Slavoj Zizek — Elon Musk, Neuralink & Post-Humanism
Interview · I WOULD PREFER NOT TO ·
2020-05-31 · 0:20:06 · 2,439 words
technology-ai-cyberspacehegel-dialecticsideologycapitalismsubjectivitysexuality-genderphilosophy-general
Žižek sketches the philosophical implications of the wired-brain / brain-machine-interface prospect (Neuralink), arguing it is a far greater vector of new domination than surveillance capitalism. The talk turns on a Hegelian dialectical thesis: the obstacle that appears to block a perfection is precisely what gives rise to it, so that removing mediation (language, failure, surplus) does not yield pure expansion but destroys the very dimension it promised. He closes with the rat remote-control experiment to dramatize the real danger: not losing individuality, but being controlled while still believing oneself free.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 12
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The prospect of a direct communicational pathway between brain and digital machine (and then between brains), which Žižek takes as the title-frame of his forthcoming Hegel book.
The transhumanist fantasy of a collective spiritual experience with thoughts directly socialized without language, Žižek's polemical target.
The intermediate layers (language, writing, internet) through which all communication and thought pass; Žižek insists these are constitutive, not removable obstacles.
The Hegelian motor by which a failure, inconsistency or contradiction is precisely what produces the positive result; the structural principle behind every example in the talk.
The retrospective illusion of a perfect form that arises in the gap between two failures (bad novel / bad movie; body with two-three extra pounds) and exists nowhere as a positive object.
His label for Marx's utopian dream of abolishing surplus value / exploitation while keeping pure expansion, Žižek's claim that this is incoherent because the obstacle (surplus) is productive.
Marx's category of the exploitative excess; Žižek reframes it as a necessary obstacle that generates capitalist expansion, so abolishing it would not yield 'pure expansion'.
Hegelian figure: what appears to block the achievement of a perfection is in fact what gives rise to that perfection; one cannot remove it without losing the very dimension it opens.
Refigured positively: historical progress has so far meant the addition of new alienating intermediate layers, and their disappearance (via Neuralink) would be the true loss, not liberation.
The Lacanian register of language and law through which subjectivity is constituted; the medium whose mediation the Neuralink fantasy naively dreams of bypassing.
Implicit in the police demand for a perfectly consistent rape report: the assumption that an authentic victim could give an objective, gapless account.
His formula (illustrated via French cuisine) for how a botched process is re-marketed as a special achievement; the model for how authenticity is produced through failure.
Stories he reaches for 5
Žižek recounts a lab video: researchers decoded the elementary neuronal pathway by which a rat orders its legs to walk and wired the brain so that pressing a button turns the rat into a remote-controlled car. The unsettling part is the extrapolation to humans, indications are the subject would not experience being controlled but would still believe themselves to be walking freely.
“You see a rat running around in a box, you press the button and you can direct the movements.”
In his last months Stephen Hawking was reportedly already exploring direct brain-computer communication: no longer using the one finger he could still move, he could just think 'forwards' and the wired computer would discern the signal and move the wheelchair, an early token of the wired-brain prospect.
“It was enough for him to just think forwards and the computer to which his brain was wired was able to discern this sign and things happened in reality.”
Žižek recounts a French friend's vulgar theory that French cuisine is built on failures rebranded as triumphs: lazy farmers' rotten cheese sold as a specialty, over-fermented wine marketed as champagne. All great moments of French food are a failure turned into a triumph, the model for how progress works.
“All the great moments of French food are this: failure turned into... failure turned into a triumph.”
Hugh Grant's stuttering, perpetually-interrupted declaration of love to Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral: the vulgar lesson is that it is only through this clumsiness that authentic love can be transmitted, a perfectly smooth declaration would mean something is wrong with the love.
“it is only through this clumsiness and so on that you can somehow transmit authentic love. If you can say a perfect love declaration, something has to be wrong with your love.”
Against the police trick of discrediting a rape report by pointing to contradictions, Žižek argues he would distrust a perfectly objective, consistent account: the very failures, inconsistencies and confusions in the testimony can signal authenticity, since traumatic subjective expression is constitutively a failed act (a Lacanian point).
