Saturday, March 09, 2013

On Specialization: Why Academic "Specialists" Are Fuckups.

There's a place for anger and frustration and every other emotion. Well, not stress, not in my life anyways. And there IS a place for fantasy.

The thing is, there is NO space for confusing planning and fantasy. You want to plan? Plan. You want to fantasize? Fantasize. But never do them simultaneously, and never mix them up, and never confuse them.

When you're planning, fantasizing is not allowed. And equally, when you're fantasizing, planning is not allowed! Mixing them up makes for pathetic fantasies and pathetic plans!

Calling on the cattle to rise up and change some law or other ... that makes for pathetic plans AND pathetic fantasies. If you're going to fantasize, start by drawing up a list of the top 10,000 people you would order to have killed. And go on from there. :)

You can't learn about the world without trying to redesign it. (Just like you can't learn to speak properly without hearing yourself). So to learn about the world you need to both plan AND fantasize. But at all times you should be aware and conscious of what you're doing.

Separation of concerns isn't just critical in planning. It's critical in all areas of life. And it's why you need to know at all times whether you're planning or fantasizing, so you can do that thing well!

The same goes for hopping from one issue to the next. You want to fix the world before finishing grieving? Fine. IF AND ONLY IF you know whether you're hopping or dodging. If you're dodging then freaking do THAT well. If you're hopping then do THAT well. And if you're overloaded emotionally or by work... then don't expect to accomplish anything at all except BEING overloaded.

If you want to do a thing, do it well. Make sure you know what you're doing and make sure you meet the preconditions for doing it well. Otherwise you're just deluded and playacting. And if you WANT to playact then sign up for theater school. And if you want to be deluded then don't hang around me because with my core value Truth I will fucking shatter your illusions.

And lastly, the exact same reasoning applies to academic specialists. And is the reason why I despise them. Because they don't specialize around learning or understanding their respective academic field. They specialize around the role of being an academic specialist. Someone who publishes within only their field, is respected by their peers and gets grants.

So they spend their entire lives never knowing what it is they're doing. Because if they did, they would be ashamed of what they do rather than being proud. You don't learn to understand chemistry by specializing on the role of a chemist, it just doesn't work. And you don't learn to make discoveries in the sciences, or inventions, or even discoveries or inventions in chemistry, by specializing on the role of a chemist. That works even less!

Academics are universally fuckups who don't understand specialization. That's why I despise their fake concept of "specialization" and their despicable "specialties" and every last academic and the whole institution of academia itself which was built on an artificial tie-in of teaching and research and sucking up to the government.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I am however telling you something you forgot, perhaps because you never learned to appreciate it properly in the first place.

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Why Nuclear Bombs Bring Peace To A World Of Slaves

In Social Implications of Technology I talk about how expensive technologies are tools for the rich and cheap technologies are tools for the poor. And as technologies fall in price from infinity to expensive then society regresses, then as they fall further in price to cheap then society progresses. I alluded to killing technologies but I never made a complete analysis of it.

Military technology seems to follow the same rules as all other technology. When it goes from infinite to expensive, it makes conflicts bigger (the tommy gun was two year's wages) and when it goes from expensive to cheap (the nuclear bomb) then war suddenly becomes too scary to engage in. We don't want poor people killing rich people after all, do we? Poor people killing each other only at the direction of rich people, now that's fine.

A nuclear sub with one or two dozen missiles each with a dozen warheads costs about a billion. If we assume it kills 100 million people then that's 10$ per life extinguished. An AK47 at 100-1000$ will kill how many? Hmm. But we don't have to guess. We can simply look up How Much A Nuclear Bomb Costs. So actually, nuclear weapons are pretty damn cost effective. They're cheaper than bullets assuming that you successfully kill one person per bullet!

Scary isn't it? How after you factor out emotion / childrearing mode, and pure raw techno-economics, there's pretty much absolutely nothing to human will. And you know, when you think about it, THIS MAKES SENSE! Because 99% of the human population are slaves, either submissive (90%) or passive (9%). They are such slaves that they seriously consider aggressive people to have high willpower! How fucking revolting and pathetic!

So yeah, in a world completely dominated by slaves, the ONLY thing that matters to human history is raw emotion (which coordinates the masses of slaves in language primitive enough to unite them) and the economics of the technology they have available to them. And that's it.

