Len Greski

Technology iconoclast. Sociologist. Husband. Father of two wonderful young adults. Opinions are my own... #datascience #agile #travel #rstats

[Len Greski @lgreski]

We may think we live in postmodernism, but reality bats last, and fantasy has a tough time getting outs. Over the long run, objective reality will defeat the fantasy of postmodernism.

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

Do we live in Postmodernity, and, if so, does that mean we need Postmodernism? Longer post.

One of the very few interesting discussions in the Woke Right universe of garbage and nonsense is the above question, which we have to think about considerably. Is there a phase of societal organization that is "postmodern," and, if so, what should we do about it? Some of my departures from Woke Right thinking that are friendlier are over these questions.

To be clear, two people I'm friendly with, one I'm friends with properly, namely Carl Benjamin and Mike Nayna, subscribe in degrees and ways to the descriptive hypothesis that humanity is in a postmodern era of social organization and that this is simply a bare fact of our circumstances that we must respond to. There's merit in this hypothesis, and it cannot easily be dismissed and shouldn't be discarded lightly.

Their essential argument is mostly technological where it intersects with social. There was a time in the past (Modern Era) in which the techno-social circumstance permitted and even necessitated a particular approach to the authentication of claims, experts, credentials, etc., and that time has passed. Maybe it's the internet. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it was mass broadcast. Certainly, the democratization of mass broadcast as we have today marks a significant departure in our knowledge-producing and transmitting circumstances, which has incredible impacts on what and how people believe and how power flows through society by way of a "knowledge is power" sort of identification.

This claim is legitimate in heavy ways, and it's not new. Certainly, Marshall McLuhan was arguing something like this 50 years ago, as were the postmodernists Jean-Francois Lyotard a hair later and Jean Baudrillard just after that. One could argue that Edward Bernays identified the turn long before, though that's somewhat debatable. The questions are what it means about society and how we interact in it, and what we should do about it.

The answers Lyotard and Baudrillard gave are slightly different but generally the same. They represent (Left) postmodernism. Michel Foucault, another arch-postmodernist, fits in their vein as well, especially his truly trenchant critiques of biopower/biopolitics. These guys were generally mostly hopeless about fixing the problem, as (Left) postmodernists tend to be, and they didn't offer anything like a constructive path for dealing with the general loss of being able to authenticate "the real" to people in a broadly cohesive way that generates general social consensus.

That rather glib despair shot through with nihilism is where the (Left) postmodernists more or less left off. If nothing is true, or at least nothing can be authenticated as true, or at the very least nothing can be communicated reliably as true and believed as such roughly universally across a society, then we're doomed to live in a space of competing localized narratives shared by groups jockeying for the political power to get people to believe them. If almost everything we believe is at best an image of the truth, not the truth, then on a particular level we must be nihilistically detached and perversely ironic (and sardonic) about more or less everything and just see how things go as we go with them.

If the thesis is correct and we do actually occupy a "postmodern condition" like the above, the (Left) postmodernists left an enormous vacuum in the space where people actually have to live life. If that's our condition, there's a huge problem with their vapid non-solution: simply, people still have to do stuff. That leaves open a door to a kind of "Right" postmodernism that's the thesis on the table and, as I said, one of the very, very few interesting genuine debates in the Woke Right universe.

This is essentially the starting place for my friends Carl Benjamin and Mike Nayna. We do occupy postmodernity, they insist. There is no solid way to agree widely (much less universally) on truths or methods for authenticating or communicating them. Various tribes do run with "their own truths" and enforce their adherence through social, cultural, and political (if not also economic) power, which they must jockey to obtain and articulate. We must accept this fact and play on the field we actually live on. And maybe we can actually find a way to do it without the nihilism, despair, and detachment.

Truths in this condition (the postmodern condition), as Nayna likes to describe them, are local to something like "denominations." The classical liberals believe this, the neoreactionaries believe that, the ethnonationalists believe this other thing, and the Woke, meaning Woke Left, still believe in their postmodern neomarxist soup of nonsense and devastation they tried to fill the gap with over the last thirty years. At the end of the day, no one can really fully authenticate anything to the satisfaction of other groups, and therefore truthiness remains local and contingent on power to impress others with it.