“The very failures in her report, the very inconsistencies, confusions, can signal authenticity.”
Works invoked 4
Žižek's own forthcoming book (first draft) from which this talk is drawn, framed for the quarter-millennium of Hegel's birth; the wired-brain prospect is its central object.
Billy Bathgate film
Called a bad movie, but one that makes one feel a much better failed novel behind it; deployed as the first illustration of the mirage of perfection arising between two failures.
Called a 'disgusting movie' he hates, but its one classical scene, Hugh Grant's clumsy, interrupted declaration of love, is used to illustrate that authentic love requires the failure and clumsiness of mediation.
Neuralink other
The popular name for the brain-machine-interface prospect; used as the polemical frame for the whole talk and as the principal example of a domination-vector masquerading as emancipation.
People invoked 11
His stuttering, interrupted love declaration in Four Weddings and a Funeral is used as the illustration of how clumsiness transmits authentic love.
Jacques Lacan positive
Credited with the point (invoked via the rape-report example) that subjective expression is always a failed act: one wants to say something, fails, and only through the failure does it.
Cited via hearsay as already exploring brain-computer communication in his last months, controlling his wheelchair by thinking 'forwards', a token of the wired-brain prospect's proximity.
The addressee of Hugh Grant's clumsy declaration in Four Weddings and a Funeral, named only as context for the example.
Elon Musk negative
Treated as a popularizer rather than a theorist; his hike/retina-feed and sex-in-the-cloud quotes are quoted at length only to be diagnosed as the big fiasco, and his privacy reassurance is called 'totally problematic'.
E. L. Doctorow negative
Author of Billy Bathgate; Žižek reports that his comment that the film was a bad movie with a better failed novel behind it cost him his friendship with Doctorow, and that on reading the novel directly he found it even worse than the film.
Tentatively named as an actor in the film of Billy Bathgate.
Named as an actor in the film of Billy Bathgate.
Addressed as Žižek's 'super-ego' who is to interrupt him if he overruns, evidently the moderator/host of the event.
Karl Marx negative
Praised for seeing clearly how capitalism thrives on imperfection, exploitation and surplus profit, but called 'too narrow' for dreaming of abolishing surplus value to get pure expansion, diagnosed as 'capitalism without capitalism'.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
The talk is a draft from Žižek's forthcoming book on Hegel (Hegel in a Wired Brain), ahead of the quarter-millennium of Hegel's birth; the whole dialectic of the obstacle is presented as 'this basic Hegelian insight'.
What it argues
Neuralink / wired-brain prospect and its philosophical stakesThe Hegelian obstacle: imperfection as generative of perfectionLanguage as constitutive mediation, not a removable obstacleFailure, clumsiness and inconsistency as the condition of authenticityHidden mind-control versus the illusion of free individualityMarx's surplus as a necessary obstacle, not a removable impediment
Dialectical moves 7
“Be careful when something appears to you as an obstacle to a perfection — quite often this obstacle is really what gives rise to the perfection.”
The master Hegelian inversion governing the whole talk: the apparent impediment is the productive condition.
“If only you lose two-three pounds you would be perfect; then you lose two-three pounds, you don't get perfection, you get an ordinary body.”
The obstacle (the extra pounds) is what sustains the mirage of perfection; removing it dissolves the perfection, it does not actualize it.
“You want to say something, you fail in it, and only through this failure you do it — that's progress.”
Following Lacan: subjective expression is constitutively a failed act, and the failure is the very mechanism of its success.
“The danger is not 'I will lose my individuality'; the danger is that you will still think that you are a free individual while being controlled.”
Reversal of the standard liberal worry: the true threat is the retained illusion of freedom, not the loss of freedom.
“Marx's dream was still capitalism without capitalism: get rid of the obstacle (surplus value) and you get pure expansion — no, we will not; we need the obstacle.”
Inversion of Marx's emancipatory project: the surplus to be abolished is the productive obstacle, so its removal yields not communism but something else.
