stepan kment, programming worlds – discourse
stepan kment, programming worlds
2025 · 552 wordsmaybe all he has left is to worry about it?
prompt simulation → cognitive flattening · turn war training → pre-simulated conflict · residue pre-simulated rebellion
- prompt
- simulation → cognitive flattening
- turn
- war training → pre-simulated conflict
- residue
- pre-simulated rebellion
- scale
- source → 552 words
kment shows us how mental decoupling can serve as cognitive dissonance in this speech, as he ends up rightfully worrying over the new technologies he himself oversees and foresees, more specifically that they may destabilize governments or allow for so much libidinal investment that they have latent consequences on interactions in the outside world, or alternatively, that they may even be a cynical rewrite of the world, removed of all its details, only upkeeping the most banal, replicated sounds and worldscapes, which, unfortunately, has you focusing more on kment half the time than the text itself.
so this actually shows us an example of his practice of a safe decoupling, precisely stepan's attempt at cognitive dissonance, due to his professed job and the signals of light but decoupled and renunciated stress or speculation at the dangers that his profession causes in the world. if hes already handing this for free, but still not being impacted to sort of, sabotage the programming/engineering hes working on, then its presumably either a non impactful role, trivially influenced by ethics given the prerogative to impact soldiers less and less that he himself underlines, or something other.
and if he did show signs of inner struggle beyond "this worries me" then he'd have to at least say "i used to be an engineer before i whistleblew" or at the very least "theres something troubling about this so in my own work ive been trying to find ways to bypass it. also the idea that video games are mini cognitive overloaded networks serving the goal of light sensitization towards "mission task" rhetoricization or re-cognation/normalization of war, or even a light training imperative itself when it begins to closely mirror real war surroundings, or itself a part of an apparatus, or the simulations beginning to influence not just future war stakes and unintended consequences, but also the mapping of the terrain itself sort of indicates a recalibration of values.
but also it shows how all war is already fought beforehand, so the simulation is the actual emergent sequencing of the real thing, or in other worlds, its the multiverse that has already affected reality, its its own version of "capitalism emerges as an alien virus of the future" or terminator, the war event is terminated beforehand, but it also concludes in all possible initializations, its initialized and therefore avoided, its also the only real conflict in the world, but its also just a command prompt and executable, so in its transgression it flattens the world - even admittedly to the pilots themselves, they say they need the flattening as kment mentions or else the speed overloads their cognitive processing power.
also, reminds me of derrick jensen when he says war is an imitation of indigenous play. like you've really turned the warmest to the coldest (in the baudrillardian sense of those terms irt. play). this is exactly why war, more terrifying than ever, can feel underwhelming. not just the victims, but those supposed to be enjoying it are too busy worrying about making sure to win it, so they don't really get to play ever. nobody gets to play... kment's worries never really get to exist in his engineering position, even his potential rebellion is pre-simulated and removed. maybe all he has left is to worry about it?