Assorted thoughts on presence and reality
September Ramblings...
Why is physical presence valuable in an age defined by video conferencing and instant messaging? People commonly say that there’s something “different” about IRL communication, in that conversational and emotional queues are more easily picked up when you can see someone properly. Then there is also the fact that there are some things or experiences that cannot be shared when you are not in person.
I was originally drawn to this question after attending some scientific conferences. Why collect thousands of scientists in a room when they could just zoom conference each other, read each other’s arXiv papers (or the GPT-4 summaries thereof). So many thousands of hours of valuable time, millions of dollars, and untold tonnes of CO2 emitted in the organisation of, travel to, and and for what? The average connection strength within an academic community isn’t particularly strong and certainly not something that requires extremely strong bonding.
We can also ask the question with other forms of huaman organisation — companies, universities, and schools. The information can be conveyed in exactly the same way through online lectures, even including built-in timetables or monitoring software to ensure attendance.
I think the answer to the puzzle lies in something different to the aforementioned “technical” aspects of presence, in something more mundane. The state of being with someone face-to-face is something that can’t be replicated online. The mere fact that you are there is something self-evident which demands the other person’s attention in a way in which no amount of rational calculation or timetabling can replicate.
Viewed from the perspective of the digital nomad or “post-presence man”, choosing to gather with other people is a shockingly large commitment. Why sacrifice your internet-given freedoms to have to be in a fixed location tied to your engagements, committing to the untold horrors of tolerating a subpar coffee or to the need to find a toilet in an unfamiliar public place, when you could do it all from the comfort of your secluded resort with a view (or big-city shoebox bedroom, whichever applies).
In this sense I guess the undeniability of physical presence represents a forcing function — in a digital environment, you are free to disengage at any time. You could end the call, exit the chat, or even block someone. Physical presence doesn't afford such easy escapes. You're required to engage with spontenaity and manage conflicts or disagreements in real-time.
This undeniability is valuable. As it is thorough the sort of forced-randomness that new connections can be forged which wouldn’t have otherwise been. If a conference were held online, the most reputable and busy scientists would log in to the session and sign out as soon as it was done, leaving no time for them to network with random new grad students who could potentially do great work in future. Or if universities were run online, students would be less likely to meet other peers who they never would have without chance encounters in the classroom, and their professors would avoid most contact with them in favour of whatever work was more urgent. Meeting in a place provides a nucleation point for these sorts of interactions which would feel silly to schedule and are hence otherwise impossible. To while away time is to spend a while together, and in this way connections strengthened in ways only possible through pointless time spent with others.
The physical presence of books has a similar effect on my relationship with them. A shelf is a conference of books, each a brick of obligation. Absent an embodiment, a book is yet another abstract piece of content which I will read “someday”, with the time consumed reading each character considered with careful cost-benefit against everything else I could be doing right now. Buying a book is a commitment of a more intangible sort, and once started not finishing a book is a kind of failure1. Being face-to-face with a book forces you to connect in a similar way you do with people.
A related place where I feel similarly confronted by the self-evidence of spontaneous reality is paradoxically in fiction, and particularly in autofiction, the fictionalised autobiography. I recently read Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle series. In it the boundary between reality and fiction is intentionally blurred. Knausgård narrates in exhaustive detail, an intimacy that cannot be denied by the reader, much like an unavoidable conversation in physical presence. Yet his intimate exploration of reality is labelled as ‘fiction’, allowing Knausgård to navigate his experiences with a freedom not often afforded in pure memoir. Safely housed within the realm of fiction, Knausgård’s book is much harder to attack than a self-consciously “true” memoir or autobiography. Yet in the verisimilitude inherent to a fictionalised autobiography are the nuggets of truth which while particular to the situation provide insight well beyond their original contexts.
With most forms of non-fiction, everything can be picked away at — claims are fact-tested, bias is assessed, and in science replicability is at least desirable if not enforced. The standard in fiction is different — originality is prized above all. The more out there the better and nothing is factual and thus it is unfalsifiable (perhaps unlike this blog post :). This is why it’s often a more effective and broader means of expression of personal perspectives. When what you saying is biased against being “wrong”, it may be less true to you.
The assumed self-evidence of claims made in fiction are valuable in a simialar way to random interactions at conferences, universities, schools, or workplaces. Whether it be situations in fiction or other people at conferences being laid out in front of you, there is a requirement to engage in the material that is not there when operating in the purely rationalist mode of reading scientific literature or making cost-benefit decisions in your email.
For various roommate related reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of debate and how it is incented recently. In the enlightenment, famous philosophers2 would make a lot of completely random claims in their supposedly factual philosophical treases. Their statements were explicitly not grounded in evidence, as we require today, but rather they were provocations intended to stir things up. While a lot of what was said was wrong or even problematic, I would argue that what they were writing was still valuable insofar as they were able to spark dialogue and generate new ways of thinking.
Knowledge is not always about concrete facts or verifiable data. Sometimes, it's about engaging with ideas, challenging our preconceptions, and forging new connections, both intellectual and personal. Just as Kant’s declarations brought philosophers out of their proverbial armchairs and into fervent discussion, so does physical presence pull us from the safety of our digital bubbles and into the unpredictable and richly textured world of in-person interaction.
Similarly, while non-fiction places the burden of truth and verifiability upon its shoulders, fiction – and especially the blurred lines of autofiction – gives us the freedom to engage with ideas in their raw, untested form. They may not always be 'correct', but they are undeniably real in their impact and resonance. In a world increasingly mediated by cost-benefit analyses, where our interactions are curated to the nth degree, stochasticity in our interactions becomes ever more precious. As we continue to advance in our technological age, we shouldn’t forget the irreplaceable value of the tangible, the unpredictable, and the undeniably real. It is in these moments, unscripted and unfiltered, that we learn and connect.
though I don’t have the ability to keep up a rule where I have to finish every book I start. Sorry, Ulysses.
Kant was the guy inspiring this phrase but it is esentially true across all of this kind of work. As my friend says, “There is nobody as confident as a 18th centruy philosopher from Europe. Just general sweeping statements about the world.” Truly the Twitter of their time.