“Two failures — bad novel made into a bad movie — but in between, retroactively, the mirage of perfection arises, existing nowhere.”
The dialectical trick: perfection is not behind the failures but produced by the gap between them, a retrospective illusion with no positive substance.
“The point is not whether my thoughts are still my own when shared in the machine — that would even be a good result; the opposite danger is that your thoughts are shared and you are not even aware of it.”
Inversion of the privacy worry: the nightmare is not expropriation of thought but unconscious, transparent sharing.
Claims 11
asserts
One should resist dismissing the wired-brain prospect as a distant illusion; something real is already happening and its philosophical consequences must be questioned.the reality of brain-machine interface technology
reframes
Surveillance capitalism, important as it is, is not the true game-changer; direct brain-machine interface carries a far greater potential for new forms of domination.where the real political danger of digital technology lies
rejects
The pseudo-Platonic view that words are a merely material obstacle to be bypassed in order to reach thought directly is false: conceptual thinking already occurs in words.the transhumanist fantasy of language-free thought-sharing
asserts
What appears as an obstacle to a perfection is quite often precisely what gives rise to that perfection, so removing it destroys the very perfection it seemed to block.the Hegelian dialectic of the obstacle
rejects
Marx's dream of abolishing surplus value and exploitation to release 'pure expansion' is an instance of capitalism without capitalism and is incoherent — we need the obstacle.Marx's utopia of abolishing surplus
asserts
Historical progress has so far meant ever more alienation — new intermediate layers (language, writing, internet) mediating communication — and that mediation is the condition of subjectivity.progress as increasing alienation/mediation
asserts
A perfect, consistent, objective report from a rape victim would be suspect; the very failures, inconsistencies and confusions in her account can signal authenticity.authenticity of traumatic testimony
asserts
A flawless love declaration indicates something is wrong with the love; authentic transmission requires the clumsiness, interruption and failure of language.the role of failure in authentic expression
reframes
The real danger of Neuralink is not that one will lose one's individuality, but that one will be controlled while still believing oneself to be a free individual.the nature of the Neuralink threat
rejects
Musk's reassurance that thoughts are only shared when willed is incoherent, because the machine interfaces with the neuronal material substrate of psychic life, not with the psyche's willing directly.Musk's voluntarist defence of Neuralink privacy
asserts
Preliminary brain-control experiments on rats already demonstrate that a wired animal can be driven like a remote-controlled car while presumably not experiencing external control.the empirical basis for hidden mind control
Quotes 8
“be careful when something appears to you as an obstacle to a perfection. Quite often, this obstacle, what appears as an obstacle, is really what gives rise to the perfection.”Slavoj Žižek · the Hegelian obstacle as generative
“I think Marx's dream was in some sense still capitalism without capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · Marx's utopia as capitalism minus its obstacle
“We need the obstacle. That's my first point.”Slavoj Žižek · the obstacle is indispensable
“the danger is not 'I will lose my individuality'. The danger is that you will still think that you are a free individual.”Slavoj Žižek · hidden control preserves the illusion of freedom
“you want to say something, you fail in it and only through this failure you do it. That's progress.”Slavoj Žižek · failure as the mechanism of subjective success (Lacan)
“All the great moments of French food are this: failure turned into... failure turned into a triumph.”Slavoj Žižek · failure elevated into triumph
“you have two failures. Bad novel made into a bad movie. But in between, retroactively, this mirage of perfection arises.”Slavoj Žižek · perfection produced in the gap between two failures
“the point is not if my thoughts are shared in some common space of the machine, are they still my own thoughts? ... I see the opposite danger.”Slavoj Žižek · inverting the privacy worry into unconscious sharing
