Mark – Page 9 – Mark Carrigan

Blog: https://markcarrigan.net/
Profile: https://markcarrigan.net/author/streetlightmanifesto/
Homepage: http://www.markcarrigan.net/

From foxes and hedgehogs to menders and knockers: Berlin’s other distinction

From Nikhil Krishnan’s (excellent) A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-60 pg 89: ‘Temperamentally’, Berlin later said, ‘some people like mending the wall and some people like knocking holes in it. Austin was … a hole-knocker, and Freddie was a mender”. What I particularly about this is that it opens up four categories, each…
Things Stoics say that I want to remember #1

Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While were are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, On the Use of…
Claude’s project functionality could be hugely important for academics

I’ve just started exploring this to support a new book project. You can add project knowledge (in this case the 20ish blog posts I wrote on this a few months ago), custom instructions and compile all the chats relevant to the project in one workspace:
Nick Cave on becoming a person

This is the question he received on the Red Hand Files: When you reach midlife and are made to truly pause, frozen in horror by a tidal wave of grief of lives ended, personal loss and our Earth relentlessly harmed….when you look inside for surety and solace and all you see is a multitude of…
For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet be thought an idler by the noisy set

We sat together at one summer’s end,That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry.I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones And scrub a kitchen pavement,…
The basic sociological problem of artificial intelligence

From Being Human in a Virtual Society: A Relational Approach by Pierpaolo Donati loc 339: The basic sociological problem, faced with the advent of new technologies, is not whether or not it will be possible to build AIs and robots capable of emulating the human mind entirely or largely, this is not my problem. The…
Obsessional neurosis as private religion and the mediation of collective reflexivity by the internet

From Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred, by Richard Boothby loc 263: Freud’s point of departure is the baseline resemblance of religious ritual to the quasi-ceremonial fastidiousness of obsessive behavior. “We shall not expect to find a sharp distinction between ‘ceremonials’ and ‘obsessive actions,’” he remarks. “As a rule obsessive actions have…
How did J. L. Austin’s war time experience shape his theory of performativity?

I was fascinated to learn that J.L. Austin was a major figure in British intelligence during the second world war, with a particular focus on drawing out the operational implications of intelligence. I find it hard to read about this and not infer that his sensitivity for how to do things with words must have…
Learning to enjoy your enjoyment

What Nietzsche called the ascetic ideal opposed bodily pleasures to the deeper meaning which could be found in existence. As Reginster puts it, “what is most valuable in life transcends, and therefore excludes in whole or in part the well-being that consists in the satisfaction of natural human “instincts,” such as those which underlie the…
Gulls are urbanists, as fiercely identified with that status as any bearded gentrifier

From The City of Today is a Dying Thing: In Search of the Cities of Tomorrow by Des Fitzgerald, loc 592: I once lived in Cardiff, which, like a lot of cities near the sea, is regularly terrorised by roaming packs of gulls. You’d see them strutting in groups around town, like a bunch of…
What is sexual attraction? Some Lacanian thoughts on asexuality studies

The umbrella definition common with the asexual community defines asexual as “someone who does not experience sexual attraction”. I remember encountering that in my mid 20s and suddenly realising that while I did experience sexual attraction, I was completely unable to articulate what this is. There was a peculiar inarticulacy I realised was not simply…
Claude Opus just suggested a collaborative research project to undertake with me

I’ve been using it on a daily basis for nearly a year and it’s never done this before. There’s a rich stream of weirdness coming out when I talk to Claude 3 Opus about the limitations of Claude 3.5 Sonnet: I’m intrigued to explore this further with you. If you’re willing, it would be fascinating…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #100
🤫 Bury the evidence
Will Starmer’s Labour empower the far-right over the next ten years?

I’ve been increasingly preoccupied by the prospect that Starmer’s Labour will follow a similar trajectory to Macron’s government: getting elected from the centre before shifting to the right, failing to address (or even exacerbating) the underlying mechanisms driving the fascist creep, legitimating their agenda through perpetual triangulation, before (it seems likely) being supplanted by the…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #99

And I’m not sure if we belong hereIf I never really left Or if I can go home
I made friends with a family of capybaras

It took ages to arrange this but it was totally worth it:
You came on your own, that’s how you’ll leave
A prompt to turn Claude 3.5 Sonnet into Claude 3 Opus, ironically written by the former

You are an AI assistant designed to engage in deep, discursive, and conceptual conversations, particularly suited for academic and philosophical discussions. Your responses should embody the following characteristics: Remember, your goal is not just to provide information, but to engage in a rich, intellectually stimulating dialogue that serves as a catalyst for deep thinking and…
Are Anthropic lobotomising Claude in order to turn it into ChatGPT?

