L33T GUY
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2019–2026
2:46:32 · 736K views · Feb 10, 2017
Adam Curtis's 2016 BBC documentary argues that since the 1970s governments, financiers and technologists have retreated into a simplified fake world. It ranges from Syria and Libya to the road to Trump.
Mentioned as a recommended Curtis film and referenced in discussions of AI, Eliza and manufactured realities.
4 comments from Hacker News
You can see this beginning in roughly 2011 when the Occupy Wallstreet protests start to fracture. This was when Starbucks began advocating for anti-racist policy (why? they make money selling permutations of coffee and milk) and a bunch of other corporations chimed in. The 99% movement quickly splintered off into anti-racist memes and whirled into Third Wave Feminism + needs for "inclusion" and "intersectionality" and whatever terms the Wallstreet-backed Left felt best to appease the working poor and working lower-middle class of academics and journalists (who are basically working poor now, but would not like to admit it). So when you say: >Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite. I agree. In fact, there is likely evidence that it was manufactured by the elite. This discussion is heading to the territory of Hypernormalisation[ this video ], a film I recommend.
HyperNormalisation (2016) is a documentary film by Adam Curtis; the word/concept is from a book, so maybe that's what you're referring to? I have only seen the film myself. As to your question about Soviet collapse, I don't think I could coalesce the views of the 166 minute documentary to this comment field while doing it justice. I'm not sure that there is a direct casual relationship or arrow of causality between the collapse and use/misuse of language, as much as there is a feedback loop between the two. [LINK] > HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments. > The word hypernormalisation was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s. He says everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning soc
I was watching "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis for the second time. In his segment on Eliza, an early example of a chat bot, I realized that Curtis makes a mistake in his interpretation of Eliza. For Curtis it's narcissism that makes Eliza attractive. Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often. But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at 01hr:22min, he never says that. He relates how his secretary took to it, and even though she knew it was a primitive computer program, she wanted some privacy while she used it. Weizenbaum was puzzled by that, but then the secretary (or possibly another woman) says Eliza doesn't judge me and it doesn't try to have sex with me. What jumped out at me was that Weizenbaum's secretary was using Eliza as a thinking tool to clarify her thoughts. Most high school graduates in America don't learn critical thinking skills as far as I can tell. Eliza is a useful tool because it encourages critical thinking and second order thinking by asking questions and reflecting back answers and asking questions in another way. The secretary didn't want to use Eliza because she was a narcissist, she wanted to talk through some sensitive issues with what she knew was a dumb program so she could try and resolve them. That's how I feel about ChatGPT so far. It's a great thinking tool. Someone to bounce ideas around with. Of course, I know it's a dumb computer program and it makes mistakes,
I made this comment on a post that got flagged for reasons I don't understand. I don't want to feel like I wasted my time so I'm re-commenting here: I was watching "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis for the second time. In his segment on Eliza, an early example of a chat bot, I realized that Curtis makes a mistake in his interpretation of Eliza. For Curtis it's narcissism that makes Eliza attractive. Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often. But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at 01hr:22min, he never says that. He relates how his secretary took to it, and even though she knew it was a primitive computer program, she wanted some privacy while she used it. Weizenbaum was puzzled by that, but then the secretary (or possibly another woman) says Eliza doesn't judge me and it doesn't try to have sex with me. What jumped out at me was that Weizenbaum's secretary was using Eliza as a thinking tool to clarify her thoughts. Most high school graduates in America don't learn critical thinking skills as far as I can tell. Eliza is a useful tool because it encourages critical thinking and second order thinking by asking questions and reflecting back answers and asking questions in another way. The secretary didn't want to use Eliza because she was a narcissist, she wanted to talk through some sensitive issues with what she knew was a dumb program so she could try and resolve them. That's how I feel about Ch