Field Note #124. On "The Parasite + The Asymmetric Operator"

Source: Cary Wolfe, "Bring the Noise: The Parasite and the Multiple Genealogies of Posthumanism," introduction to Michel Serres, The Parasite (trans. L. Schehr) (1982, English), pp. xi-xxviii.

The Status Quo.

Investors in novel, emergent domains--exemplified by web3, crypto, ai/ml--persistently seek anti-novel investment managers and models.  The mismatch is obvious yet endlessly repeated.  

Understandably in many cases, but undesirably in nearly all.

The new fund launch is a reboot of the old.  I myself have done this; once at "substantial" scale.  So, perhaps I can speak the critique, as a critique of an old self.

And, perhaps continued poor returns and outright implosions--confrontations with risk of ruin (see any number of Notes in archive on this topic) function as the productive noise for a different tune.

The question to present here, decisively excerpted in Cary Wolfe's introduction to Serres, The Parasite, and re-appropriated by me here now:

"'Can we rewrite a system,' Serres asks, 'not in the key of preestablished harmony,' but rather as 'the book of differences, noise, and disorder'?  After all, 'the difference is part of the thing itself, and perhaps it even produces the thing. Maybe the radical origin of things is really that difference.'"
(p. xiv)

The Invitation.

The solution space exploration begins with an attempt toward changing the status quo (investing) paradigm (see Field Note #123. On "Leverage Points + Edge").

Here, my concern or field of choice is the investing one.  And, I may likely not be thinking big enough and find myself encased in a nesting paradigm that reveals itself as only marginal.

But, I cannot help but try.

Again, one probed into my resume background the other day, visibly perplexed by the contrast between deep philosophical investigations one the one hand, and "high gloss" institutional investor on the other.

But, I'm confused by the opposite.

How can you operate in the emergent domains noted above--whether investor or not by designation--without first embracing (instead of disavowing or ceding to social snacking media formats and attention hijackers) philosophical inquiry?

A Call.

If anyone "out there" digs this Note (in medias res) and is questioning whether to reach out or not, please do it!  

"'The observer always makes less noise than the observed.
He is thus unobservable by the observed.  That is why he
troubles and is never troubled, that is why he is an asymmetric operator....'" (qtd. Serres, p. xxiv)

As a guitar aficionado, I appreciate playing "out of key."

The Details.

The Note here is presented in a less linear and significantly higher-yield format.

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