“Now why do we need an entrepreneur of the self? That’s because people never know as much as the market, so because we’re a flawed thinker, we must learn to transform ourselves to take in these packets of truth delivered by the market and alter ourselves to respond to them.”—Philip Mirowski
“In his book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, Mirowski concludes that neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth. Once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, information, markets, and government, it could no longer be falsified by anything as trifling as data from the ‘real’ economy.”—Wikipedia
“I guess an analogy might be, you’re applying for work in a very New Age sort of environment, where the hiring manager says she can read auras***, and that in lieu of a conventional interview she would just evaluate you on the basis of your aura. You sit in front of her for a VERY awkward five minutes or so while she closes her eyes, goes hmm and ahhh and oh! and oh dear and you have no idea what she’s reacting to, and then she opens her eyes, shakes your hand, tells you she’ll get back to you with her decision, and then leaves. And you are left completely mystified as to what just happened or what she thought of you.”—Lindsay
“In the future, I would also expect it to require an expensive license to even operate a true, general-purpose computer with severe legal penalties for doing so without government and industry authorization.”—quoderat
“I think it’s a crime that these models are opaque and yet have so much power over people’s lives. It’s like having secret laws.”—Cathy O’Neil
“How much climate destruction is best for capital? Probably more than none.”—Out of the Woods
“We don’t need more ambition or more authorities.”—Mel
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