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I hope you will not be too disappointed because my point of pride is always to give a title and then do something totally different, you know, like here today I will betray myself. I will really talk about what the topic says. It's part of an ongoing project because next year, will be a quarter of a millennium, years of the birth of Hegel, the German idealist. So this is from the first draft of my book on... the provisional title is Hegel in a Wired Brain. What does this prospect of wired brain mean? So not to lose time, let me begin. I will deal here with the prospect of so-called post-humanity opened up by a direct link between our brain and a digital machine, what is popularly called by some people like Elon Musk, Neuralink. My premise is that one should resist the temptation to proclaim the prospect of a wired brain an illusion, something that we are still far from and that cannot really be actualized. I think that in spite of all simplifications and exaggerations in the public media, something is going on in this domain, and I will limit myself to questioning the philosophical implications and consequences of this prospect. Important as the rise of the so-called surveillance capitalism is, it is, I think, not yet the true game changer. I see a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of direct brain-machine interface. It is clear that all kinds of secret agencies are already working intensely on it. What we learn is just the public face of it. So, the idea of a direct communicational pathway is usually presented as implying two steps. First, the link between an enhanced or wired brain and an external device, and then a direct link between brains themselves. So first our brain is connected to digital machines. So what this practically mean? And it may sound utopian, but my friends who work on this are telling me that we are almost already there. Namely, this idea that your brain is somehow connected with the computer and the computer can already discern some basic at least basic, raw, but nonetheless data of what you are thinking about. For example, I was told that when Stephen Hawking was dying in the last months of his life, he was already considering even practicing this type of communication. In the sense of, so I was told, he no longer was using his proverbial one finger that he was able to move a little bit for moving his wheelchair. It was enough for him to just think forwards and the computer to which his brain was wired was able to discern this sign and things happened in reality. Then the next step is that the digital machine is just a mediator so that I can... that's the dream, so that I can share directly my experiences with others. I think about something, others can directly participate in my experience. Here a quote from Elon Musk, who is of course not a theorist but a popularizer. Say you are on a beautiful hike and you want to show your husband the view. No problem, just think out to him to request a brain connection. When he accepts, connect your retina feed to his visual cortex. Now his vision is filled with exactly what your eyes see, as if he's there. End of quote. And of course, what is more logical than to extend this idea onto the domain of sexuality? Again, a quote from Elon Musk. You could save a great sex experience in the cloud to enjoy again later on, and if you are not too private a person, you could send it over to a friend to experience it, and so on and so on. What's the problem I see here? A whole series of problems, or just open questions. First, it's the implication not only of a simplifier like Elon Musk but of many other let's call them theorists of whatever you call it, wired brain or singularity, as this new form of collective spiritual experience, that somehow our brains... sorry, our thoughts will be directly socialized without the mediation of language. The... and here as a philosopher, I already explode. Because the presupposition is that somehow our thoughts exist prior to language. Because, first, this is not true even at an empirical level. Maybe we have some sense perceptions which are non-linguistic, even that I doubt, but the moment you think in conceptual terms, you think in words. Words are never just an obstacle. This pseudo-Platonic perspective that words are just a material obstacle, that ideally we should target thoughts directly, is simply false. And this is a nice example... I will talk a lot about this tonight... of this basic Hegelian insight. If all Hegelian dialectics can be condensed, resumed in something, it is precisely this idea: be careful when something appears to you as an obstacle to a perfection. Quite often, this obstacle, what appears as an obstacle, is really what gives rise to the perfection. Let me improvise even if I am eating my own time and I wait for you, Matthew, as my super-ego, to interrupt me then. I had a nice personal experience at this level. Did you see the movie, which is a bad movie, based on E. L. Doctorow's novel, I think, Billy Bathgate? When I saw the movie with Dustin Hoffman and I don't know, Nicole Kidman, I think, and so on, my impression was: this is a bad movie, but you can still feel that there is a much better failed novel behind it. Like, you know, you can somehow... I felt the greatness of the novel behind it. Then I did something which cost me my friendship with Doctorow because through some lady who was his secretary, I know that he learned my experience and didn't want to have any contact with me. Because what I then did is the obvious thing: okay, let's then read the novel directly. Sorry, but my result, maybe I'm wrong, was that it's even worse than the movie. So you see the paradox: you have two failures. Bad novel made into a bad movie. But in between, retroactively, this mirage of perfection arises. It exists nowhere. You don't get this perfect story. But you need it in the space between the two failures. I have another