Monday, March 04, 2013

Don't Force Evil People To Work: Save Jobs For Non-Evil People

Imagine a world where there's 25% unemployment and all of them are Evil because Evil people have been identified and are blacklisted. Can you imagine an "anti-discrimination for Evil people" legislative package? It would be a tough sell! It might put schizophrenics in perspective as potential employees.

More importantly, imagine what this would do to people's perception of having a job. Having a job means you're a non-evil person and it doesn't even matter how much you're paid. Oh you're a janitor? That's nice, at least you're not evil! I believe people would devalue currency and that the job itself would count as a marker of social position, a political marker effectively. Who CARES if people on welfare are paid just as much as you for doing precisely nothing? They don't have a job!

Of course, if jobs become purely voluntary and aren't paid much if anything, then all those shitty coercive things about jobs (competition, payment, dictatorship, guaranteed jobs, working with assholes) will all have to wither and be swept away. Hell, in that situation, it wouldn't even matter if paid employment collapsed and disappeared. People would still have jobs as a social activity, as something to do. They would merely be volunteer-jobs with no Evil people allowed.

Tying jobs to income and to deservingness (merit based solely on past deeds and actions) is the most corrosive and ludicrous thing imaginable. Let Evil people have an income so they're out of the way and don't cause trouble, regardless of whether or not they deserve anything. And keep the jobs for non-evil people!

Trying to force Evil people to be Good caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why should we be trying to force them to work? Or to do anything at all? WE DO NOT NEED EVIL PEOPLE. This isn't the fucking middle ages. All we need is to get them out of the way! Cut them a check and be done with them.
And if that isn't enough then remember that deservingness is an Evil notion propagated by Evil people. Once Evil people are all sidelined away from jobs, nobody who has a job will care whether or not jobless people "deserve" an income.

And while Good people firmly believe all Evil people should die, most of the population isn't Good. If Evil people get to live then they should have an income whether they deserve it or not, just to get them the fuck out of the way. That's what we NEED, to get them the fuck out of the way!

It's not a coincidence that giving homeless people a paid apartment and groceries is the cheapest way to deal with them by far. It's just a manifestation of the fact that Evil people always fuck things over. Toying with Evil is a stupid idea, no matter whether you call it 'fairness' or 'rehabilitation' or 'proper procedure'.

There are many societies on Earth that can't afford to just sideline Evil people. In fact, there are many societies that are so primitive they're actually overrun with Evil people! Africa comes to mind. But even America with a hefty quarter of its population being Evil can afford to sideline Evil people. And it can't afford NOT to. We can all see what a total fucking wreck actually encouraging Evil (narcissism) was for the USA.

Friday, March 01, 2013

Reserving Jobs For Humans? NO!

I can actually respect them for it. They do the stuff I don't want to do and can actually be happy doing it. You just have to get them to help humanity in their own way... Humanity obviously can't have everyone be Researcher or System Designer or few things would get done. I figure if we progress further we'll probably get less drones since people will care more about what happens.

Look, I respect that it was necessary for human beings to do all this shit. But it's not even true that I wouldn't want to do it or that I couldn't be happy doing it. So long as it was constantly varied from one week to the next, I could have been happy at it.

Job Complexes are a concept from Participatory Economics by Michael Black. PARECON should really have been implemented ... oh yeah, it already is implemented in this company called Semco SA in Brazil. And just about nowhere else in the world! Even if temporary and freelance workers sort of quality.

So you see, the workplace of today isn't identical to the hierarchical workplaces of 300 years ago because it HAS to be. Work doesn't HAVE to be mind-numbing and repetitive. The workplace is identical because a lot of the population is Lawful Evil. Because people are Fascistic arseholes.

Hell, they're so Evil they actually believe that competition HELPS over most of the planet. Despite the comprehensive book No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn. I don't recommend it by the way, it won't have anything you don't already know or believe to be true. I do recommend you use it as ammunition against arseholes.

But getting back to my point! The point is that I respect that it WAS necessary. Emphasis on was. It no longer is, therefore I no longer respect them for doing jobs that are unnecessary and subjecting themselves to demeaning, dehumanizing, and hierarchical subjugation to do them.

