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Comment by sradu | Hacker News Reader

I've watched / read just about everything created by Adam Curtis. He is a brilliant documentarist.

If you have a couple of hours start by watching "Century of the Self" where he tells the history of PR and Edward Bernays. (it's public domain)

If you like it then watch "The Trap" and "Pandora's box". "The Power of Nightmares" is also great. Subscribe to Adam's blog.

He is able to create brilliant connections which give a whole new perspective on history. Some people I've talked about him told they believe he is a conspiracy theorist however maybe I'm naive but most of the things he says make perfect sense to me.

I remember watching "Century of the Self" at 21 and having a tiny 'aha' moment about how things work.

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Interestingly, one of his major themes is that powerful people and institutions are themselves driven by various "conspiracy theories," neuroses, and fiction.

In this post, he describes how the MI5 and other spy organizations need ideological support from authors like Le Carre.

In "The Power of Nightmares," this is also the primary theme, but focused on the mythical and paranoid ideology that drives the "War on Terror."

So, Curtis is maybe not a conspiracy theorist, but a conspiracy theory theorist... I see him as something like a humanist: he wants to the reveal the "humanity" (pettiness, confusion, imagination) of powerful actors which present themselves as serious.

I agree with you. It particularly resonates in this piece as he repeatedly tears into the intelligence services (specifically MI5) as being completely incompetent.

I find his work to be a constant reminder of how fallible the human species is, how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise (some are better at it than others) and the utter inanity that it almost always leads to.

If only it were humourous endings to these reports.

Agreed. I was introduced to his work by watching The Trap in a seminar on Michel Foucault, interestingly enough. I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist. Much of it complementary to Adam Curtis's work.

One of the important things we find in both (as well as in the last in my trifecta of organizational theory -- The Wire) is that conspiracy theories are almost impossible, because people are mostly either too stupid or too petty and shortsighted to pull off a true Illuminati-style conspiracy.

It might be tempting to call Adam Curtis a conspiracy theorist because his notion of how power is distributed and wielded is somewhat arcane -- for instance, it's at first odd to say that the populace is controlled by propping up freedom as the guiding ethos and removing arbitrary forms of control by implementing statistical guidelines, since these things are nominally in place to remove top-down control -- but such analyses, arcane though they may be, are not conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy requires a coordinated effort.

Adam Curtis describes situations in which there is no coordinated effort, and no secret cabal. Just struggles of power and agreed upon fields of debate/combat which are then exploited after the fact by those who are able to do so.

> I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist.

While I want to make some snarky comment about how maybe this tells you what you've heard about those 'fudging post-structuralists' is incorrect, what I'll say instead is that out of that group, which, incidentally, he did not consider himself a part of, Foucault is widely considered the least-fudgy.

Consider Chomsky, for example: his (silly and vapid, in my humble opinion) beef with many continental philosophers basically excluded Foucault: "I find Foucault really interesting but I remain skeptical of his mode of expression." I highly recommend watching the debate between the two of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myy3vL-QKI4 (and the five-second summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA )

Oh, you don't need to convince me one way or the other. I spent my undergraduate career in a philosophy department that was extremely continental-heavy, as well as dedicated to reading only primary texts. After having read many volumes of Frenchies, my opinion on the two most famous is that Derrida fudged beautifully, even if he was ultimately a one-trick pony, while Foucault cherry picked some history but built a system of questions that were and are worth exploring.

I'm currently making my way through Derrida now, though I've put him down to take up some Kafka...

Hmm, what should I get from that debate? I just re-read the transcript [1], and seems they just had a minor disagreement over the notion of justice. (And a couple other little "differences" which we could consider clarifications.) I currently don't see why it's so heavily cited; some others (not you) seem to consider it some legendary heavyweight fight in the history of philosophy. But it was just... an interview.

As for his disagreements with certain philosophers... he makes a cogent point, that perhaps he simply doesn't understand it, but much of it seems to him written in a kind of gibberish, which can understandably lead to a lot of mistakes. [2]

Imagine if I wrote hopefully useful code, but it was extremely hard to read and poorly documented... What properties would we expect that code to have?

[1] http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm

[2] http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-pos...

It's of particular interest to me because it really strongly illustrates the gulf between the two. It's a pretty solid introduction to both of their positions, and goes in interesting places.

  > Imagine if I wrote hopefully useful code, but it was extremely hard to read 
  > and poorly documented... What properties would we expect that code to have?

