Sam Kriss. This essay starts well but seriously veers off into the weeds when he engages Yonatan Zunger’s argument. Rather than representing a class position I’d simply say that some people tend to arrange things they see within a “systems” framework. This doesn’t necessarily lead to conspiratorial thinking, if anything it could lead to just the opposite.
Systems thinking is certainly a common feature of computer programmers and scientists but its a personality type not a class. It’s also perfectly appropriate starting point for a materialist analysis of the world. There’s nothing about seeing the world as a trade off between conflicting interests that is incompatible with a systems way of thinking, for example.
That said, Silicon Valley and the arrogance of its new class of tech billionaires is a worthy target for derision. Just lay off working programmers.
Never Stop Posting 
Non-technologists like Kriss who mock ‘systems’ thinking also, almost invariably, create straw men — they focus on the mechanical precision of classic algorithms and assert how these are likely inadequate for modeling the real and messy world.
Of course, this is a very limited and partial characterization of systems thinking, which is a way of discussing dynamic processes: often fuzzy, always complex, sometimes literally organic, and frequently best expressed and worked with in terms of (for example) networks of probabilities from which a (formal) infinity of narratives can be extracted for comparison.
In this case, I thought Zunger fairly clearly implied, the narrative result-set includes the: “… Or, they could all just be inept and improvising like maniacs” option. But he also (in a subsequent piece) made the point that this should not reassure us — that bumblers are fully capable of bringing off an insurgency, that insurgency (at some level) always requires bumbling, experimentation, wild gambles, unplanned and impulsive action. And that ‘playing like a maniac with deep pockets,’ which is what these folks are doing, is a way of winning at Poker, and in fact, a way of beating even truly great players.
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Indeed a wealthy bumbler can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
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Taking a quick look around… what’s this guys’ schtick? Throwing stones at whoever trends the digital consciousness?
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Related…
extranewsfeed.com – When Villains Aren’t Super
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Sam Kriss is an excellent writer and I generally agree with him. His main target is liberalism of the bloodless sort that thinks everything can be sorted out by an apolitical meritocracy (ie high Clintonism). He’s not alone in being suspicious of Silicon Valley types but I think he picked on the wrong guy when it comes to Zunger who is a helluva lot more widely read and thoughtful than his Googler position might imply.
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I’ll just note in passing Yonatan Zunger your article was being discussed today on Melbourne drive-time radio station.
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No, it doesn’t start off well. It’s dismissal of kreminology is blatant bullshit.
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Paul Hosking: It’s a time-honoured clickwanking tradition.
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