experience of this, which is my favorite, but I apologize in advance if it will appear a little bit sexist. Well, my only excuse is that it is sexist. I long ago, at some... I will not say where, it would be too indiscreet... a lady, elderly lady, very nice one, was flirting with me quite openly, and she told me that her last lover, who saw her naked, told her that her body is perfect just for two-three pounds too much, too heavy. You know what was my instant reaction? Don't try to lose the two-three pounds! Because this mirage of a perfect body was emerged precisely, you know, as the reaction to this obstacle: if only you lose two-three pounds, you would be perfect. Then you lose two-three pounds, you don't get perfection, you get an ordinary body. And this is what dialectics teaches us: see the positive, generating aspect of imperfection. See how... and even to reach to the top of the tops, even Karl Marx himself was here too narrow, I think. He saw clearly how capitalism thrives, but on this imperfection, exploitation, surplus profit, and so on and so on. So his dream was to get rid of this surplus, which for Marx more and more serves as an obstacle. But I think Marx's dream was in some sense still capitalism without capitalism. He thought if we get rid of the obstacle, surplus value, capital exploitation, we will get pure expansion. No, we will not. I don't know what we will get, but not that. We need the obstacle. That's my first point. My next question: so again, don't language... of course it's a clumsy mediator. Like just think about when you love somebody, you say 'I love you', it's a bland statement that millions of people probably say daily, but it echoes... it can echo an incredible wealth of your experience. But don't never think that you can get rid of these words and just get directly at the experience. Next question is about individuality. If we... I think that our experience with the symbolic order demonstrates again how progress meant till now more alienation. Sorry, thank you very much. Alienation in the sense that new layers get in between. We never communicate directly. First it's language, then it's writing, then it's internet, whatever, whatever. And what happens if, that's the prospect of Neuralink, if these intermediate layers disappear and if we get direct communications? Will we... you know what is lost? Now I will... the dimension I'm aiming at is this one: there is a disgusting movie, I hate it, but it has one classical scene. Did you see... I'm so ashamed to mention it here... Four Weddings and a Funeral? You remember when the guy... I don't know he's a well-known actor, just his name slipped out... Hugh Grant. Yeah, when he declares his love to Andie MacDowell, he plays this typical English game of getting interrupted, clumsiness all the time and so on. But of course, the obvious, vulgar, melodramatic lesson is that it is only through this clumsiness and so on that you can somehow transmit authentic love. If you can say a perfect love declaration, something has to be wrong with your love. It's the same even if we go at the opposite traumatic end. Here of course I totally disagree with those who, when a woman denounces to the police that she was raped, and then you know one of the nasty tricks of the police till now is to look for contradictions in her report and claim 'Oh but you are not consistent, you said this five minutes before' blah blah. Well, I think, and already this is too anti-feminist, but nonetheless I think I'm making a correct point, that precisely I wouldn't trust a woman who would have been able to give a perfect, objective report and so on. The very failures in her report, the very inconsistencies, confusions, can signal authenticity. You know, this is a beautiful paradox Lacan... Jacques Lacan mentioned it somewhere... that our subjective expression is always a failed one, in the sense that you want to say something, you fail in it and only through this failure you do it. That's progress. Progress is like, if you allow me a very vulgar theory of French cuisine as an excuse not to offend French people, I will say that a French guy told this to me. That the mystery of French cuisine are failures elevated into triumphs. French farmers were making cheese, they were lazy, the cheese got rotten and so on, and they said 'Oh my god, let's sell this as something special' and you get the French cheese. Or they were making wine and something went wrong, the wine fermented too much and they said 'Okay, let's call it champagne', let's, you know. All the great moments of French food are this: failure turned into... failure turned into a triumph. So again, what happens if you can do it directly, successfully? If this danger of failure disappears? Here we can see of course, he's not a philosopher, the big fiasco of Elon Musk. When he is asked this question, his answer is, I quote: 'People won't be able to read your thoughts. You would have to will it. If you don't will it, it doesn't happen. Just like if you don't will your mouth to talk, it doesn't talk.' I find this statement totally problematic because the whole idea of Neuralink is that precisely the machine doesn't interact with your psyche directly but with the neuronal or