rune. n. Any of the characters in several alphabets used by ancient Germanic peoples from the 3rd to the 13th century; A similar character in another alphabet, sometimes believed to have magic powers.
When I was younger I used to be into collecting little things. Like collecting all the teenage mutant ninja turtle figures or Spawn comic books. I would set them them in a matrix on the floor and just enjoy their coherent splendor.
I LOVE that feeling you get when you see the essential sub-elements of a group deconstructed. Instead of collecting toys now, I want to collect important, related concepts. I want to arrange them into a matrix, to turn them into a team of Gods to be worshipped.
This is where runes come in...
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There are three levels of symbols I want to talk about... characters, brands, and then runes.
Characters, like A and ! are symbols that mediate communication between humans.
Religious symbols and corporate logos are designed to mediate communication from an abstract superstructure, as opposed to a human. If you sit and focus on the Christian Cross or the McDonalds Golden Arch, for example you will feel it speaking to you. It will broadcast its collective history, identity, message etc. Groups of people imbue these symbols with enough energy to gain a life of its own that will outlive its creators.
Sometimes these symbols receive so much attention that they become a substitute for a substantive effect on a person. This is the point when the symbols become runes. This happened, and still happens, with the Christian cross, and is part of the motivation for the Protestant relgions that reject symbolic displays of Christ.
Anyways, the point of this is that I would like to propose the imbuing of modern constructs into runes. For example, I would like to take the list of neurotransmitters (dopamine, dramamine, GABA, serotonin) and design special characters that correlate to their resulting effects. Like dopamine should get a D with some jagged edges to signify its behaviour in creating anxiety. Or we could design the symbol to also include its chemical diagram. We could then create a history of it, drugs related to it, and scenarios of the behavior it produces.
Why would I want to do this?
First, recognize that these neurotransmitters are essential to the way we view the world emotionally and cognitively. The quantities of each neurotransmitter in your body determine what kinds of thoughts will occur in our head and therefore the actions we take. We should be aware of what these elements are and we should respect them. Creating these symbols will create an awareness for them.
Second, these neurotransmitter runes would create a good mnemonic.
Third, the aesthetic benefits of rune-ifying neurotransmitters would be great. Seeing each of these previously hermit scientific words deified into magical symbols would create a sense of wonderment and awe. Seeing them stand together as a collection would turn them into a holy council that determines our fate.
TRUST ME, IT WOULD BE COOL
There are other phenomena that I would like to create runes for:
I have already, in draft form, created symbols for logical fallacies. Fallacies like ad hominem and ad ignorantam, when repeatedly committed throughout life have sweeping impacts on what you will believe. And so much of what we do depends on our concept of truth, that even a minor error, frequently repeated, will lead to a major bias in life.
One could make runes for all sorts of things, like Internet protocols or Maslow's Ladder.
This idea of deifying constructs that are hidden kernels for our lives would be a major awakening of their importance.
When you get sick, you shouldn't mind it, nor should you seek to cut it short because the sickness makes you stronger, right?
"That which makes does not kill you only maks you stronger"
Is that true?
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Any sort of resistance or pain that you experience can be interpreted as a strength-building exercise or as damage. Actually, exercise is just short-term damage in exchange for long-term recovery and then subsequent enhancement.
In my case, sometimes I'm tired and don't want to do my homework. However, sometimes I get a voice telling me that it's better to do it now when I'm tired, so that I'm stronger because of it. At the same time, I feel that I'm being overly ambitious and that I should just wait till I'm rested before getting to it.
Because in the short-run, doing my homework when I'm tired is annoying and contributes to my unhappiness. In the long-run, I am more accustomed to doing homework while tired.
I guess the same with sickness right? Erng, wrong, sorta. If I'm sick, and recover, then my body will be more accustomed for handling sickness. If I lengthen the time it takes to recover, then my body should be more accustomed for handling longer periods of sickness. Perhaps, but simultaneously, I would've damaged myself perhaps, making me more suspectible to sickness. To confuse things more, by shorting the sickness duration, you practice shortening sickness.
Like when raising kids, you don't want to completely shelter them from sickness because illness at an early age helps inspire the generation of the immune system. However, if they get so poorly ill when they're young, they could have permanent damage or it could discourage them emotionally.
Yeah, it's a bloody mixed bag, and it's hard to weigh these things out... there are positives from both sides of the situation. I guess the distinction is actually better as exercise v. destruction. You don't want destruction. But sometimes you do. "creative destruction."
