{
  "block": 106147794,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "6942.135221 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2026-05-18T03:53:33",
  "trx_id": "4b98eab192e21afb11b4dd68d197e497e23434f5",
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 105993368,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "4229.924816 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2026-05-12T18:35:15",
  "trx_id": "94ab86e8d1ece482f7d1b763a0c4ca1d898fcded",
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 105515342,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "6954.650977 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2026-04-26T03:08:42",
  "trx_id": "3f88c6aa9adccd543ca0f49fa0e5a0d1c25b88fc",
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 102863503,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "4271.471635 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2026-01-23T17:33:33",
  "trx_id": "a4fc4e2efb7e03da693cb873c9ba34737d7833ae",
  "trx_in_block": 2,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 91309767,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "4435.690832 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2024-12-17T12:46:09",
  "trx_id": "a753c6697fcbe6d9ea785d3770a24540e1306bdb",
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 79863938,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "4604.824364 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2023-11-14T04:27:48",
  "trx_id": "4823297b7aba3689a62ff40c9a1a1433862b549e",
  "trx_in_block": 8,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 78359462,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "7541.733150 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2023-09-22T07:32:48",
  "trx_id": "ac2442be1221cf636f0e80a2b68fc2f47b7f0f47",
  "trx_in_block": 7,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 69117650,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "7763.784588 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2022-11-03T15:22:45",
  "trx_id": "6a3730f41ee9b9fda54c09ecbc692a41f2bf463a",
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 60821180,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "7983.892189 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2022-01-17T20:48:45",
  "trx_id": "35a08f357513c16c213c5e1667dd3aab8fe9ebd7",
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 54611640,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "8168.086477 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2021-06-14T04:05:57",
  "trx_id": "52e35a61ed2607747e09123efccd37009e78701b",
  "trx_in_block": 11,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 49358976,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "8355.508451 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-12-11T14:20:39",
  "trx_id": "169385c3def4f9175c425b450c0a6b92cc56c9ef",
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 49210506,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "1912.543513 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-12-06T07:56:33",
  "trx_id": "b98bbfa7f93dbc18e7696db88ce426f91621fd4c",
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 49194058,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "8361.716305 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-12-05T17:58:18",
  "trx_id": "5566740145aa3662d14312a2c566dcbc79ef2b75",
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 48265656,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "1920.017158 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-11-02T22:18:27",
  "trx_id": "5a1d3a9d72753b88ac5c85e0131115e722afd474",
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 43220807,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "8564.521664 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-05-09T08:57:36",
  "trx_id": "b71bab21597cd561929d635d01b5b4359db116e7",
  "trx_in_block": 12,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 43197484,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "1953.311140 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2020-05-08T13:03:09",
  "trx_id": "bb7f8ea20e7cdf144cf60dc66d02b251a826207e",
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 38463297,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "8657.041728 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-11-24T19:30:42",
  "trx_id": "50a3c03377214d927fc09ef421f13fb94cc15ad4",
  "trx_in_block": 11,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 36653675,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "body": "Congratulations @mittmattmutt! You received a personal award!\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@mittmattmutt/birthday2.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 2 years!</td></tr></table>\n\n<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@mittmattmutt) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=mittmattmutt)_</sub>\n\n\n**Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:**\n<table><tr><td><a href=\"https://steemit.com/steemfest/@steemitboard/steemitboard-supports-the-steemfest-travel-reimbursement-fund\"><img src=\"https://steemitimages.com/64x128/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXDHs9xfx8ZZ3DESFUqHRUQAcQT5kUWobArsRoJg2Yz1F/image.png\"></a></td><td><a href=\"https://steemit.com/steemfest/@steemitboard/steemitboard-supports-the-steemfest-travel-reimbursement-fund\">SteemitBoard supports the SteemFest⁴ Travel Reimbursement Fund.</a></td></tr></table>\n\n###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png\"]}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "what-is-postmodernism",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-mittmattmutt-20190922t202845000z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2019-09-22T20:28:45",
  "trx_id": "dae75f201230e8f6cf8961f51c6a5cec65d43c4e",
  "trx_in_block": 10,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 28768761,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "8854.265439 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-12-21T21:51:51",
  "trx_id": "d7d0c09895df21a7f38e9a19c73fba503dd55deb",
  "trx_in_block": 28,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 28045319,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "29008.237543 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-11-26T18:38:54",
  "trx_id": "c7051974dab8991eb9f33c41d712b05f88671e6f",
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 26177909,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "body": "Congratulations @mittmattmutt! You have received a personal award!\n\n[![](https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@mittmattmutt/birthday1.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@mittmattmutt)  1 Year on Steemit\n<sub>_Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor._</sub>\n\n\n> Support [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)! **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png\"]}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "what-is-postmodernism",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-mittmattmutt-20180922t211505000z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-22T21:15:03",
  "trx_id": "949d7bf10ed249cab23f59cfed6d5ea2c856541c",
  "trx_in_block": 55,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 26148736,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "what-is-postmodernism",
      "voter": "sensation",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-21T20:54:39",
  "trx_id": "062573a3efc609aa7b77576db5030ddaec76566d",
  "trx_in_block": 4,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 26147172,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "what-is-postmodernism",
      "voter": "fastresteem",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-21T19:36:21",
  "trx_id": "a8cbea11520a1550a558ae744f52e8f46008497a",
  "trx_in_block": 21,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 26147168,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "The aim of this post is to explain, in hopefully intelligible terms, and by making reference to some of the central texts, what postmodernism is.\n\nI hope thereby to dispel two ideas that are found commonly enough: that postmodernism is either evil, or nonsense. The former view can be found in Jordan Peterson or other ‘intellectual dark web’ people (at least, I assume in other IDW people; since they mainly communicate via the medium of fourteen-hour youtube videos I haven’t bothered to check). The latter view can be found in most everybody else. Neither, I think, is true: if ‘postmodernism’ doesn’t have any one meaning, it has a range of meanings (I will list five), and those meanings, as opposed to being evil, in fact help us to understand many features of the world as we find it today.\n\nOf the five senses, two are ontological, which means they make claims about how reality is. Jean Baudrillard's view on simulacra has it, roughly, that in the late twentieth century, the relationship between representations (such as language, maps, paintings) and what they represent has been changed: while previously we thought representations were secondary to what they represented (first there were zebras, and then we came along and represented zebras with the word 'zebra'), this order of priority has been changed, and now representations are more important than what they represent. Judith Butler's view of gender performativity has it that there is no underlying essence that makes one be a particular gender; rather, gender is nothing over and above gendered behaviour.\n\nTwo are epistemological, or make claims about knowledge or understanding. Jean-François Lyotard claims that there are no unified theories that we can use to understand all of reality; rather, there is just a patchwork of partial theories that apply to this or that bit of reality. Michel Foucault says that the concept of knowledge is inextricably linked with power: to know facts about a thing or person is to have power over that person.\n\nAnd finally one is aesthetic, or to do with art: Frederic Jameson says that postmodern art is marked by a particular attitude towards past events and artworks. I will go through them in turn, illustrating them with quotations from a popular theory anthology, explaining the often convoluted writing, and suggesting interesting applications of them for today.\n\nBefore I do so, a couple of notes: I leave out some important thinkers like Derrida, Nietzsche, Lacan, and Adorno. There's no deep reason for this (it’s mainly because this piece would become unreadably long), and I might write a companion piece about them. And I don't discuss postmodernism conceived of as a reaction against the modernist movement in art, music, and literature.\n\n**Baudrillard**\n\nLet me then turn to the first of our writers, Jean Baudrillard. He is a French sociologist concerned with giving an account of the features of post-industrial society, such as mass media and consumerism. He travelled to America and most of his more famous analyses involve aspects of American culture in the quarter century or so before the millennium.\n\nHe remains influential to this day as one of the key thinkers of postmodernism, and indeed has some popular notoriety: Morpheus’s line ‘welcome to the desert of the real’ in The Matrix is from Baudrillard, and the makers of that film forced their staff to read ‘Simulacra and Simulation’, which is the essay we’ll discuss.\n\nBaudrillard is interested in what he calls the precession of simulacra. ‘Precession’ is a technical term from mechanics which, as far as I can tell, Baudrillard uses just as a fancy synonym for 'Preceding'. 'Simulcra' is a fancy word which means, essentially, representation. To say that simulcra are precessing then is to say that representations have come to have precedence. Over what?\n\nWell, to answer that let me present a picture of language that most analytic philosophers, as well as ordinary human beings, would find attractive: there are things out there, and there are words which stand for them. (Some deny this, holding that there is no such standing for relation relating words and things. Words get their meaning not by making contact with some extra-linguistic bit of reality, but by the relations they stand in to other words. ‘Sofa’ doesn’t make contact with some extra-linguistic bit of reality, the sofas. Rather, it makes contact with other (intra-linguistic, obviously) words: ‘chaise-longue’, ‘arm-chair’, ‘bean-bag’, and gets whatever positive meaning it has by its differences with these other words: it is not built for reclining, it is not built just for one, it would not be out of place in a dentist’s waiting room, and so on. Regardless of whether or not this is true — which it isn’t — something like the model in the text must be presupposed to understand Baudrillard, so let’s presuppose it.)\n\nThe things, for most of us most of the time, are where the action is at. Gold, the metal, is much more valuable than ‘gold’ the word. There's also a sort of temporal preceding: we have this picture of a pre-existing reality, to the various parts of which we then attach names. Adam named the animals, but the animals were already around.\n\nBaudrillard's big idea is that this idea — that things outvalue and precede representations — is, now, wrong. Here, in his almost incomparably awful style, is how he puts it:\n\n>>In this passage to a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor of truth, the age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials-worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more ductile material than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalence, all binary oppositions and all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself, that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have to be produced - this is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulated generation of difference.\n(excerpt from ‘Simulcra and Simulation’ in Leitch ed, Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, W.W. Norton and Company, 2001, page 1733. All subsequent references in this post are to this book.)\n\nThis whole paragraph, indeed pretty much the whole essay, could be reduced to the bolded (by me) bit.\n\nNow, bad style notwithstanding, the idea that we’ve substituted signs of the real for the real itself is kind of intriguing sounding, especially in the era where some claim millennials have exchanged sex for porn, and we’ve got a reality TV boss for boss of the US. Maybe Baudrillard’s on to something.\n\nTo illustrate his point, Baudrillard points to some features of (then) contemporary(ish) culture: Disneyland and Watergate. He thinks that in both cases there’s a natural way to think about these features which is, in fact, wrong. The natural way to think of Disneyland is that it functions as a fictional, unrealistic representation of America: it’s a false world within the real world of the USA. The natural way to think of the Watergate scandal is that it functions as a representation of how politics shouldn’t be done — the scandal by its very scandalousness, points to the non-scandalous normal nature of politics. In each case, we have a pair of distinctions: the fictional, unrealistic world of Disneyland as against the real world outside its boundaries, and the scandal and crime of the Watergate break-in as against the normal, honest course of American politics.\n\nBut this is wrong, says Baudrillard. Taking Watergate first, his claim is that there is no such thing as the normal, honest course of American politics. For example, take the wiretapping of Democrats Nixon carried out: this has, it’s known, long been something done or at least permitted by the political establishment (Kennedy and Truman, for example, both did it). If this is so, then if a scandal is a violation of some norms of conduct then, as Baudrillard says, there is no Watergate scandal (at least as concerns wiretapping).\n\nInstead, the function of Watergate was to convince people there is a normal, honest course of American politics. It served, Baudrillard thinks, to impose the idea that it was a scandal, that what Nixon and his gang did was indeed a break with some norms of political behaviour and that therefore there was an order that was being scandalously defied. The scandal which wasn’t a scandal caused a scandal, and therefore brought into being the condition for a scandal!\n\nThis is an interesting analysis — whether it’s in any way borne out by what actually happened is another question (we might note that Americans’ faith in their institutions took a nose dive after Watergate; we might note again that Nixon’s replacement, Ford, by pardoning Nixon, attached to himself some of the former’s guilt). But it at least makes sense, and presents a position worth considering: that representations — the sum total of newspaper articles, books, movies, and so on — about the Watergate scandal served to bring into being what was previously lacking, namely the idea that there was an upstanding political order.\n\nLet’s consider his second example, which is a bit less clear: Disneyland. He thinks that its secret is that, although we think of it as a fictional representation of a sort of world, in fact its purpose is to hide the fact that 'all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real....it is no longer a question of a false representation of reality...but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real' (p.1741). Disneyland doesn’t function as an escape into a fantasy world; it functions to distract from the fact that there is no actual world anymore.