In the literary milieu where he is ignored more than despised, John Brockman is about as well known as the first three digits of the number Pi.
“This crowd sees everything through the lenses of culture and politics,” he says. “But an understanding of life, of the world, can only come through biology, through science.”
Ebola, stem cells, brain research—Who needs the new David Foster Wallace, the new Philip Roth?
“The great questions of the world concern scientific news,” says Brockman. “We are at the beginning of a revolution. And what we hear from the mainstream is: “Please make it go away.”
…As man slowly seems to turn into an algorithm, this is then a consequence of the cybernetic thinking that has influenced and sustained Brockman in the world.
I shared this article with Arthur as part of an ongoing conversation we’re having about scientism, reductionism, and the popular modern delusion that life is essentially a problem to be solved by means of the hard sciences. All of this is itself part of our intelligence-gathering operations as he and I formulate plans for a possible Winter Offensive against Less Wrong-style rationalism and its Saint-Simonian underpinnings. (By “he and I”, of course, I mean that “I” plan to cheer him on as “he” sallies forth to wage intellectual warfare for which I am sorely lacking in weaponry.) From there, you’ll never believe how the conversation turned to mythology, Alan Watts, and surprising confessions of faith in trickster deities!
(Am I doing this clickbait thing right?)