Kahneman, Ellul & "Technocratic Psychology"
Deconstructing the Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist's celebrated work, "Thinking Fast & Slow" with the help of philosopher Jacques Ellul and psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer.
Author’s note: I tip my hat to njgloyp4r of the American Book Club for his series (hosted on X) analyzing Kahneman’s book, “Thinking Fast & Slow”. Those broadcasts partially inspired this essay.
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Technocracy and its discontents
The question concerning technology, as Martin Heidegger so long ago termed it, puzzles us still to this day. Not because we suffer from a lack of answers, mind you, for many thinkers and theoreticians have answered that call (some more constructively than others). No, the problem is far more troublesome than that. Qua Heidegger, we no longer ask what technology is, what it may reveal, or how (or if) it relates to truth, rather, we wonder instead how it may bring about our salvation.
The skepticism of the 20th century has waned, and in its stead, the sycophancy of the 21st. At our wits end with the limitations of mankind and its troublesome psyche (or soul), we have come to regard technology as a panacea capable of rescuing us from this impasse. As a result, we have become entirely dependent on what Jacques Ellul called “technique” and its medium, what I am calling “technical logic” (the meaning of which shall be elaborated by the end of this essay). But matters are worse still, for even in resisting the awful reign of technocracy we find ourselves nevertheless bound by fidelity to the awesome might of technique and thus unable to approach the challenge rationally.
Perhaps it seems odd to have suggested that we are currently being irrational with regards to technology, for after all, isn’t technology (and those social forces which bring it about) the epitome of human rationale? Aren’t the technologists themselves the most rational among us? My answer is no, judging by the “normative” standard technocrats declare for themselves (the meaning of which we shall also explore). It becomes clear, then, that the notion of rationality itself must be highly qualified if we are to continue this investigation. By the end of this essay – aided by this notion of “technical logic” – I will have achieved as much.
Our circumstances being such as they are, we remain trapped in the vice-like grip of an awful paranoia, unable to either extricate ourselves or improve our position. Though many fear the looming technological apocalypse (whether expressed in terms of artificial intelligence, automated labor, gene editing, etc.) and the consequences it will have for the economy, the labor force, and the population size, the technocratic class themselves pay this anxiety no mind – choosing instead to antagonize the population for their inadaptability and surplus-ness. (Yuval Noah Harari put it blithely when asked what will be done about the mass of people displaced by automation and artificial intelligence: “drugs and computer games.”) This circumstance has gone largely unchanged for decades, and now, we find ourselves forced – with little alternative – but to accept the future designed for us. Aided by a proper understanding, however, we may just find a way out yet.
Despite describing technocrats as belonging to a “class” I do not encourage any Marxist pretenses; I do intend, however, a distinction between the peoples who comprise the technocracy and those they rule over for the former are, in fact, distinct. This distinction, as will become clearer over the course of the discussion, is primarily biological and metaphysical (rather than economistic or ideological). The final goal of this essay will be to analyze these metaphysical and biological differences, and ultimately, to devise a portrait or profile of the technocrat himself.
From the point of view of the technocrat, most human life is simply not worth consideration. Not even the best humans can offer is good enough for the technocrat, as it is the very definition of “human” which requires changing if we are to facilitate the next stage in the development of the technological society. According to the technocrat, humanity is our problem while technology is the solution. Technocrats therefore place themselves ‘on the side of’ technology, as midwives to a birthing of the tech-revolution. They are a kind of collaborator class, effectively, traitors to Man while dutiful allies of “technique”. We will, over the course of this work, come to a psychological understanding of this rivalry using Jungian archetypal thought.
Today’s technicians are yesterday’s magicians, as Ellul observed, and while the modes of social and political organization productive of technocracy have grown more complex since the times of tribal magic, the underlying psychology has not. In at least one crucial way, it has in fact regressed (but I’ll save that for the end).
While our discussion is indeed a philosophical one, I do not intend to prosecute the matter abstractly (at least, not entirely so). To that end, I would like to frame the subject within the context of a long running debate occurring in the cognitive sciences (stretching back some thirty or more years) between the German Gerd Gigerenzer and the Israeli Daniel Kahneman. Gerd Gigerenzer and Daniel Kahneman both spent their careers studying uncertainty and decision-making (e.g., human cognition), contributing to what has come to be known as the “probabilistic revolution” within psychology. And while their findings have intersected nearly as often as they have run afoul of one another, the pair made for a heated academic rivalry (one which I intend to use toward our own ends here). The exact relationship between
their rivalry, and
the nature of Ellulian technique
will be detailed once I have provided both a summary of their individual views as scientists as well as the content of their disagreement.
The exact nature of the disagreement will be elucidated in the following section, though I can at least draw the battle-lines now. For our purposes here, Gigerenzer’s work will be used to support the folk psychology of what he calls “human logic” in contrast with the technocratic psychology of Kahneman’s “technical logic” (again, my own language). It is still necessary to disentangle the desirable results of technological innovation from the deterritorializing aspects of “technique” itself to better fortify a political resistance against the technocratic class. Thus, Gigerenzer’s critique of Kahneman will help lead our investigation as well as guide us towards a psychology of the 21st century technocrat.
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