Zak Stein - The Sacred Ethics of Measurement & A New Archetype of Wise Agency

General
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I’ve just listened to this fine interview and to Zak Stein, for the first time. I happen to strongly agree with his sense-making position. Power dynamics, manipulative mystification of explicit vs implicit, systemic corruption, motivations, capacities and capabilities…

I can’t help noticing that the 2R represents a significantly different perspective. Depending on which view you subscribe to - the course of action in terms of remediating the world would be different.

Can these 2 approaches be successfully integrated? Would anyone be prepared to (passionately :slight_smile: argue against Zak Stein’s views?

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Value, anti-value, pseudo value - I also recognise these concepts,

I think of love as value

Corruption as its substitute (pseudo value) that can be justified and legitimised depending on idealism, systems coherence and collective consciousness.

The anti-value would require dropping back to personal interests, after a catastrophic loss of trust, and advocating selfishness as a superior value

A great research topic!

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I’d love to unpack Stein’s work. Not especially opposed - passionately or otherwise - but also very interested in getting beyond it. The specific reference on my shelf is Education in a Time Between Worlds (2019). Stein offers a lot of critical perspectives on current institutions. What I don’t find in his work is the basis for systemic improvements. So having digested what Stein (and other similarly critical theorists) have to say, I’m quite a bit more focused lately on other sources that seem more generative.

Is this the interview you have in mind? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fv3S8T2nVE

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Yep, that’ s the interview - can you give me a bit more in terms of what you find lacking in his criticism of current institutions and the lack of direction?

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I’m at about the 25 min. mark in the video. (All biographical content so far).

First of all, I generally resonate with Zak’s outsider view of educational institutions. I never much cared for the formalities of schooling (although I generally did quite well with barely any effort, much to the consternation of various classmates). My first formal exposition to critical views of education as an institution came by way of Ivan Illich. Stein seems resonant with that sort of anti-institutionalism, which I approve.

That said, I’ve made a career out of hacking institutions from the inside and turning them into what I want them to be. In that sense, I’ve got one foot in the bureaucracy and another outside of it. Zak is more like 90% outside. To do what I do, I need tools and concepts that non-liminal administrators, students, and colleagues can relate to.

Zak’s notion of “time between worlds” is certainly evocative. Lately, however, I have replaced that phrase with Peter Pogany’s “chaotic transition”. Why? “Time between worlds” is a great phenomenology of what it feels like in a chaotic transition, but “chaotic transition” by contrast is clearly grounded in systems theory, allows for root cause analysis, and points to specific strategies on where to go to next. My approach lately is to quite literally architect the next world system. (Pogany and others gave me the confidence and clarity to take that on). That approach admits Zak’s diagnosis of a “time between worlds”, but leans more heavily into research around potential cures.

As one applied example, Stein in other interviews strongly cautions against the dangers of AI in education. He is not wrong. However, as an adult IT educator whose students hope to get paid employment, just warning against the dangers of AI would be a dereliction of duty. Rather, I’m working on beefing up human-centric training to leverage AI without getting consumed by it. I concede Stein’s views on the dangers. All the more reason why I feel required to plunge in to meet AI and related challenges head on from the point of view of using AI to stay on top of AI.

To sum up, Stein is good as far as he goes. I see many of the same things he sees. How his work translates for my practice, however, is unclear.

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OK, got through the whole video. The last half hour went beyond what I had previously heard from Zak Stein, and I like the trend of where there the thinking was going. The final idea “ruthlessly strategic and efficient” is the sort of mission statement I arrived at personally awhile ago, but I’m delighted that Zak Stein concurs. (He recommends reading the “Art of War” - been there, done that awhile ago also.)

In general, I like what is being said here. All I would wish to do is to make it all more ruthless, more strategic, and more efficient. A few thoughts on those lines:

  • the general discussion about the best and wisest form of government sounds suspiciously like Political Philosophy 101 content about Plato and Aristotle. Political science as a discipline has been engaged with this topic for centuries. If we are going to set out to invent something new, a fairly standard survey of the literature (AI assisted or not) would seem to be in order.

