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Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us

Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, the more we sort of build up larger and more chaotic outcomes. There is no natural state as defined by hyper static equilibrium. Only brief moments where we purport to control it — building up a chaotic momentum beneath it.

mrbungie 4y ago
Hah, that sounds like typical human hubris. To think that we as humans can control the complexity of Earth when we barely control ourselves. PS: Not suggesting anything about climate change, I'm just amused the comment parent makes.
achr2 4y ago
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.
- throwaway173738 4y ago
  Yeah chaotic systems are merely characterized by their extreme sensitivity to initial conditions for a particular long term outcome. All systems trend when modeled mathematically. It’s just difficult to know where a chaotic system will be at any point in time because of how hard it is to establish initial conditions. One way you can play with a real chaotic system is to build one of the circuits in jc sprott’s papers and vary the control variable. You’ll see at some values of your control an “orderly” progression of the response variables, and at others a difficult to predict progression. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ErwaemIAAAAJ&citation_for_view=ErwaemIAAAAJ:2osOgNQ5qMEC https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
- tsunamifury 4y ago
  Trends are chaotic too and hit inflection points that are hard to predict. He goes deep on the pred/prey model from Isle Royal where trends go for a bit then inflect. Tons of wolves then tons of elk then low populations of both then high of both. There are trends but no hyper static state or relationship even.
- miroljub 4y ago
  Our planet is both chaotic and stable, depending on the timescale we are looking at. Chaotic on the long timescale, but pretty stable given the much shorter timescale of known human history.
  - nradov 4y ago
    If you believe that then I think you haven't spent much time out in nature. Some wild species populations boom and crash in chaotic ways even in areas that haven't been impacted much by humans. Nature is far from stable on any time scale longer than a year.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Doesn't it all average out over time though? I suppose things like erosion do cause permanent changes but other than that?
    - lproven 4y ago
      ISTM like you haven't fully grasped the fractal nature of, well, nature. At one scale, it's chaos. 1 or 2 scales up or down (in time or in space) it's stable. It's like that all the way up and all the way down. Oh, and not only are the scale levels not just spacial or temporal but both, but the number of levels is itself non integer. But the point is that even chaotic systems often display order if you find the right place or perspective to stand and look. You can't say "it's not stable". Not ever. Rocks aren't stable over aeons. Galaxies aren't. Protons aren't if you wait long enough. But it is often possible to measure the rates of change and of complexity and say, look, given greater levels of complexity, then lower rates of change will probably hold... Even given a famine or a plague that's currently devastating one region.
- rektide 4y ago
  AWOBMOLG was more about mythologization of tech as oracular & all powerful, leading us to think that we can handle anything. Techno-utopianism. A lot of the series is about the belief that we could, with technologies predictive powers & neoliberal market ethos... And how it doesn't pan out. We have "New Economies" greatly bloom in the world. And about how instead we got the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We thought we were taming market complexity (via in part neoliberalism weirdly) but turns out not so much. We have the rise of cybernetic thinking & Limits of Growth (& it's limitations in assuming we cannot change human behavior). "Sure everything is trending towards shit, but we're humans, we can definitely go create some genius machine that will fix this, right" Curtis rarely comes out and makes broad conclusions, but the watcher is definitely left with impression of absurd hubris & folly & chaos-triumphant, in AWOBMOLG and in much else of Curtis's excellent excellent catalog of contemporary history documentaries.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > Curtis rarely comes out and makes broad conclusions Indeed; his films (and their titles!) are oblique and suggestive. They are about politics, but it's very hard to discern his own political posture clearly. I wonder what kind of a man he would be to meet.
    - rektide 4y ago
      He's still a bit reserved somewhat in interviews but they are fun to watch. Just my take, but I think the core concept is really that there is no one actually genuinely leading, no one left with a compelling believable vision in any position of power, and that total power vacuum keeps letting mad scenes play out across history. The need for hope, to show a willingness to go in authentically good direction at scale, is a fuel that powers the public spirit, and we keep suffering long eras where it's simply unavailable.
- nradov 4y ago
  Humans have destroyed natural habitats, but at the same time some species have come to thrive in the unnatural habitats we have created. Think of pigeons, rats, cockroaches, coyotes, racoons, etc. Life expands to fill every niche where enough energy is available for survival.
jvm___ 4y ago
"There is no natural state as defined by hyper static equilibrium. Only brief moments where we purport to control it — building up a chaotic momentum beneath it." The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe. No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round. Margaret Atwood
- tsunamifury 4y ago
  It’s taken me half a lifetime to even learn enough to start to appreciate her wisdom.
  - ask_b123 4y ago
    I might not have lived enough to appreciate it, how do I do so?
    - mecsred 4y ago
      Try not to die anytime soon!
    - tsunamifury 4y ago
      If you're being serious, it's more that within time you begin to realize both your fragility and lack of power over yourself and nature. And on top of that you realize the narrow perspectives you held as a child that came for your culture, like owning things or believing you have control over them, are far less real than we think. Here she points out, look, you can say you own something, but that's a cultural concept. Long after you are dead and gone that land will be there, you will not. Long after you said you can control nature, it will consume you in the grave. You are a part of it, and for a time you can exert some power over it, but in the long term, we are just waiting to be overrun by it. What may appear inferior, could, over a long time horizon, prove superior. Trees for example have survived 100's of millions of years, and humans are a mere 10's of thousands. We are young, ambitious and naive and we are cutting them down -- the thing that provides the very air we breath. Its a broader perspective that come with age I'm guessing.
sharkweek 4y ago
He gives the example in (maybe my favorite content of the last decade) Can’t Get You Out Of My Head about how climate scientists looking to alter weather patterns to fight the Cold War discovered, accidentally, how even the tiniest of changes cause Earth’s climate system to spiral wildly out of control.
- rektide 4y ago
  CGYOOMH was amazing. One of his best most sprawling works.

