Contribution
It gives the CCRU’s term a quotable definition, in Land’s words, put for a reader outside the collective: Carstens asks for it “in language that normal academics (such as my supervisor!) can understand”. It adds no argument and no evidence. What it adds is the definition, three examples, and the statement that the conditions under which the loop works are unknown.
Key insight
A hyperstition is a belief whose circulation is part of the cause of its coming true. Land sets it against superstition: “Superstitions are merely false beliefs, but hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality.” The difference is in the causal role of the belief, not in its truth at the time it is held. Land says plainly that it can start false: hyperstition can, in “favorable” circumstances, “transmute lies into truths”.
Assumptions
- A loop through culture. The definition needs a channel from the idea to the world. Land names two: investment, in markets and in cyberspace (“confidence acts as an effective tonic, and inversely”), and cultural and political investment, as in Jerusalem’s case.
- Sensitivity of the object to its postulation. “a nonlinear complication of epistemology, based upon the sensitivity of the object to its postulation”. He says this is not social construction: “The hyperstitional object is no mere figment of ‘social constuction’, but it is in a very real way ‘conjured’ into being by the approach taken to it.”
- No stated conditions. The circumstances in which the loop runs are “‘favorable’ circumstances whose exact nature requires further investigation”. Nothing in the interview narrows them.
Key results
There are no results. The definitional answer (R3) holds four claims:
- Definition. “Hyperstition is a positive feedback circuit including culture as a component. It can be defined as the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies.”
- Two directions. Confidence in capitalist economics works “as an effective tonic, and inversely”: the loop can run down as well as up.
- Examples. “The (fictional) idea of Cyberspace contributed to the influx of investment that rapidly converted it into a technosocial reality.” Abrahamic monotheism, by treating Jerusalem as a holy city with a special destiny, “has ensured the cultural and political investment that makes this assertion into a truth.”
- From false to true. “Hyperstition is thus able, under ‘favorable’ circumstances whose exact nature requires further investigation, to transmute lies into truths.”
The other answers are of another kind. R1 says what apocalypse reveals is “an alien order of time”, shown in “coincidences” and in a “cabbalistic pattern occulted in ordinary languages”. R4+5 takes the line from Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, “I thought I was making it up, but all the time they were telling me what to write”, as hyperstition “at an extraordinary pitch”, with human intelligences as “mere incubators” for the Old Ones. R7 says capitalism “incarnates hyperstitional dynamics at an unprecedented and unsurpassable level of intensity”. R8 puts hyperstition “equipoised between fiction and technology”.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Hyperstition is a positive feedback circuit in which an idea’s circulation helps bring about what it says | definitional | R3 |
| C2 | The fictional idea of cyberspace drew the investment that made it real | weak | asserted, one sentence, no evidence |
| C3 | Treating Jerusalem as a holy city produced the investment that makes its destiny true | weak | asserted |
| C4 | Under favourable conditions, which are not known, hyperstition can turn lies into truths | weak | asserted, with its conditions left open |
| C5 | Capitalism runs hyperstitional dynamics at an unsurpassable intensity | weak | asserted |
Concepts
- Hyperstition: as C1. Set against superstition, a “merely false” belief with no causal role.
- Hyperstitional object: an object sensitive to its postulation, not dissolved into “cognitive or semiotic structures” and still “conjured” by the approach taken to it.
- Theory-fiction is not used in the interview; R8’s “equipoised between fiction and technology” is the nearest it comes. The LIT’s keyword is from outside the text.
Connections
Land gives the term as “the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies”, so Merton’s paper (LIT-1398, Unavailable) is its acknowledged ancestor in substance, though the interview never names Merton. Soros’s reflexivity (LIT-1397, NOTE-1362) states the same loop as a two-way feedback between “the participants’ views and the actual course of events”, with its negative direction given equal place, and as a limit on social science rather than a programme. MacKenzie’s performativity (LIT-1395, Unavailable) is the empirical treatment for markets. Land’s “confidence acts as an effective tonic, and inversely” is the one place the interview admits a loop that can run against the idea.
Bearing on the record
- LIT-1396’s own body says the wrong thing about Merton. It says Merton’s prophecy “begins as a false definition of a present situation”, whereas a hyperstition “is typically a fiction or a forecast, never false in that sense, only not yet true”. The interview does not say that, and its Jerusalem example and its last sentence say the reverse: a hyperstition can begin as a lie (“transmute lies into truths”) and make “this assertion into a truth”. The LIT’s distinction should be withdrawn or kept as the record’s, not Land’s. The second difference the LIT draws, that the mechanism is circulation, the interview supports: “by their very existence as ideas”.
- CLAIM-426 cites Land’s definition, and the definition is as quoted. The interview gives no condition under which the loop runs, so it supports the claim’s premise, that some judgements’ circulation helps make them true, but gives nothing for telling such judgements apart from others. That is the part of CLAIM-426 that bears weight.
- CLAIM-425’s rule (authority from grounds, not visibility) and the “inversely” of R3 together say a judgement’s visibility can make what it says less likely too, which CLAIM-426’s title allows for only as “what it will bring about”.
No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- An interview, not an essay, by the term’s leading user, for a student’s thesis. No sources, no cases worked through.
- The conditions are left open by its author.
- The provenance is the archive’s: dated 2009, place of first appearance not given.
- Slips. “‘social constuction’” is misspelled on the page. Q6’s “particularly in relation to the apocalypse meme, which is not at all” is garbled as printed.
Open questions
- Under what conditions does an idea’s circulation make it more likely, and under what conditions less? Land leaves this open, and it is what CLAIM-426 would need.