And you need to think very carefully about this point: robots vs slaves. Because before robots and mass production came along, some people did have hygiene, and large homes, and mass communication, and publishing, and long-range communication, and books, and education and this and that.

You know who they were? The rich! Yes, there were ... you know, just read Social Implications Of Technology.

Prices have come down and things which were infinitely expensive in the past became expensive and now they're getting cheaper. And while it's generally bad for society when they go from infinitely to merely expensive, it's super-good when they go from expensive to cheap. Even killing technologies such as AK47s.

The problem for your position is that using slaves puts a floor on the price of goods. It intrinsically makes them expensive. It intrinsically makes it so that only the rich can afford them. Rich people could always afford artisanal crafts.

But for poor people to afford them required mass production and industrialization. Automation! Mass production is an intrinsically socialist idea just as artisanship and craftsmanship are intrinsically aristocratic. Same with elections being aristocratic.

Nowadays, only rich people can afford custom-designed products. And I long to see the day when AI make it so that everyone gets custom-designed stuff. I already said as much in what space colonization would really look like. Every possible opportunity will be taken, no opportunity will ever be wasted, because personalized design of everything (even your life) will guarantee it.

Hell, I'm a mental systems designer. I help design human minds. I help design human lives. I know what can be done. I know the glories that can be achieved. Read The Crimes of Ms Jean Brady for an idea of what a fairly ordinary person can achieved with a mind capable of systems design behind her.

I fucking want that. I want every person to have that. To be their own agent, to be forceful. I don't want poverty and deprivation. I don't want normal people to be slaves, or serfs, or "artisans" for the super-rich. Like the artisans employed by the Vickys (neo-Victorians) in Diamond Age. An execrable book, I recommend against it.

I want an EXPLOSION of mass-produced stuff. Even design! I want EVERYONE to be able to afford it, not just the fucking super-rich. I want to be out of a job! I want everyone else to be out of a job too! I want a genuine ludic civilization. One not where "people can be happy" but where people ARE happy.

What we have, fucking sucks. And your modest improvements to what we have ... fucking suck. Too little too late. I want infinitely more.

Totalitarian Communism Works Great!

Many people believe the problem with communism or socialism (especially the Soviet kind) is to "motivate people".

Well, not really. The biggest problem was distribution and logistics. Marxist use-value theory made no allowance for the gain in value achieved by transportation and trading. Capitalist theory of course has the exact reverse problem.

You say that collectivization disincentivized people? I retort that can't possibly have been a problem because competition ALSO disincentivizes people.

And furthermore, that Semco SA which is one of the most successful companies in the world, uses a totalitarian communist model. One that's even MORE totalitarian than Marxism. Toyota which is essentially fascist in nature, has many elements of communism too.

The big problem with the Bolshevik's version of communism, and there is no way you can possibly know that, is the coercive nature of it. And that came about not because people were forced to work or any such nonsense but because everyone was included.

You see, the big problem wasn't that everyone was guaranteed food, shelter, clothing, and a smattering of luxury items. The big problem was that everyone was guaranteed a job. Which is something YOU are trying to replicate when you imagine a Utopia.

You see jobs as bad things because the filthy capitalists have dehumanized them and tied them to money. Because they've been made compulsory and externally motivated. You idiot!

Haven't you ever heard the parable of the old man who stopped a gang of kids from hurling insults at him by first rewarding them for insulting him with money, and then reducing the amount of money from one day to the next?

Real motivation can only ever be internal. You tie jobs to money? Then you've automatically demotivated everyone. You guarantee jobs to everyone? Then you've ALSO automatically demotivated everyone!

Meaningful jobs, things to DO, are GOOD things. People fucking CRAVE them. That doesn't mean it's your fucking job to provide them! Let people fucking MAKE their own jobs!

The only thing more retarded than providing jobs to people is to provide them AND ruin them. The capitalists do this because they are fucking EVIL. The communists did this because they were GOOD. They did it out of good intentions and not knowing how human psychology works.

The problem with forced collectivization wasn't collectivization, it was with the 'forced' part of the equation. People do AWESOME work when they collectivize. When they feel part of a team, of something greater. Now you force them to work with people they despise? You just ruined their job!

