Jack Black

Just arrived! "The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racialization", available to pre-order now in the @routledgebooks Black Friday Sale... routledge.com/The-Psychosis-… | #PsychosisofRace

Alright, this begins our new series on Quantum Physics in the work of Slavoj Žižek & we're taking a look at some of the work leading up to Žižek’s Quantum History. LISTEN HERE: tinyurl.com/squashedbirds

In this one we have @JutlandGhost to talk with longtime friend of the show TODD MCGOWAN⁠ about his book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan. This is a book a lot of us have wanted for a long time! PART ONE: tinyurl.com/cambridgetodd PART TWO: tinyurl.com/cambridgetodd2 ⁠

As usual, I wrote about @GamesDoneQuick for the first newsletter of the year. Bringing some Lacanian analysis (cc: @jackstblack) to @dylcat_'s JSR run (which was amazing) and thinking about design and design for speedrunning. paradoxnewsletter.com/p/issue-413-st…

'a true materialism joyously assumes the "disappearance of matter," the fact that there is only void.' #Zizek

Here's good friend of the show & one half of the Why Theory Podcast w/ Todd McGowan, RYAN ENGLEY! We're talking canned laughter, the history of television, the aesthetics of television, memory, & forgetting! PART ONE: tinyurl.com/whytvryan PART TWO: tinyurl.com/whytvryan2

Back w/ @jackstblack whose latest book is ⁠The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism & Racialization ⁠& we’re talking through Žižek’s new book ⁠Against Progress⁠. LISTEN HERE: tinyurl.com/againstprogress

PSYCHOSIS OF RACE w/ @jackstblack youtu.be/5zDVLtIGQIU

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@gerardsans @APsyCulSoc @assoc4psychosoc I agree. At no point does my research on AI ever suggest that it is a 'psyche trying to fill a lack'.

Bold Lacanian read on AI hallucination, but the analogy leans on heavy anthropomorphic baggage. All LLM outputs start the same: every token is just next token prediction. A continuation becomes a hallucination only when a human adds real world context the model never had. There is no psyche trying to fill a lack. Personality in LLMs is RLHF rewarding fluency, not truth. Apparent traits are prompt shaped data artefacts as in Han et al 2025 arXiv:2509.03730. Self reported Big Five maps to behaviour in about 24 percent of cases. This is a stochastic funnel, not a barred subject. The confidence in hallucinations is not Lacanian jouissance. It is the Eliza effect. We project coherence and intention, then blame the model for a mismatch created by our own projection. Keep the poetic mirror, but mark where it stops explaining and starts flattering our desire to see a mind in a transformer. Great paper, but it needs a reminder to flag every anthropomorphic move with the actual technical context. Call out when you are interpreting output after the fact, not describing how it was produced, and avoid projecting human traits that do not exist. Follow for more insights or subscribe to receive updates in your inbox: ai-cosmos.hashnode.dev/the-attention-…

Looking forward to presenting my paper, “Paranoia, Perversion, and the Subject of Desire: A Lacanian Exploration of AI Chatbots”, at the @APsyCulSoc and @assoc4psychosoc conference

A Hole That Does Not Speak: Covid, Catastrophe and the Impossible JACK BLACK philosophy-world-democracy.org/articles-1/a-h… @jackstblack

Wait a minute… sport and politics don’t mix?

“This is your peace prize. It is also a beautiful medal that you can wear everywhere you want to go.”

@__elf__angel___ @katherineveritt philarchive.org/rec/BLAAFO-2

@jackstblack @katherineveritt can i read the entire paper somewhere?

‘Her’ is an entirely new film in 2025. While in 2013 I saw the AI as an independent & disembodied being, the rewatch led me to view the AI as just a narcissistic projection of Phoenix’s desires. Truly sobering that so many ppl are living in this exact *psychotic* state today. 😮‍💨

@katherineveritt Same… I’ll be rewatching it now!

@jackstblack Yes the AI helps stage the fantasy, a sort of repetition in the breakup (for Spike Jonze as I understand it, it is primarily a breakup movie). Appreciate this, Jack! ☺️

@Ame0baRepublic @katherineveritt I agree… but I don’t think he desires to leave his wife

@jackstblack @katherineveritt No, I think they meant more that because the AI is not sentient, it *cannot* be anything other than his desires. Rather than facing that reality, the same narcissism that drives the projection drives people to self-fulfilling prophecies (i.e. everybody leaves me) anyway

@katherineveritt Because I don’t think he desires to get over his ex. I think he has to realise the loss of his desire (i.e., lack). I think it’s right that *the issue* is the personification of Samantha (also, as a total subject supposed to know)

@jackstblack What if the AI abandonment is part of Phoenix’s desire, a mode through which to get over his ex? I totally get that the AI leaves of its accord in the film, but what if this too were a projection? It’s one way to read it w/o personifying the computer 🤔

Online First: Jack Black and Jacob Johanssen, 'The Subject of AI: A Psychoanalytic Intervention' - explores psychoanalytic perspectives, particularly Lacanian theory, on artificial intelligence, with a focus on chatbots, such as, ChatGPT. (Open Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02…

Finally! Getting stuck in… #Zizek

New as Online First in Theory, Culture & Society: Jack Black and Jacob Johanssen, 'The Subject of AI: A Psychoanalytic Intervention' - explores psychoanalytic perspectives on artificial intelligence, with a focus on chatbots like ChatGPT. (Open Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02…