Digital Solipsism: Liberty in the age of Post-truth politics
An origin story & how the information age became a direct attack on our liberty and ushered us into an age of post-truth politics.
Contents:
Intro
Around the time of 2015, I had a brief memory. A memory of me pulling up my phone going on to Instagram and Twitter and changing my name to privacydied. I don't know why I did this but it seems correct at the time and it had a nice ring to it. People seem to resonate with it, in conversation when it became time to share socials I would say my name is privacydied and they would say "oh that's cool" and when I spoke to other musicians they would be like "whoa that sounds heavy are you like a conscious rapper or something" and I'd say "something like that" and to be honest I don't know why I changed it either. I was working on my thesis and I will be honest with you I didn't get a good grade because it was not styled in any way like an academic text, it was a wildly paranoid amphetamine and klonopin fuelled polemic. At least my professor said that my writing was a force for good. Cyclical in nature; I would take lines of dark net speed, ramble on Microsoft Word and then take large quantities of klonopin to go to sleep. This fuelled a sort of paranoid psychosis, this was not done in vain as the information that I gathered during this time would prove to be incalculable. I gazed into the abyss and the abyss gazed back.
Now if you would like a glimpse into the mind of an individual undergoing amphetamine psychosis feel free to read my post entitled Pellucid Stack. There are many salient points and its critique on liberty and its intersection with technology has aged quite well, in my opinion.
privacydied
Fast forward to 2023, the name privacydied had been the moniker I have been using for pretty much every social handle for around 8 years now, with no idea as to how I came to exist and the weirdest thing about this was I didn't care, I never once chose to google the etymology of this phrase because I believed it wholeheartedly and had thousands of words and anecdotal experience to back up my world view, until one day I was watching a video on Wikileaks and how they leaked the BNP member list. If you don’t know “The BNP is a "far-right" party, whose members are banned by the UK civil service from a number of government occupations. 12,801 individuals are represented.”
12.8k members in a country of 68 million people are minimal when you think about it so this invisible spectre of far-right nationalism was mainly just Assange stirring up some attention to him and his organisation and more power to him because although this list is minimal, it’s quite disturbing to see people who are policemen who have taken an oath to protect and serve to simultaneously be card-carrying members of a far-right nationalist party.
The release of this list didn’t go down as smoothly as would like as some infighting occurred within their ranks mainly due to concerns with the privacy of people they were about to release, some members of Wikileaks objected to releasing this list for privacy concerns and fear of inaccuracies and the fact that there were antifa supersoldiers who have attempted to infiltrate the organization.
Assange shut them down by quoting:
"You have zero privacy anyway, get over it!"
- Sun Microsystems CEO (1999), Scott McNealy
In my 8 years of being privacydied, I had not once heard this phrase ever, so I guess that’s my origin story. If you don’t want to say the whole thing you can call me pry.
Simple as.
On Cypherpunk & Cyberpunk
I digress, In my final year of university I decided to create an "Ethnographic Research Project on the Cypherpunk & Cyberpunk Movement" (this would be the pretext for writing the polemic 'pellucid stack') which was a brief overview of the cypherpunk movement which originated in 1993- it's awareness and the subculture.
To context, cyberpunk is where science and technology meet society, Cyberpunk is an attitude of sorts, themselves caught in the power struggle between identity and the system and the juxtaposition of this manifests a great interest and even an obsession with topics such as security and privacy. It's obsessive, as said by Eric Hughes the writer of the Cypherpunk manifesto. “Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” (Hughes, 1993)
Cyberpunk observes inherent inequalities within modernity and diagnoses society's ailments with a form of malicious compliance, as disparities grow wider, their tactics become more desperate: using the tools of the system against the system. So it becomes an awareness. In a world saturated with violently accelerating change, cyberpunk must find themselves armed with a sharp awareness of what is going on around them. As most are apathetic, irreverent and powerless to the issues that artificial intelligence affords them. The disparity grows wider and the world changes with a violent acceleration. These birth movements such as transhumanism, and technological singularity continues to evade our collective consciousness. As advancements in biological and information technologies radically change our lives it seems likely that it will only become more coercive and invasive in the future. Aesthetically the symbiosis of the cybernetic organism and brain-computer interface will become the petri dish of an ethereal subculture of hackers, phreaks, netrunners, ravers, and razor girls.
