1946 – The Universe is Hostile to Computers (YT video 2021)

For me this video has some metaphysical dimensions – and you will perhaps pardon me for that. There is something very encouraging (even if with micro-catastrophist repercussions) in the fact that there is this flippancy of bits all around us, or the fact that all the Mars rovers are using some old hardy tech in order to minimize or become resilient in the face of the chaotic, unpredictable behaviour or highly energetic particles. Most of the time life here down below is kind of disconnected from the above (outside the realm of critical astrology or the like). This video exemplifies in a very specific way the proximity of the realms, of the so below as above, the fact that effects somehow overrun causes, that we cannot deal with a unicausality, and particles energized by black holes at the center of our galaxy actually reach us and somehow – influence or may affecteven results of e-elections. There is also these proof of vibrant materialism all around in the words of Jane Bennett, something that the micro processor industry had to deal with since the beginning. This enlarged affectibility (panexperientialism?!) – the affectations of matter in the Spinozist terms are all around, and even ultra rare events such as antimatter collisions highlight an invisible universe that is made visible via all sorts of glitches, via gaming impossible feats. Visionary artists such as Hilma af Klint that participated actively in the feminist occultures (like Theosophy that acted like a feminist liberation theology) around 1900 where also increasingly sensible to the insensible and the invisible realms and with the discovery of various ends of the spectrum – and new theories of “quanta”, “fields” and rediscovery of atomism, became also the artists to try and imagine and represent our first modern art abstractions.

It is important to keep thinking how the discovery of cosmic rays impacted our pop culture – even in the origin story of superheroes such as the Fantastic Four.

1807 – The Bayesian Trap (Veritasium 2017)

Useful references: The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

“I didn’t say it explicitly in the video, but in my view the Bayesian trap is interpreting events that happen repeatedly as events that happen inevitably. They may be inevitable OR they may simply be the outcome of a series of steps, which likely depend on our behaviour. Yet our expectation of a certain outcome often leads us to behave just as we always have which only ensures that outcome. To escape the Bayesian trap, we must be willing to experiment.”

Incidentally Thomas Bayes gets mentioned in Adam Curtis last series of documentaries.


Bayes’ theorem