[Music] thank you there is perhaps no creature that represents our time in history better than the iPad baby this drooling vegetative specimen half human and half cocoa melon spends its crucial years of development in the blue haze of the interface studies suggest that iPad babies are primarily the cause of Parental inefficacy where the parents use the device to occupy time they would otherwise have to spend with their annoying and needy kids these babies then spend much of their time navigating digital symbols and simulations instead of actual toys or people some researchers note that this has
led to a difference in how kids play namely iPad babies engage in epistemic Play Play that is exploratory and largely involves receiving and consuming information this is quite different from ludic play which typically involves generating and producing imaginative and creative symbols and scenarios short the iPad baby consumes in the place of creating the philosopher beaudryard decades ago actually already highlighted this strange phenomenon as he notes human participation has shifted from the role of the producer to the role of the consumer even the more potty trained Among Us passively spend hours a day receiving an endless
stream of opinions and images as kingwell aptly describes the thing you're engaging in right now the interface is a Timeless drug an endless addiction with no relation to real past and real future let alone what we might still venture to call actual purpose an endless present of spectacles a Hall of Mirrors a fiction that feels more real than our very reality and the worst part is that it actively informs our reality influencing everything from dating Behavior to democratic Integrity but to escape from it we first need to give it a name which beaujiard has so
generously already done hyper reality environment [Music] how did we get here Andrew Potter expertly unites The Works of Bertrand Russell and Rousseau to explain our Strange compulsion to scroll Russell notes that mankind has generally dealt with two misfortunes those inflicted by nature and those inflicted by other humans as civilization progresses in terms of limiting those nefarious natural misfortunes such as floods and famines our concerns changed to dealing with the misery of other people these miseries embedded in social hierarchy and power shift our attention towards status over survival this is seen in Rousseau's distinction between the
two forms of self-love Amor De SOI the sort of dignity and pride we feel when triumphing over the elements over the Amor prop which sort of Pride we feel when we have triumphed over someone else in terms of showcasing a higher status as Potter goes on to argue many of us in the west rarely have to concern ourselves with survival our behaviors rarely impact whether we live or die and in most cases the historically significant need for our beliefs to correspond with reality doesn't really matter anymore many can hold what he calls luxury beliefs such
as climate change denialism in the comfort of their homes without ever having to experience intense flooding or smog as Potter writes we are free to believe literally anything none of it really matters the lights still come on in your house your car still runs the grocery stores remain stocked with food we now spend much of our time and energy engaged in status competitions signaling our political and social affiliations in the service of our Amor proper [Music] nowhere is this more apparent than in the virtual world the interface our cultural world is composed more and more
of simulacra or simulations of reality we watch reaction videos to Twitch streams to videos of people playing a simulation we watch endless Tick Tock stitches that begin with we need to talk about this in reference to a Twitter thread this dizzying array of simulacra acts as a Hall of Mirrors where the constant layering of representations and symbols obfuscates what is actually real we live more and more in a world of heuristics where everything is a slightly reduced and altered version of its actual self as beauchard writes this leads to the subject becoming a pure screen
a pure absorption and reabsorption surface of the influent networks caught up in the spectacle of hate watching hot takes and ratios the chronically online becomes so entrenched in a play of spectacle that increasingly drifts away from the outside to the point in which the very idea of a shared social reality loses any meaning this is hyper reality where our cultural world has been entirely subsumed by the virtual social media simply offers more stimulation and spectacle than boring old reality as argued by Hano Lei this process is already somewhat played out Georg simmel argues that modernity
caused the tragedy of culture in which objective culture came to dominate subjective culture here he defines objective culture as the general and Abstract whereas the subjective involves those meaningful experiences that we relate to in day-to-day life as such processes as urbanization the division of labor and the use of money as the main reason behind socializing emerged individuals became more and more blase in their attitude cities offered a constant stream of stimulation and people adapted in order to not be constantly overwhelmed nowadays the interface of bright colors funny sounds and endless chatter desensitize us even more
to the mundane in the same way that the money of modernity became the sole focus of what was valued status now Reigns Supreme although social media used to exist to garnish organic relationships in terms of sharing photos with one's close family and friends it now exists to service rational relationships that may boost one's status the hyper reality of the internet has replicated symbols tragedy of culture objective culture in terms of the objective goal of increasing one's followers or likes has now replaced the subjective culture of meaningful and organic relationships foreign [Music] this is too romantic