\n\nWhat does this mean? In what sense is Los Angeles no longer real? Well, he doesn’t really say. A textbook on postmodernism (Postmodern Theory, Best and Kellner, The Guildford Press p119) suggests that the proliferation of manuals (sex manuals, DIY manuals) makes the same point for Baudrillard: we come to privilege the ideal over reality. We’re not concerned with our actual lawn, or relationship or whatever, but with the expert one the specialists will show us how to create. Another example Baudrillard gives himself is of opinion polls: we think of them as registering opinion, but we know well that they form opinion. If you read in an opinion poll that a given party is doing better than you would have anticipated, you might then come to put your support behind the lost cause.\n\nWhat should we take from Baudrillard? These are all mildly interesting observations. We do seem, in some sense, to live in a time in which representations are very important, and can even sometimes have this reality making power. Again, the tendency to just point to our current political situation is strong: the quick argumentum ad Trumpum make lead us to think we are definitely in a Baudrillardian world.\n\nStill, we don’t get, from Baudrillard, anything clear enough to give us a sense of postmodernism. It’s obviously not the case that LA is no longer real, and we can note that humans have been defining themselves against ideals, and doing something because they think the neighbour does it too, for as long as there have been human beings. Baudrillard doesn’t make the case that there is something particularly different about post-industrial society that warrants giving it and only it the moniker of postmodernism. But he does suggest a useful partial understanding of some bits of our world.\n\n**Lyotard** \n\nThe next person to consider is Lyotard. His basic idea is that postmodernism is defined as an 'incredulity towards metanarratives'. In plain English — we don't believe in overarching theories of the world. For example, back in the day people believed in God, and then they believed in reason, socialism, Darwin, Marx, Freud. In general, it was thought that there was something we were heading towards, some ideal, or that at least we were progressing, and that, moreover, we were doing so according to an intelligible process. For Darwinism, or at least its popular interpretations, the laws of natural selection caused us to be more adapted to our environment than our ancestors, and those laws explain not only why, for example, we don’t brachiate but also our little peculiarities, like why we have useless appendixes or why it’s very hard to stop eating something sweet after you start. For Freud, the laws of the unconscious are what gives rise to our behaviours, from small slips of the tongue and dreams to the sort of partner we choose, and understanding these laws can enable us to free ourselves of the neuroses and anxieties with which we are burdened. For Marx, the laws of capitalism itself suggested its downfall, and, for example, for all their sci-fi bizarreness, uber’s self-driving cars are just the newest working out of an underlying capitalist logic.\n\nNow, though, what do we believe? Freud is certainly out—we don’t assign any deep meaning in our parapraxes, and few would have much time for thinking that the concepts of id and ego and superego limn any psychological reality. While we’re all—apart from the many who aren’t—still pro-Darwin, we’re also very aware of the extent to which science is sometimes irrational or can be misused or is sometimes just false. And Marx—the thought that there is some beyond of the unfettered capitalist system encountering the underside of which in Manchester influenced Engels so—that is hard to see, although it is becoming ever easier.\n\nWe are, Lyotard thinks, in an age where the thought that we are progressing in accordance with big picture and meaningful laws ought to be one held with suspicion. In Lyotard:\n\n>>Neither economic nor political liberalism, nor the various Marxisms, emerge from the sanguinary last two centuries free from the suspicion of crimes against mankind. We can list a series of proper names (names of places, persons and dates) capable of illustrating and founding our suspicion. Following Theodor Adorno, I use the name of Auschwitz to point out the irrelevance of empirical matter, the stuff of recent past history, in terms of the modern claim to help mankind to emancipate itself. What kind of thought is able to sublate (Aufheben) Auschwitz in a general (either empirical or speculative) process towards a universal emancipation? So there is a sort of sorrow in the Zeitgeist. This can express itself by reactive or reactionary attitudes or by utopias, but never by a positive orientation offering a new perspective\n(page 1614)\n\nLess fancily: how can you believe in anything after Auschwitz? Not to mention God, but even any sort of belief that humans are progressing — how can it remain? We have given up the thought of progress, the idea that there is one aim towards things tend, and have replaced it with plurality. He uses, vaguely, the notion of a Wittgensteinian language game to try to make this point. At the start of the century came the idea that there was one language which could serve as a pure vessel of logic: a language into which we could translate vague imprecise language that would serve as a universal scientific language. As the century developed, he points out, the number of different logics exploded, each apt to translate a different part of language, with no real concern for there being an underlying language in which everything could be said (a fact which one could, without too much inaccuracy, link to Goedel’s incompleteness results and Wittgenstein’s passage from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations). There was no universal language, it seems, but different languages for different purposes: one language for talking about necessary truth, one for talking about responsibility and duty, and so on. That’s where Lyotard thinks we are: there are just different local languages, local sets of rules, local ways of behaving, not to be subsumed under some big picture story of reality.\n\nAgain, a lot of Lyotard’s work is vague and poorly expressed. But nevertheless, and as with Baudrillard, the thought seems worth considering. The thought that definitive of postmodern cultures is that its subjects don't believe in big picture theories of the world has some sort of appeal to it. It is noteworthy, I think, that for a decent percentage of young people the idea of religion is never even considered as an option. And it's also noteworthy that were I writing a hundred or so years ago, there is a decent chance I would be at least receptive to Darwin, Freud, and Marx, each of whom saw an order in things. Does a contemporary, moderately well-informed person, see things this way?\n\nThe idea that we're getting better is hard to take with inequality and climate change, and Freudianism has been replaced with the medicalisation of the mind. At the moment, our mental lives have been stripped of their meaning. For Freud, one's sufferings said something, they tried to communicate the kernel of you that makes you unhappy. Even the smallest thing, a little slip of the tongue (a Freudian slip) was indicative of something. Now it's just serotonin and oxytocin and dopamine: we've moved from meaning to neurochemistry. Similarly, Marx had a vision of how capitalism would progress towards its own demise but that vision doesn’t seem to have come true and we have come to accept what Mark Fisher famously called ‘capitalist realism’, the thought that there is no alternative to our current situation (Capitalist Realism, Zero Books, 2011). We can’t even find repose in science. The replicability crisis in the social sciences is revealing that whole swathes of research is rotten to its core, the result of researchers inadequately versed in statistics being forced to churn out research papers for tenure or consultancies.\n\nSo it's prima facie reasonable to think that the mark of the postmodern is this absence of big beliefs. But only prima facie. There are two big problems with taking the absence of metanarratives as a particularly definitive feature of our society or even the one that preceded it. After all, people have often been haunted by belief's absence; and is it really true that in our era of the alt-right and identity politics left we don't believe in things?\n\n**Jameson**\n\nLet’s turn now to Frederic Jameson. He thinks an important thing about postmodernism is the relation between high and mass or popular culture. He notes that an interest in pop culture is, in a sense, already deeply there in modernism (Joyce, for example, wrote a chapter of Ulysses in the style of cheap romance novels; Eliot fills ‘The Waste Land’ with current songs alongside Latin poetry and Shakespeare references), but he thinks that postmodern works of art have a different way of using these things.\n\nThey no longer 'quote' such 'texts' as a Joyce might have done; they incorporate them, to the point where the line between high art and commercial forms seem increasingly difficult to draw'.\n(page 1961)\nTo make this notion of incorporation more precise, he introduces a distinction between pastiche and parody. A parody, roughly, is adopting a voice other than one's own, 'to cast ridicule on the private nature of these stylistic mannerisms and their excessiveness and eccentricity with respect to the way people normally speak and write' (p. 1963).\n\nSo, Jameson says, this presupposes a sense of a normal voice, against which the parodied is measured, for example the way the Nausicaa chapter is measured against the first few chapters of Ulysses. But now — what would happen if one no longer believed in such ordinary languages? If all there was was a plurality of different voices, with no baseline, then to speak would involve putting on a voice, but it would not be parody. It would be, in Jameson's terms, pastiche.\n\nPastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry ... without that still latent feeling that there's something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic.\n(page 1963)\n\n>>This notion of pastiche seems apt to describe much of the great art of at least the 90s: it captures Tarantino’s aesthetic as well as the manic style of the Simpsons, for example, and arguably finds expression in one of the most interesting genres of music of the 90s, namely rap, which relies heavily on sampling older works.\n\nJameson also thinks that nostalgia is an important feature of the postmodern outlook. He points to the film American Graffiti, released at the height of Watergate in 1973, and looking back in an idealised way to 1962, and to some other nostalgic films and books of the era, and seems to suggest that nostalgia is a distinctively postmodern thing.\n\nAgain, this fits well with at least some 90s art — The Simpsons and Twin Peaks are both set in weird worlds that are simultaneously contemporary and from an earlier era. What he says seems apt:\n\n>>It seems to be exceedingly symptomatic to find the very style of nostalgia films invading and colonising even those movies today which have contemporary settings: as though, for some reason, we were unable today to focus our own present, as though we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience.\n\nOur retro films and TV shows aren’t accurate presentations of the past:\n\n>>Cultural production has been driven back inside the mind, within the monadic subject: it can no longer look directly out of its eyes at the real world for its referent but must, as in Plato’s cave, trace its mental images of the world on its confining walls…we seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about that past, which itself remains forever out of reach.\n(page 1966-67)\n\nJameson, writing in the early 1980s, diagnosed a trend that reached its height, arguably, in the 90s, with Tarantino and Lynch and The Simpsons. He sees that nostalgia is a fundamental feature of postmodernism, and taking his suggestion, we can then agree that the 90s are indeed a postmodern decade. It’s worth asking, though, whether we are still postmodern as far as art is concerned. I would suggest that the sort of pastiche and referentiality one finds in The Simpsons is no longer in vogue, and while there are many retro shows (Stranger Things, GLOW, Mad Men), they seem to have a markedly different relation to the past that they represent. Arguably, we’re artistically post-postmodern.\n\n**Foucault**\n\nIt is, I think, considerably harder to pull out one big, easily compressible and comprehensible idea from Foucault's writings than it is from the others. His writings are vast, organized into different periods and complicated. What I'll do is explain one part of one central cluster of concepts for which he is famous, and which are relevant for today.\n \nThese are truth, power, and surveillance. That truth, or at least what is commonly taken to be true (an important qualification, of course), is connected with power is something very intuitively obvious. We need think only of Fox News and The Daily Mail, the millionaires who bankroll anti-climate change research and who buy, on either side of the party political line, elections. Or again, we can think of countries in which the government straight-up censor what its citizens can encounter: again, we have a straight causal connection running from the powerful to (what people take to be) the true.\n\nWhen Foucault speaks of truth and power, or, as he sometimes does, truth/power, though, it's important to note that that's not what he means. The power that interests Foucault is not to be found in the obvious places: not in the millionaires and the state and the media. Rather, for Foucault, power works much more subtly, constantly, and mundanely.\n\nIn order to see this, consider the following two stories about how punishment, conceived of as a manifestation of power, could be wielded. On one, you punish people when they do something really bad. When, basically, it’s you vs them: when the people rise up and try to overthrow you, say. And when you do so, you do so brutally, let’s say with public executions.\n\nThere are advantages and disadvantages to this method. Obviously, it incurs risk — if the people are advancing on you, they might win. And brutal ostentatious punishments take time and money too. But it has a certain advantage: you don’t have to really pay that much attention to punishment. The only time you need to have your punishment hat on is during those large and unmissable disruptions. And that in turn means you don’t really have to devote time and resources to attending to your citizenry.\n\nThe other method of punishment works by correcting not large infractions, but small ones. Not assassination attempts, say, but juvenile delinquency. This has a certain advantage: if you can nip misbehaviour in the bud before it blossoms into large scale unrest, you can save the time and risk of ostentatious punishment. But it requires a lot more knowledge. You need to be paying attention to the kids constantly, attentive to their every action, so you can be attentive to their every transgression. You need to know a lot more about them — about their daily routines, about how they mouthed off to teacher, and so on. But that knowledge confers power: if you know these small facts, your capacity to punish becomes much more fine grained, and more effective. In the words of some text about young workers in the 19th century Foucault quotes\n\n>>The least act of disobedience is punished and the best way of avoiding serious offenses is to punish the most serious offenses very severely\n(page 1637)\n\nOne of Foucault’s basic thoughts is that we moved from the first model of punishment, of big punishments for big transgressions, to the second model around the turn of the 19th century. We did so partly because the individual, the common person, became an object of study then. It became important to know vital statistics like the number of children a person had, their health, the age their parents died at, and so on, in order to manage more efficiently towns and countries. With this rise in the science and practice of statistics (conceived of as measuring features of those who make up the state) the individual became an apt subject of knowledge, and this led Foucault to the study of prisons, hospitals, workhouses, and so on, all of which had this character of what he calls panopticisim — of being places the inhabitants of which are also being observed, with the knowledge culled from that observation being used to keep them in line.\n\nFoucault’s picture is an interesting one. That power is something that runs through our institutions rather than being brutally enforced upon us is worth thinking about. I highly doubt I’m the first to have made this connection, but I think one can quite clearly make a decent case for social media as panoptical, that is as a tool in which observation and the knowledge it yields serve power. Here’s how it would go: you might think that power controls knowledge in social media in one of two ways: either the powerful simply censor what they don’t like, or the powerful make use of the data we give them to direct us in the directions they want us to — in the direction of voting for this person, or buying this thing, or simply of spending all our time on these platforms giving us their data.\n\nThe Foucault view, though, or at least the part of it I presented here, would be different, less obvious, and more interesting (this is probably an extremely cold take; if you can anticipate what I’m just about to say, skip this paragraph). It would point to the low level practices that guide us through social media, the small incentives and punishments it offers. For example, heterodoxy, playing devil’s advocate, is often not well received on social media, in the very mundane (and embarassing-that-we-care) sense that if I were to, say, play devil’s advocate and make the free market case for sweatshops then for a start no one would favourite or like my post, and it’s highly possible people would unfollow me (https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/popularity-twitter-partisanship-pays). Conversely, if I were to dunk on some libertarian thinkpiece doing the same, I would be treated better. Favouriting, retweeting, following — these are the sort of subtle bottom-up manifestations of power that Foucault would have been interested in, and rightly so.