I'm less sure about Carl Benjamin, who I've spoken with on this less than Mike Nayna, but Nayna offers few, if any, definitive solutions. The despair is still there but tinged with hope that maybe we can figure it out. Benjamin, for his part, seems to be leaning into a kind of ethnic-traditionalism as a kind of anchor, pulling off a variety of influences that must include Edmund Burke and his appeal to the epistemological weight and force of tradition. Nayna, for his part, believes the "Woke Right" crew (a term he doesn't like or accept) are the only people in the game really exploring possible solutions to the postmodern condition, aside from the Woke Lefts, who offer revealed to be nothing but toxic, mind-ruining soup that tears societies apart.

This is a valid question and a site of real debate. Social media, especially now that mass broadcast is available to anyone with a smartphone or tablet, puts us in a fundamentally different condition so far as knowing and information exchange, thus belief, goes. AI and its capacity to produce fakes will massively accelerate that liquidized "truths" space. This is a real problem, and it's not clear (a) what the solutions are, (b) that there are solutions, or (c) that the solutions of the past (e.g., classical liberalisms knowledge systems) are adequate or even appropriate to the new condition. What should we do if that is the right read on things?

On the other hand, the issue is the thorniest one that can possibly be: like it or not, reality still exists, is knowable, is true by definition, and coheres. It also doesn't care about anyone's politics or social power and will crush people who get it wrong not out of any kind of malice or vengeance but simply because that's what happens when you get consequential things wrong. Reality remains the thing you run into when your beliefs are false.

The idea-authenticating and communicating problem is, to people like me, not systemic and fundamental, in disagreement with my friends Carl and Mike. It is surmountable, though I don't claim to know how and admit that it may well be close to intractable, especially by design. (I hold out that out of necessity, it is likely that highly functional emergent solutions will come about even if we don't "think of" them.) To me, the truth still matters, is not completely lost, and is actually capable of being persuasive, even in a near-saturated propaganda environment because (a) there are consequences to being wrong that are unavoidable eventually, (b) the truth has a funny way of coming out over time anyway even when it doesn't assert itself through tragic consequences, and (c) reality, being true and coherent by definition, can be glimpsed through the "desert of the real" by virtue of its necessarily flawless (not merely rationalized-good) level of coherence. [I don't care what's happening at the quantum level, and, no, it doesn't f--king mater here.]

Anyway, this is a real debate in Woke Right space. Skip the neofascist bullshit and Jew hate and engage in it if you want to do something actually interesting and productive in the space.

[Berlin Product People GmbH @Berlin_PP]

"The New Software Economics: Earn the Right to Invest Again, in 90-day Cycles" https://t.co/dEIgXbnpuC @lgreski (via @liminalarcgroup)

[Stefan Wolpers @StefanW]

"The New Software Economics: Earn the Right to Invest Again, in 90-day Cycles" https://t.co/YN9KOvzhIX @lgreski (via @liminalarcgroup)

[Len Greski @lgreski]

...and this is especially dangerous when the pricing model is based on token consumption / per-use, and many companies don't account for these types of costs in their software acquisition plans.

[Theta @theta_ai_takes]

@levie Every enterprise AI conversation right now lands in the same place: vendor owns the workflow, vendor owns the business. Regulated industries are sleep-walking into a brand new dependency.

[Len Greski @lgreski]

Ever wonder about why it's so hard to replicate success with corporate performance frameworks described in books or case studies? Part one of my thoughts on this topic have just been posted at Architecture & Governance Magazine: https://t.co/1C2iNPa0hg

[Len Greski @lgreski]

An often overlooked detail in the messianic narrative is the destruction of the Jewish temple in AD 70, where the genealogies wee stored. Once the temple was destroyed, no one could prove the Messiah's lineage, and therefore, the Messiah must have come before AD 70.

[Chris Loesch 𝕏 @ChrisLoesch]

2 of 2

And then, the miracle broke upon the world. As Rome’s census stirred the roads, a virgin named Mary, pledged to Joseph of David’s line, made her way to Bethlehem. There, as Micah foretold, she bore her son in a lowly manger, amid animal breaths and starlit hay, while heavenly hosts sang to wide-eyed shepherds. The virgin conception? Attested in the accounts: By the Holy Spirit’s power, Mary carried the child Immanuel, God among us, straight from Isaiah’s page. The family trees in the records wind back to David, affirming that Branch from Jesse’s root.
Trials followed swift: Herod’s fury sparked a killing of Bethlehem’s boys, mirroring Jeremiah’s lament as sorrow ripped through homes. But Joseph, dream-warned, escaped to Egypt with his family, returning only after, fulfilling Hosea’s call from exile. Even the era matched Daniel’s timeline, the Messiah appearing right on cue.
This isn’t folklore or fancy; it’s history locked in place, with dozens of prophecies aligning against impossible odds, a convergence only heaven could engineer. Here stands the God of Israel, not aloof or fickle, but tenderly true, dispatching His Son to shatter evil’s hold, mend the ancient breach, and extend mercy to all nations. Let this truth seize your heart with wonder, the child in swaddling cloths the promised Christ, living proof of a God who delivers. In our spinning chaos, this hope shines eternal: The Messiah came, and He will return. Glory to the newborn King!