Androgynous in its origin, unrestrained it is lost in the delicate balance between the analogue and digital worlds. Avoiding both the attention and oppression of the system. With the rise of the ubiquitous internet, “cyberculture” has begun to permeate the popular culture of modern society. Meanwhile, the cyberpunk subculture remains somewhat underground, though where one ends and the other begins is often difficult to discern.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre with the most accessible aspect, being the literary subgenre of science fiction that features a dark and gritty, yet painfully realistic vision of our near future. It essentially takes active social trends and pushes them to their logical extremes. The megacorporation now dominates as the primary influence of society, which brings about the aggregation of wealth, acceleration of environmental decay etc. As urbanization manifests people flock to the cities, drugs and crime offer one’s best hope of achieving happiness, and the line between human and machine begins to fade away. This culminates in the “city lights at night” aesthetic present in much of cyberpunk art. While some may enjoy—perhaps even fetish—the dystopian world presented in cyberpunk literature, most are anticipating the resistance against it. For some, this fight has already begun.
On Kojima and the importance of Metal Gear Solid 2
In this section, I will go over the release of MGS2, the importance of Raiden and the final codec call. If you’re online enough and have played this game and know what I’m talking about, You probably know what I’m going to cover in this section you can probably skip this and go straight to “Digital Solipsism”.
Although I had a PS2 growing up I did not play any of the Metal Gear Solid games and as they were highly rated on Metacritic and universally praised on video game forums such as 4chan's /v/ I knew with advancements in graphics and technology video games don't exactly age well as a medium so my window of opportunity for playing these games and appreciating them was dwindling as many of their features would become appropriated in other games and the origin of their features would become less profound.
So one Christmas break, I decided I was going to do it. (Not kill myself but play Metal Gear Solid) my millennial/zoomer cusp brain was not going to be able to stomach the original PS1 version so I opted to emulate Twin Snakes on the Dolphin Emulator with a wired Xbox 360 controller, it's a remake of the PS1 version of Metal Gear Solid but on the Metal Gear Solid 2 engine, this version was only released on the Gamecube and it is a controversial version of the game amongst many fans, due to certain differences with the voice acting, cutscenes and gameplay additions like first person mode which can completely break the difficulty in certain sections (so you should probably play on hard difficulty) and the absence of VR missions. It isn't perfect but if you know that you're not going to be able to handle playing a game made in 1998 in [current year] then it essentially is your only option. So suck it up buttercup.
So I played Twin Snakes and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish and because it was my first introduction to a Metal Gear Solid game I didn't notice any of the shortfalls that veterans of the game did. I had fun playing a game and you should too, it's much better than being a jaded gamer...
I would then go on to immediately play Metal Gear Solid 2, there was a pretty playable PC port and you can mod it to use an Xbox 360 controller and play at native resolution etc, but my advice to anyone wanting to play MGS2 is to emulate the PS2 version with the PS2 emulator PCSX2 with the Vulkan Renderer, I'm currently replaying it and I find it to be the superior version, notable mentions are the PS3 version of Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection.
Anyway, this shit’s gay who cares. I played MGS2 and immediately played MGS3 it was fun etc… but this entire wall of text is for me to explain the importance of MGS2 and why the message of this 20-year-old video game seems to become more relevant than ever.
A basic gestalt on MGS2
I have no qualms with spoiling the plot of this game and providing more context around this too. So if you have a problem with this please leave and play MGS1 and MGS2 and come back. Now at E3 2000, a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2 was released.
You have to understand this was a huge fucking deal at the time. Just two years prior a low polygon blocky game was released and now the trailer comprised entirely of in-game footage showing a myriad of game mechanics like rain "bodies that need to be hidden, enemies being able to detect shadows, lights in an area that can be destroyed to affect enemy vision, realistic enemy AI that relies on squad tactics rather than working individually, and multi-level environments that add an element of "vertical tension" to the stealth gameplay."
It was a glimpse of what the future of gaming would look like and many people were extremely excited about this release, and one of the craziest things about this game was that it was a launch title for the PS2, we were truly living in the future. The entire trailer showed the protagonist Solid Snake sneaking and fighting boss battles in new but familiar locations. It was shaping up to be one of the greatest games of all time.
2001 rolled around and the game was released, it does not disappoint it receives 5 stars from every publication and is a shining example of video games being able to be considered as an art form. It defies all expectations and is expeditiously entered into the video game hall of fame.
