Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

the kind of performance she's doing is antithetical to the politics she's namechecking.

― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Friday, June 4, 2021 2:04 PM

stop making sense.☺

also xpost to alpine: i wondered the same thing. is he really doing post-production on a tiktok selfie video?????

I mean, I don't really know the hows tbh, but I'm assuming he does it for the same reason every single YouTube/TikTok/whatever video randomly cuts angles and closeups because the internet seems to be allergic to unchanging still shots of a talking head

He's dunking on grimes' political proposition performance production values

I'll see the faux commiebot bugs on your face and raise you a closeup of my proletariat pores. How u like them apples?

Scanning Fantano’s bookshelf for Four Futures: Life After Capitalism.

well yes, if god were real, that would solve a lot of problems.

I lol'd but really now... (quoting Clarke's third law) "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" seems to apply here.

So yes, perhaps if we're lucky we'll get the alien overlords instead of Hal. I think we all can agree humans haven't got the best track record as leaders.

I guess I just don't see it as a particularly useful argument; it elides a lot of stuff in a teleological way.

has anyone ever read that stanislaw lem short story about the planet that's populated by robots who will kill any non-robot being on sight? then the twist is that all of the robots are actually just humans in disguise, but none of them are actually aware and have been tricked into thinking that they're the only ones that are a human in a robot disguise? and they all subsequently go around terrorizing each other to weed out any humans in disguise?

i feel like that's what claire means when she is praising the "robot overlords."

― things repeat forever and there never is a remedy (Austin), Friday, June 4, 2021 8:08 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this adds a sinister new dimension to the “robots in dis guys” thread

btw the luxembourg signal already recorded the definitive "praise our robot overlords" theme song many years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZDyvDICnWY

idk about any bitterness from that scene towards towards her at the time of her breakout in 2012 etc. but there's obviously been a lot more open hostility towards her from people who knew her then since her heel turn with dating elon etc.

nah ppl were hating years before elon

I think all of the musicians who tried to patiently explain ai in music and generative art to her on twitter gave up after that incident and just facepalm any time Grimes says something now

I think it’s pretty clear the “ai” she’s talking about is not based in any sort of study of actual technology in use now, or the direction that current r&d is going, nor is it based on current ethical and philosophical work. It’s just stoner thought experiment territory

There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it reminds me of a friend and his college classmate who would get really stoned and then have “debates” that were utterly nonsensical. Like, “we need to enforce birth control because overpopulation will ruin the planet” versus “we will develop technologies that cleanse pollution and will have massive cities a thousand stories high housing billions of people”

You can debate whether this is harmful because it’s coming from someone who lives with Elon Musk and speaking in such a way is irresponsible, but in all likelihood that state of affairs probably has an expiration date

obligatory link to video demonstrating where music AI is actually at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH2EbK9dQlg

isn't what she said basically just 'fully automated luxury gay space communism', which was not an uncommon thing for online leftwing people to say like 2 years ago? verso published a book with that title

Her partner is one of the richest people on the planet, she left out the part about stripping him of his power and wealth that’s necessary for communism.

Yes, which was itself a redux of 50-year-old ideas from people like Bookchin and Firestone - which is why it seems pretty silly to present this like it's an original proposition that communists haven't thought about because of their hostility to AI.xp

xp- i get that part, ppl upthread were calling it tech-bro utopianism tho

Without considering a reconfiguration of power structures, it is just tech bro utopianism. It’s the underpants gnome meme but for a classless society instead of profit.

I think the plan is to murder all the useless poor people and then have a faux communist paradise exclusively for all the multi-billionaires that remain. Comrade musk will basically organise the new society like an endless fyre festival but with robots

Maybe it just bums her out to know that her grandchildren will have to be guillotined for the plan to work.

Without considering a reconfiguration of power structures, it is just tech bro utopianism. It’s the underpants gnome meme but for a classless society instead of profit.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Saturday, June 5, 2021 5:09 PM (forty-six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't see the part where she specifies 'without any reconfiguration of power structures.' i suppose that's something u can read into it (presumably she doesn't think her husband's head should be put on a spike) but what she says (and imo what all fully-automated luxury gay space communism is implicitly arguing) is p consistent with the depiction of technology in, say, chapter 15 of capital vol 1

With every advance in the use of machinery, the constant component of capital, that part which consists of machinery, raw material, &c., increases, while the variable component, the part laid out in labour-power, decreases.