mrbungie 4y ago

Hah, that sounds like typical human hubris. To think that we as humans can control the complexity of Earth when we barely control ourselves. PS: Not suggesting anything about climate change, I'm just amused the comment parent makes.

achr2 4y ago

Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.

throwaway173738 4y ago
Yeah chaotic systems are merely characterized by their extreme sensitivity to initial conditions for a particular long term outcome. All systems trend when modeled mathematically. It’s just difficult to know where a chaotic system will be at any point in time because of how hard it is to establish initial conditions. One way you can play with a real chaotic system is to build one of the circuits in jc sprott’s papers and vary the control variable. You’ll see at some values of your control an “orderly” progression of the response variables, and at others a difficult to predict progression. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ErwaemIAAAAJ&citation_for_view=ErwaemIAAAAJ:2osOgNQ5qMEC https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
tsunamifury 4y ago
Trends are chaotic too and hit inflection points that are hard to predict. He goes deep on the pred/prey model from Isle Royal where trends go for a bit then inflect. Tons of wolves then tons of elk then low populations of both then high of both. There are trends but no hyper static state or relationship even.
miroljub 4y ago
Our planet is both chaotic and stable, depending on the timescale we are looking at. Chaotic on the long timescale, but pretty stable given the much shorter timescale of known human history.
- nradov 4y ago
  If you believe that then I think you haven't spent much time out in nature. Some wild species populations boom and crash in chaotic ways even in areas that haven't been impacted much by humans. Nature is far from stable on any time scale longer than a year.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Doesn't it all average out over time though? I suppose things like erosion do cause permanent changes but other than that?
  - lproven 4y ago
    ISTM like you haven't fully grasped the fractal nature of, well, nature. At one scale, it's chaos. 1 or 2 scales up or down (in time or in space) it's stable. It's like that all the way up and all the way down. Oh, and not only are the scale levels not just spacial or temporal but both, but the number of levels is itself non integer. But the point is that even chaotic systems often display order if you find the right place or perspective to stand and look. You can't say "it's not stable". Not ever. Rocks aren't stable over aeons. Galaxies aren't. Protons aren't if you wait long enough. But it is often possible to measure the rates of change and of complexity and say, look, given greater levels of complexity, then lower rates of change will probably hold... Even given a famine or a plague that's currently devastating one region.
rektide 4y ago
AWOBMOLG was more about mythologization of tech as oracular & all powerful, leading us to think that we can handle anything. Techno-utopianism. A lot of the series is about the belief that we could, with technologies predictive powers & neoliberal market ethos... And how it doesn't pan out. We have "New Economies" greatly bloom in the world. And about how instead we got the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We thought we were taming market complexity (via in part neoliberalism weirdly) but turns out not so much. We have the rise of cybernetic thinking & Limits of Growth (& it's limitations in assuming we cannot change human behavior). "Sure everything is trending towards shit, but we're humans, we can definitely go create some genius machine that will fix this, right" Curtis rarely comes out and makes broad conclusions, but the watcher is definitely left with impression of absurd hubris & folly & chaos-triumphant, in AWOBMOLG and in much else of Curtis's excellent excellent catalog of contemporary history documentaries.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > Curtis rarely comes out and makes broad conclusions Indeed; his films (and their titles!) are oblique and suggestive. They are about politics, but it's very hard to discern his own political posture clearly. I wonder what kind of a man he would be to meet.
  - rektide 4y ago
    He's still a bit reserved somewhat in interviews but they are fun to watch. Just my take, but I think the core concept is really that there is no one actually genuinely leading, no one left with a compelling believable vision in any position of power, and that total power vacuum keeps letting mad scenes play out across history. The need for hope, to show a willingness to go in authentically good direction at scale, is a fuel that powers the public spirit, and we keep suffering long eras where it's simply unavailable.
nradov 4y ago
Humans have destroyed natural habitats, but at the same time some species have come to thrive in the unnatural habitats we have created. Think of pigeons, rats, cockroaches, coyotes, racoons, etc. Life expands to fill every niche where enough energy is available for survival.

jvm___ 4y ago

"There is no natural state as defined by hyper static equilibrium. Only brief moments where we purport to control it — building up a chaotic momentum beneath it." The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe. No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round. Margaret Atwood

tsunamifury 4y ago
It’s taken me half a lifetime to even learn enough to start to appreciate her wisdom.
- ask_b123 4y ago
  I might not have lived enough to appreciate it, how do I do so?
  - mecsred 4y ago
    Try not to die anytime soon!
  - tsunamifury 4y ago
    If you're being serious, it's more that within time you begin to realize both your fragility and lack of power over yourself and nature. And on top of that you realize the narrow perspectives you held as a child that came for your culture, like owning things or believing you have control over them, are far less real than we think. Here she points out, look, you can say you own something, but that's a cultural concept. Long after you are dead and gone that land will be there, you will not. Long after you said you can control nature, it will consume you in the grave. You are a part of it, and for a time you can exert some power over it, but in the long term, we are just waiting to be overrun by it. What may appear inferior, could, over a long time horizon, prove superior. Trees for example have survived 100's of millions of years, and humans are a mere 10's of thousands. We are young, ambitious and naive and we are cutting them down -- the thing that provides the very air we breath. Its a broader perspective that come with age I'm guessing.

sharkweek 4y ago

He gives the example in (maybe my favorite content of the last decade) Can’t Get You Out Of My Head about how climate scientists looking to alter weather patterns to fight the Cold War discovered, accidentally, how even the tiniest of changes cause Earth’s climate system to spiral wildly out of control.

rektide 4y ago
CGYOOMH was amazing. One of his best most sprawling works.