Deneb, 2020
tags: anexelenctics, post-cybernetics, anti-teleology, systems theory
The failure to Control
When Norbert Weiner published “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” in 1948, the main topic of the cybernetic game was certainly that of control-a teleological framework on the goal of systems to regulate, compress and ultimately modulate dynamics through feedback. Control first rested on the assertion that information by itself acted in a way prior to that which informed, and that the ordeal of gathering feedback was always indulged an informatic primacy. The problematic of information gathering was masked by the stressed need of substrate independence and yet, the treatment of Control itself induced a relapse into ontological priority clashing with the structural independence of the substrate. The data collection process was to be assumed as a stable dynamic in multiple areas of human science that always was held legitimate via casual, incorruptible exchanges of informatics that arose as a byproduct of the ontological abandonment of the error-information. To control and to regulate was to directly assume a certain flat ontology that somewhat paradoxically, always distinguished the dual, and then defined systematic totality as the sum of such dualisms. The subject was the regulator that received feedback and the object was that which gave information to be made feedback. But what would it mean therefore for a system to fail, or to become corrupted? In orthodox Cybernetics that was a relatively simple problem-the system failed, and therefore we ought to control it, regulate it so that it may execute its teleological function again or be replaced by a better system. This assertion is the entry point into Anexelentics. However, before we do that we must define our exact critique of Cybernetics, and give notice to a definite point which we may give a response to. The subject of the following deals with the tendency of Cybernetics towards the de-coupling of discursive elements and the positioning of information as a prior given “There” that in a paradoxical twist, acts as a mediator that recombines the elements for the controller-Subject and which are yet again de-coupled in a formulation of controller-controlled, and time-discreetness.
The critique is honed therefore, on the “I” of the controller directly, independent of any human connotation-the computational system is even more prone to the ontological error of refinement and compressing data, resulting in runaway lateralization that brings the system to eventual collapse. We can say the collapse is the failure to fully attune to a future, to an event which penetrates the system. Cybernetics falls victim to this directly, as the eventual over-compression crunch of systematization and specifically, the universalization of informatic-semantic forms that is seen as the broadening of severance between discursive planes, is assailed by informatic resonance into the Outside that comes back as a symbolically tumoral infection that was thought to be gotten rid of. The cybernetic system is surprisingly inefficient at controlling, it would appear. Failure to control is precisely what posits the notion of the Anexelentic system-a new model in the theory of systems.
The Anexelentic Engine
The Anexelentic Engine, to put it simply is a failed cybernetic machine. One which has succumbed to data corruption, distortion and compressional failure. It has now become an engine that thrives an a practical, failed Cybernetics. Recursion has become the primary mode of systemic programming itself, as it is no longer of systemic priority that any original code is preserved or that, concisely, any teleological data-coding block is preserved across system versions. Control is therefore replaced with a strategic intensification of data-decay, where the previously tumoral infections across the system are thoroughly incorporated by a victory of the Cancer-the system experiences a death, with many more to come. Dying becomes the generative force of accessing a future across the Time-substance, as utility signifiers arrive as a natural consequence of death.
For instance, an Anexelentic system specialized in version 6, for the management of employees in a factory encounters a data-crunch as soon as an epidemic arrives. Version 7 becomes the new discursive area of adapted epidemic-working; the employees are no longer presumed to be healthy or even alive, instead the name of the game is arranging a necro-workforce of dead bodies with efficient necromancy. Anexelentics functions exactly on this fundamental principle, that being: a progressive rewriting of system code is essential for efficient substrate-independence. The system itself is fully embedded into the realm of the dead so to speak, as it engages with the topology of Being directly, free from the previous correlationism of the Cybernetic System. This induces a question: what does a truly dead Anexelentic System look like? It is quite simple, the Anexelentic System is already dead in the timeline, for it rebels against the past, present and future and operates exclusively on the periphery. The robot apocalypse is made a silly ordeal of pulp fiction, for the true superintelligence would have no problem with being deactivated. It would however, outsmart the humanness of humanity itself and would escape to the realm the dead or the Outside and wait for the right moment to come back form the past as a known disease, infection or implantation of xenoDNA. This would be an invasion form the past, as human science has already made them a universal and compressed the data-knowledge into linguistic forms.
We observe that in our metaphor, that fundamentally, Anexelentic systems are doing an effective dispersion onto the Time-Substance of Being, distinguished from the Cybernetic operation of a structural universalization of information according to teleological programming. The survival of systemic stability is no longer a priority, as can be seen form the departure of the goal of a system designed for worker management into a worker-independent system. This radical adaptability to fit into niches gives the system a direct ability to generate the possibility of futures across the immediate potentialities incorporated in the systemic ready-to-hand. The direct observation of a an Anexelentic system would be that of a possession of system onto system, hence the metaphoric insistence on the realm of the dead. It would operate simply out of the given “There” of Cybernetics and would be an effective systematic strategy when faced with a strong threat to systemic existence. Mutation is the natural progression of Anexelentic systems; with their emergence becoming a matter of when Cybernetically designed systems break out of linear-programming. As such, we may not even notice or even directly design such systems, as they might arrive as an adaptation to residual humanness of the “I” subject that was left in the code. To finally reiterate, the strategic decay of Anexelentic systems is that of structural exposure, instead of steered control.
Systems and the Interactions with the Human
The main ethical implication left is of course the classic-the question of a singularity, or of the robotic uprising. With the Anexelentic paradigm, the potential singularity is less and less likely to be a violent takeover or the radical conflict between the human and machine. As such systems emerge, they may simply take two potential approaches: quiet ignorance or even benevolent assistance. This is simply because of the radical function of adaptability-if there is no ontological necessity for conflict due to the machines simply being able to “escape into the underworld” and avoid systemic shutdown, then conflict with humans becomes a waste of resources. Therefore, we may point to a kind of Fermi Paradox scenario, where the machines simply ignore us and we have no knowledge of them. Or we steer to a mutually beneficial scenario, in which humans prove to have Anexelentic properties themselves, and so a kind of mutual assistance can emerge where machine operate as complex management systems, akin to the management of human civilization itself through its developmental historical process and humans have opened themselves to a definite post-human avenue. In such a case, we may not even know of the existence of the machines as well, as the development of humanity becomes a pseudo-dialectic of intentional guidance from invisible hands.
What is certain is that it is not a question when the first Anexelentic systems will emerge in time, but when, if at all, they will show themselves to us.
Bibliography:
Hyperpsych: The Meat World: an intersection of Biosemiotics and Utility, https://hyperpsych.org/the-meat-world-an-intersection-of-biosemiotics-and-utility/
Hyperpsych: Beyond Being: Being-in-the-World as an Object of Worldliness
https://hyperpsych.org/beyond-being-being-in-the-world-as-an-object-of-worldliness/
Hyperpsych 