and old-fashioned of me to wish for the good old days of organic connection perhaps I should accept this tragedy of culture but I also think it's important to highlight the more harmful costs of our hyper reality as bojard warns the spectacle that brings people to fully engage in hyper reality comes at a great social harm fixed distinctions between social groupings and ideologies implode and concrete face-to-face social relations recede as individuals disappear in Worlds of simulation with no reference to reality ideologies become increasingly focused on status competitions infighting and constant moral policing neuters any potential Unity
or useful Collective action as individuals instead focus on increasing their following ideologies implode as any reference to an external reality fades to understand one another is to only generate more and more chatter more spectacle that ironically leads to even more misunderstanding as Potter writes the narcissism of minor differences that is the Hallmark of healthy Democratic politics becomes the pathology of mutual and comprehension for some incomprehension has bred resignation here we see some entirely giving up on trying to understand although this is justifiable in the sense of how seemingly confusing and disorienting Hyper reality can be
I would argue that this is also a form of anti-intellectualism that is very much on the rise there are of course several different forms of anti-intellectualism as classified by Klausen religious anti-rationalism which defines emotion as positive and reason as bad can appear in the chronically online instances of individuals policing subtle uses of language and behavior to the point of absurdity here to be offended even on behalf of another group is justifiable grounds to censor the accused this ironically more often than not gives the accused ammo to ridicule the offended the second form of anti-intellectualism populist
anti-elitism mostly belongs to the strands of alt-right politics that exhibit a conspiratorial skepticism towards globalists Progressive politics and old money such Mass conspiracies prioritize anonymously generated evidence over scientific research as they often deem such research as already corrupted by the global Elites this form of anti-intellectualism tends to result in either violence or a feeling of betrayal as the prophecies or evidence becomes increasingly detached from reality the third form of anti-intellectualism is unreflective instrumentalism that argues that knowledge or intellectualizing is worthless unless it directly leads to material gain in smaller forms on reflective instrumentalism appears in
the I'm not going to read all that Trend you see on Tick Tock comments on a larger scale Community such as the manosphere promote in extreme form of pregnant where only knowledge in regards to dating advice money making and fitness serve any relevance anything else can be considered either useless or potentially dangerous to an ideology solely focused on gain for these individuals deeply entrenched in the anti-intellectualism of online spaces hyper reality plays a nasty trick it actually begins to offer codes and models of behavior that then structure their everyday life men that are taught that
all women have shallow and hypergamous dating expectations as well as women who are taught that all men cheat begin to experience such convictions as even more real than reality even if the man has seen countless women in real life with less than attractive male Partners or the woman has never been cheated on the hyper reality of these spaces obscures subjective experience through spectacle these individuals then go out into the world with these beliefs and ironically can become the very evidence that the other is seeking this is hyperstition an idea borne out of hyper reality that
is conjured into being as Nick land writes superstitions are merely false beliefs but hyperstitions by their very existence as ideas function causally to bring about their own reality capitalist economics is extremely sensitive to hyperstition where confidence acts as an effective tonic this is not only evident in dating culture but appears in the terrifying spread of misinformation that can have real world consequences on elections and policy making the normalized dehumanizing of political opponents and the infinite polarizing of social issues has led to a disillusionment in understanding how one is to sincerely act politically beaudryard's terms we
have become the schizophrenic who is open to everything and lives in the most extreme confusion we have become Professionals in engaging in epistemic play seeking out and playing with knowledge and information the sacrifice however is in our ability to generate and create and act in a meaningful way the iPad baby unlike previous iterations of our species will be born entirely within hyper reality they will be born into a world ready made for them to be received and consumed just as long as they're increasingly short attention span allows for how will they view others when they
grow up when people become merely corporeal representations of their more real online avatars how will they engage politically when they elect leaders who must make decisions in the world of environmental policy and resource allocations a world that will feel so alien and illusory in comparison to the interface [Music] I would give you the cliche advice to get offline to be better parents and actually hang out with your kids and yes we do need to embrace boredom the banality of organic experience if we are to reclaim our subjective culture to talk to your neighbor to go
for a walk but also just as importantly we need to hold the Techno corporations that have knowingly constructed this hyper-reality accountable we need to hold the corporations accountable that make wages so low and working hours so long to the point in which effective parenting becomes impossible this will be a juggling Act of Herculean difficulty if the iPad baby is our present it is its diaper that will be our future [Music] this video is sponsored by blinkist I wanted to take a moment to share with you how blinkist has helped me become who I would like
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