I guess you have to do things on a case-by-case basis and see whether something is worth it. if it's too complicated, use your intuition.
Today we live by proxy. Our experience of the world is mediated by a gallimaufry of electronic foils, digitizing the real world to be transmitted through our two square meters-sized, biological receiver (the human body has a surface area of roughly two square meters). The network of channels that deliver information to this receiver, have become a celestial-sized capillary network. Word-of-mouth remains surprisingly non-deafening, though, for the highest-resolution scan of an event, this boulder of data that is a perfect copy of the actual event, has been grinded down to its grain-of-sand parcels. We get the discrete packets of information, which while smaller, are presented in towering quantity. Viewers can point-and-click instantaneously in order to get needle-thin super-summaries of "news." It's amazing how well our brain can then stitch up this flood without requiring too many dikes to stanch overflow.
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Despite how alien this ocean of the virtual seems on the surface, our ancient human behaviors have survived. 500 years of modern science has not perturbed greed, envy, avarice, and love. Each of those emotions is like a thin piece of patterned clothing we wear. This clothing drapes this material homo sapien, but masks nothing. Our communication skills provide a source light to project these emotions onto the world and hopefully onto our fellow man. The relative scales of the projected emotional tapestry haven't changed much, but the intensity of the source light, as aided by technology, has supernova'd for every individual. We can decorate this Christmas tree of ourselves with little bits of choices that define who we are. Our musical tastes, our culinary tastes and our aesthetic tastes in the modern world all speak to an inflating inventory for what comprises the identity tabled to this two square meters-sized transponder of ours.
Two square meters, the size of two picnic blankets, wraps up an internal cosmos of identity that yearns to break free and share itself with our fellow man.
If the light bulb homo sapien burns bright now, why hasn't the world blown up into a burning fireball of information overload? Fortunately this property of exploding complexity naturally creates richer and more expansive landscapes for its data to graze. New media magnifies the space where we can lay each of these grains of sand. This technological compensation started with cave paintings which took up full meters of physical space and has evolved into to blogs that require only a micrometer-sized ant-colony of magnets. Is the growth in the body identity compensated by a parallel growth in media to store it?
The modern human story is also about team work. Our natural social hierarchy is that of a pyramid, which like the pyramids of Giza, is an effective method of reaching height.
Teams are just another vehicle for the individual. Teamwork is just another technology, another tool granted to the cyborg homo sapien to make man stand more formidable, and tower far above our modest, evolutionarily fixed, Serengeti-survival requirements.
Modern society is the ultimate in super-teamwork. But if teamwork amplifies the individual, given our current population and technology to brighten our projection, then the world would be over-crowded. But alas, as mentioned above, team-work is a pyramid, and while the bases have increased, there are still relatively few apexes.
Play with the idea that per-tribe, there remains a fixed sum total of relevant players on the stage. In any tribe, there is the popular one, the handsome one, the warrior, the criminal. But while it seems tribes have become obsolete as we "don't even know our neighbors," the tribe has just inflated to encompass the entire world society. And it's easy to see that this per-tribe gossip node count is still fixed, as our magazines recycle the same people with their same biographies. Britney Spears is just replacing Marilyn Monroe in our social consciousness, who was probably replacing Kendall Sharifas who was the town tease in our ancestral tribe. (See Slate for more on this vein) Sure while there are more people to be discussed, the bar has been raised as to what constitutes a fully developed identity. Try discussing Joe Non-celebrity at the tribal pow-wow of the water cooler, and you will find yourself ostracized. Discuss something about Paris Hilton, on the other hand, and you will get willing ears ready to receive and re-transmit your facsimile of an understanding of what is already a golem of an identity.
This identity re-calibration has come into the extreme now as it has become a career. Reality TV shows are an example where one makes money not through any skill or product, but by simply being. The participants' life is put onto the market to be speculated on by remote-control. Some make quite a fortune doing this paid-living, such as Jessica Simpson who is seen by millions eating chocolates and feeding her cats. One could argue that her fame is also a product of her pre-existing career as a pop star. But with the low product-quality standards apparent in pop-music faire, you could say that whatever musical utility her work has done for the ears approximates zero. When you pay $18 for that album of over-processed, over-formularized, adolescent-romance tunes, you are voting with your wallet that yes, this identity Jessica Simpson is worth giving more attention to on the stage. This fanaticism with interactive rating shows like American Idol and TRL further illustrates this democracy of identities.