Now Kojima is a quirked-up individual and culturally there are major differences between western and eastern video games which I will not go into here as this post is already extremely long and it is not relevant, but some individuals were not happy with MGS2 mainly because Kojima pulled off one the biggest bait and switches ever achieved in a video game. Now players thought that were going to play Solid Snake the protagonist from the previous game a rugged individual with a bandana and husky voice. As was seen from the trailers, what had happened was Kojima only let you play as Snake for the first mission and then made you play as a completely new character called Raiden, all missions you saw in the trailer that had Snake playing outside of the first mission was simply the character model of Raiden switched with Snake, but this was not done in completely in jest this had a specific purpose as hand. Although Raiden is just as capable as Snake. He can sneak, roll and do everything that Snake can do his appearance is completely different.
This mf is frankly beautiful a textbook pretty boy, his physique is twinkish, his hair is bleached and long, he has a soft and effeminate voice, and he doesn’t combat roll like Snake but basically cartwheels instead, everything about this individual is zesty as fuck. But do not be fooled this brother is a cold-blooded killer— raised as a child soldier, they called him “Jack the Ripper” and he has a baddie of a GF called Rose, trust me brother, this nigga fucks and he would absolutely steal ur GF or BF. No cap.
Why Raiden?
Now, why would Kojima do this? sully a loved character, a winning formula with such a crude bait and switch. The decision to feature Raiden as the main character in Metal Gear Solid 2 was a deliberate creative choice made by Kojima. The game's narrative explores themes of information control, manipulation, and the relationship between reality and perception, and the decision to switch the player's perspective from Solid Snake to Raiden was a way of exploring these themes in a more complex and nuanced way.
And that’s where you, the player come in, Raiden is a symbol for the character he is YOU. Snake gained experience in the field. Whereas Raiden gained his combat experience in VR training, The average player has not learnt how to shoot a gun in first person from being deployed in Iraq they have learned it from a simulated experience (video games/VR), Just like Raiden. According to Kojima, the decision to feature Raiden as the main character was also intended as a commentary on the nature of sequels and the expectations that players have when they approach a game franchise. By subverting player expectations and introducing a new protagonist with a different backstory and personality, Kojima sought to challenge players to think critically about their assumptions and preconceptions.
While the decision to feature Raiden as the main character was controversial at the time of the game's release, it has since become a celebrated example of creative risk-taking and experimentation in game design. The game's themes and narrative twists have also been praised for their relevance to contemporary issues of information control and manipulation in the digital age.
He never once questions the narrative of his involvement in the plot of this game just like YOU when you bought the game on launch, put the disc in and did exactly what the Colonel and Otacon told you to because you entered the game with the expectation that you are the ‘good guy’ going to save the world from evil. With no pretext to justify this claim apart from your in-game superiors blindly stroking your ego and narcissism, telling you that you are a good boy! Kojima is mocking you, and mocking the idea of Western Neoliberal peacekeeping— the Hollywood idea that you can stand for truth, justice and liberty by bombing a country into freedom and democracy in a digestible 90 min action movie and be home for Christmas with minimal casualties and free elections and human rights for for everyone! You get a liberty and you get a liberty!
The Adam Curtis documentary ‘Bitter Lake’ touches on this topic, I like to call this the act of neoliberal ‘peacekeeping’ as,
The Eternal Anglo Playbook:
Colonialism and or imperialism rape the resources of your country for x amount of years.
This creates really difficult times for its inhabitants, therefore they pick up the pieces with a dictator.
The original colonial power lambasts the country being run by a dictator and says how dare you not have a “Magna Carta/constitution/free elections/human rights” etc.
They remove your dictator because he was not installed by a ‘free election’ or violates ‘human rights’ or has ‘chemical weapons’ it really doesn’t matter because the media will be used to repeat the lie and generate support for the said war.
Even if the leader was installed by a fair election if their policies do not align with the Anglo’s (for example they are a communist) they will remove them anyway.
In most cases this leaves a power vacuum for a much worse evil to come in
i.e, Saddam being removed led to the creation of ISIS
Gaddafi being removed led to open-air slave markets in Libya.
Rinse and repeat.
