The future, which is now, will require – not a philosophy of science, but a philosophy of pseudoscience. For, in the future, which is now, pseudoscience, will increase in both its chaos and complexity, knowledge and power. This is precisely because the distinction between ‘real science’ and ‘pseudo science’ – historically known in the philosophy of science as the problem of demarcation – has never been more blurred than it is today. Today, one man’s technoscience is another man’s pseudo science and one man’s pseudo science is another man’s technoscience and the whole entire structure and configuration of this debate is ordained by Man3. Technology has superseded the biocentric definition of the Human. The biology of human genetics has been transferred into the language of informatics and code. To be Human is to be a specific genetic code reproducible in all its chaos and complexity through cloning, gene editing and artificial intelligence. Technology is truly nothing more than art drenched in scientific aesthetics and yet, the superficial equation of technoscience with the art-practice of science itself is the purely “scientific” grounds for the magnification of the problem of demarcation in the 21st century. Technoscience is the persistent pseudo-sciencing of science itself through the re-creation of science (and the Human) through technology. The perfect mechanism of explanation for this dynamic in our current future now is manifest in the excitement and despair conjured by the virtual reality of the Metaverse. The Metaverse is an interlocking embrace of all that is meant and made possible by the institutional conglomerate that is science, technology and racial capitalist society. Therefore, it is important here to make clear: The World was never destined to go virtual; the virtual was and is a contingency co-emergent with the techno-capitalist feudal society that has become the code of Human living since the Human became re-defined through code. This is the true meaning of ‘homo narrans’ – the coded Human. Therefore, in our current moment of Metamodernity, inaugurated in and through this re-definition of the Human as nothing more than a narratological summary of informatics and data points, there can be no such thing as techno-optimism. There is only techno-nihilism, techno-hopelessness, techno-pessimism. The techno-optimist are either capitalist or naive. If one speaks of technology and does not speak of war and death then, one has not missed the elephant in the room but the nuclear bomb. When the Metaverse takes on its full exposure, and the nihilistic prophecy of the “the virtual world becoming more important than the physical” comes into fruition, we will have to remember that the Zoomification of education and the bio(necro)political sovereignty exerted in the execution of shutting down the entire World set the stage for this. It is not that the World ‘necessarily’ will become Ready Player One, it is that the elites of the World have been optimizing the imagination and material conditions of ‘the masses’ for years, priming us for a metamorphosis that is now all but impossible to stop. Indeed, the very idea of putting a stop to the dawn of Man3 is seen as anti-progressive. But as you know, or rather, as you should already know: Social media already is, already has been, and always was the Metaverse. A world of characters and avatars. Simulated battles and virtual wars. Algorithmic statutes and hidden by-laws. Demands. Commands. And dictates on how to be. Incentives for devoted attention. Chaos of capitalist rule. A home.
And there are no greater defenders of Twitter Capitalism than the Marxist of Twitter. This is not because Marxist use Twitter (as if usage itself is a reason for criticism when the point is more paradigmatic) but because Marxist literally defend the corporation of Twitter and the value of its functional utility with arguments that hold more merit than most. Nevertheless, these argument are still made in “favor” of the continuation of the digital capitalist existence of a corporate social media entity built on a decided nihilism towards its inevitability. Capitalist realism rears its ugly head the worst in debates about Twitter. Therefore it is true: it is easier to imagine the End of the World (or rather, a World in which – ‘the virtual becomes more important than the physical’) than it is to imagine the end of digital capitalism. All the defenses of Twitter that rely on the so-called “ease of access” through which Marxist/radical literature and politics can be disseminated sound like nothing more than a Twitter advertisement for a Jack Dorsey charter school anchored in neoliberal openness to “radical thought.” There’s a lot more things I want to say about this, and I know a lot of people, who have a lot more to say, that feel like they’ve been giving no space to speak. A philosophy of pseudoscience would be something of a creative intellectual community where thought, creativity and community can be tied together, where dissent and disruption is inevitable yet, there is still a such thing as ‘together.’ There are too many great ideas lurking in the obscurity of oblivion just as there are too many obstacles in the way of getting new ideas out into the world and getting the people with the new ideas in mutual aid of one another. Such a move in the Metaverse would not end the doom. These are the New Dark Ages. We are all doomed. But, the pseudo-thought here is that to think together is to offer the impossible possibility of being doomed, together – as not another way out, but as the only way with.
Mumble Theory 