Blogging expands the competitive space from not just the big players like Anna Nicole Smith (snicker), who still need at least some notable skill (playboy and marrying rich), to Joe Non-celebrity. Anybody can get a free blog set up and start presenting his life. After a while, if he communicates well, he can eventually be popular and obtain a pseudo-celebrity status. While a lot of the big bloggers are still those who have some sort of other field where they deserve attention, such as Cory Doctorow who writes for WIRED magazine and Dave Winer who writes blogging software, there are some bloggers who are pure socialites. People like Ernie from little. yellow. different., Wil Wheaton, and Witold Riedel simply are, and are fed through page-views. (see Technorati's Top 100 and Fairvue's Weblog Awards)
When Google bought Blogger, I thought that Google's successful adWords system would then truly monetize identity. That an individual could then have a career just by being himself, presenting slices of his life to the world, and profiting from selling adspace on his blog. When I first thought this was a novel idea, I was quickly snubbed, as I only had to turn on the TV and see evidence that fame and fortune are already independent of talent.
Skeptics versus early adopters in the abstract.
Skeptics tend to reject alternative hypotheses and stick with the status quo.
Early Adopters are more easily convinced that a fresh idea is superior.
Now some vocabulary ammo to preface the abstraction:
In statistics, there’s a field called hypothesis testing. You take an existing hypothesis, for example, that the world is a sphere (null hypothesis). Then you look at the evidence to see whether the world is actually a hologram (alternative hypothesis). In statistics, you often hold the null to be true until you get a certain amount of data and evidence that causes enough doubt to make you reject the null.
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But the question beneath that is, where do you place the null hypothesis at? You can certainly flip the two sides. Start with the idea that the earth is actually a hologram and look for reason to doubt it by checking evidence that it is actually a sphere.
The assumption that the proctor brings to the table is key in determining a bias about the outcome. So if you’re a skeptic and say, “Come on, you can’t prove that” are you secretly holding onto the idea that the null is true? The discussion usually doesn’t highlight the assumption that’s accepted in the face of weak evidence. In the discussion, once the opponent is discredited, the natural tendency is to accept the guy who delivered the blow.
Statistics has more terminology to account for this:
There are two kinds of errors that can be made in significance testing: (1) a true null hypothesis can be incorrectly rejected and (2) a false null hypothesis can fail to be rejected. The former error is called a Type I error and the latter error is called a Type II error. (HyperStat)
So a Type I error would be an error committed by the early adopter. He rejects whatever is the standard belief quickly.
A Type II error is an error committed by the skeptic. He holds steadfastly to the null, unconvinced by evidence otherwise.
Here’s the mnemonic: The number of the type indicates what is true. Type I error means you error in knowing that the I, the null, is true. Type II error means the II, the alternate, is true, but that you made an error in not seeing it.
People have varying propensities and tolerances for various errors in many fields. So there is no true skeptic and no true early adopter.
But some though, hold a broad bias toward a specific error. My parents are often on opposing sides of the Type I/II divide. One parent takes new things s/he reads in the paper about new technologies and just runs with it. He/she comes rushing to me about this new theory, this new perspective, and is rife with excitement. If I question his/her logic about being so easily convinced, he/she says that it’s better to experiment and be adventurous with ideas. My other parent accepts things often because of tradition. For example, he/she would require tremendous evidence to convince him/her that I should skip going to college. To him/her, staying in school is the null hypothesis. It’s like, “here, this is the default position, now prove yourself out of it!” The burden then goes to the bearer of the alternative hypothesis to go against the grain.
So the issue of import is where does the burden of proof go to? Also of import is how adverse and seeking we are of Type I and Type II errors?
It’s hard to say that one is more risk-taking than others, although generally the Type I error committer would be associated with a risk-taker.
Because I can put forward that there may be more risks bearing Type II errors: stagnation, getting run over, looking old.
// you can obviously tell that I’m somewhat of the Type I person--with good justification though. (remember, mnemonic, Type I means reject the I when it might be right, i.e. reject the establishment). Often I’ve been in a situation where taking the road less traveled gave me great returns.
Anyways, be aware of what kind of errors you seem to be willing to accept. Question why it is that you have this as your bias or model. And make sure that in the face of weak evidence that you don't rush to a sides by pure fiat. Be aware of the consequences of a Type I or a Type II error.
I wonder how effective a matrix listing one's tendencies to commit logical fallacies can be at determining someone’s personality, character, and propensities for certain behavior, and therefore shape their destiny.