whatever material existence of your psychic life. So for me the interesting question if anything is exactly the opposite one. It's rather, the point is not if my thoughts are shared in some common space of the machine, are they still my own thoughts? That would even be a good result. I see the opposite danger. That your thoughts are shared, but you are not even aware of it. That you are... so the danger is not 'I will lose my individuality'. The danger is that you will still think that you are a free individual. And this is already half concerned... half... sorry, confirmed with research my friends who are deeply involved, I have strange friends I admit it, into this, told me that, you know, it's an old story of mine, they already can do it for decades with rats. I have a video which is a pretty terrifying video, a friend of mine who works in a lab doing this cognitive research has told me, where they already deciphered very elementary orders that neuronal path of how a rat gives orders to its legs to move and so on, to walk, what direction. And the result is pretty terrifying when they wired, in an very elementary way still, this rat's brain. You have a box, you press the button and, to be very brutal, the rat turns into a remote-controlled car. You see a rat running around in a box, you press the button and you can direct the movements. Now comes the mysterious part my friends didn't want to talk about. But they told me, their question was immediately: how would it have been with men? And if you do it on humans, and it's pretty elementary, I'm talking just about these basic orders, move forward, left and so on, how will a human being controlled in this way, how will it experience this predicament? Will it be that 'Oh my God, now I am no longer my own master, a foreign power is directing my movements'? All the indications I was told go in the opposite direction. You don't even know that you are controlled. You think that you are still freely, like I would advise you to do this, I walk here around, you press your button, you direct me and I still think that I am freely walking around. So I think that at this level the prospects of breathtaking mind control opens... opens up. We cannot even imagine what is going on. What is already going on.
I hope you will not be too disappointed because my point of pride is always to give a title and then do something totally different, you know, like here today I will betray myself. I will really talk about what the topic says. It's part of an ongoing project because next year, will be a quarter of a millennium, years of the birth of Hegel, the German idealist. So this is from the first draft of my book on... the provisional title is Hegel in a Wired Brain. What does this prospect of wired brain mean? So not to lose time, let me begin. I will deal here with the prospect of so-called post-humanity opened up by a direct link between our brain and a digital machine, what is popularly called by some people like Elon Musk, Neuralink. My premise is that one should resist the temptation to proclaim the prospect of a wired brain an illusion, something that we are still far from and that cannot really be actualized. I think that in spite of all simplifications and exaggerations in the public media, something is going on in this domain, and I will limit myself to questioning the philosophical implications and consequences of this prospect. Important as the rise of the so-called surveillance capitalism is, it is, I think, not yet the true game changer. I see a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of direct brain-machine interface. It is clear that all kinds of secret agencies are already working intensely on it. What we learn is just the public face of it. So, the idea of a direct communicational pathway is usually presented as implying two steps. First, the link between an enhanced or wired brain and an external device, and then a direct link between brains themselves. So first our brain is connected to digital machines. So what this practically mean? And it may sound utopian, but my friends who work on this are telling me that we are almost already there. Namely, this idea that your brain is somehow connected with the computer and the computer can already discern some basic at least basic, raw, but nonetheless data of what you are thinking about. For example, I was told that when Stephen Hawking was dying in the last months of his life, he was already considering even practicing this type of communication. In the sense of, so I was told, he no longer was using his proverbial one finger that he was able to move a little bit for moving his wheelchair. It was enough for him to just think forwards and the computer to which his brain was wired was able to discern this sign and things happened in reality. Then the next step is that the digital machine is just a mediator so that I can... that's the dream, so that I can share directly my experiences with others. I think about something, others can directly participate in my experience. Here a quote from Elon Musk, who is of course not a theorist but a popularizer. Say you are on a beautiful hike and you want to show your husband the view. No problem, just think out to him to