\n\n**Butler**\n\nThe final person I want to consider is Judith Butler and her work on gender performativity. Ideas concerning gender being a spectrum, or fluid, or socially constructed, or independent of the bodily organs one is born with, are highly salient at the moment, and at least one influential line has it that a cause of this is Butler’s work (Angela Nagle argues this in *Kill All Normies*, Zero Books, 2017). And these ideas are much mocked by various alt-right people and snowflake deriders. To what extent we can draw such links — to what extent we should think of such people as in any sense reacting to this postmodern feminist theorist is unclear, but it seems worth in any event exploring the ideas.\n\nHere is a representative passage, unpacking which will help us get clear as to one central line of Butler’s thought. Consider acts which we typically treat as male or female: or fighting versus, say, nursing. The standard view is that in acting in one of these ways, we thereby express something about ourselves. Just as I express my nationality, say, when I open my mouth and my unlovely accent tumbles out, so when I get in a fight I express my masculine core or essence.\n\nNot so for Butler:\n\n>>Such acts, gestures, enactments [like fighting and nursing], generally construed, are *performative* in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise pruport to express are *fabrications* … [t]hat the gendered body is performative suggest that it has no ontological status apart from te various acts which constitute its reality. This also suggests that if reality is fabricated as an interior essence, that very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse\n(page 2497)\n\nThere’s a bit to unpack here. First, consider the notion of performativeness. This is an idea that comes from the English philosopher J.L. Austin (to Butler via Derrida, but I’ll overlook the Derridean aspects here), who noted that while frequently language is used to note facts about the world, sometimes it has another function: it makes facts about the world. When I say ‘I do thee wed’ I am not reporting on a marriage. There’s no preexisting fact I’m calling attention to. Rather, I’m making a fact, the fact that I’m married, just by uttering those words (in Austin’s memorable phrase, I’m not reporting on a marriage, I’m indulging in it).\n\nIn the same way, Butler thinks, when I do something coded as masculine, I’m not giving voice to some pre-existing fact: rather, I’m creating the fact of my masculinity in so acting. There is no essence of gender beyond my acts; in Butler’s terms, there’s no thing (it has no ontological status) of being male or female beyond the things one does. And if one wants to hold on to the idea of there being some essence, we need to realize that the direction of causality is different to what we might have thought. It’s not that this essence causes our actions; it’s that our actions cause the essence.\n\nI want to make one point about Butler’s work. It, or at least ideas in the vicinity, has been subject to a lot of criticism. Some of this is because of its style, which is fair enough — it’s not, in my view, a fun book to read. But some of it is that the ideas are completely ridiculous. People think it’s obvious there must be some essence to gender and make fun of her for not thinking that.\n\nBut if anything, what I would say about Butler is that her view is kind of familiar. It’s not ridiculous or incredible; it’s just a version of one of the most venerable philosophical ideas out there, namely idealism. For centuries if not millennia, philosophers have been telling us the essence of things is other than where we might think. Plato told us that real things were not physical but his immutable forms; more pertinently, Bishop Berkeley argued that what we took to be real physical objects existing independently of us out in the world where we in fact just ideas in the mind of God.\n\nAnd it’s not like these are isolated incidents: Kant, Hegel, even contemporaryish and well-respected analytic philosophers like Hillary Putnam and Michael Dummett dabble in similar sorts of positions. Their points of reference might be the philosophy of logic and maths, but the basic thought is roughly the same. So Butler, despite her style and differing intellectual background, belongs to a long-standing venerable tradition and whatever issues one might have with her work, that it’s unprecedently ridiculous is not one of them.\n\nSo concludes our whistle-stop tour through postmodernism. I hope I’ve shown that there are many ways to understand the concept, and that they can shed light on features of contemporary life. And I hope that having read this, when you encounter talk of postmodernism in popular media, you’ll now have a greater sense of what the author in question might mean.\n\n*(Cross-posted from medium.com/@mittmattmutt. My novella *Coming From Nothing* is, in part, about postmodern theory. If you like fiction, check out a sample [here](http://bit.ly/cfnextract); the amazon page is [here](https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Nothing-Thought-Experiment-Novella/dp/1785356194))*",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"postmodernism\",\"philosophy\",\"peterson\",\"butler\",\"theory\"],\"links\":[\"https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/popularity-twitter-partisanship-pays\",\"http://bit.ly/cfnextract\",\"https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Nothing-Thought-Experiment-Novella/dp/1785356194\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "postmodernism",
      "permlink": "what-is-postmodernism",
      "title": "What Is Postmodernism?"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-09-21T19:36:09",
  "trx_id": "bddea9572193490a09af4e0f1041204578e5ad97",
  "trx_in_block": 27,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24542574,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "generation-x-generation-x-and-millennials",
      "voter": "magpielover",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-27T12:31:27",
  "trx_id": "b36adf3b9f16a648ded8f56208b865ff9bf94030",
  "trx_in_block": 52,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24541928,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "People talk a lot about millennials as if they were some sort of brand new species, a wussy-feely generation faced with an unprecedentedly bad social lot: priced out of the housing market, doomed to the gig economy, their whole existence monetized for advertisers, and so on.\n\nAn obvious way to test whether this characterisation is apt is just to look at previous generations and see if this is so — is there something markedly different about millennials?\n\nThe generation prior to millennials are called generation x, and they are done so in homage to Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X. Thus a bit of low-hanging intellectual fruit is to check out that novel and see if its characters are markedly different from millennials as characterised in the popular press.\n\nYou might be forgiven for thinking that they would be markedly different. After all, wasn’t the 90s a time of emotional stuntedness and disaffection typified, say, by Nirvana, the smiling nihilism of Seinfeld, the angst of Fight Club? And wasn’t it a time of unprecedented economic growth (4% per annum during Clinton’s years)? One might be forgiven for thinking that generation x was disaffected but prosperous, and thus opposite to millennials who are affectionate but broke.\n\nThat would a mistake, though. If you look at Generation X, the supposedly voice of a generation text, you’ll see that its young people were just as emotionally open and economically alienated as the young people today, and moreover — and less surprisingly — exhibited the same mistrust towards the megabrands that wove into their lives as facebook and uber weave into milennials’.\n\nI’ll make this point basically just by presenting a bunch of quotes from Generation X, centred around the three topics of economic alienation, mistrust of brands, and emotional openness.\n\n\nThe book is about three friends, Andy (who narrates), Dag, and Claire, who live in Palm Springs, a town where rich people ‘come to buy back their youth’ (Generation X, Abacus, 1991, p12 — all subsequent references are to this) where the protagonist’s dogs, on the second page, get their snouts in a bag of fat removed by liposuction, where ‘gray hair gobble[]s up the jewels and perfumes’ (p11) at one of the protagonists’ work, and where there is ‘no weather…. also no middle class’ (p12). There is just the affluent and those whom they serve.\n\nThey work ‘McJobs’, that is ‘low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector’ (p6). They realise they’re getting screwed over. Andy’s friends’ smiles\n\n>are the same as the smiles worn by people who have been good-naturedly fleeced, but fleeced nonetheless, in public >and on a New York sidewalk by card-sharks, and who are unable because of social convention to show their anger, who >don’t want to look like poor sports (p8)\n\nWhy are they getting screwed over? In part because of the luckily successful older generation. When Dag storms out of his job he rants:\n\n>Do you really think we enjoy hearing about your brand-new million-dollar home when we can barely afford to eat Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our grimy little show boxes and we’re pushing thirty? A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You’d last about ten minutes if you were my age[]…I have to endure pinheads like you rusting about me for the rest of my life, always grabbing the best piece of cake first and then putting a barbed-wire fence around the rest. (p26)\n\nThis could be spoken of today by a young deliveroo driver to their parasite landlord or a Mail reading Brexiteer: generation x are economically millennial (or vice-versa), unhappy at the unfair advantages of the previous generation.\n\nToday we rightly dislike amazon, uber, facebook, the lifestyle brands that enrich few while impoverishing many (allowing that impoverishment can be political or social, in the case of facebook and its misused data). Generation X found a similar enemy in consumerism, which is railed against at many times in the book.\n\nHere’s another scene of job storming out, only this time it’s Andy quitting. He says:\n\n>God, Margaret. You really have to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff? What makes us deserve the ice cream and running shoes and wool Italian suits we have? I see all of us trying so hard to acquire so much stuff but I can’t help but feel that we didn’t merit it. (p28)\n\nSome more of the same:\n\n>You mean to tell me we can drive all the way here from L.A. and see maybe ten thousand square miles of shopping malls, and you don’t have maybe the weentsiest inkling that something, somewhere, has gone very very cuckoo? (p69)\n\nAnd:\n\n>Otis got to thinking: Hey! these aren’t houses at all — these are malls in disguise’…Otis developed the shopping mall correlation: kitchens became the Food Fair; living rooms the Fun center; the bathroom the Water Park. Otis said to himself, ‘God, what goes through the minds who people who live in these things — are they shopping?’ (p80)\n\nUpdating the references to, say, ‘personal brands’, to talk of how is twitter dot com still free?, and to the supposed freedom the gig economy offers and these complaints — if not their exact tone and phrasing, which perhaps reads a bit on the nose today — could come from the mouth of a young person today, almost 30 years after the book was written. Generation x are as cynical of branding and business as millennials.\n\nThe third thing is feeling. Andy loves his friends and they love him, uncomplicatedly. They’re there for each other. They aren’t the nihilists that would later pop up in Seinfeld. It’s harder to pull quotes here because it’s more of a spirit which suffuses the book: the characters find peace from their shitty McJobs by spending time together and telling stories. The ending of part two, though, is representative:\n\n>These creatures here in this room with me — these are the creatures I love and who love me. Together I feel like we are a strange and forbidden garden — I feel so happy I could die. If I could have it thus, I would like this moment to continue forever.\n\nSuch genuine affection and concern, arguably, is of a piece with supportive twitter threads and the friend-protecting desire to not permit, in the face of a world overpopulated with them, dumb-ass provocateurs to speak at your university. Generation x are emotionally millennial.\n\nSo the generation x portrayed in Generation X are economically displaced, suspicious of brands, and yet emotionally open and supportive … which sounds like a very good description of millennials to me, and suggests that those people who say there’s something unique about the current generation should do their cultural history a bit better.\n\nYou might be somewhat unimpressed. This is just one book: no matter what it says, we still have the more cynical, ironic, echt-90s stuff to come in grunge and The Simpsons and the other things I mentioned above. Fair enough: it is just one book. But it’s instructive that such a seminal book is so different to what one might expect, and it’s also helpful, I think, in showing that certain features of contemporary life aren’t the result — as one taking an ahistorical perspective might be tempted to think — of certain early noughties exogenous shocks (the internet, the 08 crash) but are rather continuous with life before the millennium. Realising that you might be more willing to realise that our current situation is a deeply baked-in result, not an accidental feature, of the politico-economic order since Reagan and Thatcher, and more desirous to change that order.\n\n(*originally posted on medium.com, 24th July 2018*)",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"literature\",\"millennials\",\"generations\",\"nineties\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "literature",
      "permlink": "generation-x-generation-x-and-millennials",
      "title": "“Generation X”, generation x, and millennials"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-27T11:59:09",
  "trx_id": "afb730298623fa14aeb059faa508f9bb12cb4a81",
  "trx_in_block": 70,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24276277,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "why-i-think-trump-won-t-be-president-at-the-end-of-the-year",
      "voter": "steemitboard",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-18T06:26:03",
  "trx_id": "be9e751e7ee5e757b5940d67e3d3b457c98ad1c8",
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24276276,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "body": "Congratulations @mittmattmutt! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :\n\n[![](https://steemitimages.com/70x80/http://steemitboard.com/notifications/voted.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@mittmattmutt) Award for the number of upvotes received\n\n<sub>_Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor._</sub>\n<sub>_If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word_ `STOP`</sub>\n\n\nTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!\n\n\n**Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:**\n[SteemitBoard World Cup Contest - The results, the winners and the prizes](https://steemit.com/steemitboard/@steemitboard/steemitboard-world-cup-contest-the-results-and-prizes)\n\n> Do you like [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)? Then **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notify.png\"]}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "why-i-think-trump-won-t-be-president-at-the-end-of-the-year",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-mittmattmutt-20180718t062602000z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-18T06:26:00",
  "trx_id": "b0a4842aa1c18c76bc4460e22fbeb6a6ce8d80e3",
  "trx_in_block": 45,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24263567,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "why-i-think-trump-won-t-be-president-at-the-end-of-the-year",
      "voter": "ax3",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-17T19:49:15",
  "trx_id": "110522404121ba6ab7c7d2bccca785976ca9c736",