Logical fallacies are common failures that humans make when analyzing arguments. Some examples are things like, “comparing apples and oranges” or making a quick leap from correlation to causation. A fairly comprehensive list appears here.
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Assuming that one’s grades on a logical fallacies test were predictive of their nature, then, the other question I have is: how much are our propensities to commit logical fallacies shaped by our experience.
For example, are programmers, who are used to solving deterministic problems and focus attention on cause (code) and effect (binary executable), more inclined to commit causal fallacies. And maybe it’s not necessarily their programming experience that shapes them, but their propensity to be a programmer could be linked to their propensity to see things in a certain way.
Abstract painters, may be more in tune to things like indeterminism, and not see things so black and white.
Celebrities who are badgered to pontificate even if they lack evidence may be habitual fallacy criminals.
Once I’m done understanding that long list of fallacies, I might sit down and grade myself to see, comparatively, which fallacies I’ve been most prone too. Afterwards, I’d then try to draw connections between that and whatever parenting or shaping I’ve had growing up to see if there are parallels.
Genotype: genes
Phenotype: the resulting human
Fine...
What about:
Genotype: psychological activities, thought spaces, meta-cognition..
Phenotype: destiny..
We have a science for the first one, but do we have a science for the second?
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Neither of the genotypical nor phenotypical analysis of mind and destiny have even reached the cataloging stage. Some sample questions that progress here could answer: "What is the relationship between being 'laid back' and financial success" "What is the effect of setting a goal" "What conditions are necessary for someone to set a goal" "How does man manage to survive in the world despite being irrational" "Should we take the advice of succesful artists when they say that the _key_ is to 'pursue your passions'" "What are _keys_ and how do we use them"
If we are adverse to certain choices but can get used to them once we do, isn't there some arbitrariness? What should we do in those cases?
Are there optimal psychological paradigms that will maximize happiness? What mindset is even necessary to desire happiness?
Selfhelp gurus like Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins are like modern-day alchemists in this field since it's so immature. Even listening to the successful is not useful because they most of the time don't have true insight to how they went from A to B.
Unfortunately, a shocking conclusion from this kind of science may be that in the end we truly have much less control over our lives than we think. But even if that is the conclusion, it might offer us some hope on how we can exert more control.
I'm posting this, it's a rough draft, but I may not finish it, so might as well...
screw Sarte and his retroactivism or pessimism that meaning implies suffering
then screw the agnostic writers who say that our search for meaning is the meaning.
and also screw the religionists or the deifiers of the mysterious who are under the stupor that meaning is in things like having a good job.
what if meaning is in choice, sarte had the right idea, but more along the lines of.. indeterminism, breaking the natural laws is meaningful.
if it is inevitable that x occurs, but then you cause y to occur that is meaningful... because your meaning, that is how you obtain purpose, by not fulfilling what woudl happen otherwise, but because you broke it down.
if you naturally want to preserve yourself and leave a hedonists life, but you sacrifice your well-being so that you can take care of your child, that is meaningful... unmeaningful would be to just go completely with the flow, in which case you'd abandon your child perhaps
but if you're already naturally going to take care of your child, then doing so is not particularily meaningful, doing something meaningful then would be to approsach a challenge, if it's difficult for you to teach but you somehow manage to teach your children to be moral, that is meaningful.
meaning involves challenge, but meaningful challenge, and a meaningful challenge is one that breaks a natural tendancy (good or bad)..
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LOW
You've heard "The Medium is the Message", but what does it mean? Read this snip about McLuhan and his seminal book "Understanding Media: Extensions of Man" to get the picture.
MED
I'm attempting to read his book which is a somewhat tricky read, esp. since it was written in 1967... Basically... the "medium is the message" mantra is an attempt to debunk the notion that "technology isn't inherently good or bad, but it is rather how we use it" ... McLuhan thinks otherwise, looking at each technology as another appendage or extension of man's already existing functions... and every extension, to him, implies an amputation of pre-existing methods. If Airplanes made the railway obsolete, and the railway made wagons obsolete, then wagons made carrying stuff on your back from village to village obsolete. The function of personal distribution of goods has been extended by various technologies to eliminate space and time constraints... You can read that link above for more.
HIGH
Read Michael Shanks's discussion on Media eigenvectors as a way of describing media in the abstract, talking about knobs such as redundancy, persistence, temporality, richness, and complexity. Very out-there, yet readable and interesting. Deepness ensues. UPDATE: McLuhan applied to today's tech.
FUN
Or, just watch this film Network.