request a brain connection. When he accepts, connect your retina feed to his visual cortex. Now his vision is filled with exactly what your eyes see, as if he's there. End of quote. And of course, what is more logical than to extend this idea onto the domain of sexuality? Again, a quote from Elon Musk. You could save a great sex experience in the cloud to enjoy again later on, and if you are not too private a person, you could send it over to a friend to experience it, and so on and so on. What's the problem I see here? A whole series of problems, or just open questions. First, it's the implication not only of a simplifier like Elon Musk but of many other let's call them theorists of whatever you call it, wired brain or singularity, as this new form of collective spiritual experience, that somehow our brains... sorry, our thoughts will be directly socialized without the mediation of language. The... and here as a philosopher, I already explode. Because the presupposition is that somehow our thoughts exist prior to language. Because, first, this is not true even at an empirical level. Maybe we have some sense perceptions which are non-linguistic, even that I doubt, but the moment you think in conceptual terms, you think in words. Words are never just an obstacle. This pseudo-Platonic perspective that words are just a material obstacle, that ideally we should target thoughts directly, is simply false. And this is a nice example... I will talk a lot about this tonight... of this basic Hegelian insight. If all Hegelian dialectics can be condensed, resumed in something, it is precisely this idea: be careful when something appears to you as an obstacle to a perfection. Quite often, this obstacle, what appears as an obstacle, is really what gives rise to the perfection. Let me improvise even if I am eating my own time and I wait for you, Matthew, as my super-ego, to interrupt me then. I had a nice personal experience at this level. Did you see the movie, which is a bad movie, based on E. L. Doctorow's novel, I think, Billy Bathgate? When I saw the movie with Dustin Hoffman and I don't know, Nicole Kidman, I think, and so on, my impression was: this is a bad movie, but you can still feel that there is a much better failed novel behind it. Like, you know, you can somehow... I felt the greatness of the novel behind it. Then I did something which cost me my friendship with Doctorow because through some lady who was his secretary, I know that he learned my experience and didn't want to have any contact with me. Because what I then did is the obvious thing: okay, let's then read the novel directly. Sorry, but my result, maybe I'm wrong, was that it's even worse than the movie. So you see the paradox: you have two failures. Bad novel made into a bad movie. But in between, retroactively, this mirage of perfection arises. It exists nowhere. You don't get this perfect story. But you need it in the space between the two failures. I have another experience of this, which is my favorite, but I apologize in advance if it will appear a little bit sexist. Well, my only excuse is that it is sexist. I long ago, at some... I will not say where, it would be too indiscreet... a lady, elderly lady, very nice one, was flirting with me quite openly, and she told me that her last lover, who saw her naked, told her that her body is perfect just for two-three pounds too much, too heavy. You know what was my instant reaction? Don't try to lose the two-three pounds! Because this mirage of a perfect body was emerged precisely, you know, as the reaction to this obstacle: if only you lose two-three pounds, you would be perfect. Then you lose two-three pounds, you don't get perfection, you get an ordinary body. And this is what dialectics teaches us: see the positive, generating aspect of imperfection. See how... and even to reach to the top of the tops, even Karl Marx himself was here too narrow, I think. He saw clearly how capitalism thrives, but on this imperfection, exploitation, surplus profit, and so on and so on. So his dream was to get rid of this surplus, which for Marx more and more serves as an obstacle. But I think Marx's dream was in some sense still capitalism without capitalism. He thought if we get rid of the obstacle, surplus value, capital exploitation, we will get pure expansion. No, we will not. I don't know what we will get, but not that. We need the obstacle. That's my first point. My next question: so again, don't language... of course it's a clumsy mediator. Like just think about when you love somebody, you say 'I love you', it's a bland statement that millions of people probably say daily, but it echoes... it can echo an incredible wealth of your experience. But don't never think that you can get rid of these words and just get directly at the experience. Next question is about individuality. If we... I think that our experience with the symbolic order demonstrates again how progress meant till now more alienation. Sorry, thank you very much. Alienation in the sense that new layers get in between. We never communicate directly. First it's language, then it's writing, then it's internet, whatever, whatever. And what happens if, that's the prospect of Neuralink, if these intermediate