Comprehensivist Wednesdays: The Industrialization of Mimesis
Details
In this meetup we will explore what happens to persuasion when the means of producing it pass out of human hands. Persuasion is usually discussed in terms of technique: how to argue, how to move an audience, how to win a case. But behind every technique sits a more basic question. What kind of relationship is persuasion, and what does it require of the people inside it?
Aristotle answered this question more carefully than anyone before or since. In the Poetics, he treated mimesis, the representation of human action, as a serious art with its own internal standards. A well-shaped tragedy moves us through catharsis not because the playwright tricked us but because plot, character, and emotion were arranged with judgment. The speaker, the work, and the audience occupied a shared world, and persuasion was the disciplined practice of moving people inside it. What Aristotle assumed and didn't bother to argue for, that persuaders are present, accountable, and disciplined by their craft, is exactly what is dissolving now.
In his short TED talk The real danger of AI isn't intelligence, it's persuasion, the tech analyst Philipp Klöckner names the three new levers: structure, scale, and personal data. A message can now be tailored to each recipient, deployed at industrial volume, and delivered without a named or accountable speaker behind it. None of the constraints Aristotle took for granted (the named author, the finite audience, the publicly judged work) are guaranteed anymore. The art of moving people, which Aristotle treated as a craft inseparable from character, has been re-engineered into a technology separable from any human at all.
Our conversation will focus on what persuasion needs in order to remain human. When the means of mimesis are owned, automated, and personalized, the question is no longer can it be done? but who is doing it, who is being moved, and what is happening to the world that used to hold them both?
The Poetics — to read Project Gutenberg
S. H. Butcher translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1974
The Poetics — listen to the audio
https://youtu.be/DIY1po5G0zA?si=u5MgLqHJnSFxJvBA
The real danger of AI isn’t intelligence
https://www.ted.com/talks/philipp_klockner_the_real_danger_of_ai_isn_t_intelligence_it_s_persuasion
AI and Economic Risk - first 5 (informational purposes only)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40bf9vkOtrs
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CJ Fearnley's book "Collaborating for Comprehensivity," is a unique exploration of comprehensive thinking, inquiry, and collaboration, is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and free PDF formats.
- The free PDF version can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bapsUhFtRDSPdAW6zRBe7omBlcghz-yi/
- Available on Amazon Kindle for the lowest price Amazon allows of $0.99 here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1K18B5/
- Available as a paperback on Amazon for the lowest price Amazon allows of $8.31 here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D11GHC9V/
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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays." Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”
See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/
We record all our Meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you prefer. Watch Past Meetups here.
Welcome to "Comprehensivist Wednesdays"
Explore transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and polymathy in ways Buckminster Fuller described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”
A Meetup Every Day, Every Week, For Everyone!
Join us every weekday at 8 pm or 9 pm ET. We record all our meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you participate.
Watch Past Meetups here.