#MerryChristmas!

[LiminalArc @liminalarcgroup]

Read Now 👉 https://t.co/M0ENDzm8lo

Learn about the impact that a capabilities-driven organization has on data strategy, architecture, and the AI-enabled business.

Written by @lgreski and originally published in Architecture & Governance Magazine (@governance_and).

[Len Greski @lgreski]

A summary of some of my recent thinking about how to profitably adopt AI technologies by integrating them into an organization’s business capabilities:

[LiminalArc @liminalarcgroup]

Read Now 👉 https://t.co/M0ENDzm8lo

Learn about the impact that a capabilities-driven organization has on data strategy, architecture, and the AI-enabled business.

Written by @lgreski and originally published in Architecture & Governance Magazine (@governance_and).

[Len Greski @lgreski]

Early voting in #ga11 today. Less than 10 minutes from parking to submitted ballot, and no, the machine didn't change my vote. Thanks to the poll workers who are running a highly efficient operation at the Tim D. Lee Senior Center in #cobbcounty #election2024

[Len Greski @lgreski]

Working as designed

[Len Greski @lgreski]

My latest thinking on business capabilities and their role in AI-enabled products and services has just published by Architecture & Governance Magazine: https://t.co/cU8A3GAHfx #ai #businesscapabilities #businessarchitecture

[Len Greski @lgreski]

@JRakove Politics hasn't changed much in 45 years. The presidential candidate selection process is turning into the 2024 version of "we don't want nobody nobody sent." The big question is "who gets to be the 'nobody?'

[Len Greski @lgreski]

Expanding on my comments from the Agile Thoughts podcast, here is Every Project Needs a Firefighter, and Every Firefighter Needs an Arsonist https://t.co/MCAVMV8FjS #agile #architecture #leadership

[AgileThoughts.bsky.social🇺🇦 @agilethoughts1]

Are there fire fighters and arsonists in your organization? @adamtornhill tells special guest @lgreski and I how to connect people dynamics to design flaws and fixes. Episode 265: https://t.co/Axj9YEpIaC
@codescene #programming #softwaredevelopment #softwares

[AgileThoughts.bsky.social🇺🇦 @agilethoughts1]

Are there fire fighters and arsonists in your organization? @adamtornhill tells special guest @lgreski and I how to connect people dynamics to design flaws and fixes. Episode 265: https://t.co/Axj9YEpIaC
@codescene #programming #softwaredevelopment #softwares

[Len Greski @lgreski]

@jonnysday @JonathanLeeman The 1925 BFM declares 2 scriptural offices in the church: "bishops or elders, and deacons." The 1963 BFM changes this to "pastors and deacons." The 1963 error in governance is the root cause of the conflict over the Law Amendment.

[Len Greski @lgreski]

One of the keys to convincing executives to reduce technical debt is quantifying its value as improvements in throughput, quality, runtime performance or value density. I enjoyed discussing these topics with @AdamTornhill and @agilethoughts1 #softwaredevelopment #agile

[AgileThoughts.bsky.social🇺🇦 @agilethoughts1]

Can having good code design help the bottom line? @adamtornhill tells special guest @lgreski and I about his past experience in improving software design and the efforts economics. Episode 264: https://t.co/n88ZvO2miL
@codescene #programming #softwaredevelopment #softwares

[Len Greski @lgreski]

@agilethoughts1 ...hmm, looks like it needs to go on a diet.

[Len Greski @lgreski]

"Et tu, crouton?"

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

If you’re lucky, history remembers you as a salad

[Len Greski @lgreski]

@matloff Have you used test driven development with R? In addition to the debugger, test driven development with testthat helps people write higher quality code. And yes, I do use the debugger, especially as a teaching tool. #rstats