Philip K. Dick’s dystopia
unherd.com
unherd.com
Big PKD fan myself, some of his stories seem impossibly fanciful and he does bang on about drugs an AWFUL lot but the stories can have a lot of insight in them all the same.
In one of his books, the characters take drugs so powerful reality itself changes. Bit rum even for PKD, I had thought. Until I read the account of a depression sufferer when asked how he knew his medication was kicking in. He said he felt no internal changes whatsoever, but knew it was working when other people starting being nicer to him. And I realised PKD had got to the truth of something, how we take drugs maybe not to change ourselves but our perceptions of the world, and if your perception of the world changes is that not the world changing?
On the other hand, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away.”
2. All human minds are only capable of perceiving a small fraction of the total information content of the world, and most of our perceptions are based on constructed social realities (e.g., as this is a tech forum, you could say we live in a virtual machine where small rectangles of woven fiber are given a meaning far beyond the mere fact of their existence, purely based upon our collective perceptions of what those rectangles represent). Changing our perceptions can therefore change this social reality and, as a result, change the context in which we live.
Forgive me for the high-school philosophizing.
Also...if butterflies can cause tornados, who says putting on your tinted glasses can't change the world?
I don't know how you'd test this though.
It can be a difficult concept to grasp for those who've lived their entire lives immersed in one single viewpoint (religious fundamentalists for example). In such cases, it's rather like trying to explain what 'wet' means to a fish. The fish has never experienced 'not-wet', and so has no notion that it's immersed in anything - that's just its perceived reality. Hence the 'take the fish out of the water' concept can be seen as a kind of deprogramming, in PKD's view, or escaping the brainwashing imposed by authoritarian socieites of all stripes. There are those who ardently argue against this kind of thinking, curiously enough - for example, they'll say we should tell historical lies to children in the name of enhancing their faith in their political leaders and state institutions.
In terms of actual physical reality, though, humans have tended to rely on shared experience of global external state, in the programmer's lingo. Internal object state has to be tested against other's perceptions, which is why if people hear or see something strange or out-of-the-ordinary, the first thing we do is ask someone else "Hey did you hear that? Did you see what I just saw?"
Now if others don't confirm our reality, we might worry about our mental state - i.e. auditory hallucinations are a well-known feature of schizophrenia, for example.
It has some mystique because apparently Dick himself was so terrified of its contents that he never read it after writing it, not even for proofreading.
I wonder what he would have thought if someone told him that 50 years later, just a few feet above his head, that there would be an antenna talking to a swarm of low earth orbit satellites in space, that could access all information known to man. But, at least 20% of the data flow would be used to share images of people having sex with each other.
He actually might have been one of the few people from that era who would NOT have been surprised this was the future.
On the other hand I'm a optimistic utopian, so I may be inclined to minimize and disregard dystopian writing.
Where P.K. Dick really got me is in "How to Build a..." [1] in which he's very interested in the nature of reality and open to the idea that it is far more fungible than we think and in fact there may be a greater intelligence at work in the Universe that arranges reality in such a way as to communicate to the participant who is paying close attention. It doesn't scare and depress me to think that I don't have the control I thought I did and am mostly along for the ride. It's also exciting to think "more will be revealed"
[1] "How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later" Philip K. Dick, 1978
He believed that there may be two greater intelligences diametrically opposed to each other and vying for control over the universe in order to remake it according to their own preferences. He expressed in his interview in Metz, France 1977[0] that he believes they are engaged in a constant struggle of programming and reprogramming the universe and history each trying to undo the others work. He connects this idea to his novels The Man In The High Castle and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said both of which involve alternate timelines. He even thought that he could retrieve memories of other timelines or other incarnations and that some of them were in worlds that were much more brutal than our own.
All this to say that his belief in a higher power certainly followed the same lines of thought that he explored in his novels.
At least our current system is not (yet) a true panopticon, which is a system where the prison guards can see all the prisoners, all the time, but the prisoners cannot see or communicate with one another. People can still communicate with one another, but the expectation of privacy is almost entirely gone. Certainly the power structure can see who is communicating with who via metadata monitoring, even if strong encryption can hide the content of the communication in many cases.
The extent to which general knowledge of this constant monitoring changes mass social behavior isn't really known, but one imagines it's the kind of thing the research anthropologists in CIA Behavioral Studies programs - characters that populate many PKD works - are obsessed with.
Incidentally, PKD's drug-psychosis-theme in many of his works is most likely linked to amphetamine psychosis, a fairly well-studied and well-understood side effect of constant use of amphetamines and their derivatives or analogues (i.e amphetamine, (Adderall), methamphetamine, MDMA (Ecstacy), methylphenidate (Ritalin)). These widely prescribed, used and abused substances should be regarded with more caution, I think - particularly when it comes to ADHD diagnoses in children. Certainly the for-profit drug manufacturers shouldn't be trusted on this, nor the mass social behavior manipulation types.