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I found a huge resource on interesting stories and issues summarized by big thinkers.
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When it comes to business, Steve Jurvetson has continuously been a source for inspiration for me. He's young, thrice graduated from Stanford, blazingly rich, and articulate. But these kind of "golden" guys are a dime a dozen it seems, especially with all the dot-com gazillionaires.... What distinguishes him is how clairvoyant he seems with his understanding about everything... he has smarts in a Buckminster Fuller sense.
His two most recent filmed visits to Stanford, while not telling me things in specific new, summarized and synthesized everything into a coherent vision for the business-technology future. Watch his most recent archived lecture here. Consider it an executive summary for Age of Spiritual Machines. At the very least you'll get high by the speed at which he talks.
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Control your own little artificial gene pool. This app provides you with a digital primordial soup where swimbots compete with each other for food. Manipulate seetings to see how the bots evolve through mating preferences. I just downloaded it and I think it's a briliant concept. (by way of Gavin Nog)
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Why does the future scare you? The most emotional and rabid neo-luddites seem to be lacking in introspection. The most emotional and rabid anybody seem to me the least introspective. The above article is a simple exercise that may unfortunately seem alien to many people who are quick to criticize technology.
On a similar note, I think blogging serves a good purpose by taking what's inside your head and putting it in text, therefore bringing fresh sunlight to your ideas and thereby illuminating it's strengths and weaknesses--how many times have I waxed strongly on my blog, only to later reflect with embarassment at first, and then subsequently with learning and change.
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The Meaning of Life TV is a super-accessible index of short video-clips summarizing these topics:
The anthropic principle
Consciousness
Direction in history
Direction in evolution
Faith and reason
Free will
What is God?
The Godhead
Being good without God
Limits of science
Why meditate?
Mystical experiences
Pantheism
The perennial philosophy
The problem of evil
Quantum weirdness
Religion as panthology
Religion in a global age
Evolution of religion
Science and religion
and Self-transcendence.
Pretty much all the modern philosophical problems I'm interested in.
It's like watching The Waking Life in more detail.
(by way of slumberfogey)
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Proponents of determinism think that those who believe in free will are optimistically naive. Proponents of free will think that determinists are grumpy and haven't "found" free will. Those who haven't chosen a side think that the people on both ends of the spectrum are arrogant, while as free willers and determists think that the fence-sitters have no courage.
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I think emotional intelligence means being the master of cause and effect.
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Anything human that is abstracted enough eventually becomes neutral. i.e. stop thinking too much
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Blog-friend Strange Loops writes.. Simply put, looking back on my life and my behavior patterns, I find very little independent thought, indeed very little thought at all. More often I coast from one authority to the next (based on whatever I think makes a reliable authority - once it was teachers, later news, more recently the internet, and of course all along books), and my little ejaculations of thought (say in expressing an opinion or explicating an idea face-to-face or on a message board) were more often than not just regurgitation of ideas or opinions I had heard elsewhere, stated by better writers than myself.
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....
perhaps we can gain a lot more wisdom and much fuller perspective on life by devoting our attention more carefully to fewer things than in trying to split our time and attention between an ever-growing, never-ending series of things. Perhaps the Zen monks had it right in seeking enlightenment not through study of all the myriad scriptures and dogmas and teachings of Buddhism, but in meditating on one simple thing until we become, like cats, beings that live in and experience the moment.
I really like the way Mr. Loops expresses his frustration... it captures an idea and desire that I think many philosophists have... to really get something, to produce some idea or thing that is significant, free from influence, a truly linearly independent vector in the space of human consciousness.
He's right, it's too easy to get caught up in all the complex feeds of data and just rehash and recombine. I too find myself, sometimes, just mirroring the opinons of slashdot or slate, when I think if I was to be truly objective, I'd find positive in things like Ann Coulter as well...
Ah, but how?! Here I am with this lofty goal of seeking quietude and hermitage to be with my thoughts when I live in a busy college dorm full of rambunctious students playing rap music as loud as their speakers will go throughout the day. How can I escape from the stress and pressure of the daily grind when I'm attending classes and ever focusing (out of the corner of my eye) on paper deadlines and "tests" of my "knowledge"?
It is a pickle, certainly. maybe off-campus housing? or rejecting school?
School does suck in many aspects. It's built on the idea that your prime motivation is to start with the possibility of failure or a poor grade with your existing interest and motivation, and then disciplining yourself away from a bad grade into a good grade.