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24263563,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "According to the odds offered on British website betfair.com this morning there's  a 7% chance that Trump won't be president at the end of the year. I think there's about a 15% chance that he won't be, so I took that bet. To put my mouth where my money is I thought I'd explain why I think that.  Basically there's a bunch of premises I think are plausible and together they lead to my title. I'll list and justify them in this post.\n\n\n**(Premise 1)** There will be no Trumpian equivalent of [the enabling act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933).\n\nAt least as the story tends to be told (I'm no historian) Hitler pushed through the enabling act in order to, well, enable him to pass laws as a dictator untroubled by any democratic impediments. This is, I think, a big fear, implicitly or explicitly, among many observers: that Trump will do something similar to enable him to establish dictatorial power. His refusal to stand up for the FBI in the meeting with Putin yesterday stokes such fears, but I can't bring myself to believe it.\n\nWhy do I think this? Basically two reasons:\n\n1. No matter what you think of Republicans and their plutocratic friends, they *really* don't want dictator Trump. I'm sure they all hate Trump and what he stands for: to know him, more or less, is to do so.\n\n2. I think people are wont to overestimate the likelihood of this dictatorship-through-law-sowing up because of the famous example of Hitler. It's a [familiar fact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic) that we are prone to overestimate the likelihood of events if  events of a similar type are salient in our minds, and I think—and I should say, this is very much a conjecture, in no way am I saying I'm completely confident in this and thus unworried about what's happening—it's plausible to think that's what's happening here. The parallels to Nazi Germany are brought out so frequently that we overestimate the probability that we're in another Nazi Germany situation.\n\n**(Premise 2)** The Mueller investigation will turn something big up, and will do so soon.\n\nOne reason to think this is the obvious point that it explains Trump's behaviour around Putin. But I'm more moved by a less obvious thought, which turns on what I think of the GOP's character.\n\nI think two things about the GOP: They really don't want dictator Trump, and they really don't want to piss off his base/Fox News, but\n\n**(Premise 3)** They don't want dictator Trump more than they don't want to piss off his base.\n\nThis is basically a principle of not being completely contemptible. I don't understand politicians; their behaviour is very weird to me. But a—perhaps naive—faith in humanity leads me to think that even the GOP, whom I don't esteem, would rather  stand up to Trump than to go along with it and keep their seat. But then it's weird—why hasn't there been any significant resistance? This is something that I think most calls out for explanation.\n\nBut now if **(Premise 3)** is true, we can explain it. The reason there hasn't is because **(Premise 2)** is true—if premise 2 is true, and the GOP know it's true, then it might be that Mueller will do their dirty work for them. They won't have to speak up, and attract the ire of Hannity, because Mueller will do bring forward charges that they can't ignore.\n\nSo here's what I think is a plausible continuation: Mueller turns up impeachable offenses, and the GOP go along with it. But that could take forever for the legal process to happen, yet I bet this morning that he'd be gone in about five months. However:\n\n**(Premise 4)** Trump will resign.\n\nThe only thing Trump cares about is appearing good. If he realises he's toast, he'll resign and try to spin it in some way (and he'll probably come to believe the spin he'll tell) favourable to him. But the key thing about resignation is that it's quick: it doesn't require a slow court process. And so that's part of the reason I think it's plausible that the whole thing could be wrapped up by the end of the year.\n\nSo that's it. Some facts about history, about cognitive biases, about the character of most Republicans and that of Trump mean that my own degree of belief in the claim that Trump won't be president at year's end is somewhere between 1/10 and 1/5. In any event, it's greater than what the bookmakers think, and that's why I'm betting the way I am. Of course, if I'm wrong, that'll be embarrassing, and especially if I'm wrong about **(Premise 1)** it'll be horrifying. But I thought I'd put my mouth where my money is. If people can persuade me I'm wrong I will genuinely be interested to hear counterarguments.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"politics\",\"trump\",\"betting\",\"reasoning\",\"president\"],\"links\":[\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933\",\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "politics",
      "permlink": "why-i-think-trump-won-t-be-president-at-the-end-of-the-year",
      "title": "Why (I Think) Trump Won't Be President At The End Of The Year"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-17T19:49:03",
  "trx_id": "f83420dc1cc7358e8f5cdbd130af077eb5f694a7",
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24166566,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "29227.803703 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T10:56:42",
  "trx_id": "7a274efafc4d136c38696eef250bec84ca1e3b0a",
  "trx_in_block": 41,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24165290,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "an-idea-for-twitter-based-philanthropy",
      "voter": "sensation",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T09:52:54",
  "trx_id": "b7676e04a94405cd7380eeba41d420ff010ce55b",
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24165057,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "an-idea-for-twitter-based-philanthropy",
      "voter": "pinoy",
      "weight": 1000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T09:41:15",
  "trx_id": "a9a6e22f1d2b8eea1f78d39f82e6ff717a377118",
  "trx_in_block": 3,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24164875,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "why-left-wing-people-should-like-blockchains-and-an-intuitive-explanation-of-what-they-are",
      "voter": "magpielover",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T09:32:09",
  "trx_id": "e5905c0cda9167ab6395713276f6d4c80cb3adde",
  "trx_in_block": 36,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24164453,
  "op": [
    "claim_reward_balance",
    {
      "account": "mittmattmutt",
      "reward_sbd": "0.344 SBD",
      "reward_steem": "0.000 STEEM",
      "reward_vests": "171.689221 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T09:11:03",
  "trx_id": "d3df2f4fb651dcba85b709226d76aab375a71f1b",
  "trx_in_block": 21,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24164346,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "I’m very taken with this idea: that we can do one big good thing for the benefit of others by each doing one small good thing for the benefit of others. That if we collaborate we can, at little cost to ourselves, confer a large benefit on others. Here’s an obvious example of the sort of thing I mean. If you were to ask me to give £100 to a particular charity, I would balk. I don’t make that much money, I have other charitable donations, I need to buy avocado toast and so on and so on. But if you were to ask me to give £1 on the understanding that 99 other people would also give £1 pound, I would do it without a second thought. (I don’t claim that this is even an idea slightly original to me, but I don’t have any immediate sources in mind for places this sort of thing has been done.)\n\nIt doesn’t have to be money, though. It can be time and expertise. If you were to ask me to proofread the university application of an underprivileged person, or the CV of someone long unemployed, I might balk (in fact, I wouldn’t, because I have plenty of spare time for reading things, but there are many people who don’t have plenty of spare time who would understandably balk). But if you were to ask me to read a line, or a section, of such an application, or such a CV, I would do it without a second thought. And I’m guessing there’s many other people who would feel the same.\n\n*\n\nThe main obstacle to such proposals is, I take it, logistical. You may be happy enough to participate in such small benevolences, but only if doing them doesn’t take too long. You’d be happy to quickly give a pound, but if doing so required you to browse to a site, go through several screens of checking out, log in to paypal or get your debit card, you might not. Spending, say, five minutes to donate a pound just seems too much hassle.\n\n(Think of shopping on amazon: buying things on it always feels — at least to me — like a surprise, like it takes one screen too few. I’m almost certain that I would buy fewer books if they asked me was I sure before placing my order. These small differences matter.)\n\nSimilarly for the proofreading: if it were delivered by email, it would require you to log in to your email, find the message and reply to it, and so on, which actions would take longer than the actual reading of the line or section of the document in question. The small good thing suddenly doesn’t seem so small.\n\n*\n\nBut there are ways around this sort of problem. You might have shopped in places, either online or in actual shops, where they ask you if you want to round up the amount you’re paying, with the difference going to some charity or other. Such things work because you’re already buying something, so it doesn’t require any further effort on your part to make the donation.\n\nI think the same sort of thing could apply to the CV/application example. What we need is to piggyback on some activity you perform for your own good in the same way that charities piggyback on the purchases you perform for your own good. And it needs to be something that involves reading, presumably.\n\nBut twitter is something you perform for your own good (at least, kinda), and twitter involves reading. So my thought is: use twitter, an environment in which you’re already reading, to keep the time-cost of participating in small proofreading down. Take the CVs, or the personal statements, divide them up into chunks, and tweet them to the people who are interested in helping out. They look at it sandwiched between Trump tweets or memes or updates from friends and quickly tweet any small corrections. These corrections get aggregated somehow and the feedback gets passed on to the author of the document. (Note, btw, that this harnesses what is perhaps the strongest urge known to humankind, the urge to correct people online.)\n\nNow, there are obvious enough problems with such a proposal. Even assuming we could resolve issues about privacy and anonymity (which I think we could) one might justifiably worry that the correctness (from a proofreading perspective) of a document can’t be determined on the basis of the correctness of the small chunks that make it up. Here’s a toy example. Imagine you read:\n\n* I approached the copse and yet remained calm.\n\nWhile that seems like a perfectly fine sentence if it were someone’s recounting a Duke of Edinburgh experience in which they came across a bear-filled clump of trees, it would be less fine were someone recounting a Duke of Edinburgh experience in which they rode around in an ambulance, and the sentence were preceded, say, by:\n\n* We got called out to check on a body that had been found. The paramedic asked me to get out first and check it out.\n\nIn context, it’s clear that the author has mistyped ‘copse’ for ‘corpse’, but without context this wouldn’t be at all clear.\n\nIn short, it might be that decent proofreading is not something which can be done on a sentence by sentence level. Granted, that is a problem, albeit one that might be amenable to a clever solution (I don’t know what the solution is). I don’t really mind if you think that this particular idea is a bad one; what I hope is you can agree that the logic underlying it, that trying to implement systems in which we cooperate in small ways to help others, is one worth thinking about, and piggybacking is a good to go about it, and twitter and related sites offer possibilities for piggybacking, in light of the fact that we spend so much time on them.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"altruism\",\"charity\",\"philanthropy\",\"twitter\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "altruism",
      "permlink": "an-idea-for-twitter-based-philanthropy",
      "title": "An Idea For Twitter-based Philanthropy"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T09:05:39",
  "trx_id": "5dd311dc0da4ae64fcadfea9e2e878ce66019438",
  "trx_in_block": 17,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 24164205,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "*(originally published on medium, presupposing an audience who doesn't know what blockchains are and doesn't like them)*\n\nIt’s easy to criticize cryptocurrency. Fun, too.\n\nAs to easy: it’s environmentally disastrous, it helps bad criminals like people traffickers, for a decentralized system it (or at least its most famous exemplar, bitcoin) sure does rest on centralized mining cartels, and it, or again at least bitcoin, is so unequally distributed that it is de facto centralized, in the sense that a so-called whale (someone who has a lot of bitcoin) could — though no one knows if they really do — manipulate prices easily, if they so chose.\n\nAs to fun: it’s a currency one can’t really use, well, as a currency. You can google for stories about bitcoin conventions where one can’t pay with bitcoin because it just takes too long. Ethereum, one of the biggest players in the field, was hobbled last year because too many people started using it to buy digital kitties. The people who make money from it or defend it are obnoxious libertarian types. (Actually, this last point is unfair. While there may be tons of such people, many of the people ‘in the space’ as the locution goes are very smart, interesting, and seem quite nice.)\n\nThis nothwithstanding, I think there is much to learn from cryptocurrencies, or rather from the technology underlying it, or rather from the vision underlying the underlying technology. Even if bitcoin shouldn’t exist because of its environmental costs, and even if any such attempt at decentralisation will fall victim to human beings’ lust for power (as manifested today in whales and mining cartels), the basic underlying principles of blockchains are ones which anyone, and in particular leftish people whose visceral dislike of crypto’s current form might lead them to dismiss the whole idea, ought to like. (Terminology note: *bitcoin* is an instance of a *cryptocurrency*, some of which make use of *blockchains*. In what follows I only concentrate on proof-of-work based blockchains. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry.)\n\nI’m going to try to make this case by considering three reasons why leftish people, construed wildly loosely so as to mean basically people who care about equality and fairness, and the institutions which hinder those values, should heed crypto. I’ll do so by introducing blockchains using a parable that, while loose in central respects, gives the big picture story in a way that is more digestible than the presentations one typically finds.\n\nThere’s a group of people on an island somewhere, and they want to record their history as it happens, day after day. How should they go about it?\n\n*\n\nTheir first thought is as so: have a book kept under lock and key that a dedicated historian adds to every evening at 7 pm.\n\nThey don’t like this idea, though. They think it’s wrong that any one person should get to speak in that way for the whole community, and that biases and such would all too easy warp the history. Rather, they think the community as a whole should get to tell their own history, and so they think that everybody and anybody should be allowed to update the history, to reflect the congeries of perspectives people have on reality.\n\nThey hit upon this idea: a person gets randomly elected each day, and they go and write it up.\n\nStill, there’s a problem. If it’s under lock and key, someone must look after the lock and key; there must be a guard. That person will know the identity of the daily updater. And that’s risky. The updater might feel pressured to tell a history that the powerful like, in case the powerful have bought the book guarder. Even absent that, they feel rightly uneasy about a guard having all that power and knowledge.\n\nThey think about getting rid of the guard: the book is kept unlocked, but there’s a policy that the town square, where it’s held, is completely empty at 7 pm each night, so the updater can update it without anyone learning that they did so.\n\nBut that, too, has a problem. What’s to stop the updater from deleting old bits of the history, or even from bringing in their own doctored book and swapping them out? The anonymity brings risk of the history getting corrupted.\n\nThen someone has a good idea. Instead of writing the history, they decide to carve it in stone. Not a fancy stone: just a standard, squarish, 3x4x6in stone, of which there are many around. The clever thing they do is, as a community, precarve the last year of their history on it. It takes three hours for one person to carve a day, so it takes them about one thousand work hours. But there’s one hundred people, and so, working three hours a day, they get it done in under half a week.\n\nWhat does this achieve? That it’s stone means someone can’t come in and selectively erase bits of the history they don’t like. That it’s precarved means it’s essentially impossible for a single person to forge. Working alone, it would take them a year working three hours a day, or about three months working flat out at twelve hours a day.\n\nEven then, it would be no good. If they went away from three months and worked their socks off, making their forged stone with a view to sneaking it, say, under their shirt into the town square, the actual stone would have, by the time they returned to camp exhausted, have had three more months of history written on it. More generally, unless they were to find a way to work quicker than humanly possible, the actual stone will always have the advantage. They won’t foreseeably be able to catch up, given the precarving the whole community performed.\n\nWhat this means is that the stone is essentially unforgeable, because it is the product of too much work for a single person to reproduce. And this means that we don’t need guards to look after it, and so one of the major worries about having a decentralised history that anyone can write to is solved.