The extraordinary increase in the productivity of large-scale industry accompanied as it is by both a more intensive and a more extensive exploitation of labor-power in all spheres of production, permits a larger and larger part of the working-class to be employed unproductively.

where "machinery"/ai will continuously reduce the share of human labour as an input to production. it's not clear that marx believed that a reconfiguration of power structure was key to the development of technology that would bring about abundance. imo he seemed to think communism would piggy-back on those technologies, at least up to a point, where the final development in service of shared abundance would be worked out

it could be that people are mad because she didn't appropriately cite references, as Sund4r claims, or maybe fully automated style communism is going out of fashion and a more hippie anti-industrial agrarian style of communism is now in vogue. but i think substantively what she's saying is p standard, it's just the grimes factor/elon musk association that is driving ppl up the walls

the Elon Musk association is not trivial

sure. i mean i personally don't care, but i guess i feel some sympathy to fans who had put stock in her as a political figure before who were let down by it

Technology without reconfiguration can bring about unparalleled abundance - for a tiny sliver of the population. (It already has!) That's the problem with her tweaked-out statement and tech-bro utopianism - it rests on the assumption that abundance will be shared equally (or, more likely, people who have babies with billionaires don't actually care about the last bit) which is just a giant lol because look at the world around us. We could have abundance right now and don't, there is no reason to believe that AI/technology in and of itself will become an equalizer. That's what people are roasting, not that she promoted "communism," because she clearly has no interest in communism.

As we might gather from her statement that she's a socialist for now 'but not economically.'

We have a millionaire partnered with a billionaire telling us about magical robot elves who'll make everything better (so trust the tech bros, like my partner).

I'm not mad. I just think she's goofy.

Technology without reconfiguration can bring about unparalleled abundance - for a tiny sliver of the population. (It already has!) That's the problem with her tweaked-out statement and tech-bro utopianism - it rests on the assumption that abundance will be shared equally (or, more likely, people who have babies with billionaires don't actually care about the last bit) which is just a giant lol because look at the world around us. We could have abundance right now and don't, there is no reason to believe that AI/technology in and of itself will become an equalizer. That's what people are roasting, not that she promoted "communism," because she clearly has no interest in communism.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Saturday, June 5, 2021 6:26 PM (four seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

ya i disagree that that's what people are roasting, given that it's not something she said. really all she says is "AI will create the possibility of us not having to work" the bit about that happening without any increase in sharing of resources is being read into it

We could have abundance right now and don't

depends how you define abundance. global gdp per capita is like 12k usd, so like 33 dollars per day. that's roughly the income level of peru. also that's under the assumption that transitioning to an equal global income distribution wouldn't affect the total amount of income. gdp per capita has grown at about 4% per year on average the last 20 years, so assuming that keeps up (probably optimistic, it currently looks like it's slowing down), in another 20 years we'll be at 26k, roughly current income level of Latvia. imho we're still a while away, materially speaking, from a communist transition to abundance

Taking an idea that was wildly utopian in the first place, simplifying it to dorm-room stoner level, and then presenting it as a "proposition" to the only people in the world who already believe in it is lolworthy, even aside from the implications of her actual class position, etc.

i agree, it could have been presented in a more academically rigorous way

roughly current income level of Latvia

actually a little closer to Malaysia (which is perhaps surprisingly marginally richer)

the bit about that happening without any increase in sharing of resources is being read into it

Because she doesn’t mention it, yes - and it’s a fundamental element of the “fully-automated communism” desire you’re comparing to her.

depends how you define abundance

People in the richest country in the world not dying in the street while this chucklehead’s partner manipulates the market for CummyCoin for one.

maybe fully automated style communism is going out of fashion and a more hippie anti-industrial agrarian style of communism is now in vogue

flopson, I'm in the middle of both of them so can't fully endorse yet, but you might be interested in these two books, neither of which match that description afaict but are p critical of FAL-communism:
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3184-breaking-things-at-work
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745338606/inhuman-power/

thx rob. gavin's book is on my to-read pile but i hadn't heard of the other one

it's fun so far, though I am definitely actual-luddism-sympathetic already.
I haven't gotten far at all with the Dyer-Witheford et al and I suspect it is probably not super compelling if you're not interested in AI qua AI. In its favour the opening chapter has one of the better explanations of current AI tech that I've seen

It’s incredibly tone deaf however you try to rationalize it.

Yeah I doubt Grimes truly cares about all that theory that has been discussed in this thread. What people are mad about is how she turns that important discussion into an aesthetic meant to look cool or hip.

Realiti (demo) just came on and it made me very sad how much I (still) love it.

What people are mad about is how she turns that important discussion into an aesthetic meant to look cool or hip.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, June 5, 2021 7:19 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yea she’s the one who “turned” this conversation that way

I find it's easier to enjoy more music and artists if you don't follow them on social media.

I don’t really use social media often and it’s hard not to follow her techno-fascist opinions when the news cycle has a hard-on for everything musk-related.

I for one got more entertainment from this TikTok than from her music.

Anything that creates negative perceptions about musk and herself nowadays is fine by me too. Fuck them both.

I find it's easier to enjoy more music and artists if you don't follow them on social media.

― octobeard, Thursday, June 10, 2021 11:16 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i find it's easier to enjoy if you dont take their social performance as literal policy propositions

she has the methiest vibes. her and elon are probably tuend ot the moon 24/7

woah typos

lol plausible theory

we had a spy in the house, but it was azealia so…

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRkAPIdCum8/

i like this snippet! it seems like new music is probably coming soon, elsewhere she's talking about a music video for another track being almost ready

Probably have to spend $25000 and buy it as an NFT