School is also a business, college especially so, it's designed to perpetuate itself, so there is no way getting around the influence of the all mighty dollar.
School is also a tool, not a conspiracy tool, but it is a tool for society to aid in the division of labor and filling up the work-place with apt-workers. I believe in the Abolition of Work stuff tentatively and I'm a generalist, so school is counter-productive to my goals. Plus my passions are in my alternative ideas and philosophistry, not these books and academic bricks. Plus I think the instructional mechanisms are whack for me, given how much of an auto-didact I am....
(I'm finishing though, because I have a year left, and because I've situated myself in such a way where I've minimized the issues that bother me.)
Somebody's gotta leave and walk the independent path. Thoreau certainly did, and maybe so will you.
color is navajowhite for compassion and optimism.
Clay Shirky explains why micropayments won't work... and in good philosophistric syle, employes a cool economic concept of "mental transaction costs" Micropayments, like all payments, require a comparison: "Is this much of X worth that much of Y?" There is a minimum mental transaction cost created by this fact that cannot be optimized away, because the only transaction a user will be willing to approve with no thought will be one that costs them nothing, which is no transaction at all.
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Comic Book artist Scott McCloud responds with his counter-arguments, primarily because he is the target of Shirky's criticism.
I love the Internet for helping me see both sides of coin on many things... but at the same time... to McCloud and Shirky, why can't we just, "wait and see"
Nazi Germany once posted a compendium titled, "100 scientists who think Einstein is wrong." Einstein responded by saying, "It should only take 1 scientist if I were truly wrong."
McCloud's and Shirky's essays are both long on talk, but at least for McCloud, he should just go out and make lots of $ from micropayments rather than gesture loudly.....
...okay, maybe McCloud has something to gain by defending his system because people may read Shirky's and lose trust in him.... but really, his argument should be like a bullet point thingy, listing good counter-arguments as one-liners, and ending, "you'll see, I'll prove you wrong ;-)"
It's like the more someone tries the cover an emotion up, the more words that are generated to do so... i.e. this guy, in a lot of words, is saying, "you hurt my feelings Shirky"
post's color is lightgreen... green has a forward analytical attitude. I chose a washed green though because I just woke up from a nap, so this post doesn't have as much energy into it.. though it deserves some color and whip.
Clay Shirky's writings are always a refreshing read. Here is an article he wrote about Napster and Music Distribution in 2000. The crux of what I like about this article is just this line: efficiency trumps legality.
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Jef Raskin has come up with a new user-interface for document viewing. It's called a ZUI for zooming user interface and provides an alternative perspective on viewing data with a web of links and content. (By way of Brad Luster)
So Sue Me
What's the best way to punish corporate criminals? With lawsuits, not prison sentences.
By Daniel Gross
Excerpt...
As for cops at the SEC, they may talk tough and hold flashy press conferences when they nab insider traders. But in the global scheme of things, they may not be so important. "When we try to understand specifically what works in securities laws, we find that several aspects of public enforcement, such as having an independent and/or focused regulator or criminal sanctions, do not matter, and others matter in only some regressions." In other words, "Public enforcement plays, at best, a modest role in the development of stock markets."
BTW, StumbleUpon is great... it's like my revolver blogroll above on steroids (i.e. personalized and larger). I may get addicted to Stumblin' soon, I recommend you check it out. I was suggesting they provide a way to integrate my selected stumbles into my blogrolls or straight into my blog.
Amazon should accept trackback pings.
On a side note to this "positive psychology" mumbo jumbo, this is an interesting analysis...
PE (Positive Experience) Anatomy
This is a minimal outline of the model I have developed since 1984 based on the beleif that positive experiences are our most valued personal assets and inner resources. I offer training seminars and coaching based on this model.
Shirky: Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content
Why Micropayment Systems Don't Work
The people pushing micropayments believe that the dollar cost of goods is the thing most responsible for deflecting readers from buying content, and that a reduction in price to micropayment levels will allow creators to begin charging for their work without deflecting readers.
This strategy doesn't work, because the act of buying anything, even if the price is very small, creates what Nick Szabo calls mental transaction costs, the energy required to decide whether something is worth buying or not, regardless of price. The only business model that delivers money from sender to receiver with no mental transaction costs is theft, and in many ways, theft is the unspoken inspiration for micropayment systems.
I like Chris Rock's quote: "A woman knows she's going to sleep with you within 5 minutes of meeting you." Hah, is it true? would be convenient.
