21st Century Research "Ambitions"

I saw this article about Future and Emerging Technologies on next big future and I wondered at the 4 out of 6 projects that Brian Wang, that racist mindless cheerleader, was NOT hyping.

• FuturICT - The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: Unleashing the Power of Information for a Sustainable Future

Anti-human crap. Simulation and hand-holding for elitists with a view towards getting them to better understand technology & demographics blah blah blah so they can better oppress people. And of course the ever present exploitation of "climate change" as an excuse to impoverish people. This is NOT collective intelligence.

• Graphene - Graphene Science and technology for ICT and beyond
• Guardian Angels - Guardian Angels for a Smarter Planet

Anti-human crap. Oppressing people by infantilizing them with respect to the natural environment. Totally useless if optional since people won't stand for infantilization.

"emotional applications" what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

• HBP - The Human Brain Project
• ITFoM - IT Future of Medicine: a revolution in healthcare

Supposedly machine diagnosis yet sold in such a fishy kitchen sink & head in the clouds way that it sounds unrealistic at best. It actually sounds like a big sink for lots of money, to make biotech researchers feel useful, like ITER does for physicists. It doesn't sound like it will ever be useful. The danger for humanity here is that it makes real progress on machine diagnosis seem unrealistic, just like Star Trek made communism sound unfeasibly far away. "Well, we squandered millions of euros in R&D money and we achieved squat. What hope do YOU have?"

• RoboCom - Robot Companions for Citizens

I have no words. These retards are actually trying to create Cylon slaves. And yes, I mean conscious beings as a slave labour force.

Conclusion

You know that things have gotten dire when the US military under DARPA has a much better track record of funding pro-human technologies than civilian researchers. I want to ask if researchers have always been so crushingly idiotic or if it's a recent phenomenon.

Poverty of imagination and poverty of ambition doesn't quite cut it, these worms are pathetic and evil. Yet more confirmation for my hatred of academia. The best of these projects (the ones Brian Wang hypes) are probably worse than the worst of my projects. But I know what's at fault. It's the bureaucratization of academia.

At least DARPA is still capable, every now and again, of saying "fuck it" because they kill people and they're proud of it, because they're in it for themselves. DARPA doesn't answer to anti-human political paymasters because it serves the needs of the military, and the military is simply assumed to be entirely anti-human.

Gangster Rap is 3000 years old

The Ancient Greek bards were rappers. The Iliad and the Odyssey were rap songs ... about rape and slaughter. The epic poems like the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and the Norse poetic Eddas were equally barbaric reinventions of the Ancient tradition.

Rap is all about beat rather than melody. The ancient Greek epics were chanted. Non-existent melody, so-so rhymes, but very strong beat and rhythm. Also, it may be difficult to believe but as non-melodic and violent as rap is, ancient epics were worse.

This is the first time I've noticed it. I'm used to thinking of the ancient epics as really shitty murderous stories. Because that's the known-wrong belief in the literature departments which all consider the Iliad to be something written for purposes of territorial appropriation.

Well, they weren't. They were really shitty trance-inducing murderous rap songs. It kinda strips all the allure off of the Iliad, assuming it has any, when you put it in proper context. Not something alien and primitive, but very familiar and primitive. Or just primitive.

Academic types have a real blind spot to this because they can't be seen, or even THINK, that they're wasting their time studying something low class. Even when they compare the Iliad TO rap, they minimize the resemblance, saying it's "freestyle like jazz and rap". Jazz? WTF?!

It's why performers say stupid shit like "rap Iliad" instead of "original Iliad". If anything, their performances are weak and not nearly hardcore enough because the Iliad was more rap than rap. It was more violent and less melodic than all but the most extreme gangster rap.

Oh and the Iliad is not a poem except in the loosest sense. And Homer was never a poet anymore than he was a writer or a singer (he was a scribe). We don't call rap songs 'poems', we call them rap. And the Iliad? The Iliad is not "like" rap. The Iliad IS rap!

General-Purpose Self-Improvement

It's often said that the human brain is a computing machine, and this is blatantly true. It's less often said that the human mind is an operating system or programming language. And when it is said, it's assumed to be some kind of metaphor. It isn't a metaphor, it is exactingly true. (Consciousness though has no exact analogue.)

There are two general-purpose psychological self-improvement techniques. And strangely enough, they correspond to two paradigms for programming languages in computing. The two paradigms that admit not only thinking, but thinking about thinking, and thinking about thinking about thinking, and ... to infinity. Computing is about thinking precisely. OO and Functional are about improving your thinking by thinking about thinking.

I think I'm on the right track that this kind of correspondence exists. And I think I'm on the right track that the Core Values paradigm I invented is the one that 'happens' to correspond to the computing paradigm I like (OO). And I think I'm on the right track that the common features between my paradigm and the computing paradigm I like ... are also the same things that make this computing paradigm understandable and natural for the overwhelming majority of programmers.

The OTHER technique is to pretend to be the kind of person you would like to be. And the guy whom I learned this technique from (the writer of Self 2.0) considered it too dangerous to use past a certain point. Myself, I consider it anathema.