\n\n(You’ll realize that the equations change if more people are corrupt and in cahoots; but provided sufficiently many are honest, forgery won’t be possible. This is a crucial feature of actual blockchains.)\n\nAt least one problem remains, though. What’s to stop the anonymous historians from telling a version of history favourable to them? When it comes to be the day I get randomly elected, I go and secretly write about how great I am.\n\nTo solve this problem, they introduce another innovation. They don’t carve directly on the stone, but on some slow-drying concrete applied to the stone. This concrete takes 28 hours to dry, and they have the following policy: if the history of the day before you seems egregiously bad, you can wipe it over and tell your own version. Now, it’s egregiously bad for the stone to say how great I am: after all, I’m not. I once lifted the hind legs of a dog and used it as a vacuum cleaner, for example.\n\nWhat that means is I won’t be tempted to lie. Because the person after me, just like me, will be randomly chosen. And there’s no reason to think that that person will look on me as favourably as I look on myself; maybe they remember the dog vacuum incident, maybe they’re unimpressed with me for some other reason.\n\nSo I should think, if I lie, there’s a pretty good chance my history will get erased. But I don’t want that: I’m committed to the idea that there be a solid history that I contribute to.\n\n(We could even incentivise it: as a community, we love poetry, and as a reward, the historian of the day gets to write their own poem on the stone. We all want nothing more than for our poems to get read and appreciated. So I should definitely not want to risk my poem getting erased because I was silly enough to lie about myself. Cryptocurrencies incentivize adding to the blockchain; this is mining, as we’ll see below.)\n\nWe’ve come quite far. An unamendable unforgeable history, collectively written, which we can roughly trust because if you lie, your contribution is likely to get erased by the next person. This, roughly and allegorically speaking, is what a blockchain is. Note how our community got rid of centralized power and its abuses. Instead of one historian telling the story, we each tell a part of it, relying on the fact that unless our stories are roughly accurate, they won’t get accepted. One single story is replaced by the community collectively each telling a bit of the story. Instead of having to have a guard to make sure no one messes with our story (and who thus knows who is writing it at any time), we rely on making our story unforgeable by each putting in work that it’s infeasible to counterfeit. And we don’t have to worry about telling anything but the truth and facing repercussions, because our contributions are anonymous.\n\n*\n\nLet’s translate this, partially, into blockchain talk. I’m going to leave some important and cool stuff out, but I hope what I don’t leave it out is enough both for my purposes and to get a rough sense of how bitcoin works. I recommend [this book](https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf) or, if you’re in a rush, [this article](https://lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/john-lanchester/when-bitcoin-grows-up).\n\nA blockchain is digital entity. It consists of blocks linked together. Each block is a list of transactions: statements involving the transferring of some bitcoin to someone else (how this works I’m leaving out; you’ll have to take it on trust that there’s a neat way of representing and verifying transactions). The blocks record the history of bitcoin transactions, just as each day’s write-up on our stone records what happened that day. How we do ensure that the blockchain is an accurate record of the transactions?\n\nFor one, we make it hard to amend, like our stone was. The blocks are linked: for every sequential pair of blocks b1 and b2, where b1 is added to the chain before b2, in b2 there is a special bit of data — a hash — which is determined on the basis of the contents (i.e. recorded transactions) of b1 such that if b1 had different contents, the hash would be different. What this means is, if you want to go back and amend one particular block (say because there’s a transaction in it you don’t like), it’s not so simple: if you amend it, then the hash in the subsequent block will be incorrect, and you’ll be found out.\n\nStill, though, that might not be so difficult. If it’s easy to add blocks, then it might be easy to add many blocks. So even if you wanted to amend a block ten links down the chain, that wouldn’t be a challenge.\n\nBut it’s not easy to add blocks. In order to add a block, you have to solve a very hard puzzle which uses the information in the block you’re proposing and the hash of the previous block. The solution to this puzzle is called (unfortunately for British English speakers) a nonce and it too must be included in your block. So if you wanted to amend a block ten links down the chain, you’d have to recompute each of the nonces for those blocks, and that’s very, very difficult (this is a slight misrepresentation, but hopefully cognoscenti won’t hold it against me). In our parable: the stone is the chain and carving the day’s history is adding a block.\n\nIt takes a lot of computing power to find a nonce (this is the source of bitcoin’s fabled energy consumption). So it takes a lot of computing power to amend a blockchain.\n\nBut it also, by the same logic, takes a lot of computing power merely to add to a blockchain. Why would you bother? Or rather: if you’re going to bother, wouldn’t you be wise to propose a block favourable to yourself, that may not be accurate? How do we guarantee the record kept by the blockchain is trustworthy?\n\nI kind of assumed, in the parable, that people just intrinsically wanted their history to be recorded, and that meant they didn’t write egregiously bad histories. But I also noted we didn’t need that assumption — we could assume that there’s a reward for having your history recorded. In the parable, that was that the stone would contain, along with your history, some poems you wrote, that would thereby be published and preserved for posterity.\n\nThere’s also a reward for adding to the blockchain, and that’s, in part, how we guarantee an accurate record. What happens is that when you propose a new block, you get to put in a transaction which pays certain newly created bitcoin to you.\n\n(quick aside: I’m not getting into the nature of transactions, but there’s still one question that’s hard to pass by: what is a bitcoin? A bitcoin, I think, should just be thought of as the capacity to make certain transactions, which transactions can then be added to blocks. It’s a right, not an object.)\n\nWhat this means is that you really want your block to get added: if it does, you get bitcoin. By contrast, if it doesn’t, your work finding the nonce has been in vain. And for your block to get added, like with the stone, is for the next person adding a block to add their proposed block on top of it (and not to erase it, the equivalent of which would be to ignore your block and add to the block which preceded yours). But that person, as with the stone, is determined randomly (it’s whoever manages to solve one of the tricky puzzles, and solving the puzzles is, roughly, a matter of luck). So you should aim to make your block as uncontroversial as possible: something that a complete stranger would accept as an accurate reflection of reality.\n\nThe blockchain doesn’t care who are you; names have no power. You don’t get to add a block by being famous (as with our putative historian in the stone parable), but simply by doing some work: by solving the puzzles. The blockchain doesn’t need guarding: by all the work collectively done which it encapsulates, it guards itself by being unforgeable and unamendable.\n\nAnonymity, work, collective action and no centralized power: these are the reasons I think blockchains should serve as an (idealistic, certainly) model for how we should live in many domains. I end by illustrating this.\n\n*\n\n*Contemporary society encourages atomization and atomization is bad. Blockchain tech suggests collective action, so the blockchain is an inspiring vision for how to face contemporary society.*\n\nIt’s in the interests of people with power to prevent the powerless from cooperating. If they were to do so too much, the wisdom of crowds might lead them to come to realize that the source of the bad things in their lives is not, as they’re told, other poor people, but their rich overlords. That benefit fraud, for example, is a pea when measured against the sun of tax evasion.\n\nLess tendentiously, it’s simply a fact that things like civic participation waned in the last third or so of the twentieth century, as we became happier to spend the evenings we would formerly have spent bowling or in the pub watching TV alone (this is a fact documented, in the case of the US, in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone). If the next technological revolution were to fight against this trend, that should surely be welcome.\n\n*Contemporary society rests too much value on name and resting too much value on name is bad. Blockchain tech suggests anonymity, so the blockchain is an inspiring etc.*\n\nWe’re obsessed with names, to ridiculous extents. Newspaper columnists exist: people who get regularly paid to regularly have opinions. We haven’t quite caught up to how ridiculous that is, when you can open your twitter and get as many opinions as you wish, opinions which are frequently from experts and backed with data, for free (and in the domain of politics, at least, it has been repeatedly shown that the professional opinion-havers have laughably bad — as in, demonstrably wrong — opinions.) For any given column, there’s an equally good or better one languishing on someone’s hard drive, unpublished simply because the columnist has a name and the unpublished person doesn’t. That’s silly.\n\nDitto for books, songs, movies, etc. 20% of them receive 80% of publicity, despite equally good or better books, songs, movies etc. existing, and they do so because of the name of the author/artist, not because of their superior ability (I made up that figure, but I’m sure if anything it underestimates the problem).\n\nBlockchain doesn’t care about name; it is anonymous, everyone participates, and they do so via work. And while that work could be carving stone, or solving computer puzzles, it could also be writing and editing and publishing articles or books or songs or movies.\n\nWe should care about work, and not about name, and blockchain does.\n\n*Contemporary society relies too much on big, powerful institutions and relying too much on big, powerful institutions is bad. Blockchain tech shows a way of doing without big powerful institutions, so the blockchain etc.*\n\nThis is, of course, pressing. We pass most of our social interactions through powerful businesses (twitter, facebook, medium), a fact that it seems has already had massively bad social and political consequences. Anything that tends to the destruction of these big, powerful, institutions, is good, and blockchain does, so blockchain is good. We should turn our attention to decentralized social media, for example, heeding the adage that if you don’t know what the product is, you’re the product. We should be willing to put in some work in its maintenance, collective work, and thus escape from the grip of the big tech companies.\n\nI could talk about these three things at exhaustive length, but I won’t. I hope this post has shown that if you don’t like — as you shouldn’t — some of the worst things about our society, then the theory if not the practice of blockchain technologies is something you should pay attention to. We need new models for how to think about our future, and blockchains, if nothing else, provide such new models for thinking.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"blockchain\",\"left-wing\",\"cryptocurrency\",\"politics\"],\"links\":[\"https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf\",\"https://lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/john-lanchester/when-bitcoin-grows-up\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "blockchain",
      "permlink": "why-left-wing-people-should-like-blockchains-and-an-intuitive-explanation-of-what-they-are",
      "title": "Why Left Wing People Should Like Blockchains (& An Intuitive Explanation Of What They Are)"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-07-14T08:58:36",
  "trx_id": "88a025fdab347585600a924b1d1df3159271ed4f",
  "trx_in_block": 13,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 22726536,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "9140.009027 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-05-25T01:52:18",
  "trx_id": "d08a554e282ba05925317fbce8736683a6b44642",
  "trx_in_block": 40,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20690719,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "westworld-as-prediction",
      "voter": "dtubix",
      "weight": 5000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-03-15T07:28:39",
  "trx_id": "166dcc8c20ebd96989a334f9622765b498a906c8",
  "trx_in_block": 73,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20120612,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t035204313z",
      "voter": "tylerkiwi",
      "weight": 0
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-23T11:49:24",
  "trx_id": "14affb990378500de0bd35aa375af26b1574dea4",
  "trx_in_block": 51,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20120610,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t035204313z",
      "voter": "tylerkiwi",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-23T11:49:18",
  "trx_id": "bf185f51f10d6c14bc49023d9de479d6630fda69",
  "trx_in_block": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20107353,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"following\":\"charlott\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-23T00:46:24",
  "trx_id": "fbe0bebec0bc2417282d7fcab797d5a053b2e572",
  "trx_in_block": 22,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20106994,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "lilycampbell",
      "body": "thanks @mittmattmutt! I will check that out!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"vlog\"],\"users\":[\"mittmattmutt\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180223t001153026z",
      "permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180223t002828585z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-23T00:28:27",
  "trx_id": "d5467d85cd46a9942984f725115e9e9279117f65",
  "trx_in_block": 93,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20106662,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-sex-markets/ is a good introduction. The stuff about 'silencing' in particular is quite a hot topic. Hopefully it's accessible enough for someone without an academic phil background--I'd be happy to answer questions if you had any, it's something I've been meaning to study in more depth for a while.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"vlog\"],\"links\":[\"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-sex-markets/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "lilycampbell",
      "parent_permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180222t055030357z",
      "permlink": "re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180223t001153026z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-23T00:11:51",
  "trx_id": "0e3064dd87b15379ab0e4718345a5987e0a213be",
  "trx_in_block": 37,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20092545,
  "op": [
    "delegate_vesting_shares",
    {
      "delegatee": "mittmattmutt",
      "delegator": "steem",
      "vesting_shares": "29626.288545 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T12:25:51",
  "trx_id": "69bd30d0cf87d9a8f627b4963683ef6bcf1dcfea",
  "trx_in_block": 24,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20084639,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "lilycampbell",
      "body": "Please, do feel free to send me any specifics you are thinking about! Thanks!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"vlog\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180222t010227305z",
      "permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180222t055030357z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T05:50:30",
  "trx_id": "6ed9a0695f9d4e546130bf9f9b1a16c96e496fbe",
  "trx_in_block": 27,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20081119,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "westworld-as-prediction",
      "voter": "sensation",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T02:54:27",
  "trx_id": "ff32e23f84f3cfa0871fef4bc90293182b735470",
  "trx_in_block": 44,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20079197,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"following\":\"godflesh\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:18:21",
  "trx_id": "ff79b5dd3b731d1779b61ea64f0818978fed4871",
  "trx_in_block": 50,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20079188,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "godflesh",
      "permlink": "a-brief-introduction-in-phenomenology",
      "voter": "mittmattmutt",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:17:54",
  "trx_id": "c717aeed71515505905e9f839c947eede1535b2a",
  "trx_in_block": 36,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20079175,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "godflesh",
      "permlink": "a-brief-introduction-in-structuralism",
      "voter": "mittmattmutt",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:17:15",
  "trx_id": "b422f1441df987f336eeaeeba74cd6d339fae5c4",