Also, it's likely that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, another vision of a drug-addled dystopian future (1932), was a major influence on PKD's dystopian works.
It is close enough to a true panopticon. Inside of any form of web communication, the compulsion to not say anything that rocks the boat too much is felt and seen clearly in people's behaviour. Even in "private" encrypted chat the culture is one of which we shouldn't say anything lest it be leaked, evidence of that outcome or not.
Drawing conclusions from ADHD related diagnoses is difficult. The illness is incredibly poorly defined and the state-of-the-art biological research has yet to identify what the problem is, or who even has it. The waters are even muddier, ADHD is frequently diagnosed in the place of other hidden difficulties like narcolepsy, depression, thyroid problems, vitamin deficiency and more. I agree more caution is warranted and also more research. Psychologists operate in a grey area where they can prescribe and hide more than is arguably justifiable.
Don't be so hasty to condemn kids to this miserable existence based on some vague worries about stimulant psychosis, which is very rare with current treatment protocols and most cases are due to abuse.
1) ADHD diagnoses are a relatively new phenomenon, which did not exist before the early 1980s. The fact that these diagnoses created a multi-billion dollar market for amphetamine manufacturers can hardly be ignored when discussing this issue.
2) A specific neurological problem is very hard to diagnose accurately, and there's no independent biochemical/molecular test for ADHD. Assuming real examples of ADHD do in fact exist, massive levels of overdiagnosis are entirely possible.
3) It's entirely possible that some people do find these drugs helpful in their day-to-day lives, even if they have nothing like 'clinical pathology' to excuse or justify their use of such substances. For example, caffeine is not considered an ADHD treatment, although it may help with focus for some people.
This is a dishonest representation. It’s a gross understatement to say “some people” find it helpful when I and many people personally know those who have had their lives radically changed by prescription ADHD treatment
Not really true. The name ADHD and the now deprecated ADD originated in DSM-III in 1980 but the actual disorder has been discussed in the literature since the 19th century, and was present under a different name(minimal brain dysfunction) already in the original DSM.
> Assuming real examples of ADHD do in fact exist
You implying this needs to be an assumption when there is broad scientific consensus that ADHD is a real disorder, only makes you seem biased. I'm not saying overdiagnosis isn't an issue. The US is particularly bad here, just like with every other instance of oversized corporate influence. But implying ADHD is some big pharma hoax is needlessly dichotomous and not at all supported by evidence.
3) Just because something is "entirely possible" doesn't mean it's the case. And once again research into amphetamine has shown that healthy subjects have little if any measurable benefit from taking it whereas people with ADHD can have life-changing benefits.
You seem to enjoy listing things that are "entirely possible". Might I suggest reading some research?
The Global Market For ADHD Medications (2007)
https://sci-hub.se/10.1377/hlthaff.26.2.450
> Several key issues are salient.
> First, objective tests for ADHD are lacking, a problem shared with most other psychiatric conditions. Guidelines for proper diagnosis must be followed, so that disorders with similar symptoms (such as conduct disorder or bipolar disorder) do not receive inappropriate stimulant treatment.
> Second, prescription rates of stimulants (and other psychotropic medications) have greatly increased, at least in the United States, even for preschoolers. About half of U.S. children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD receive stimulant medications or related agents.
> Third, unintended side effects may accompany stimulant use. Most are mild, but public health concerns have arisen about the potential for negative cardiovascular effects and suicidal thoughts [this is relevant to PKD's history, note he died of a stroke, and had at least one suicidal episode]
> Fourth, questions abound about the potential for “diversion” of prescription stimulants to people without ADHD, related to improvement of study skills and possible euphoriant effects.
As far as the 'clincal reality' of ADHD, I'd argue that the scientific basis of psychiatric disorder classifications and the efficacy of treatments is not that clear, relative to say, a diagnosis of drug-resitant tuberculosis infection. For example, the entire serotonin theory of depression is now on shaky ground due to apparent fraud in historical studies. This doesn't mean anti-depressants and amphetamine derivatives don't provide some benefit to people, but the whole field's not on very solid ground.
You mention the "serotonin theory" as if it's been a theory with wide consensus behind it, when it never was. The wider monoamine hypothesis was just a loose idea based on the efficacy of monoaminergic medication(starting with MAOIs in the 50s). It was always controversial, and studies have always been mixed on this. The hypothesis saw a brief surge in the 90s when highly selective serotonergic medications were shown to be effective. But research has moved on since then, showing that effect of SSRIs is more strongly linked to upregulation of things like BDNF. The review from 2022 on the serotonin hypothesis was not some earth-shattering result, it just confirmed what most researchers in the field already suspected for the last 2 decades.
Once again your description of psychiatric clinical practice and research comes off as a caricature gained from mainly consuming mainstream simplifications of the research, and I'm done engaging with it.
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/documents/Timeline.pdf
Digging through those references seems to point to a very low level of ADHD diagnoses and treatment in the 1970s relative to the 1990s, for example. Was there a massive undiagnosed disorder among American children in the 1970s?
