Cybernetics and free will

Theirs is rather a call to enter into the process; to become immanent to the deterritorialising processes of immanentisation in themselves. We must view ourselves from within the depths of things in order to fully recognise the flows that flow through, with and around us. Our task is only to make ourselves worthy of the process…. U/ACC instead argues that what is open to ‘us’ is perhaps only the possibility of, as Deleuze writes in Logic of Sense, a “becoming the quasi-cause of what is produced within us”. There remains much which is inherently outside ‘us’, however. All we are able to do is produce “surfaces and linings in which the event is reflected”. [2]

In accelerating the process, Deleuze and Guattari nod purposefully towards Nietzsche, and, in light of the limits of what we are able to produce, we should remember that what is key for Deleuze in Nietzsche’s thought is his amor fati; his love of fate. Fate for Nietzsche is not our theistic destiny in the hands of God but the affirmation of a life caught up in its own flows. It is in this way that Deleuze writes of becoming worthy of the Event, of a life made impersonal. […] the task is “to become worthy of what happens to us, and thus to will and release the event, to become the offspring of one’s own events, and thereby be reborn, to have one more birth, and to break with one’s carnal birth — to become the offspring of one’s events and not of one’s actions, for the action is itself produced by the offspring of the event.” [5] — Fragment on the Event of Unconditional Acceleration

I'm not totally sure what that means, but I think I have a decent idea. My read of what this is saying, bc I think trying to explain things in our own words is useful for making sure we understand them, is that it's saying that D&G make the point that we can't control society, and that sociocultural flows mostly create who and what we are, what we do and desire, and that the proper response to this is to become intimately familiar and aware in our feelings, our phenomenology of that, instead of trying to resist it, to be pure and moral and totally deconstructed, or rigid and rational, and then to wu wei with those flows to participate through that awareness in the partial creation of ourselves, even if we can't wholly create ourselves, by trying to shape, in what way we can, how we are shaped by the events and circumstances around us, and choosing to love what shapes us (amor fati).

Radical acceptance of the facets that shape you, and then trying to shape those facets in turn.

I think wu wei is a description of the practice they're advocating, separated only by accelerationism's very different (and stronger) analysis of how those impersonal flows are created and how they work and where they go, and why they are. It's also connected to how Martha Graham talks about a similarly unnameable "quickening:"

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Which is a concept that's very close to a lot of what accelerationists talk about I think: impersonal forces that express themselves in particular ways through us. The opening to fanged noumena actually talks a lot about how Land's work is largely a response to Kant, and he's a really deep reader of Kant — and one of the things it points out is that Kant is super rational and individual and sort of protestant in all his writings except one, where he talks about art, talking about inspiration and genius as this impersonal force that flows around and through humans and is expressed in a unique way in particular ones. And how Land basically took that bit and extended it. (And it is absolutely worthy of scrutiny and extension/expansion, yeah. Why is it just some special folks… and why is it limited to Art (whatever that is)? Cue my frustrated autism noises when people imply engineering/science/computers are mechanistic and procedural.)

It's the same as realizing, from introspection, we don't have free will: lots of people claim they experience free will but that's bullshit. If you spend a long enough amount of time laying on your back staring at the ceiling thinking about how you think, it's clear. What I mean by this is that if you spend long enough thinking about your past choices, you'll often realize that they were either determined by external random chance (e.g. forgetting a detail) or that past-you simply couldn't have done anything else (but this requires deep compassion and understanding of your past self and her imperfections, something people are not good at). Pure libertarian free will just logically entails that our actions are pure chance, because if they were the product of our character and memories interacting with our environment, then they'd be determined! to the degree we could "choose otherwise" given those inputs, the only logical option other than determinism is random chance. whereas determinism is actually what implies that we are in control of our actions. Of course there are some who try to find a third way between randomness and determinism and composites of the two, using quantum tubules or some shit, but I feel like those two categories are logically exhaustive of the conceptual space there.

What people think of when they hear "we don't have free will" is some sort of vulgar Tolstoyan determinism where people can't change and can't break out of loops. They just confuse having "free will" with being able to change their behavior in response to stimuli, or being able to be unique — none of which requires free will. We know that we can break out of loops and make decisions that expose us to new information and change our circumstances so that we do more of the things we want to do, and that feels like free will, but we're doing that deterministically on the basis of our prior experiences, current experiences and environment, and character developed based on prior experiences.

What it really is that we experience is a feedback loop with our past, present, and the ongoing sort of state object shaped by those, that we're in, where we couldn't do otherwise than what we do next, but at the same time, we can still change by adapting and responding to that feedback. Think about a robot that can try new solutions to problems, and store memories on what worked and didn't, and so on, but it's still determined to do those things. It's the feedback and adaptive processes that give us control over ourselves in the way we introspectively experience it: the fact that with each action, the results of that action add further information that change who we are and what we know, so that even if we're a pure function of our inputs, the inputs are different this time. Think about the world state data object in pure functional programming languages.

For sure we're also impacted by lots of RNG, like atmospheric behaviors and all the other things that seem to "just happen" and can't easily be predicted or measured. What I'm just saying, from the perspective of trying to understand why we can still change, and feel like we have free will as in control, even if determinism is the only logical option, feedback loops and adaptation are why; RNG is another factor that feeds in, but more for the "free will as could've gone otherwise."

Understanding this intimately is useful for therapy, or any kind of self directed personal growth: if you believe that anything is possible that leads into "willpower" and "motivation" and other frameworks that aren't very helpful. Whereas if you have a cybernetic understanding you can try to change the environment, or the feedback loops you're in, or what information you're processing. This is probably a gross oversimplification, but maybe there is a point to be made here that we have a lot of afflictions either caused or worsened by what the axiom of free will; if what's actually happening is a feedback loop, one model here is to think about depression in terms of it being partially exacerbated by a lack of new inputs and change. "New inputs" and "shocking the system" underly all(?) improvements my friends and I have been able to make in our own mental health.

Outsideness and cybernetics wins again?