  "trx_in_block": 53,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20079124,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "*(Draft, to be published in Ultimate Westworld and Philosophy. Do not cite, comments very welcome.)*\n\nCall a machine which looks and acts exactly like a human being an android. Assuming that AI and robotics continue to develop as they have been, we will be able to make androids sooner rather than later. Given this, one of the most pressing moral question of our generation and those which follow us is how we ought to treat the androids we create.\n\nThis is a topic of much science fiction, and one of the many interesting questions posed by Westworld. In episode two, the question is dramatically presented when William and Logan, newly arrived at the park, are having dinner. A host comes up to them, encouraging them to go on a treasure hunt. William, then a newcomer to the park, is unable to conceptualize what’s in front of him as a mere machine, and politely refuses, respectfully listening to the host’s spiel even though he’s not interested. The more seasoned Logan, with complete indifference, stabs the man in the hand with a fork to get him to leave. When androids come, should we be Williams (at least, young Williams) or is it morally okay to be Logans?\n\nThis fascinating question is not the one I propose to directly explore in this essay (though I will say some things about it). Instead of asking how we should treat androids, and I will ask how we will treat androids, and try my hand at predicting the future.\n\nAnd my prediction is, basically, that places like Westworld will arise in human society. Harnessing work from philosophy, anthropology, computer science, as well as some basic facts about economics, I will argue that, having developed androids, we will exploit them for our purposes, but their very indistinguishability from real humans will mean we won’t be able to do that with a clear conscience. I’ll then suggest that to assuage our conscience we’ll keep the exploited androids out of sight and out of mind, just as we keep the millions of animals we use for food locked away in factory farms. But exploited androids kept out of the way for human’s use is just what Westworld presents to us. So Westworld is a dark prediction of our future.\n\n*\n\nCheery, I know. And maybe I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m wrong. But a set of plausible claims makes it seem to me that my conclusion, if far from certain, must be taken seriously. I will first set out the claims as premises, before spending the rest of the essay giving reasons to think they are true.\n\n**The economic premise.** If we develop androids, we will do so in order to have them do work (including emotional work) for us, and we will exploit them.\n\n**The computer science premise.** If we develop androids, our ability to fine-tune them to prevent behaviours like the exhibition of pain and suffering will be extremely limited.\n\n**The anthropological premise.** We will be inclined to treat these androids as if they were alive.\n\n**The moral premise.** We ought to treat these androids as if they were alive, and in particular we ought not to cause them to suffer.\n\n**The factory farm premise.** When we have beings who work for us, whose behaviours we can’t control, and which we’re both inclined to treat as alive and which we ought to treat as alive, we lock them away in order not to see the suffering imposed on them by the work we make them do.\n\nThese together lead to:\n\n**The Conclusion.** We will lock androids away in order not to see the sufferings imposed on them by the work we make them do. But this is Westworld. So Westworld is our future.\n\nThe economic premise gives us that we’ll exploit androids, which will lead to (at least) the exhibition of suffering and displeasure on the androids’ part. The computer science premise gives us that we’ll be unable to code out this exhibition of suffering and displeasure. The anthropological premise will give us that we’ll be inclined to treat them as alive, and thus to be sympathetic to their exhibitions of suffering and displeasure. The moral premise tells us that if you have something acting as if suffering, you ought to relieve its suffering, even if you’re uncertain if it is in fact really suffering. Together, these mean that androids will be like factory-farmed animals, and so it’s reasonable to think that they will be treated as such, locked away from human view, which is the conclusion.\n\n**The economic premise**\n\nThe economic premise says that the very raison d’être of androids is to serve humans, and, indeed to be exploited by them.\n\nYou could deny this. Surely, you might think, the reason for developing androids is just like the proverbial reason for climbing Everest — because it’s there to be done. AI isn’t primarily about serving humans, this thought goes, it’s about nerds making the best chess playing machine for the nerdy sake of it.\n\nMaybe this was true a couple of decades ago, but it is no longer. The reason people care so much about self-driving cars is precisely because they threaten, by promising to revolutionize, a core area of human labour. Drivers are threatened by being rendered obsolete by machines which don’t make mistakes or take breaks, and the CEO of Uber looks with wonder at the possibility of getting rid of messy, inconsistent, expensive humans from his business.\n\nThe point generalises. Most populations are aging in ways that we don’t know how to deal with. Health insurance and pensions are not enough to pay for the treatment a sick, aging population will require andso we’re faced with old people with a range of conditions which need medical attention, and not enough doctors and nurses to treat them. We’re faced, moreover, with an epidemic of loneliness, which research suggests causes physical pain. Android doctors, nurses, and companions offer solutions to these problems, but they are solutions which fundamentally depend on the idea that androids serve humans.\n\nThat’s not so bad, yet, though. But here is a crucial point: for androids to be economically viable, we’ll have to exploit them. People will have built them and paid for their development, and they’ll want to get the highest return on investment possible.\n\nOne of the main roles for androids will be emotional labour: the labour of caring, of just being with the sick, lonely and bereaved. Someone to see someone through a hospice, to spend time with the [insert your own description of peak annoyingness here], or with the bereaved widow. And that costs. It’s hard to just be there while someone dies, to look after the lonely, to spend time with the annoying.\n\nThat’s why it’s vital that people who do these jobs have time off, are offered counselling, are able to decompress after a shift and come home to family and friends, to rest from their emotional labour. But now if we were to give the same to androids, time off, counselling, friends and family to support them, the androids could well end up costing, when you factor in the research and development and production that has gone in to them, as much as humans. Then there would be no economic benefit to introducing androids, and so the androids probably wouldn’t get built. What we should expect is that the androids will be expected to work longer hours, skip breaks, and so on, so that the manufacturers really get their money’s worth without having to worry about complaints about violating human rights.\n\nSo androids, if they’re to be economically viable, will have to be exploited. To bear more of the (especially) emotional costs that people require. That’s premise one.\n\n(You might already be objecting — ‘wait, these are machines. Speaking of exploitation here makes as much sense as speaking of the exploitation of a car wash’ — hold that thought for a paragraph or two.)\n\n**The computer science premise**\n\nThat’s not enough to really get us worried though. Because after all, one might think, the great thing about beings which we create is that we can create them as we wish. Westworld, to some extent, would lead us to believe this. It gives us a picture of Arnold tinkering with his hosts, changing their algorithms in subtle ways to achieve subtle effects.\n\nGiven this, then there’s an obvious response to the worrying thought above: we simply program androids not to tire out, not to feel the brunt of the emotional labour they carry out. An apt analogy would be that just as we build engines out of parts that won’t wear out quickly as compared to puny human arms, so we would build our humanoids to not mentally wear out, compared to our puny human minds.\n\nBut androids won’t be steam engines, and won’t be designed like steam engines. And that leads me to my second point: there’s little reason, given what we know about AI as its practiced at the moment, to think that we’ll be able to have such fine-grained abilities when it comes to what properties we want and what properties we don’t want our androids to have. Westworld gives us a world in which we can dial a host’s intelligence or bravery up or down with a touchscreen; that is unrealistic.\n\nIn order to make this point, it’s necessary to take a little detour into the philosophy and computer science of artificial intelligence as it’s currently practiced.\n\nIf you’ve done any coding, you might be under the impression that in developing AI we’ll simply write a program that spells out what the android should do if it finds itself in a situation of a given type. For example, you might imagine it would look something like (pardon the funky indenting):\n\n    if(HeadTapped()==True)\n           if (InsectFlying(Self.Head)==TRUE)\n                 Swat()\n            else if (ProjectileNearby(Self.Head)==TRUE)\n                  LookForAttackers()\n\nIn English, this would be spelling out what the humanoid does when it finds itself in a particular situation, the situation of having its head tapped. If it has, it checks to see if it’s either an insect or some projectile that tapped its head, and on that basis it performs some action.\n\nOn this model, we explicitly hardcore behaviour in our androids in the form of a computer program. And, so, we can choose to not hard code certain other behaviours in the program. In particular, we could avoid introducing any routines that dealt with pain or unhappiness at all. It simply wouldn’t be part of the design of the android to feel pain, or to be exploited.\n\nThe thing is, that’s now how AI works at the moment, and it’s very unlikely that an android, which, remember, was defined as something which acts and behaves exactly like a human, could be coded like that. One of the problems, as you might imagine, is that to hard code all the possibilities of human action in statements like the above is just not plausible. What if it wasn’t a projectile or an insect, but a leaf or a floating plastic bag or a strand of its own hair? Or what if the humanoid was a Jain so swatting the animal wasn’t an option? Thinking about it, you realize that human action is much too open ended to be coded down into a set of routines like the ones above.\n\nThis is confirmed by looking at how current AI works. AlphaGo, for example, the program which famously beat human players in the ancient game of Go, doesn’t have all the possible situations it could find itself in hard coded in its program. Instead it, as well as other famous AIs, figures out what to do by itself. This is the crucial point. We don’t say: do this when you find yourself in this situation X and want to go to situation Y (where X might be hit by insect, and Y relief from bothersome insects). Instead, we feed the AI training data in the form of inputs and outputs, Xs and Ys, and let it work out a function that will take it from situation X to situation Y. So what we would do, roughly, is show the AI a bunch of humans interacting with, in this case, buzzing insects, and try to get it to work out itself how to behave like the humans do, which is to say how to produce the appropriate human-like output to the input of being assailed by an insect.\n\nSo why and how does the AI do what it does? That’s not for us to know. You can think of it as a black box that takes in input and produces output, a blackbox encoding a function that, though learning, increasingly approximates the behaviour of humans as found in the training data.\n\nWhat that means that these AIs are going to be, in a sense, uncontrollable. We won’t be able to tell the AI what to do and what not to do, and so in particular it seems like we won’t be able to tell it not to exhibit pain-like behaviour in exploitation-like situations.\n\n(You might think with suitable ingenuity in framing the teaching data we’ll be able to avoid these problems. After all, self-driving cars are taught from human drivers, but they don’t pick up all the human behaviours of human drivers — they don’t text at red lights, and so on. Granting this, we should still not be optimistic about our ability to control what androids will be like. Consider, for example, the astonishing fact that Google Translate, off its own bat, developed its own language without any human prodding whatsoever. At a certain level of sophistication, AI is massively outside our control.)\n\nThe key point is that the behaviour of androids is likely not going to be something which we can pick and choose about. And that means that pain behaviour and exploitation behaviour is not going to be something we will have control over.\n\nBut, still, you might think, surely even if this is so, the humanoids will still be machines. It doesn’t make sense to speak of a machine being exploited or suffering, so we shouldn’t be worried even if our humanoids do show signs of suffering. But this isn’t so, and leads us to the next two premises.\n\n**The moral premise**\n\nIf it doesn’t make sense to speak or machines as suffering, then we don’t need to worry. But we do need to worry. In this section, I’ll argue that we morally ought to treat androids as we treat humans.\n\nIn order to make the first point, I want to present a variation of a famous argument in the philosophy of religion, Pascal’s Wager. Pascal’s Wager is this: you should believe in God, or at least try to believe in God, because if you don’t and God exists, then you’ll miss out on an infinity of happiness in heaven (if you don’t and God doesn’t exists, you can have the mild, let’s face it, pleasure of a sinful life). On the other hand, if you do believe and God exists, then while you’ll have to act in a certain way on earth (maybe going to church, refraining from coveting thy neighbor’s ass, and so on) that will be a bit of a hassle, that hassle will be more than repaid by the infinity of happiness in heaven. So, if there’s even a slight chance that God exists, you should believe.\n\nWithout getting too bogged down in what’s known as decision theory, if you have two ways of acting, and one will bring about a small loss or gain with a good chance, while the other will bring about a massive gain with a very small chance, you should do the other thing.\n\nNow imagine you’re Logan and you’re wondering whether or not to jam a fork in the host’s hand or not. If you do, and it’s not alive, then no harm, and you’ve had a bit of sadistic fun. If it is alive, then you’ve done something horrible — inflicted suffering on something who can feel pain. That’s really bad. Any decent person feels very bad if they hurt an innocent other. On the other hand, if you don’t do it, you neither get the small sadistic fun, but nor do you risk doing something very bad. So you should not do it, even if you’re almost sure the host is indeed a lifeless machine. The mere chance it could be a living suffering thing means you shouldn’t risk it.\n\nThat shows, I think, that we should treat androids like humans if there’s even a slight chance that we think they are capable of suffering. But now consider our exploited nurses: we should be very worried, when they’re complaining about their long hours and emotional exhaustion, that we are in fact doing something very wrong by shortening their breaks, even if we think it’s very unlikely that there’s a ghost in the machine.\n\nHowever, remember I’m interested in what will happen, not what should happen. People do things they shouldn’t do all the time, so it could well be that we will all be Logans, even if we think we should be Williams.\n\n**The anthropological premise**\n\nBut there is in fact strong evidence from anthropology not only that we should treat androids like creatures with minds, but that we do, indeed that we’ve been doing so for decades.\n\nTo see this, I want to discuss the work of MIT anthropologist Shelley Turkle. In her book Alone Together she reports work she has done over decades with children and robotic animals. The results are fascinating. One important finding is that children don’t act with a binary alive/not-alive distinction, one which parts simply humans and animals on one side and toys such as Furbies and Tamagotchis on the other. Rather, for children, the notion of aliveness is gradable and interest-sensitive: stripped of the jargon, this means that one thing can be more alive than another, and that something can be alive relative to a certain purpose. Here are some quotes from the children:\n\n“Well, I love it. It’s more alive than a Tamagotchi because it\nsleeps with me. It likes to sleep with me.”\n“I really like to take care of it. . . . It’s as alive as you can be\nif you don’t eat. . . . It’s not like an animal kind of alive.”\n(*Alone Together*, 28)\n\nFor much more discussion, I refer the reader to Turkle’s book. But for now, we can ask: well, so what? What consequences should these facts about children and furbies have for androids?