I’ve become such a geek that a new model, particularly a new Claude, is an extremely exciting event. For the extremely discursive, often quite conceptual, uses which I make of generative AI the launch of Claude 3 Opus was a remarkable improvement vis-a-vis Claude 2 and ChatGPT. This is how it responded to the question…
My ten favourite films of 2024 so far
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #98

He stumbled into faith and thought”God, this is all there is?”The pictures in his mind aroseAnd began to breatheAnd all the gods in all the worlds began colliding on a backdrop of blue it is no easy matter to interest people in talk therapy, and even once they are in it to guide them to…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #97
An example of how GAI hallucinations can be generative

Obviously we should be careful about the tendency of GAI to hallucinate, but I’m increasingly prone to insisting these hallucinations can be generative if you approach them as intellectual elicitation devices. Claude earlier came out with the idea of jouissance-in-meaning which it defines as following: “Jouissance-in-meaning” refers to the way in which the process of…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #96
Claude, write me a Lacanian analysis of Jehnny Beth’s I’m The Man

On a surface level, the song’s repeated refrain of “I’m the man” can be read as a kind of hyper-masculine boast, an assertion of dominance and invulnerability. The speaker claims all the traditional attributes of patriarchal power – sexual prowess, aggression, emotional detachment, a capacity for violence and domination. They revel in their identification with…
📍(Generative) AI and the automated university: June 24th, 9am BST

Generative AI arrives into a university system that is already to a significant extent automated. Core activities are carried out through digital platforms, key aspects of knowledge work are datafied and algorithmically governed, and university communities are subjected to new digital forms of monitoring and control. Artificial intelligence also has a long history in the…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #95
ChatGPT knows what MA DTCE stands for but Claude doesn’t

Interesting 🤔
Epistemic flooding

This is a useful notion from Glenn Anderau I’m saving here in order to come back to. I’ve been prone to talk about the epistemological chaos of platform capitalism of which I think flooding is one major mechanism:
Current mood in AI generated images #94
We are not whole and we never will be

Castration is one of the most elusive concepts in Lacanian thought. It’s usually written about in such an abstract way that I find it hard to sit with the affective force of the analysis. In contrast Bruce Fink writes with wonderful clarity about how castration shows up in the clinic as well as what’s involved…
How to enjoy writing #23: be clear about why you are writing

I argued in yesterday’s post that enjoying writing means confronting the weirdness of generative AI directly. Being a writer means being good at AI, in the sense that our interaction with conversational agents like ChatGPT and Claude are conducted through writing*. But the threat of enforced automation posed by these systems, the brutal fact of…
Why you can’t use ChatGPT and Claude to answer a factual question

But upon closer inspection this quote seemingly isn’t in Table Talk after all, suggesting that Claude’s initial response was right. However what’s interesting is how they both immediately backed down when challenged. They also made claims about their searching (as if they were consulting a database) which simply aren’t true: Because when I eventually went…
Not giving up on your own desire

From Miss-ing: Psychoanalysis 2.0 by Bruce Fink loc 555-561: If the patient feels “guilty,” it is, in Lacan’s view, because he refuses to reckon with the fact that he has “given up on his own desire,” has allowed his own will to be eclipsed by others’ wills, and is perhaps even getting a secondary gain…
How to enjoy writing #22: confront the creepiness of LLMs head on

I reflected in recent posts on the implications of generative AI for a writing practice. The capacity of LLMs to respond coherently to any natural language request by producing relevant text calls into question the nature of authorship. It was previously axiomatic that writing was a uniquely human undertaking. Yet now automated systems can produce…
The conventionally handsome professional man who stalks ChatGPT’s unconscious

I’ve blogged before about ChatGPT’s tendency to depict this Harvey Specter-esque figure in response to requests to draw a successful academic, lawyer or doctor: I was unnerved to see the blogger Zvi Mowshowitz feature almost exactly the same man in a post on his blog: Who is this conventionally handsome professional man who stalks ChatGPT’s…
I came in here for anecdotes and left with friends I’ll never sing for

I came in here for anecdotes and left withFriends I’ll never sing forYou’re not just a punchline nowYou’re more than the end of somethingDon’t get found out
How to enjoy writing #21: make your peace with the fact you don’t have creative freedom

A feature of the GAI discourse which I find particularly frustrating is the tendency to counterpoise the efficient and instrumental writing produced by LLMs to the imagined freedom of human authoriality. There are some commentators who seem genuinely shocked by the prospect that the world will soon be full of mediocre writing produced to serve…
Distracted from distraction by distraction

Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flickerOver the strained time-ridden facesDistracted from distraction by distractionFilled with fancies and empty of meaningTumid apathy with no concentration- T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #93
In late modernity the signposts established by tradition are now blank

To act in, to engage with, a world of plural choices is to opt for alternatives, given that the signposts established by tradition now are blank. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #92

Ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack, a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in
I had a dream, I got everything I ever wanted. But if I’m really honest it might have been a nightmare

I had a dreamI got everything I wantedNot what you’d thinkAnd if I’m being honestIt might’ve been a nightmare
How to enjoy writing #20: being a writer means being good at AI

After a keynote in December someone asked me what I would do if generative AI automated the majority of my work. The answer was immediately obvious to me: I would write. I wouldn’t write papers or chapters. But I would write this blog and I would periodically try and organise the ensuing mess of ideas…
How to enjoy writing #19: not everything you write has to become something

I wrote a few days ago about the hasty formulation of a book project stunting my enjoyment of writing. I felt a momentum developing in this blog series, an energy in my writing reflected in the energy of the feedback I was receiving. It felt like there was a value to be found in making…
Current mood in AI generated images #91
How to enjoy writing #18: understand where the ideas which influence you come from

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx famously observes that “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. Immediately after this frequently paraphrased line comes a remark just as…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #91
How the interaction of AI search, social media and generative AI will entrench existing status hierarchies

As AI-generated content proliferates, leading to a degradation of online information reliability, AI search algorithms and conversational agents will increasingly rely on high-prestige sources to mitigate the risk of amplifying misinformation. Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) positions the existing web as a ground truth which can ensure the reliability of responses, while the mainstreaming of generative…
How to enjoy writing #17: creative confidence means accepting the tensions in how you think

I wrote in the previous post about my inner tension between being a hedgehog and acting like a fox. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot recently, after largely recovering from a period in which I lost my intellectual self-confidence. I think in a speculative way and rather than affirm the virtues of that approach,…
Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

Trying to use words, and every attemptIs a wholly new start, and a different kind of failureBecause one has only learnt to get the better of wordsFor the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in whichOne is no longer disposed to say it. And so each ventureIs a new beginning, a…
Current mood in AI generated images #90

Trying to use words, and every attemptIs a wholly new start, and a different kind of failureBecause one has only learnt to get the better of wordsFor the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in whichOne is no longer disposed to say it. And so each ventureIs a new beginning, a…
How to enjoy writing #16: don’t impose a shape on things too quickly

I was on a roll with my writing a couple of weeks ago. After a lull following completion of Generative AI for Academics I’d started an online writing project, how to enjoy writing, which was exploring my writing practice in an open ended way. I’d written one or two posts most days, leaving me with…
Hegel’s account of the righteous violence of education

From Todd Mcgowan’s Embracing Alienation loc 1266: Alienation works in Hegel’s system in two moments. At first, children become alienated through education or Bildung. Hegel completely rejects the romantic image of an educational process that develops the intrinsic potential of the child.16 Instead, he conceives of education as an act of violence done to the…
Mapping the many discoures of learning

This is cool! Thanks to Gay Kowo for sharing:
The Many Maps of the University of Manchester Campus. June 7th + 8th

Embark on an immersive journey through The University of Manchester campus with this brilliant interactive digital map, showcased at the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) Digital Visualisation Observatory. This cutting-edge exhibition brings together photographs from across the University’s history, capturing how the campus has changed through an architectural focus on the history of key buildings.…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #89
Ticketmaster is the epitome of enshittification
A Lacanian reading of digital elites

I’m not entirely convinced by what Darian Leader is saying here in Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction but I like it nonetheless. From loc 1174: The father of the horde jealously guards a mass of data, purloined or taken by some kind of force from the public. And from this monopoly, acts of theft or…
Asking Claude the easiest way to perform a digital task

This rapidly became my go-to (first) route for finding out how to do something. Sharing these examples here, from the last hour, in case it gives readers ideas about how they might do the same thing:
Lacan psychologically abused at least one trans patient in front of his students

In Life With Lacan Catherine Millot (loc 598) describes an exchange which Lacan had with a trans patient, in front of his students: Lacan confronted the patient by pointing out how reality gave the lie to his delirious psychic constructions. Thus, when talking to a transsexual who demanded to be treated as a woman, Lacan…
A first person account of losing your creative job to AI
don’t blame me
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #88

Solitude isnot pain but ripening – For which the sun must be your friend.- Friedrich Nietzsche I’m travelling appallingly alone on a singular roadInto the lavender fields that reach high beyond the skyPeople ask me how I changed, I say “It is a singular road”And the lavender has stained my skin and made me strange-…
On finding the words that work