Notably, the CDC only starts tracking ADHD diagnoses starting in 1997!
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/timeline.html
What does that curve look like if you extend in back to 1967, which is apparently when the NIH began funding US academic studies on the behavioral effects of treating children with amphetamines?
I agree with much of your argument but I think the question of how common ADHD medications affect people without ADHD is fairly inconclusive, see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591814/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3489818/ for examples that show some effects (and not others) and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6165228/ that does not (but with a small study size).
What an interesting quote!
I will have to check out some of the works of those other authors in the future, to examine the idea sets they propose, and then (after having read them thoroughly!) possibly add some of the better/more interesting ideas they propose -- to my "chock-full-o'-everything philosophical idea corpus in my mind" <g> (For lack of a better term!)
Anyway, a very interesting quote -- worthy of future study!
Bladerunner (the director's cut anyway) was a great film, still among my top favorites. It added much-needed clarity to some of Phil's best cud-chewings. Without the film, I think he'd have remained relatively unknown. Other authors, before and since him, I may turn back to for another read - because they offer me more than more confusion.
Dick used to write letters to the FBI in the 1970s urging them to investigate fellow science fiction writers like Thomas Disch or professors like Fredrick Jameson. He was a participant in (delusionaly?) ratting people out to the secret police. I'll leave it to others to forecast a dystopia, he seems to forecast a dystopia he is trying to build.
It would be more adequate to say that PKD focused on spiritual and religious subjects, particularly the nature of reality and how the "little creatures" suffer and struggle to survive. This isn't a mode of futurology. PKD struggled with the symptoms of diagnosed schizophrenia and his work powerfully reflects that personal struggle. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is about a spiritual dystopia that doesn't center the replicants at all - that theme of "our idea of the human" comes rather from Ridley Scott.
Then comes the political pivot near the end of this blog post. PKD didn't predict COVID-19 or even try. It's spectacularly unclear that he was trying to warn us about the "danger" of qualified scientists telling us that it would be helpful to get vaccinated and wear masks to reduce the death and disability caused by a lethal pandemic. COVID-19 has killed over a million people in the US alone - hundreds of 9/11s worth. This isn't a conspiracy to control you with technology. To quote a certain wise wizard, "I am not trying to rob you. I'm trying to help you."
A far better example, which actually involves surveillance rather than unrelated masking and distancing measures, would be politicians and wealthy businesspeople pushing invasive CSAM detection systems into consumer devices "for the good of the children" while schmoozing with Jeffrey Epstein.
Typical faff from Unherd; a long article full of information better explained elsewhere followed by a poorly veiled gesture towards their existing agenda.
China can't even stop it. It's not possible.
That IS dystopian.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/par...
[0] https://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-backdoored-and-stole-keys/
We aren't. 95% of people are.
In case that wasn't clear enough, PKD wasn't talking about what you're talking about.
There is a great talk by him from about '77 where he outlines the basic idea that we are living in a simulation that became the basis for the plot of The Matrix movies, and the logic is pretty classic psychological disassociation and paranoia you get from using drugs over time. Not to diminish his huge contributions, but there's stuff that's right on the edge. One of the beautiful elements of the "Mr. Robot" series is that this underlying question is also a major plot point. You can see him in the video here (sorry, the better versions seem to haven scrubbed) https://youtu.be/_U6lgSbPj8Q?t=47 , and he's got the kind of blunted affect that is typically associated with decline. His book "Exegesis," which were the letters he was writing to people at the time are consistent with indications something was going wrong as well. When I was just learning synths and a new sampler over the pandemic, I produced a track from a live session with samples from the speech, albeit they were in reference to the "Computer Controlled" logo on the 303 bass synth I used in it: https://soundcloud.com/n-gram-music/exegesis , but I sampled just the best parts.
This is to say, neither PKD nor hackers concerned about surveillance dystopia today may have a reliable picture, as paranoia can be really enveloping. That said, of course that's what They would say - you can see how this becomes an inescapable spiral. Paranoia is the iterated logic of an idea and unless you uproot the foudational one, by virtue of perfectly reasonable and consistent logic, it's going to creep back.
In fact it seems even more apropos of the dual identity of both subject and narc that the article discusses. Traditional government surveillance makes most of us solely subjects with little role in the enforcement process. But in a world where mob justice applies social sanctions, we're all simultaneously judges and candidates to become defendants, able to be condemned by our own words. Encryption is irrelevant when those words are intended for public consumption.
Black Mirror did an episode on what it would look like if your social reputation were reified into concrete societal privileges. That kind of ad absurdum exploration makes the surveillance state of social networks much easier to recognize.
I have lost count of the times people used encryption and either it was broken or subverted in some way, an example being the FBI creating its own encryption app as a major honeypot. Encryption apps, chat programs , protocols, etc. have a recurring tendency to be broken or have leaks.