Hey, you know how you sometimes want to talk about a movie with someone while you're watching, but can't because you don't want to interrupt the movie watching experience.
How about group watching of a movie online. What if a bunch of us got into a chat room and startup a divx at the same time. That'd be cool.
This might have been mentioned before, but I wouldn't mind having a prioritization filter that required that everybody who wants to get to into my privledged e-mail folder has to have paid a penny to send that e-mail. I only send about a hundred e-mails a month, so I wouldn't mind paying a buck, and I'm sure other ppl wouldn't mind sending a penny.
This would make the cost of spam high enough to deter.
Somebody already has Pennymail I'm sure with the same idea. Possible players for this could be Plaxo. Either way, SOMEBODY's going to make a lot of money solving this spam thing... e-mail's important to ppl, and it is dying.
Slashdot | U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
Slashdot | U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"Silence is argument carried out by other means." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Interesting exceprt from Moby's Journals (moby.com).
Blackout Questions
8/17/2003 - New York City
another blackout related journal entry...
some questions that we were pondering during the blackout:
1-how many people were getting root canals done when the blackout happened?
2-how many people were cheating on their partners when the blackout happened and will now be faithful for life?
3-how many people took psychedelic drugs 40 minutes before the blackout happened and thus felt that they caused it or were involved somehow?
4-how many people had visited nyc on september 11th, 2001 and were also visiting for the blackout? do they feel responsible, somehow?
5-how many instantaneous/synchronous events happened as the power failed, like: deaths, little league home-runs, broken windows, spilled milk, etc. it's safe to say that everyone who experienced a synchronous event will attach some degree of significance to their event and the blackout.
Unfortunately, not all his posts are enlightening, this is rather depressing-annoying
Yuppified Journal Entry
8/20/2003 - New York City
now that i've stopped touring for a while i think that you'll be able to expect increasingly domestic and yuppified journal entries from me.
like this one.
i was upstate for a few days, and it was great.
monday morning in particular. i woke up very early (6 a.m) and watched the sun come up, and as it came up it illuminated the fog that had collected in the valleys, so the fog in the valleys was pink and the tops of the mountains were bathed in this reddish light.
it was amazing.
and now i'm being a fully fledged, dyed-in-the-wool, bron-y-aur, yuppie. ('bron-y-aur', i'm sure it means something in welsh, but i just know it as a hyphenated led zeppelin song).
i'm being a yuppie cos i'm on my roof and it's dusk and really breezy and i'm sitting up here with my laptop and it's great and i know i'm a stinky yuppie with a penchant for run-on sentences.
and hyphens.
and-hyphens.
i'll stop.
thanks
moby
There's a MSNBC article summarizing the major strides that the gay community has made recently in America: the first gay Episcopalian bishop was elected yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws a month ago, and it seems likely that at least civil unions between same-sex couples will obtain some recognition.
If this is a genuine, permanent paradigm shift, then these events are big from a social evolution standpoint. Let's consider the opposite: homophobic societies. Obviously they exist to promote reproduction so that these societies can persist; societies that carry anti-gay, pro-reproduction memes tend to survive.
So, when a society comes out of the closet, what does it mean? It could mean that that society is on its decline. Michael Savage apparently agrees, slamming gays as "sodomites"--which would be a reference to Sodom and Gamora of Babylon, a civilization that crumbled possibly because of too much Hedonism and sodomy.
Now, I'm no crack-pot religionist, but is this wholly untrue? It would be too hard to prove or disprove. But the ultimate question is: does social population growth matter? Have societies withered away simply because they stopped having babies? I can't think of many that jump to my mind. But Europe may be in danger of having this happen to her.
But, there could be something unique about our time period where the society construct is losing its weight and therefore its monopoly on memes. Globalization breaks down the walls between societies so that could be one possible source to look at.
Also, this could be a prelude to the Singularity. Gays, self-involved Hedonists, and those who participate in unmarriage could all foreshadow a future where we don't need coitus to generate better information processors (children) in order to help the species persist.
I haven't heard a good counter-argument to the notion that homosexuality could lead to the declining population of a country.
However, I think homosexual acceptance is an inevitable result of societies that sponsor freedom and the rapid exchange of ideas. A closed society can easily shut down homosexuality without too much resistance from its citizens if the citizens are kept in the dark about homosexuality's acceptance elsewhere or if the standard for freedom is low there.
-- well, maybe not shut "homosexuality down" but still force people to have sex with the opposite sex, even if it is not their orientation.
