Ideology

Ideology is “a Cultural Technē gone wrong”:Haslanger (2021), 28. This conception of ideology follows Haslanger (2017, 2018, 2021) and goes back to Althusser and the Marxist understanding of ideology as false consciousness.

a “network of social meanings, tools, scripts, schemas, heuristics, principles, and the like”Haslanger (2017), 155

which is distorted in specific ways so that it hides aspects of the world the perception of which would question or threaten systems of Power and the social order they impose.

An example for ideology in action is how Geology is shaped by ideology.

References

Haslanger (2017): “Culture and Critique”
Haslanger (2018): “What is a Social Practice?”
Haslanger (2021): “Political Epistemology and Social Critique”

Mentions

Bubble of Affluence

A bubble of affluence is a community of (relatively) wealthy individuals and groups, whose affluence hides the negative aspects of the world from their personal experience, thus masking or hiding their Privilege.

Colonialism and Capitalism Form a Feedback Loop

From Colonisation to Early Capitalism Colonisation can be seen as an expansion of the supply zones of European citiesDeLanda (2011) , “the original European solution to the ‘ghost acreage’ question”Tooze (2022) .

Concepts Are Compressed Models

A Concept is an interface to expose and connect some Models’ salient features.

Consumerism

Consumerism is an Ideology that encourages the acquisition and consumption of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.

Critical Theory

Critical theory is situated theory with an emancipatory goal.

Cultural Hegemony

Cultural hegemony is the dominance of an elite’s Ideology.

Customer Centric Means Consumerist

Cultural Evolution makes sure that every method that helps understands people’s wants and needs can and will be used to generate new wants and needs, which is needed to keep an economic system from collapsing in which Innovation fuels continuous growth.

Epistemic Colonialism

Epistemic colonialism is the use of Power to force a System of thought, often an Ideology, onto an area of thought and a population of thinkers that have every right to organise and be organised differently to deal adequately with their specific experiential context.

Fascism

“Fascism“ can refer to a historical political movement and to a political Ideology.

Geology Is Shaped by Ideology

As a collection of Models, Theories and Explanations, Geology offers “an evidence-based understanding of planet Earth’s history”.

Industrial Agriculture Is a Lying Social System

The Social System of industrial agriculture does not actually do what it says it is doing – it is, in a more than metaphorical sense, lying.

Institutions Lose Legitimacy in a Feedback Loop

Zuboff (2021) describes why the legitimacy of Institutions is essential for social stability: > [The] ongoing miracle of social order rests on “common sense Knowledge,” which is “the knowledge we share with others in the normal self-evident routines of everyday life.

Large Language Models Are a Feedback Loop for Society

Large Language Models (LLMs) will soon be a main source of content in our digital (virtual, augmented) world(s): > Machine learning generated content is just the next step beyond TikTok: instead of pulling content from anywhere on the network, GPT and DALL-E and other similar models generate new content from content, at zero marginal cost.

Patriarchy Is a Product of Agriculture

Patriarchy is not an inevitable consequence of human nature.

Perceived Irrationality Is Rooted in Actual Rationality

Rationality is an evolved strategy.

Racism Is a Justification for Exploitation

Contrary to what we’ve learned in school, it wasn't racist ideas, born from ignorance and hate, that led to racist policies, but exactly the other way round.

Rationalism Is Not Rational

Rationalism à la Eliezer Yudkowsky has two connected fundamental flaws – an ontological and an epistemological one.

Revise Concepts to Critique Ideology

In Conceptual Engineering, propose improvements to Concepts that expose and critique Ideology, making Ideological Oppression visible and enabling its subversion.

Revolutions Try to Force Systems into Imaginary Attractors

All political revolutionaries imagine a future constellation of their society and, if and when they succeed in disrupting the old system, use Power to implement the new one.

Science Can Be Criticised Scientifically

Science can be understood and criticised on a variety of levels.

Sensemaking

We make sense of the world in order to act in it.

Separate Explanation from Emotion

The world is a hierarchy of systems.

System Change Needs Disruption, Popular Support and Alternative Institutions

Climate and Ecological Breakdown is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, with civilisational Collapse an increasingly realistic outcome.

There Never Were Socialist States

There never were socialist states.