… stands for agree, amplify, and accelerate. Initiated here, and escalated here, it opens an unexplored horizon for strategic discussion within NRx. No analysis of cultural conflict on the Internet can bypass a reference to trolling, and no understanding of trolling is any longer complete without reference to AAA. It raises the discussion of parody to a new level. (If it isn’t already obvious, this blog is seriously impressed.)

AAA works if strategic complication has favorable consequences. Whichever cultural faction has the greater capacity for the tolerance of difficulty, identity confusion, irony, and humor, will tend to find advantage in it. I think that’s us. It’s inherently toxic to zealotry.

As a sub-theme — but one keenly appreciated here — it marks a critical evolution in the Cthulhu Wars. (Check out the graphics on the TNIO post for recognition of that.) Rather than arguing over whether “Cthulhu swims left” AAA proposes amphetaminizing the monster regardless. If a “holocaust of freedom” is what you want, let’s go there. Take this operation to the end of the river … and see what we find.

ADDED: Slate Star Scratchpad comments.

The weekly free-for-all opens for business.

Amerika has posted an interview with an ‘Internet troll’ that’s well worth a look. Only a year ago, my sense of a ‘troll’ was of an abusive ‘drive-by’ commenter, putting up remarks of no cognitive value, designed entirely to annoy. By early this year, after the most hilarious hoax in history had been executed, my understanding of the word had definitely evolved (swearing solemn oaths on a copy of The Origin of Species does that). I’m now inclined to interpret ‘trolling’ as a subtle art, in the spirit of Swift’s A modest Proposal (a work referenced in the Amerika interview). I’ve not been subjected to a moronic drive-by for months, so the fact I no longer have a convenient name for it doesn’t matter a huge amount. Is ‘goblin’ available?

The Unz Review goes from strength to strength, and now hosts Peter Frost. That’s an opportunity to recall a remark by fellow Unzer Razib Khan, which I would expect to be endorsed by other writers there: “… when Neoreactionaries using [sic] terms like the Cathedral they’re closing off the conversation to outsiders, and creating a group with initiate-like dynamics.” That strikes me as a feature rather than a bug, which suggests that distinct evaluations of ‘public conversation’ are the real topic here. (The Public Sphere is an intellectual-liberty death zone.) While in Unz-territory, this post by Steve Sailer is also notable.

Why Israel will die. Additional racial provocation for the week on Israeli Naziporn, Asian rage, and Weissrein TV.

The crazy productivity levels at TNIO and Anarchopapist are disintegrating my brain.

Some global collapse stuff. (+)

Dampier on digital intrusion.

Cthulhucoin? (It’s hard to quite know.)

rkhs put up a link to this (on Twitter). I suspect it will irritate almost everyone reading this, but it’s worth pushing past that. Even the irritation has significance. The world it introduces, of Internet-era marketing culture, is of self-evident importance to anyone seeking to understand our times — and what they’re tilting into.

Attention Economics is a thing. Wikipedia is (of course) itself a remarkable node in the new economy of attention, packaging information in a way that adapts it to a continuous current of distraction. Its indispensable specialism is low-concentration research resources. Whatever its failings, it’s already all-but impossible to imagine the world working without it.

On Attention Economics, Wikipedia quotes a precursor essay by Herbert A. Simon (1971): “…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Attention is the social reciprocal of information, and arguably merits an equally-intense investigative engagement. Insofar as information has become a dominating socio-historical category, attention has also been (at least implicitly) foregrounded.

Attention Economics is inescapably practical, or micro-pragmatic. Anyone reading this is already dealing with it. The information explosion is an invasion of attention. Those hunting for zones of crisis can easily find them here, cutting to the quick of their own lives.

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Only a few months ago, I had never heard of Poe’s Law. Now it’s a rare day in which it doesn’t crop up several times. Invocations of the Zeitgeist are inherently improbable, but if there were to be a persuasive illustration of the phenomenon, it would be something like this.

According to the succinct Wikipedia entry (already linked), Poe’s Law is less than a decade old. Among it’s precursors, also relatively recent, a 2001 Usenet comment by Alan Morgan most closely anticipates it: “Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook.” In other words, between a sincere intellectual position and its satirization, no secure distinction can be made. (There is nothing about this thesis that restricts it to ‘extreme’ opinion, although that is how it is usually understood.)

The latest opportunity for raising this topic is, of course, @Salondotcom. (There’s an entertaining interview with the pranksters behind it here.) The offense of this account, which led to it being suspended by Twitter last week, was clear beyond any reasonable doubt. Quite simply, it was nearly indistinguishable from the original, a fact that has itself been explicitly noted (and tweeted about) innumerable times. Parody Salon slugs, so ludicrously over-the-top that they had @Salondotcom readers in stitches, were funny precisely because they were such plausible mimics of Salon‘s own. Readers were laughing through @Salondotcom, at Salon. This is almost certainly why the account was suspended.

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State-of-the-art in Japanese android design. (Thanks to @existoon for the pointer.)

It’s not really — or even remotely — an AI demonstration, but it’s a demonstration of something (probably several things).

Wikipedia provides some ‘Uncanny Valley’ background and links. The creepiness of The Polar Express (2004) seems to have been the trigger for the concept going mainstream.

From the level of human body simulation achieved already, it’s looking as if the climb out to the far side of the valley is close to complete. Sure, this android behaves like an idiot, but we’re used to idiots.

ADDED: Some hints on how the inside out approach is going (and speculations).

There’s clearly no other solution. (It would be an act of kindness at this point).

ADDED: Synchronicity watch —

Is anything other than nuclear annihilation too good for the UK? http://t.co/f9ZfdvXGwW

— Henry Dampier (@henrydampier) June 25, 2014

Gary Oldman, neoreactionary hero:

PLAYBOY: What’s your view of the future? Are you optimistic about where society is heading?
OLDMAN: [Pauses] You’re asking Gary?
PLAYBOY: Yes.
OLDMAN: I think we’re up shit creek without a paddle or a compass.
PLAYBOY: How so?
OLDMAN: Culturally, politically, everywhere you look. I look at the world, I look at our leadership and I look at every aspect of our culture and wonder what will make it better. I have no idea. Any night of the week you only need to turn on one of these news channels and watch for half an hour. Read the newspaper. Go online. Our world has gone to hell.

ADDED: The punishment begins (and comment from Radix).

ADDED: “Oldman also said that if you didn’t vote for ’12 Years a Slave’ at the Oscars, you were considered racist.” (A transparently preposterous claim, apparently.)

Is there a single iota of conservative wisdom NOT contained in The Gods of the Copybook Headings? http://t.co/pZUIpUGV2e

— Outsideness (@Outsideness) June 23, 2014

Well, is there?

Alex passed the link along (in this thread), so I thought I’d foreground it:

It’s not really saying anything that will come as a surprise, but it’s worth endlessly repeating (and the color scheme helps to get it through the gate).

Whatever other arguments are available in favor of traditional religion, they need to be supplemented by the recognition that man is simply too damned stupid for the Death of God.

From here (via):

it always was a little absurd, but it’s seriously absurd now