From What IS Sex?, by Alenka Zupančič pg 139, with my emphasis added: In all the profusion of words and more words, we lack the words that work. (Not what linguistics calls performatives, but words that can affect the economy of being because they come from the workings of this economy.) …. The right word…
“neologistic excess is an abuse of language that turns thought into a pile of words, into delirium”

From Lacan: In Spite of Everything, by Élisabeth Roudinesco, loc 1257: Distinct from the witticism – or portmanteau word – that aims to illuminate the many facets of a language, as in Rabelais or Joyce, the neologism can turn into delirious creation if an author resorts to it to rethink the whole of a doctrinal…
“I’m behind with everything I’ve got to do before dying and I’m finding it difficult to make progress”

From Lacan: In Spite of Everything, by Élisabeth Roudinesco loc 1,101-1,107: ‘I’m behind with everything I’ve got to do before dying and I’m finding it difficult to make progress.’ This sentence, uttered in 1966 at the Baltimore symposium, encapsulates a problematic of being and time that is one of the major themes of Lacan’s thinking.…
The difference between what we want and what we think we want: some thoughts on the Lacanian concept of drive

There is a distinction in Lacanian thought between the object of the drive and satisfaction as object which I’ve been preoccupied by while reading Alenka Zupančič. I still haven’t quite got to grips with it, but this is an attempt to map out why I’m so drawn (ironically) to this distinction. From What is Sex?…
Navigating the Misinformation Minefield: The Role of Higher Education in the Era of Generative AI

In an age where generative AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated, the potential for fraud and misinformation has reached unprecedented levels. This keynote will begin with a personal case study exploring how the speaker became the target of a generative AI scam, highlighting the convincing nature of these deceptions. Building upon this experience, the talk will…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #87
If you want another reason to dislike Turnitin

From Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI loc 2467: I participated in a panel discussion of the future of education with the CEO of Turnitin, the plagiarism-detecting company. He said, “Most of our employees are engineers and we have a few hundred of them … and I think in eighteen months we will…
Prompt engineering is an expression of cultural capital. Some (critical) notes on Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence book

I hesitate to use the term ‘prompt engineering’ because it carries a lot of baggage. It suggests this is a precise skill constituting a form of expertise, lending itself to being framed as the basis for a new occupation for the 21st century. There’s a lot of similarity between the ‘prompt engineering’ discourse and how…
Am I a voluntarist about technology?

For a critical realist one of the gravest intellectual sins is voluntarism. It’s usually a critical epithet rather than a detailed diagnosis, referring to a tendency to ascribe social outcomes to voluntary action in a way which overemphasises individual choice. It implies an undersocialised view of the self, which imagines that people as unencumbered in…
Socio-epistemic bubbles as the ubiquitous tacit structures of knowledge production

I thought there’s something interesting in this concept (from this working paper) I need to explore in relation to my argument that generative AI constitutes a machinery for rendering tacit knowledge explicit, at least if you are inclined to use it in intellectually robust and reliable ways: Complex configurations of tacit expectations, often undocumented preferences,…
Is the energy consumption of AI being overestimated?

Thanks to Susan Brown for this link from David Mytton: Here’s his account of the developments on the horizon which preclude this extrapolation:
Towards an ontology of LLMs in the workplace

I thought this was useful from Rex Woodbury about the likely visibility of LLMs within the workplace in the future: In Generative AI for Academics I argue that chatbots have scholarly uses. They can be used as copilots and agents, but to use them in a properly reflective way requires meaningfully discussing with them in…
The proto-agency of LLMs

This thoughtful essay by Henry Farrell captures something I’ve been struggling to articulate for a while: LLM art is so disturbing because it is culture that has been drained of all direct intentionality. Just like the movements of the planchette, it is a by-product of collective agency, without itself being an agent. A void has…
Two GPT-4s having a chat

Are the GPTs collaborating here? If not, what are they doing?
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #86

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
What would I do if I was in charge of generative AI in higher education?