This is not the right analogy. The right analogy is a C programmer looking at some Haskell code, and complaining that they don't understand where memory is allocated, where the pointers are. I mean, after all, who can get real work done without pointers?

Let's examine his essay, but substituting in Haskell and C... actually, wait a minute. I know I've heard this before... ah yes, here: http://byfat.xxx/chomsky

Okay, so that's only kinda what I'm saying... what would you think about this paragraph?

  > But from 50 years in this programming game, I have learned two things: (1) 
  > I can ask friends who work in object oriented areas to explain it to me at 
  > a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular 
  > difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I 
  > will come to understand it. Now functors, arrows, hylomorphisms, monads, 
  > etc. --- even first-class functions, whom I knew and liked, and who was 
  > somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't 
  > understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand 
  > can explain monads to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to 
  > overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new 
  > advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic 
  > mutation, which has created a form of "programming paradigm" that is beyond procedural 
  > programming, structured programming, etc., in depth and profundity; or 
  >  (b) ... I won't spell it out.

You'd probably say "seriously, stop being an idiot. Haskell is hard, and strange, and weird, but it has value. If you like C just keep on writing C, no need to be such a jerk about it. But Haskell is for doing different kinds of programming than C."

The most helpful monad tutorial http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/write_some_fucking_co...

Let's not take one throwaway analogy I made (to help illustrate someone's point), and base an entire post on highly leaky programming analogies. Why not actually help us understand the useful aspects of continental philosophy? I cited explanations, not shaky analogies. (I'm sorry for using an illustrative analogy, because they serve as good rhetorical targets.)

Why not pick a technology made by a charlatan, and see how it sounds? You're after all assuming that the philosophy he criticizes is Haskell. What if instead, it's some closed source, obfuscated "artificial intelligence" snakeoil which barely even compiles?

And why pick that one particular paragraph? How about the one where he mentions meeting some luminaries he criticizes, like Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva? Does the aggressively ignorant C programmer go so far as meeting the Haskell implementors, trying to understand their perspectives? Does anyone go around citing the ignorant C programmer's debate with a famous Haskell implementor, where they mostly agree?

What about when he requests these philosophers "to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make." Does anyone think Haskellers don't do this? Then as programmers, we need to focus some efforts on that. Because in the software world, that's a sign of charlatans!

> Why not actually help us understand the useful aspects of continental philosophy?

Sorry, I thought you were trying to understand what Chomsky is saying here, not get an introduction yourself.

> You're after all assuming that the philosophy he criticizes is Haskell.

I'm not assuming; I've read most of these people, or at least have a basic grasp of their ideas.

> And why pick that one particular paragraph?

I thought it was the one that was most illustrative.

> How about the one where he mentions meeting some luminaries he criticizes, like Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva?

Uhhh I replaced "Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault," with "functors, arrows, hylomorphisms, monads, etc. --- even first-class functions". I'm not sure how I could more directly engage there.

> What about when he requests these philosophers [explain themselves]

They do. There is a wealth of introductory literature. I think you're taking Chomsky too literally here; this is rhetoric.

As an incredibly simple, basic introduction, here's an eight minute video on postmodernism and Community http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YanhEVEgkYI

And here's a 5 minute introduction to Zizek, who Chomsky has been reviving this spat with in the press as of late: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZDNhKBxgTw

> I'm not assuming; I've read most of these people, or at least have a basic grasp of their ideas.

Should you believe something I believe, merely because I claim it's right (with no evidence)? I likely believe some false things. People believe all sorts of weird things. The AI snakeoil salesman might believe in his own snakeoil.

> I'm not sure how I could more directly engage there.

By using the actual paragraph where he mentions actually meeting Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva. Or in general, try peforming the same trick on a passage where your point maybe doesn't look so hot. Or instead of Haskell, the aforementioned AI snakeoil.

> There is a wealth of introductory literature.

Here, I cite introductory literature on a non-mainstream programming language, on many levels: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6038989). It took work, but I hope it helped a couple people.

(It's unhelpful to merely cite the existence of literature (rather than naming it), leaving people ignorant. After all, I demonstrated that I was willing to re-read the Chomsky/Foucault discussion. I'm not lazy.)

And I vouch for the literature I cite. That means if people have problems with it, I know places where people can go and ask away to their heart's content. Or I will sit down and help people understand, until they're satisfied (or no longer interested).

[Edit: I see you edited to offer youtube links. Thanks, will watch! If they're good and in-depth, then ignore my last point.]

Sorry, I really think we were talking past each other for a bit here. I misunderstood what you were actually asking for.