If you think about it, you'll know it's true because people create coops and unions all the fucking time. But the clearest example was in the middle ages when an English king heard that the yeomanry were collectivized to deal with the law. They organized together in groups to vouch for each other you see.

Well, the king thought that was a fine idea! But what about those people whom nobody would vouch for? Let's force other people to vouch for them! And very rapidly, what had been a totally spontaneous self-organization was utterly destroyed when it turned from voluntary to compulsory.

The Bolsheviks tried to force good intentions on evil people. That's why they failed. Because evil people simply refused to do good or be good, and people came to hate being in their proximity.

You want a communist system that works? You don't have to kill evil people. You don't even have to starve them. You simply have to not cater to them.

Semco SA does that. It's totalitarian, it's communist, it's also purely voluntary. You don't want to work with a particular team? You don't have to. They don't want to work with you? They don't have to either!

The Sexual Attraction Equation

Someone asked on a mailing list I subscribe to whether sexual attraction followed a 2-dimensional model. Ugh, so so wrong! No, that isn't even close to anything real. This is the complete form of the equation for sexual attraction:

Fetishes if any + face (neurological averaging) + abstractions (core values) + body-part attraction (tits, ass, legs, arms, genitals) + overall body proportions + interaction dynamics (dominance, submission, attunement, etc) + assortative mating (non-core values).

And I'm leaving out pheromonal attraction because I don't know anything about it.

Now gender identity by comparison is MUCH simpler! It's just core values + non-core values!

Of course, what people are actually interested in is the dimensional decomposition of the solutions to these equations. Well, I will simple them up for you to understand: that whole male vs female attraction shite is oversimplified crap spoonfed to simple-minded idiots.

See, the way it works is that sexual arousal is semantically content-free. It has no meaning! You're not attracted to ANYTHING, at all. Except maybe "people". Or if you have fetishes then the fetish in question. Otherwise, it's just things that turn you off. Or things you're conceptually attracted to. Oh and beauty but beauty is just neurological averaging and is essentially non-sexual.

And things like core values and non-core values? They are *too complicated for idiots to understand*!

Finally, to answer whether sexual attraction is a choice, when the sexual attraction equation returns negative numbers for the entirety of one gender, then that person is exclusively attracted to the other gender. When it returns negatives for both genders then they're asexual. And when it returns some positives in both? Well in that case, take a good look at the above equation and realize how fucking retarded your question is.

Engineers Boast Of Creating Mind Control Technology

Take a good look at this creepy ass story of imbecilic morons playing Doctor Frankenstein for no reason whatsoever.

Now, before you get on my case, I know full well that the ultimate application of this technology is brain-downloading of human brains. And they're doing it this way in order to verify that their brain interface is correct, reliable and portable. I fucking KNOW this. I am ALL FOR IT.

But that's not what these scum fucking scum fuckers are SAYING, is it?! What they're saying is just utterly fucking REPULSIVE! Organic computers!? WHAT. the. FUCK?!

If you want neuromorphic computers, Hewlett Packard is working on memristors to produce just that. And they will ultimately be FAR cheaper, and FAR more reliable! And far more powerful and far faster!

But no, these scum sucking fuckers are going the BIO route. Why? Bio bio bio bio! Like saying fucking "magic". Magic makes it better! Bio's better! These scum fuckers are trumpeting an INFERIOR and OBSOLETE technology! A REPULSIVE inferior and obsolete technology. A creepy and freakish technology. WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

It almost looks like they're deliberately un-selling their technology. Pitching it in such a way so as to deliberately turn off or repulse their audience and market. Almost! But the TRUTH is these are the same kinds of worthless scum that work on nuclear weapons and LANDMINES. And BIOWEAPONS!

And so here they are trumpeting for all the world: look we've got a better landmine! Look we've got bioweapons! Look we've got MIND CONTROL TECHNOLOGY!

Fucking engineers. That's what this is. Fucking engineers. Engineers incapable of synthesis, thus incapable of JUDGEMENT. Incapable of ethics or morality except as some stupid list of rules saying THOU SHALT and THOU SHALT NOT. And because nobody TOLD them "thou shalt not make mind control technology" they think it's GREAT.

No fucking judgement. Fucking engineers!