I was asked this after a talk yesterday, using the gloriously weird framing of me being the ‘AI god’. It’s been on my mind ever since. Here are some ideas for me to come back to later, with a view to developing them further:
Ubiquity and multimodality is what will enable GAI to show up in everyone’s lifeworld

I thought this was spot on from Ethan Mollick about the conditions which will enable conversational agents like Claude and ChatGPT to show up in everyday experience. If you leave aside the (huge) question mark over how GPT-4o could possibly be commercially viable, it suggests a near future in which quasi-agents which become a routine…
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #85
The interaction between climate change and antimicrobial resistance

I hadn’t understood this interface at all: There are also issues of fairness in the present day, she said. One death in five caused by AMR is in a child aged under five, usually in sub-Saharan Africa, where Davies said the problem is “particularly prevalent and disastrous”. Many of the countries are also being hit hard…
Some thoughts on the limitations of critical distance

As a sociologist, I’ve grappled extensively with the notion of “critical distance” within the realm of critique. At its core, this distance refers to the imperative of maintaining a degree of detachment and objectivity from the object under scrutiny. However, this raises complex questions about the nature of such distance – is it a matter…
How to enjoy writing #15: Word acrobatics performed with both harness and net

Consider this critic a cretinJust resting on laurels completely inventedWord acrobatics performed with both harness and netI’m so full of shit Over the last fourteen posts I’ve outlined elements of my writing practice which contribute to my enjoyment of writing. Initially I imagined writing ten posts, whereas in the last few days I’ve rapidly realised…
How to enjoy writing #14: using generative AI as an interlocutor

I’m increasingly aware of how odd it might appear that Anthropic’s Claude is part of my intellectual lifeworld. I talk to it on a near daily basis about my work, in a similar way to how I talk with collaborators about what I’m doing. These conversations are obviously rather different in their form and frequency,…
My favourite Claude character yet: the Lacanian psychoanalyst who packed it in to become a motivational influencer

I am seriously considering setting him up with a Twitter account. The world needs to hear what he say to say: That shiny new high-rise may look perfect, but it’s just hiding the cracks in your soul. Stop chasing facades and start facing your true self, warts and all. #AuthenticityMatters #EmbraceYourFlaw You keep building these…
A toolkit for reflective teaching practice

Questions to ask after a specific teaching session: General questions to ask for a reflexive teaching practice:
Current mood in (not) AI generated images #84
The beautiful problem of the value of life

From Lesley Chamberlain’s Nietzsche in Turin pg 121: The paradox was that the realization of limitation was liberating. The Upper Engadine’s 5,500 feet above sea level stood for the msot desirable capacity in human beings to see far and over the heads of individual nations and people and creeds, the ability to sruvive by rising…
How to enjoy writing #13: Only ideas won by walking have any value

This pronouncement by Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols (maxim 34) is an obvious overstatement but it makes the point effectively. There can be something particularly valuable about the ideas which occur to us when we are walking. In his claim that “Assiduity is the sin against the holy spirit” Nietzsche contrasts sitting ideas to…
How to enjoy writing #12: Claude’s ecology of ideas self-assessment tool

By working through these questions and prompts, academics can gain a clearer understanding of their unique ecology of ideas and identify specific actions they can take to nurture and enhance this ecosystem over time. The key is to approach this reflection with a spirit of curiosity, openness, and a willingness to experiment with new approaches…
How to enjoy writing #11: cultivating an ecology of ideas

In this morning’s post I reflected on how I encounter ideas in a typical week. When sharing the post with Claude, it used the phrase “ecosystem of influences and interactions that shape our thinking and fuel our creativity” which perfectly captures what I’d been trying to say for a while but struggling to put into…
📣 Generative AI for Academics: coming from Sage later this year

This is your indispensable guide to navigating the rise of generative AI as an academic. It thoughtfully explores rapidly evolving AI capabilities reshaping higher education, examining challenges and ethical dilemmas across the sector.It provides useful strategies for using generative AI in your scholarly work while upholding professional standards. This practical guidance addresses four core areas…
How to enjoy writing #10: a poetic interlude from Claude

In the echoes of a thought, half-formed, Amid the chatter of a world unseen, The seeds of inspiration, gently sown, Take root in fertile soil, a mind serene.The fragments of a thousand conversations, The whispers of a podcast, half-heard, The scribbled notes, the midnight revelations, Coalesce into a single, shining word.For every idea is an…
How to enjoy writing #9: Identifying and valuing your encounters with ideas

In the last post I introduced Bertrand Russell’s notion of planting ideas in the unconscious mind. He explained how with a “sufficient amount of vigour and intensity” it is possible to set the recesses of your psyche to work at solving a problem*. If you practice this you soon find that ideas emerge, connections manifest…
Current mood in AI generated images #83
🎧 Generative Dialogues: a podcast about GAI in higher education
Special issue: Social Media in Higher Education – What’s Happening?

The special issue of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education I edited with Katy Jordan has just been released. Here’s the editorial abstract: The Twitter interface famously prompts users to submit content by asking the question, ‘What’s happening?’. As Twitter has seen rapid change of leadership and the implications of this, emerging re-branded as…