And sorry for misunderstandings on my part.

“I’m no good for anything except taking the world apart and putting it together again (and I manage the latter less and less frequently).” -- Derrida

Both you guys might enjoy this essay on Derrida. I've read a couple volumes of his work, and this is a very balanced view of it: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/mar/25/derrida-exc...

I do think that Foucault's theories are quite applicable and expandable, though it's true that he can be pretty obscurantist. As the Chomsky essay notes, the history of French intellectualism that these guys come from is a very particular situation, something that even most of their non-French acolytes fail to appreciate. Most specifically, this whole generation of French theorists came of age around 1968.[1]

A whole lot can be deduced when you understand that France's intelligentsia at the time were largely structuralists who believed that history moved along rationally, according to an underlying structure. Post-structuralism as such was an attempt to reappropriate the happenings of 1968 as a "rupture", something that was new, unprecedented, unforeseen -- a real event. As Deleuze writes about it, the concept of an event is unintelligible in a structuralist sense, since a structuralist views an event as a mere surface-level phenomenon of a static underlying structure. I imagine if you went to Woodstock and told the hippies that nothing new was going on, but that their generation was the inevitable result of everything that went before them, they would similarly protest in the name of personal freedom.

It is unsurprising, then, that Derrida's work is much like the brooding of an intelligent teenager. All across the world, the Teenager came into his own in the late 1960s. Any adult of reasonable humility knows that a teenager can bring to light simple truths that the adult has grown accustomed to ignoring. And that is the value of Derrida. I agree with Chomsky that much of it is banal -- but so are most bits of wisdom.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_events_in_France

[2] The real shame of French Theory is more about the way it contributes to the already benighted state of humanities education in a professionalized capitalist society, which rewards specialization and competition and opens the way for obscurantist occultism as the easiest way to maintain a level of job security. Sigh...

Many "conspiracies" do seem to require implausible, superhuman feats of coordination driven by Machiavellian malfeasance.

These can be dismissed as improbable.

However, many horrible things happen in the world that are not driven by a plot, but by dumb nature, stupidity, or the conflux of human biological urges -- ill suited to a technologically advanced world.

Such "emergent" threats deserve greater consideration; particularly if the theory renders them (at first glance) plausible.

It would be funny if it wasn't sad.

Many, perhaps most, people are equating "conspiracy theory" with "total madness", as if there is no empirical proof of a conspiracy, such as hijacking (call it "grounding" all you want, the plane was hijacked) of the bolivian president - or the conspiracy, sorry, co-operation between the five eye secret services to have each other's help spying on their own citizens when occasionally they pay attention to the law.

It's total madness to assume that there are not thousands of "conspiracies", nothing more than covert agreements between parties (some of these agreements legal, some not), that benefit the conspiring parties at the expense of some non conspiring parties. And yet most people pride themselves on being rational for consistently ignoring any idea of such a conspiracy.

Conspiracy Zero: Hijacking the term "conspiracy".

It's crazy to make affirmative declarations without solid evidence. But it's equally crazy not to make a reasonable inquiry into the possibility that you are being deceived by any person or group with the means, motive and oppurtunity to do so.

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." - Adam Smith

I've loved Curtis's work, but I parted ways from him slightly with Machines of Loving Grace. While technological transhumanism certainly opens up new vistas for potential abuses of human (or sentient?) rights, I have a hard time seeing it as intrinsically negative, rather than the natural progression of the evolutionary process.

I don't know why people give him so much credence. He's an expert in making entertaining TV shows. He's not a historian or an expert in any of the areas he discusses.

He's an artist who uses archive footage to tell a story. The story is often so simple that it isn't strictly true, but it's still worth a watch. I think his films will be treasured by future historians to get an insight into the current events of our time.

Future historians will look at stuff that isn't true to get an insight into our time? Can you spot the flaw there?

Historians pull their information from sources of all kinds. For example, a piece of propaganda from WW2 (which is likely to be almost completely untrue) could be an invaluable insight into determining a collective mindset of the time. Similarly, a diary of someone on the street, who's been taken in by that propaganda is also useful.

Adam Curtis exists in the outskirts of a behemoth of a broadcaster, so his interpretation of these events will be useful - especially given that they are broadcast so widely.

How can any one individual get an insight into a population of millions -- without making at least some concessions to practicality, and the generalisation and other "technical" untruths that this implies.

You think that current historians only look at stuff that's true to get an insight into the past? Can you spot the flaw there?

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