To create context
Kojima baits and switches you again and it turns out the Colonel that you were taking orders under was not actually a real person but an AI and you were forced to carry out its bidding. In every action film, there’s always the scene where the protagonist seems to be shit out of luck, with no way out strapped to the bomb with a timer going down with just enough time for the villain to reveal to the protagonist their master plan. Now what this AI villain proposes is some of the most frightening and satanic shit I’ve ever heard a villain say. In any form of media ever.
One of my most controversial opinions is that I don’t particularly consider video games to be art, but MGS2 is a very strong candidate. But please, I implore you to watch the video and I implore you to understand that this is a video game from 2001. There is no possible way this sort of narrative could be achieved as effectively through film or novel it had to be a video game played by YOU.
“In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumours about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander. All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution. What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context. You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth." And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.”
tl;dr: The AI is concerned and displeased with how we exercise our freedom to communicate with the internet and wants to pick and choose the information it deems necessary for the survival of the human race.
It’s called the “Selection For Societal Sanity” or the S3 Plan, A concept that involves the use of advanced technology to selectively manipulate the beliefs and behaviours of individuals in order to create a stable and harmonious society. It disguises its censorship as a form of ‘memetic eugenics’, by saying they do not want “control content, but to create context” for the greater good the S3 plan is focused on manipulating individual beliefs and behaviours in order to create a particular social outcome as it involves the use of force and deception to control and manipulate individuals for the benefit of a select few.
Digital Solipsism
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
- William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
Now one must understand that this was the villain’s master plan. But ask yourself this, how is the “Selection For Societal Sanity” any different to what is happening in the real world at this very second? By legitimate intelligence agencies that you pay taxes towards? We were told we had rights, not given to us but fought for, spilt with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
We were told we had a right to privacy but also simultaneously lived under the most surveilled state on the planet.
We were told that we had freedom of speech and that if you are an American the First Amendment would specifically cover “freedom of the press”.
The case of Julian Assange and his extradition to the United States raises complex legal and ethical questions about freedom of speech, press freedom, and government transparency. Assange exercised this ‘freedom’ and was immediately extradited to the USA to be tried, ironically the country which specifically has Freedom of the Press in the First Amendment of its constitution! The charges against Assange represent an attack on whistleblowers and an attempt to intimidate journalists and discourage them from reporting on sensitive topics.
“[freedom of the press] is a very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system.”
- The Nature of Freedom, Technological Slavery, Kaczynski, Theodore J.
Almost half of the media is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Is it not evident that personal freedom is an abstraction a petty half-truth which doesn’t resemble anything close to what it did when the constitution was created?
"It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government.
- The Nature of Freedom, Technological Slavery, Kaczynski, Theodore J.
Every single think tank, government, intelligence agency and civil rights organisation etc is waging one huge information war to somehow have control over the flow of information under the pretext of controlling content by creating context.
This struggle can take many forms and they all have it disguised in a way that seems beneficial to the user, some say they are trying to tackle disinformation to protect our democracy and some say they are trying to stop “fake news” by including efforts to regulate the content of online platforms, promote certain narratives, or challenge disinformation and propaganda.
While some of these efforts may be motivated by a genuine desire to protect democracy or combat harmful speech, You can call it whatever you please but just know this is simply the battlefield for which consent for censorship is being manufactured and these efforts can be used as a pretext for censorship or the suppression of dissenting views.
This is being hyper-accelerated with the use of AI and other technologies to automate content moderation ushering us into what is called ‘post-truth politics’.
This is not a blackpill and I am not trying to dishearten or demoralise you. But once you realise there is a war going on for your mind being fought through multiple mediums by multiple agencies.
This does not mean that the path of least resistance is to only believe what you can see with your own eyes in the real world and anything that you see online, must be assumed with 100% certainty to be a fabrication. Or to consider all media as fake, or every photo you see to be photoshopped or every interview with a politician to be AI-generated, and the flavour of the month celebrity to have been funded by numerous agencies and undergone rigorous media training to appear normal and relatable.
it’s at this point it is imperative that you must retain your agency as an individual and not become a pawn in this game because you cannot win. This does not mean you should be fooled into adopting a form of Digital Solipsism, as that technically would be one individual attempt at regaining agency but it doesn’t work as it only makes you become absorbed in your own digital world, to the exclusion of others people and the wider world around them. This can lead to a situation in which individuals only seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs, and are resistant to considering alternative perspectives.
