#0008 Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does, LLMs Are Weird Computers, Living in a Time of Psychopolitics
Welcome to Constant Flux, a weekly lens taking a systemic view on the polycrisis.
This week’s digest looks at the small breaks in how things are supposed to work reminding us that what a system does isn’t always what it was meant to do. That the weird behavior of LLMs might be telling us something and that we’re in the middle of a change in how influence works. Now it's more about quiet dark suggestions. Confusion and noise. Everything looks increasingly darker...
But hey:
"Where there is power, there is resistance.” — Michel Foucault
Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does
This short piece is a great check on lazy (systems) thinking. “The purpose of a system is what it does”(POSIWID) sounds clever, but it often turns into a shortcut for blaming everything on bad intent. If a system fails, the reasoning goes, "maybe it was built to fail". But that’s too easy and lazy and it shuts down real thinking.
Cynicism like that might feel sharp (I tend to fall into it myself all the time, "gliding down the surface of things" as Easton Ellis would say). In reality it just blocks insight. It keeps us (me) from asking better questions, seeing the full picture, and making things better. Not everything a system does is what it was meant to do. Some outcomes are just side effects, friction, or failure.
I guess the smarter move is to stay curious. Systems are messy. If we want to change them, we have to understand them first.
LLMs Are Weird Computers
They're kinda like a weird database you can query
The text explores how LLMs are transforming the way we work and think. I think anyone that used them extensively can agree that they blur traditional boundaries between roles, making complex processes more accessible. LLMs are a kind of reconfiguration agents that blur roles, reframes tasks and allows for new kind of cognition (I guess you can call it?) to "leak" into everyday work.
Phillipp also talks about the strange and uncanny nature of LLMs. Inherently weird.
Living in a Time of Psychopolitics
Psychopolitics opens with an ominous statement: “freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude," something that's most felt when "passing from one way of living to another."Byung-Chul Han views the current situation as the turning of a new page, whose psychological ailments constitute a “profound crisis of freedom." The forces responsible operate on a level which he calls “psychopolitics.”
That the internet has shifted from a decentralized space of open expression to a tightly controlled, algorithmic environment governed by a few dominant platforms is no news of course. The system used to evolve with its but now evolves to shape us. basically optimizing for what the system deems profitable.
This article expands on ideas from psychopolitics to show how modern platforms control not through force but through influence. Instead of telling users what to do, they nudge behavior by shaping what people see, want, and value.
In this sense control feels like choice. You think you are acting freely, but your preferences are being ever so subtly engineered. It is not censorship. It is optimization that looks like autonomy. Also check out this regarding this on the ongoing digital coup
Ripples
Designing the Unknown
If Design Thinking is dying what is next? C-K theory is a (french) contender.
Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town
In a small Japanese town, middle-aged men became trading cards and suddenly kids see them as heroes. A lovely systems tweak that revives community by reimaging who gets to matter.