So from another perspective, this could be a test for societies that know how to actively encourage population growth. Traditional methods for curbing the gay tide are losing their steam. Religious arguments are becoming mute as there is a wealth of other sources of information than your local parish (and if they support a Gay bishop, there goes Church's force in keeping the gayman down. Open scientific debate and the free movement of education has also shown that there is nothing physically dangerous about being homosexuality except the increased possibility of getting AIDS if you don't use protection. And also, urban legends and myths your parents used to feed you, have also lost their weight due to the free exchange of information.
What's my personal stance? I'm a firm believer in the Singularity's imminent arrival, so I don't care too much about population decline, as the consequences won't be felt.
If the Singularity doesn't happen though, would totalitarian societies be more favored then, by forcing certain ideas on its people? Or can a society allow freedom to float freely while managing to enforce policies that ensure its survival?
Which leads to another issue I will get to later: The importance of freedom and its relationship to survival.
Life is a series of desktop wallpaper changes.
When Chaz and I were watching the terrible film Anger Management someone walked out of the theatre and yelled outloud, "This movie sucks!" I thought it was funny, but I thought it would be even funnier if some filmmaker got an indie itch and just actually threw that in there. Actually recorded someone yelling "This movie sucks" and have a shadow skirt the screen. That alone would be enough to get some movie/comedy nerds yapping. No?
darthbucky: I was fascinated this morning with a really weird idea
darthbucky: All morning
PhilDhingr: what's that?
darthbucky: Here goes....
darthbucky: The first thing species on this planet developed was the ability to send out an infinite number of commands
darthbucky: From their neural network to their various parts
darthbucky: Next, they started having thoughts
darthbucky: More abstract, didn't necessarily have a direct effect
PhilDhingr: AH!
PhilDhingr: more?
darthbucky: They could have an infinite number of these little thoughts
darthbucky: Then, meta-thoughts
PhilDhingr: yes, yes, yes.
darthbucky: Not only an infinite number of them, but somehow on an infinite number of levels
PhilDhingr: pseudo-infinite, right?
PhilDhingr: and the lower-order species had smaller neural networks and less outlets, and therefore, less in quantiy, but pseudo-infinite nonetheless
darthbucky: There's some kind of weird complexity here, because in some ways "wow, it was a waste of time worrying about that" counts as a more complex thought than the most complex of single-level thoughts about VRML or whatever.
PhilDhingr: and our current operation, outside of consciousness, any movement or lack thereof, is an infinite output.
darthbucky: Then you get SYSTEMS of meta-thought
darthbucky: Programming languages
PhilDhingr: yes
PhilDhingr: yes
darthbucky: And an infinite number of them
darthbucky: (theoretically, anyway)
darthbucky: Again, at many levels of complexity
PhilDhingr: emergence to order the infinity of neural blu-blah.
darthbucky: So what's the next step?
PhilDhingr: the next step is blogging.
darthbucky: You want to say something like "the Omni-thought"
darthbucky: The singularity
PhilDhingr: I am the omni-thought
darthbucky: But that doesn't work
PhilDhingr: the singularity?
darthbucky: Because you can't have an infinite number of them
darthbucky: And because the Omni thought has only one level of complexity
PhilDhingr: I think there's an upper-bound on the levels that can be consciously grasped.
darthbucky: Probably somewhere, yeah
PhilDhingr: what's to say there isn't an omni-thought beat occurring and we're just the cells of that thought.
darthbucky: You can't have a (meta-)^85 thought
PhilDhingr: i.e. world-wide discussion leads us to the beautiful whole of "democracy" let's say, or "justice"
PhilDhingr: or "freedom"
darthbucky: Those aren't omni thoughts
darthbucky: They aren't everything
darthbucky: Or there wouldn't be separate words for them
darthbucky: So I then started doubting the existence of the omega point
PhilDhingr: omega point?
darthbucky: Something I've previously had at least some degree of faith in
PhilDhingr: faith, a bitch.
darthbucky: Do a google search...somebody can probably explain it better than I can
PhilDhingr: alright.
darthbucky: Essentially, it's the point at which mankind has accomplished everything that can be accomplished
darthbucky: All possible avenues have been pursued
PhilDhingr: can I post the transcript of this into the blog?
darthbucky: Sure...but I don't feel like I've come to any sort of conclusion
PhilDhingr: I know, neither have I, but I think that's part of the message.
darthbucky: *grin*
darthbucky: I dunno
PhilDhingr: and I'll leave that in there :-)