layers disappear and if we get direct communications? Will we... you know what is lost? Now I will... the dimension I'm aiming at is this one: there is a disgusting movie, I hate it, but it has one classical scene. Did you see... I'm so ashamed to mention it here... Four Weddings and a Funeral? You remember when the guy... I don't know he's a well-known actor, just his name slipped out... Hugh Grant. Yeah, when he declares his love to Andie MacDowell, he plays this typical English game of getting interrupted, clumsiness all the time and so on. But of course, the obvious, vulgar, melodramatic lesson is that it is only through this clumsiness and so on that you can somehow transmit authentic love. If you can say a perfect love declaration, something has to be wrong with your love. It's the same even if we go at the opposite traumatic end. Here of course I totally disagree with those who, when a woman denounces to the police that she was raped, and then you know one of the nasty tricks of the police till now is to look for contradictions in her report and claim 'Oh but you are not consistent, you said this five minutes before' blah blah. Well, I think, and already this is too anti-feminist, but nonetheless I think I'm making a correct point, that precisely I wouldn't trust a woman who would have been able to give a perfect, objective report and so on. The very failures in her report, the very inconsistencies, confusions, can signal authenticity. You know, this is a beautiful paradox Lacan... Jacques Lacan mentioned it somewhere... that our subjective expression is always a failed one, in the sense that you want to say something, you fail in it and only through this failure you do it. That's progress. Progress is like, if you allow me a very vulgar theory of French cuisine as an excuse not to offend French people, I will say that a French guy told this to me. That the mystery of French cuisine are failures elevated into triumphs. French farmers were making cheese, they were lazy, the cheese got rotten and so on, and they said 'Oh my god, let's sell this as something special' and you get the French cheese. Or they were making wine and something went wrong, the wine fermented too much and they said 'Okay, let's call it champagne', let's, you know. All the great moments of French food are this: failure turned into... failure turned into a triumph. So again, what happens if you can do it directly, successfully? If this danger of failure disappears? Here we can see of course, he's not a philosopher, the big fiasco of Elon Musk. When he is asked this question, his answer is, I quote: 'People won't be able to read your thoughts. You would have to will it. If you don't will it, it doesn't happen. Just like if you don't will your mouth to talk, it doesn't talk.' I find this statement totally problematic because the whole idea of Neuralink is that precisely the machine doesn't interact with your psyche directly but with the neuronal or whatever material existence of your psychic life. So for me the interesting question if anything is exactly the opposite one. It's rather, the point is not if my thoughts are shared in some common space of the machine, are they still my own thoughts? That would even be a good result. I see the opposite danger. That your thoughts are shared, but you are not even aware of it. That you are... so the danger is not 'I will lose my individuality'. The danger is that you will still think that you are a free individual. And this is already half concerned... half... sorry, confirmed with research my friends who are deeply involved, I have strange friends I admit it, into this, told me that, you know, it's an old story of mine, they already can do it for decades with rats. I have a video which is a pretty terrifying video, a friend of mine who works in a lab doing this cognitive research has told me, where they already deciphered very elementary orders that neuronal path of how a rat gives orders to its legs to move and so on, to walk, what direction. And the result is pretty terrifying when they wired, in an very elementary way still, this rat's brain. You have a box, you press the button and, to be very brutal, the rat turns into a remote-controlled car. You see a rat running around in a box, you press the button and you can direct the movements. Now comes the mysterious part my friends didn't want to talk about. But they told me, their question was immediately: how would it have been with men? And if you do it on humans, and it's pretty elementary, I'm talking just about these basic orders, move forward, left and so on, how will a human being controlled in this way, how will it experience this predicament? Will it be that 'Oh my God, now I am no longer my own master, a foreign power is directing my movements'? All the indications I was told go in the opposite direction. You don't even know that you are controlled. You think that you are still freely, like I would advise you to do this, I walk here around, you press your button, you direct me and I still think that I am freely walking around. So I think that at this level the prospects of breathtaking mind control opens... opens up. We cannot even imagine what is going on. What is already going on.