\n\nOn the one hand, you might think these findings are unimportant. That just because children treat animaloids this way, doesn’t mean that humans will humanoids in a similar way. Firstly note that this response requires much more caution, for the obvious fact that in the future, among those who interact with humanoids will be children. Indeed, if humanoids are disproportionately found in the caring services, then to the extent that children use these services, we will be faced with the problem of children-humanoid behaviour on a large scale.\n\nThe second thing to note is that it’s not only children who do this. If they aren’t as ingenuous and philosophically surprising, adults adopt similar attitudes. Turkle tells us of old Japanese people who care for dog-like creatures, of young professionals who sincerely state they’d be happy with a robot to replace their boyfriend. It could be that we haven’t come to view life as explicitly gradable in this way just because, up to now, most robotic animal-like things have been aimed at children and the elderly, thus people who tend not to, frankly, be listened to.\n\nI’m thus somewhat tempted to make the prediction that once humanoids come along, adults will treat them as children treated their furbies: as attributing some life to them. That adults are working with a gradable concept of life, just as children are, it just hasn’t become apparent yet. Moreover, if we’re assuming that these humanoids will be much more sophisticated than furbies, then it’s plausible that they’ll consider them more alive, perhaps much more alive, than any human has so far considered any humanoid robot.\n\nBut this means that not only should we, but we will, be moved by their suffering and exploitation. The crucial question now is: how will we deal with these feelings?\n\n**The factory farm premise**\n\nThis might seem all for the good. If we ought to treat humanoids as if they had minds, and we’re by nature disposed to, then things are good, right? What is normatively demanded of us and what we’re instinctively inclined to do coincide, a rare and happy occurrence.\n\nWell, but not really. Remember why we’re going to have humanoids in the first place: to do stuff for us. These things which we ought to treat well and which we’ll be disposed to treat well — their whole raison d’être is to be of use to us. That will require, I argued, that we treat them badly. If we need so many people to function as nurses for our aging society, it’ll do no good to introduce a bunch of humanoids who’ll then need to be treated exactly as well as humans. So the economic imperative which will lead to humanoids’ creation will lead to their being treated badly. So how will we resolve this tension between our morals and instincts and economics?\n\nThis is where things start to look less nice. There are some creatures whom we mostly believe ought to be treated well, and whom we are instinctively inclined to treat well but whose economic raison d’être turns on them being treated badly: animals, and more particularly animals used for food.\n\nWithout going into all the gruesome details, consider these facts, which only touch the surface, culled from Jonathan Safran Foer’s recent popular account of the morality of food, Eating Animals. The typical chicken you find in a supermarket comes from an animal that is kept in a cage with sides about the size of the piece of paper you’re reading (less than your laptop screen, probably, only a few times bigger than your smartphone). These cages are stacked very high, they’re inside, and the chickens go from there to their death, never seeing outside, not to mention their chicken family.\n\nOr consider the eggs you eat. These come from chickens who are tricked into believing it’s spring by being held in shed first kept entirely dark in a near starvation diet (to mimic winter), then in a shed kept entirely light 16 hours a day. The chicken thinks it’s spring and starts to lay. Once they’re done, it’s back to artificial winter and then to artificial spring again. In that way, they produce three hundred more eggs than they do in nature, and after their first year, when their yield lessens, they are killed. Moreover, the ‘husbands’ of these egg layers, which are not used for food,since they’re obviously not apt for laying eggs,are simply killed, to an order of 250 million a year.\n\nMake no mistake, in walking in a supermarket, in pretty much any animal product aisle, you are walking in the remnants of mass torture that’s hard to conceive. And we do find it hard to conceive. Chances are, if you’re a meat eater, reading this paragraph will make no difference to your consumption. If you’re not, it’s considered bad form to judge, at least overtly, those who do eat meat or animal products.\n\nAnd now let’s return to Westworld. We’re faced with a contradiction. Human nature and moral reasoning will incline us to treat these humanoids as alive — “alive enough”, at least, to be nurses or companions. Economics will require that they be exploited. That means longer hours in the ward, fewer breaks, that means them dating the really boring people who [insert your idea of undateable boredom here]. That means making them suffer. How to reconcile these facts? How to reconcile that we treat these alive enough creatures badly? Well, if the development of factory farming is a worthy analogy, as I have suggested it is, the thing to do will be to hide it from view. Don’t present the suffering we’ll inevitably cause these creatures, keep it hidden away.\n\nA place away from day-to-day life, where humanoid creatures are used by humans. Sounds familiar? As a reader of this volume I would hope that it does, because I’ve essentially just described Westworld to you. And so my grim conclusion is that Westworld is our future.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"westworld\",\"philosophy\",\"artificialintelligence\",\"television\",\"future\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "westworld",
      "permlink": "westworld-as-prediction",
      "title": "Westworld As Prediction"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:14:42",
  "trx_id": "eb8f73de7b8a2983826587a96694c0318e36ec59",
  "trx_in_block": 34,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20078962,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "@@ -17141,20 +17141,69 @@\n n from The Simpsons.\n+%0A%0A(originally posted on medium 7th February 2018)\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"tv\",\"internet\",\"thesimpsons\",\"gameofthrones\",\"aesthetics\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "tv",
      "permlink": "how-the-simpsons-lead-to-the-tv-of-today-eschewing-contemporary-life-for-fantasy",
      "title": "How The Simpsons lead to the TV of today eschewing contemporary life for fantasy"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:06:36",
  "trx_id": "e6611b669dbef5bb4aa09eac29a9c3fbde1463ac",
  "trx_in_block": 47,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20078879,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "You should! Would be v interesting to hear responses to the arguments philosophers make from someone with first-hand experience.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"vlog\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "lilycampbell",
      "parent_permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t043157082z",
      "permlink": "re-lilycampbell-re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180222t010227305z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:02:27",
  "trx_id": "b257aadbcbde2235ae885befc58c0cbfde0f3310",
  "trx_in_block": 10,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20078866,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "lilycampbell",
      "permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t043157082z",
      "voter": "mittmattmutt",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:01:48",
  "trx_id": "9f9400ed5778138cbc9f23624c4f7f21def51c64",
  "trx_in_block": 27,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20078848,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"following\":\"a-0-0\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:00:54",
  "trx_id": "2d0384f75239ee1b50cb53a70dd3f3a6d7ed95ea",
  "trx_in_block": 39,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20078848,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"following\":\"chrisee\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:00:54",
  "trx_id": "2db7586d1838b8940e0690c8c680d49463c5335c",
  "trx_in_block": 15,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20078847,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"following\":\"raise-me-up\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-22T01:00:51",
  "trx_id": "70b858533114616dc91f62dc0822d8888ac30322",
  "trx_in_block": 25,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20055895,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "how-the-simpsons-lead-to-the-tv-of-today-eschewing-contemporary-life-for-fantasy",
      "voter": "sensation",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T05:52:57",
  "trx_id": "2d5041618fc6944e2a48b48f50b077042d94c853",
  "trx_in_block": 48,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20054814,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "how-the-simpsons-lead-to-the-tv-of-today-eschewing-contemporary-life-for-fantasy",
      "voter": "anomaly",
      "weight": 100
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T04:58:54",
  "trx_id": "349747ff60f575bfdc3d921d4a09be51e7a910a7",
  "trx_in_block": 18,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20054278,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t035204313z",
      "voter": "lilycampbell",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T04:32:06",
  "trx_id": "d27eedd5c734d29a227cd2fff8137053b0fc9b44",
  "trx_in_block": 25,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20054275,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "lilycampbell",
      "body": "Thanks! Maybe I should do a video on my philosophy on porn, that's a great idea. I do have a lot to say on the subject!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"vlog\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t035204313z",
      "permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t043157082z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T04:31:57",
  "trx_id": "b6fcacb8e5a3d1032c33796af810e35708d6dbf1",
  "trx_in_block": 21,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20054168,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "We live on the internet. This is a genuinely new way of being — this morning, for instance, I did my job, talked with friends, attempted to flirt, and read some things which made me laugh (memes) and some which didn’t (the news). I did so within ten minutes, from my bedroom, silently and nearly motionlessly. That’s new.\n\nIt’s a newness TV doesn’t seem to have caught up with. Although we live on the internet, the characters in the tv shows we most like don’t. Tyrion Lannister doesn’t, Saul Goodman doesn’t, the characters from Stranger Things and Westworld and The Walking Dead all don’t. These shows span themes and periods and genres — the only common factor seems to be the lack of internet.\n\nThat’s puzzling — why do the tv we watch and the lives we lead diverge in this way? One of the points of art is to try to make sense of how we live — why has the most popular contemporary tv seemingly abandoned this task? I hope to answer this question.\n\n## ESCAPISM?\n\nLet me first consider a couple of answers which I don’t think are right. Firstly, you might think there isn’t really an interesting answer to my question. It’s just a fact about tv (and also movies) that it’s primarily an escapist medium. For every true to life show there’s also a fantasy; for every Friends and How I Met Your Mother there’s an X-Files and a Lost, and from Star Wars to Jurassic Park to the Matrix to the Harry Potter films reality has never been a primary concern of audiovisual art.\n\nI think there must be something to this answer, but I don’t think it quite tells the whole story. One of the reasons for this is that even in non-fantasy — think Girls, for example, or Breaking Bad — there is not that much recognition of the primacy of the internet. It’s there, maybe, but it’s not focal. But the internet is focal in our lives. It’s weird that tv makers wouldn’t rush to portray this new way of life, and so I think even admitting that tv is to a large extent a medium of escape shouldn’t satisfy our curiosity.\n\n## INTERNET LIFE IS HARD TO PORTRAY?\n\nHere’s a second answer — the reason such shows don’t have much to do with the internet is because the internet is to a large extent a written medium, whereas film and tv are audiovisual. It’s just an unfortunate fact, from the makers of tv’s perspective, that the anger which would formerly have been embodied in a frown or a raised voice is now embodied in a text which ends in a period. While one can portray this, one has to do so more indirectly (say by having a character tell someone how she’s upset because the period was missed out), and one loses something in this indirectness. Because of the internet our lives are mediated by text, and this mediatedness is difficult to dramatically represent. The second answer has it that we’re in an unteleviseable era, and so it’s natural that the television makers would flee to televiseable eras, like Westeros or the 80s.\n\nAs above, I don’t want to discount this answer. I think it makes a lot of sense, and properly to come to terms with moving to a writing culture is something which we need to think long and hard about. But, again, I think it can’t be the whole story.\n\nTo see why I think this, rewind twenty years. It’s at best doubtful that you had an internet connected device in your room then but there’s a very good chance there was another screen you stared at for many hours a day — I mean, of course, a television.\n\nIn 1997, a typical American watched over five hours of tv a day. That’s a lot, and just as my internet-filled morning would have been inconceivable then, so at the end of the 70s the glossy, hundred channel world of network tv of the 90s would have likewise been hard to imagine. If we’re now firmly in the internet era, we were then firmly in the television era.\n\nAnd a very similar argument to the above could be run here: that the tv era, just like the internet era, and ironically, is untelevisable. Those five hours you spent in front of a television are not exciting to watch. Television, as a medium, is not apt realistically to portray the day to day lives of people who watch a shitload of television.\n\nThis seems, initially, borne out by having a look at the popular tv of the 90s — think about Friends, or Seinfeld. Two shows about 90s people living everyday lives, but, ironic references to, say, the pilot Jerry and George make or Joey’s soap Days of Our Lives, tv doesn’t much impinge upon the lives of the two gangs.\n\nSo is that it, then? Was tv defunct already as a medium for portraying media-saturated contemporary life in the 90s? Is it just the case that once we started spending all our time looking at screens, tv lost the ability to speak about our day to day lives?\n\n## THE SIMPSONS PORTRAYED INTERNET-LIFE BEFORE THE INTERNET\n\nNo. A tv show managed to portray the television era. Indeed, the tv show that managed to represent tv life is most likely the greatest tv show there’s yet been. I mean, obviously, The Simpsons (for the purposes of this essay, The Simpsons means roughly seasons 3 to 8; for at least the last fifteen years, as most admit, The Simpsons has been both poor quality and culturally irrelevant, and so won’t figure in my discussion). The Simpsons, I’m going to suggest, despite its surreal, fragmented, cartoon surface, is in fact something like a realistic account of a mind on tv. It’s not a surreal portrayal of ordinary life, but it’s an ordinary portrayal of a surreal life, of the surreal life of one who spends most of their non-working life watching television.\n\nA lot can be and has been written about The Simpsons, and properly to do justice to its richness would require at least a book in itself. I’m going to focus on three crucial aspects important for understanding the show and the subsequent history of American comedy, which will eventually enable us to answer the question of this essay.\n\n## THREE FEATURES OF PEOPLE WHO WATCH A LOT OF CABLE TV\n\nHere are three features it’s relatively uncontroversial to attribute to the watcher of a lot of television of the 90s — three states of mind that watching television fosters. Firstly, a sense of detachment and irony — one knows what one is watching is dumb, the plots are formulaic, the emotions mawkish, and so on, and that the shows are mere lures to cause you, a demographically valuable person, to watch the advertisements which make up a third of each allotted half an hour or hour segment. Yet you still spend all this time doing it. Second: a sense of being drowned by many voices — the sheer quantity of different shows available to someone with cable tv was and is immense: from news reports to comedians, from people going through real to people going through imagined catastrophes, old films and music videos, all laced between advertisements. Third, and related to this, an instability of attention — not only are you exposed to all these different voices, but you are exposed to them rapid-fire, within minutes. Not only could one go from a televised Gulf war to a rerun to M*A*S*H to an advert for a strimmer, one could do so more or less instantaneously, by flicking through the hundreds of channels available.