This episode unpacks a key sentence from Nick Land's "Meltdown": "As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics, modernizes, upgrades, paranoia, and tries to get a grip." What does it mean for markets to "manufacture intelligence"? It's not merely a figure of speech. Drawing on Hayek and Mises, the discussion highlights how markets function as literal intelligence-generating systems. The surprising efficiency of early stock markets, like the Dutch East India Company's, serves as a stark illustration of market mechanisms creating new forms of social awareness.

The conversation then considers politics's reaction to this ascendant market intelligence. Land's sentence suggests that much of political modernism, along with its heightened paranoia, is an attempt to cope with or "get a grip" on forces it cannot fully direct. This frames political history as a continuous, often failing, effort to assert control over the intelligence emerging from market processes, from Soviet collectivization to the "paranoid style" in American politics.

These ideas find a striking parallel in today's discussions about Artificial Intelligence. As AI accelerates the creation of intelligence, familiar calls for control and "safety" emerge. Referencing Land's "Machinic Desire," the episode touches upon "Politically Organized Defensive Systems" (Pods) and their core rule: "the outside must pass by way of the inside." This offers a lens on current debates around AI governance and the push to centralize oversight of a rapidly escalating new intelligence.

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