TikTokized systems relying only on documented automatic reactions would ignore the second fact and offer him more porn & less foreign news. As a technology of 'individuation without choice', predictive algorithms treat us based on our system-1 self & call it into being 3/3 @theoryculturesociety.org

But imagine a user who stares at pornographic images 6 milliseconds longer than at foreign news items and yet believes that porn is a form of prostitution that must be abolished whereas reading foreign news is a cosmopolitan civil duty. Surely both facts tell something about this person. However 2/3

This ‘individuation without choice’ calls into being a self very different from the choosing neoliberal self, based on the assumption that our 'hot cognition' alone reflects our true self whereas our conscious reflexivity is mere self-deception (4/4)

The paper also explores the threat of algorithmic prediction to democracy: if our will can be predicted, voting and deliberation might be conceptualized as friction that can be rid of, as algorithms know what we want better than us. Finally, I explore it implications for subjectification: (3/4)

I show how this transformation relies on changes in expert knowledge, as economists and psychologists no longer portray choice as an economic engine that increases consumption but rather as an obstacle for capitalism (2/4)

Okay, give me a schtickle of flouride

After years that the right turned 'bureaucratic' into an insult, it's sociology's turn to point to its promise as protection against the arbitrariness of power (and not only repeatedly reveal the always partial and biased realization of this promise).

Now the government is simply a stronger player (which in turn is controlled by even stronger ones, big capital). Must be interesting to teach Weber in these days, as they remind us that bureaucracy is not just an efficient system of governance but a democratic ethic of transparency and equality. 4/5

It's a natural continuation of Trump's principled opposition to abstract and generally-applying moral rules, which I once discussed in an article. Furthermore, the separation between governments that set the rules of the game and the governed that play by them has been cancelled: 3/5

AI in governance seeks to revert us to the age of (now non-human) intuition. In this sense Musk's AI-coup, the attempt to dismantle government agencies through AI decisions and replace others with AI, is a logical extension of Trump's policy: a war against the very idea of rule-based governance. 2/5