\n\nI’ll eventually want to claim that these features are common between the watcher of tv and the user of the internet. But first I want to show that they are mirrored in the style of The Simpsons, which thus functions to represent the televisual mind. First, a detached and ironic attitude towards television is as ubiquitous in the Simpsons as in the watcher of tv. Examples could be trotted out ad nauseam; but think, for example, of the scene in The Front (season 19 episode 4; almost all the examples that follow were found by selecting more or less at random an episode and either watching it or reading the script, and as such could be multiplied). Bart and Lisa are walking through the corridors of a studio which makes cartoons — past water filters, cleaning ladies, and so on — asking a producer about the costs of making animations. The producer says that sometimes they cut corners, for example by reusing backgrounds. As he says this the background of the scene is itself reused — the same water filter and cleaning lady reappear, emphasizing to the audience that what they’re watching is just another cheap cartoon like Itchy and Scratchy. Or think of Bart Gets Famous (s05e12), which begins with Bart walking down the stairs whistling The Simpsons own theme. The nature of tv is something the Simpsons is concerned with, and in that it is similar to the jaded 90s channel hopper.\n\nThe second aspect is the plurality of voices tv drowns you in. I think this is reflected in one of the central sources of humour in the Simpsons, in which characters saying things that are out of character. Consider the following exchange from The Day The Violence Died (s07e18):\n\nLisa: It’s one of those campy seventies throwbacks to appeal to Generation X-ers\n\nBart: We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.\n\nWhile it’s maybe possible for overachieving Lisa to say this, Bart is here speaking like no underachieving eight-year-old on the planet, but rather channeling a disgruntled middle-aged sitcom conservative. The Simpsons constantly makes this move of having characters speak in voices other than their own. Another example, from the beginning of Homer Defined (s03e05):\n\nHomer: Here’s good news! According to this eye-catching article, SAT scores are declining at a slower rate!\n\nLisa: Dad, I think this paper is a flimsy hodgepodge of pie graphs, factoids and Larry King.\n\nThis isn’t Homer’s voice at all (he doesn’t care about news, really, he wouldn’t say ‘eye-catching’). But he says it. Or think of the monologue when Marge suggests he give up his side venture selling loose sugar (Lisa’s Rival, s06e02):\n\nHomer: Never, Marge. Never. I can’t live the button-down life like you. I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles. Sure, I might offend a few of the bluenoses with my cocky stride and musky odors — oh, I’ll never be the darling of the so-called “City Fathers” who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about “What’s to be done with this Homer Simpson?\n\nHere’s another with Bart (Homer’s Barbershop Quartet, s05e01):\n\nBart: [incredulous] Barbershop? That ain’t been popular since aught\n six, dagnab it.\n Homer: [reproachfully] Bart, what did I tell you?\n Bart: [abashed] No talking like a grizzled 1890s prospector…consarn\n it.\n\nExamples like this could be multiplied. Of course, a lot of this is just played for laughs, but I think there’s a point behind it: the source of these voices in which the characters speak must, surely, be television. We should think of these strange outbursts as the characters’ internalizations of the disparate voices they hear; just as one learns to speak from one’s parents, so the 90s person learns to speak from television, and this is portrayed in surreal out of character dialogue like above.\n\nThe third feature of the tv addict is their instability of attention. This, I think, is reflected in the fundamentally digressive style of the Simpsons — the way the show constantly cuts away to imaginings or scenes from the past or surrealistic futures, to news reports or a character’s imagining.\n\nThink, for example, of the following sequence from Homer Badman (s06e09). Homer has been wrongly accused of sexual assault, and records an interview to clear his name, which gets edited absurdly to make him appear guilty; we then cut to his reaction, which cuts to his famous sung suggestion that the family escape their troubles by going to live ‘under the sea’. We then cut to footage filmed outside his house, followed by more tv: Gentle Ben, a talk show like Oprah, the presenter of which is a grizzly bear. Incredibly this all occurs within about 3 minutes, and while this is perhaps an extreme example, this rapid cutting between markedly different scenes is undoubtedly a central feature of the Simpsons’s style (evidence for which is the way it was further developed in (clearly obviously Simpsons-influenced) Family Guy and related shows, where it plays an even more pivotal role). It should be taken, I hold, to be a staging of the instability of attention of the person channel hopping. The Simpsons jumps around because it represents the 90s tv viewer, whose attention itself jumps around.\n\nWe should view these features — and, again, this isn’t close to exhaustive — as ways in which The Simpsons, despite surreal appearances, is in a sense mimetic. It portrays a mind hooked on television, and it is surreal only because to be hooked on tv is surreal. But this shows us something very important: despite the seeming obstacles, you can portray what it’s like to live a media saturated, glued-to-your-screen culture. You just need to use non-realistic artistic techniques. The Simpsons shows us how.\n\n## TV CULTURE AND INTERNET CULTURE\n\nBut this leads on to a related point. Although there are very notable differences between internet culture and tv culture, there are nevertheless similarities. In particular, the three things I focused on seem to be examples of similarities. We have the same sort of distanced, ironic relationship to the internet that we have to television. We know that we’re essentially providing content for twitter and that we are its products, that it polarises debate in a bad way, that it’s really addictive. We create and spread memes, an activity so laced with irony and distance I can’t even begin to explain it. We use uber despite knowing uber is bad, and spend a decent amount of time hate-reading thinkpieces we know in advance we’ll dislike. There’s something ridiculous about all this, and we know it, yet we persist in it.\n\nSimilarly, we get the same plurality of voices on the internet that we got on tv. Twitter is again a good example. It is, in this respect, like tv amplified many times — in literally one minute our brains go from memes to politics to friends, in 140 character bites. Opening my feed at random I read a tweet about anxiety from someone I met once, a couple of memes, an ad, a story about the Manchester May 22nd terrorist attack. And we get the same instability of attention, as I go from thinking to laughing to ignoring to horror or fatigued indifference.\n\nIf this is so — if internet culture is like tv culture, at least in some respects — then the style of the Simpsons would be well placed to give an account of our internet life. So if it’s possible and indeed available, our question returns, and can be reposed — why don’t we have art that captures internet life? We don’t we have Simpsonian tv in 2017?\n\n## THE ANSWER\n\nBasically, because we had Simpsonian tv in 1997, and fashions change. The reason we’ve sought the escape from reality typified by the shows I mentioned at the start is just because the depiction of our internet reality, which would have to be Simpsonian, is artistically passé. As the title of a South Park episode has it, Simpsons Already Did It.\n\nLooked at in this way — as a reaction to the Simpsons — the last twenty years of sitcom history make a lot of sense. There has been a gradual deSimpsonizing, a process whereby shows have progressively got less and less similar to the Simpsons. Arrested Development, for example, in the early 2000s has many cutaways and plays with the notion of itself as television, but doesn’t have the striking Simpsonian feature of characters speaking in voices other than their own. A little bit later, The Office and Parks and Recreation move yet further away. These shows can be seen to want to have their metafictional cake and eat it too — by using the mockumentary format, they in essence move the fourth wall into the universe of the show, enabling simultaneously fourth-wall breaking while keeping to a realist, non-self referential premise. We should view such shows, I think, as attempts to slowly wean us off self-referentiality — it can’t be done too quickly, or the self-aware viewer would revolt, but by downplaying it it allows the makers to inject genuine feeling into the show in a way that would have been difficult earlier (difficult, not impossible — Friends stands out). Finally, the current era has moved yet further, dispensed with the framing, and now presents essentially straight comedies, of which Brooklyn Nine Nine is a paradigm. Such shows are entirely straight, and have gotten away from the Simpsons. The problem is, if I am right, they’ve also thereby lost the chance to give an account of our fragmented experience. It’s hardly surprising that newer shows like The Last Man On Earth or The Good Place are set in the post-internet age.\n\nSo this is my answer to the question of why so many television shows don’t depict life on the internet. It’s not reflective of some deep artistic impossibility, but rather it is explained by its possibility — by the fact that it has already been done, and artists look always to the new. Ironically, if the makers of television want to portray our new way of life in all its fragmented, attention-sapping weirdness, they should turn the clock back and seek inspiration from The Simpsons.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"tv\",\"internet\",\"thesimpsons\",\"gameofthrones\",\"aesthetics\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "tv",
      "permlink": "how-the-simpsons-lead-to-the-tv-of-today-eschewing-contemporary-life-for-fantasy",
      "title": "How The Simpsons lead to the TV of today eschewing contemporary life for fantasy"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T04:26:36",
  "trx_id": "bde4b77610ce563fc04c6c56f365a58ef1aeddb5",
  "trx_in_block": 20,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20053477,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "This was very interesting, thanks. I wonder have you encountered any of the philosophy of pornography--it's quite a big debate in contemporary circles, and an interesting one, albeit one which almost takes it as axiomatic that porn is bad. I bet you'd have an interesting perspective on it.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"vlog\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "lilycampbell",
      "parent_permlink": "ryqblo2b",
      "permlink": "re-lilycampbell-ryqblo2b-20180221t035204313z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T03:52:03",
  "trx_id": "5eabb140e45a6acaeb8b229abe37e7aa15b4b874",
  "trx_in_block": 60,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20053298,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "lilycampbell",
      "permlink": "ryqblo2b",
      "voter": "mittmattmutt",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T03:43:06",
  "trx_id": "6e0df65fd711a7575283086ca156d8c11a5ab4a3",
  "trx_in_block": 7,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20053274,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"follow\",{\"follower\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"following\":\"lilycampbell\",\"what\":[\"blog\"]}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-21T03:41:54",
  "trx_id": "896033244a8383bc4e25f088627ece2bd6f96afb",
  "trx_in_block": 27,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 20047635,
  "op": [
    "author_reward",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "re-lukestokes-if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life-20180213t225959217z",
      "sbd_payout": "0.344 SBD",
      "steem_payout": "0.000 STEEM",
      "vesting_payout": "171.689221 VESTS"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-20T22:59:57",
  "trx_id": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "trx_in_block": 4294967295,
  "virtual_op": 22
}

{
  "block": 20000659,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "steemitboard",
      "body": "Congratulations @mittmattmutt! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :\n\n[![](https://steemitimages.com/70x80/http://steemitboard.com/notifications/firstcommented.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@mittmattmutt) You got a First Reply\n\nClick on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.\nFor more information about SteemitBoard, click [here](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)\n\nIf you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word `STOP`\n\n> By upvoting this notification, you can help all Steemit users. Learn how [here](https://steemit.com/steemitboard/@steemitboard/http-i-cubeupload-com-7ciqeo-png)!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"image\":[\"https://steemitboard.com/img/notifications.png\"]}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "analytic-philosophy-as-poetry",
      "permlink": "steemitboard-notify-mittmattmutt-20180219t074950000z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-19T07:49:48",
  "trx_id": "a1c3bd13501713270510771734a936c4c504ba64",
  "trx_in_block": 55,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19984281,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "danbab7",
      "permlink": "details-from-gustav-klimt-s-the-kiss-1908",
      "voter": "mittmattmutt",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-18T18:10:54",
  "trx_id": "c2ef84ae005ce34911e6505b6f0ad78f5fbd426e",
  "trx_in_block": 17,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19867361,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "re-lukestokes-if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life-20180213t225959217z",
      "voter": "lukestokes",
      "weight": 400
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-14T16:41:12",
  "trx_id": "3e3f0d88de5664b74176ddf760b0a9c3def001b1",
  "trx_in_block": 46,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19867359,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "lukestokes",
      "body": "I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s interesting. I was more thinking about humans running simulations to better understand how they should create A.I. But if the A.I. take over the simulation, that brings us back to an inverse Roko’s Basilisk.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"simulation\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "mittmattmutt",
      "parent_permlink": "re-lukestokes-if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life-20180213t225959217z",
      "permlink": "re-mittmattmutt-re-lukestokes-if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life-20180214t164107413z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-14T16:41:06",
  "trx_id": "4cd3d500b8aa73740717e3394b5854eaa70aa095",
  "trx_in_block": 35,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19846169,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "Cool argument, it's essentially a converse Roko's Basilisk, right?",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"simulation\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}",
      "parent_author": "lukestokes",
      "parent_permlink": "if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life",
      "permlink": "re-lukestokes-if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life-20180213t225959217z",
      "title": ""
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-13T22:59:57",
  "trx_id": "d6b2a13adea8843bf063c1b9cd705cfa538c6b07",
  "trx_in_block": 71,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19846132,
  "op": [
    "custom_json",
    {
      "id": "follow",
      "json": "[\"reblog\",{\"account\":\"mittmattmutt\",\"author\":\"lukestokes\",\"permlink\":\"if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life\"}]",
      "required_auths": [],
      "required_posting_auths": [
        "mittmattmutt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-13T22:58:06",
  "trx_id": "fa8055b69b1e4474ac73ce02a97338699580f4d5",
  "trx_in_block": 21,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19846110,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "lukestokes",
      "permlink": "if-we-re-in-a-simulation-could-studying-morality-and-a-i-improve-your-life",
      "voter": "mittmattmutt",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-13T22:57:00",
  "trx_id": "8b049ed9ab2fafbdae80ab04658a4db19f15efec",
  "trx_in_block": 30,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19841237,
  "op": [
    "vote",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "permlink": "analytic-philosophy-as-poetry",
      "voter": "sensation",
      "weight": 10000
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-13T18:53:15",
  "trx_id": "172b34d36bc85bc1e3766e5e8b5d80b1d552e763",
  "trx_in_block": 1,
  "virtual_op": 0
}

{
  "block": 19840019,
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "author": "mittmattmutt",
      "body": "@@ -20220,16 +20220,17 @@\n nt book \n+*\n Modal Lo\n@@ -20247,16 +20247,17 @@\n aphysics\n+*\n  even ha\n@@ -20891,16 +20891,17 @@\n uary 9th\n+ \n (https:/\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"philosophy\",\"poetry\",\"logic\",\"writing\"],\"links\":[\"https://medium.com/@mittmattmutt/the-beauty-of-analytic-philosophy-6acf106a6a3e\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}",
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "philosophy",
      "permlink": "analytic-philosophy-as-poetry",
      "title": "Analytic Philosophy As Poetry"
    }
  ],
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "timestamp": "2018-02-13T17:52:15",
  "trx_id": "401a7dc7e48b77ce166121a450024bec3a712985",
  "trx_in_block": 27,
  "virtual_op": 0
}