The forces and powers that be are far too pervasive and powerful and trying to be a soldier of the information and culture war will have you chewed up and spat out, you will lose friends, you will lose your job and most of all you will lose your sanity.
I'm not saying that in a ‘post-truth world’ the truth doesn't exist or cannot exist but with the inability to 'prove' truth it may as well not exist and therefore one could say it is easier to act on the premise that everything is false. While it may be tempting to retreat into a digital bubble and reject all information as false or unverifiable, this approach ultimately limits our ability to engage with the world and make informed decisions. It is important to recognize that while absolute certainty may be elusive, there are still many sources of trustworthy information and many ways of verifying the accuracy of claims.
Rather than giving up on the idea of truth altogether, it is important to approach information with a critical and sceptical mindset, seek out multiple sources of information, and evaluate claims based on evidence and logical reasoning. This requires engagement with the wider world and a willingness to consider alternative perspectives, rather than retreating into digital solipsism.
THIS IS NOT A REAL RANT FROM BEN SHAPIRO
THESE ARE NOT REAL WOMEN
BIDEN DID NOT SAY THIS
THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL SEGMENT FROM MANHATTAN-BASED PODCAST RED SCARE
BUT OH MY BROTHER IN ABRAHAM I AM ENJOYING THE DEATH OF TRUTH
Liberty in the age of Post-truth politics
Again I must reiterate, this is not a blackpill. I am not trying to demoralise you, I am simply the drill sergeant trying to battle harden you for the upcoming information war that is going to be waged. You must understand that although I quote a domestic terrorist who strongly disliked technology and saught it to be the bane of his existence and the root of all problems in society. I actually don’t agree with burning the Library of Alexandria down and sending us back to the stone age and frankly, it would be impossible so it’s stupid to even entertain this idea.
Technology is simply a tool. A vehicle to get us from A to B, A Japanese bullet train can travel up to speeds of 200 mph and has transported 6.4 billion total passengers since its inception, a net positive for society.
Two outcomes can come from such powerful technology:
The case for Liberty
The ability to fabricate any conversation and video could potentially lead to the re-emergence of freedom of speech as without some sort of encrypted verification one could easily have plausible deniability.
“Your honour! My client did not rob that business that is a deepfake video someone has made of my client putting a revolver to the clerk’s head and threatening to blow his brains out unless he cleared the register.”
However, it is important to recognize that encryption and verification technologies can play a role in helping to address these challenges. For example, encrypted messaging services can help to protect the privacy and security of communications, while verification technologies such as digital signatures and blockchain can help to ensure that content is authentic and has not been tampered with.
At the same time, it is also important to recognize that there are limits to the effectiveness of these technologies and that there is a need for continued vigilance and critical thinking in order to address the challenges posed by disinformation and misinformation in the digital age.
Ultimately, the emergence of new technologies and tools does present both challenges and opportunities for freedom of speech and other fundamental rights and liberties, and it is important for policymakers and citizens alike to engage in thoughtful and informed discussions about how best to navigate these complex and rapidly evolving issues.
The case for Tyranny
The ability to fabricate any conversation and video could potentially lead to the absolute dissolution of all rights because an agency could literally use your voice farmed from every Instagram story and voice note you’ve ever made, fabricate a video of you using images scraped from every Instagram and Facebook selfie you’ve ever made reconstruct a 3D model of you, taking a 98% concentration of fuming nitric-acid and adding the acid to three times that amount of sulphuric acid in an ice-bath, then adding glycerine drop-by-drop with an eye-dropper to create nitroglycerin.
“Your honour! We have the perpetrator here red-handed trying to make extremely large quantities of nitroglycerin, we believe he was inspired by a domestic terrorist that lived in a wooden shack and hated technology, we advise for the maximum sentence of 100 years no parole.”
It is important for individuals to be aware of the potential risks associated with sharing personal information and data online, and to take steps to protect their privacy and security. This can include using strong passwords, avoiding sharing sensitive information online, and being cautious about what information is shared on social media and other online platforms.
At the same time, it is also important for policymakers and governments to consider the potential risks associated with the use of advanced technologies for fabricating content, and to take steps to mitigate these risks. This could include investing in research and development of verification technologies, strengthening regulations around data privacy and security, and supporting education and awareness campaigns to help individuals better understand the risks associated with sharing personal information online.