  • on the propagada topic, I found YN Harari’s work Nexus to be a quick clean point of entry, well supported with historical examples. Harari’s “information as truth” vs “information as power” distinction is easy to grasp and serviceable to many applied situations.

  • awakening, prophecy, and polymathy all sound like fine educational goals to me. Now - how to build a curriculum for those?

  • on the question of “planetary scale agency” (predatory, wise, or otherwise), not sure it has ever existed (unless in the mind of a transcendent deity). But yes, now we do in fact need to specify, design, and build a form of planetary governance. Whether that system in practice would be “wise” or not remains to be seen. Some constitutional governments have better track records than others.

  • the discussion of pseudo value and anti value recalls many spiritual and philosophical analyses of evil and delusion down through the centuries. I don’t dislike the new terms - but do we really need them? Remember - ruthless, strategic, efficient. One way to be more efficient is to make good use of terms we already have, rather than promoting new ones.

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Robert, terribly sorry for not responding to your comment, I’m travelling.
I wanted to offer my sense-making of what was said in that interview. That’s just how I understood it.

Zack defines the meta-crisis as the corruption of systems that’s creating generative dynamics driving the society (world?) towards collapse.

Is this deliberate or accidental? Is it agentic or emergent?

Zack offers two theories -

Mistake theory: bad things happen in the world because people make mistakes.
Conflict theory: bad things happen because people do them, they are in conflict with each other

He appears to say that the Conflict theory is the correct one and the Mistake theory is part of the manipulation and mystification. The people designing negative extranalities want you to believe that they are accidental and emergent.

It’s done deliberately by a certain group of people in order to maximise power and control. He refers to some of them as sociopathic and even sadistic.

They are using manipulation to mystify reality - “making problems worse while giving you a sense that they are made better”.

He talks about information war where “we’ve gone nuclear” - it’s a war where there are no winners because the concept of truth is being destroyed.

rufus:
how do we come back to truth
what type of inner capacities
we need mindfulness, mediation, meta-cognition where we see what’s happening
and we regain agency, sovereignty

Zack appears to imply that “coming back to the truth” is both impossible and insufficient, because it’s not only about the “truth”. It’s about deep alternatisation of reality that’s re-enforced throughout the society - education, culture, media…

zack
buddhists are so propagandised, and addicted to social media
meditation not enough - because you focus on nothing instead of focusing on solving problems

(Please correct my understanding if wrong)
Mindfulness and meditation are about disengaging with the world. Complex problems need sustained focus. Digital media is making us less able to focus, but meditation is not the same as active engagement.

rufus:
the interlocking causation of technology, institutions and culture - an ecology of causation. is post truth function of social media or is social media exacerbating underlying culture war?

Zack says that we need to rigorously engage with the realities of the world.
What are these realities? Understanding what forces are at play, what is the dynamic of power, what are capacities and capabilities needed.
You need to engage the world.

rufus: raises point about whether it’s the system that favours certain types of people and behaviours, rather than people defining the system.
Again, pursuing non-agentic jellyfish analogy.

zack:
in order to sociopathically maximise your power - you would create an eco-system around you - like the jellyfish - that would incentivise that type of thing.

rufus:
how do we start creating other equilibria?
where is the rebirthf? Even in pockets, small groups. Better faith communication, rewarding better behaviour.

zack:
what you have a system which has become as corrupt as - we can’t be naive as to how much power is in the hands of so few people who are not in the interest of everyone. not a simple way that a bunch of do-gooders can do about that power. hard to admit - it’s very true. good people get weeded out systematically - it starts with the education system. Shifting from diagnosing the problem - who are these people, what are we up against. Trying to do better.

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@Martin, thanks for summarizing all that here!

On the substance of the matter, here is another perspective.

  • with respect to “mistake” vs “conflict”, conflict seems the more important factor. This view is informed by historical structuralism (e.g. Marx, Braudel, Pogany, Karatani). Cultural-material drivers pushed up structures like states, classes, and civilizations which conflict. This does not of course rule out mistakes in how we navigate the inevitable conflicts that occur.

