Digital Culture Unit presents: Prediction, Process and Reason
Date:
02/06/2015
Organised by:
Goldsmiths, University of London
Presenter:
Luciana Parisi
Level:
Advanced (specialised prior knowledge)
Contact:
Description:
Prediction, Process and Reason
As the computational capacity to gather and analyse data accelerates, our culture, and indeed our future, is becoming increasingly bound to technologies of simulation, prediction and control. Algorithmic outputs are used in various optimization frameworks, for example: risk assessment and management programs by public and private institutions; the profit maximisation instruments of HFT and derivatives trading; resource allocation solutions such as targeted advertising, predictive policing and friction-?free logistics. Rather than merely rejecting these developments as the chronic symptoms of a culture of instrumental reason, this seminar proposes to identify the limits of the computational image of reason and the shortcomings of contemporary technologies of simulation. We aim to discuss the way in which reason intervenes in, and does not simply register or respond to, the description and prescription of behaviour. The seminar offers a renewed engagement with the question of sapient intelligence that moves beyond the simplistic reduction of neural processes to computational operations of symbol manipulation. Tackling these complex issues requires making distinctions between continuous and discrete processes, between theoretical models and the raw data of simulations, and between inference and blind reaction
Schedule of events:
10:00 – 11:15 Ray Brassier:
‘Computationalism and Inferentialism'
With student response and questions
11:15 Coffee break
11:35 – 12:50 Giuseppe Longo:
‘Models vs. Simulations: A comparison by their Theoretical Symmetries’
With student response and questions
12:50 – 13:50 Lunch break
14:00 – 15:15 Johanna Seibt:
‘Simulation and the Limits of Simulation: A Study in Robophilosophy’
With student response and questions
15:15 – 15:35 Coffee break
15:35 -? 17:00 Roundtable discussion
Cost:
Free
Website and registration:
Region:
Greater London
Keywords:
Data Collection, Qualitative Data Handling and Data Analysis, Research Management and Impact, Research Skills, Communication and Dissemination
Related publications and presentations:
Data Collection
Qualitative Data Handling and Data Analysis
Research Management and Impact
Research Skills, Communication and Dissemination