  • on the topic of “information war” - propaganda is as old as civilization itself. The abundant literature on false consciousness, ideology, totalitarianism, etc. stands witness. Social media is the latest digital twist, but a student of knowledge and power over the long haul can hardly be surprised that those who grasp at power will bend any available medium to that specific purpose.

  • on why power concentrates, Peter Turchin says the most. (Standing on other shoulders, of course). Turchin also shows why that also leads to state collapse. (Many, many historical examples).

  • so … is mediation worth it? I’ll take my cue from Thich Nhat Hahn. Clear heads and action-orientation are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, those two approaches seems rather synergistic.

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Thanks to Rufus and Zack for the brilliant cognitive wrestling and living with the questions as Postmodern Existentialism in 2025. The struggle “to know” to stay connected to the fundemental- the systemic- the stinging experience of turning on the news that experientially downloads planetary pain into ones personal nervous system is too much. We or at least the US Democrats are hopeless is seems.

I very much appreciate, thanks to my own studies in Intellectual History the amount and the quality of knowledge that Rufus and Zack bring to bare on these topic and can reference. Wonderful to hear his stories and insights. Towards the end, it seems to make the current situation all the more emptying of hope. For me, framing of possibility while we decend into the vortexes, can not be understood or responded to through knowing enough to plan, to live in balance or retreat into a sanctuary in times of complexity.

If you are a sailor or mountaineer, are a dedicated practitioner of -do than you know that risk and fear are relatives to personal experience. If you regulary practice rock climbing, living vertically is fun and a chance to play with your presence in relationship to gracefulness, power and precision coming from slowed awareness. Those who practice group field holding with presence and precision can be ready for grief or celebration to well up as a poem spoken as if through a vale of sacred awareness…and they can playfully provoke those attending into co-creation. my point here is: to stay with the trouble at the scales and dissonance we are currently experiencing each of us needs a mental-embodiment set of practices done diligently. Not just sitting in meditation but also moving meditation and the agility and connection of Contact Improv. No just sitting around a fire, holding space and circle practice, but also inviting in the 7 directions, and the supportive spirits in rituals of thanks &giving so that knowing expands past knowledge.

An old quote: “The first casualty in war is the truth” goes back a long ways. Propaganda and boasting, demonstrations and fakes of power are part of the animal kingdom.
From a lecture by Bonnita Roy: [Origin of Self. part 1 Timestamp 37:00] (https://youtu.be/QivUf1QXtP8?feature=shared&t=2370)]
Much of what we are seeing in America now Bonnita says is “all of us as animals…” and that there is no engagement by retreating to a cloister. What is showing is this aspect of white American unprocessed colonialist perpetrator disguised as pseudo heroes coming outof othering as unintegrated male messes. The bruts have taken over because we refuse to see, clean up with our neighbours and care for ourselves. Non ofthe MAGA crowd will practice meditation but they will take the best aspects of Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer’s and many others groundbreaking systems work and weaponise it for power and further ignorance-absencing taught via Meta and Alphabetet al.

Knowing more “about” or mapping aligned groups who we have no relationship to won’t bring us into attunement, acceptance, acknowledgement, atonement and alignments that allow deep and powerful agency. The powerful have long since mapped our people, fed the constellations to the top gamers assisting AI strategy next set of parallel possibilities. The challenges we face can not be managed by outstrategizing the power gamers and AI creatives, Project 25 is an learning organism not a blueprint. It will take deep integrity and quantum Consciousness in my opinion to create radical resonance. Only living and modeling what is alive each day fully in Life can bring man.kind back to LIFE. At least that is how I see it at this moment.

I probably missed a few aspects due to my blindspots and that I got into a spacific line of emergence due to habit. So ask me for what you see I don’t understand and I’ll do my best to come back into relationship on that topic.

Keith Riggs

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Timely. I just got back from 5+ miles on a kayak, including open water crossings too and from an island I had not dared attempt before. Now I dare. There were lots of test runs elsewhere leading up to this. Courage is a muscle that can be stretched and strengthened. So are confidence, initiative, other capabilities.

Risk, in general, is built into life itself. To me the greatest risk of all is simply refusing to live.