Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else’s rules. The noetic enterprise is a primary obligation toward being. Our salvation is linked to it. Not everyone has to read alchemical texts or study superconducting biomolecules to make the transition. Most people make it naively by thinking clearly about the present at hand
-Terrance McKenna, New Maps of Hyperspace

A long time ago, facing utter existential melt down, I resolved that somewhere in the universe, someone had gotten it right. Whatever their circumstances, they were attuned to whatever greater noesis entropy was responsible for, that in the far reaching vastness of emptiness and nothing was one entity whose beneficence to his local space was so singular and pure, so adapted and beneficial, that this far off being alone, by himself, justified the existence of the entire rest of the universe.

While we mortals strive, some other collective had found their ideal enclave, and that was good enough.

Has anyone tried going to colleges to study under famous libertarian professors? Like going to Santa Clara to study law under David Friedman, or learning economics at Loyola New Orleans to study under Walter Block. Was it as amazing as you thought it would be?

Best dieting tip ever: wait up to 20 minutes for the satiation to arrive. It's working for me.

This is from "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", by UCSF professor Robert Lustig who said "High Fructose Corn Syrup is Poison", with convincing evidence that it causes metabolic syndrome and the obesity epidemic. http://www.sweetsurprise.com/

"There is something wrong with our biochemical energy feedback system."

"fructose goes way beyond empty calories. It is a poison."

"AFAIAC, this stuff was Japan's revenge for World War II"

HFCS is so cheap that it has found its way into everything: hamburger buns, sauce, ketchup, most loaves of bread.

The Coca-Cola conspiracy: coke has lots of salt, the sodium makes you thirsty; the sugar hides the salt!

Some schools performed the intervention of cutting out coke machines, and it had a significant effect on obesity and type II diabetes.

On a minor point, he made this statistician (and former logician) cringe once or twice (by assuming Gaussianity, interpreting a defeasible argument as a deductive one and declaring "only the contrapositive is transitive") but his central message seems to be sound, and of course very important.

* - ("lustig" means "funny" in German)

Very impressed w/ quality of speakers & people at #hplus, very inspiring. Mindshare kicked ass as a partner. Next time I think I might do a random talk on something besides seasteading, for variety. Diet&exercise, maybe. Or self-dev in general.

Tempting to re-run for the board next year, but I think I need to pare down my commitments a bit and focus on some core things in my life in 2010. (And hopefully w/ a baby in 2011). But I like being a board member, and I want to do a lot more of it in the future.

It was a nice extroverted idea sharing networking weekend to end my US year. I'm leaving for India next weekend, and really looking forward to the time to reflect on my priorities, "honeymoon" with Shannon, and isolation period to pound out a rough draft of the seasteading book.

From Bryan Caplan, nurture may not affect much, but it does affect how your kids feel about and remember you:

one of the most important exceptions to the behavioral genetic conclusion that parents have little long-run effect on their kids. The exception: How kids feel about and remember their parents.

This Swedish twin study, for example, finds that parents leave a lasting impression. Even when your kids are in their fifties and sixties, they'll remember if you were kind or cruel, warm or cold, encouraging or discouraging. The article confirms some genetic effect - how your kids remember you depends partly on them. But unlike many behavioral genetic studies, this one (like several others) confirms a fairly large nurture effect. Identical twins are only moderately more likely than fraternal twins to see their parents the same way.

I think this is an example of groping in the dark.

via

( snooooze zzz boring )

i still don't have a cell phone

Posters in Moscow's newest airport, still under construction:



via tema.

In Russian, Uzbek and Turkish languages, just in case.

Original: craschworks - comments

George Costanza is philosophizing about death

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8394987.stm

North Koreans are "devastated" following currency reforms that could wipe out their savings, reports say.

Ordinary people are reported to be desperately trying to buy as many goods as they can with the old currency while it is still valid.

The government told its people on Monday that it was knocking two noughts off the nominal value of banknotes.

Experts say this will help tackle inflation and increase officials' control over an already impoverished population.

They say the Pyongyang government particularly wants to reign in the activities of free markets that have sprung up across North Korea.

The North Korean government was initially quiet about the reform - telling its own people, but not the rest of the world.

But on Friday South Korea's Yonhap news agency said a Japan-based newspaper with links to the North had confirmed the news.

Yonhap quoted an interview the newspaper had conducted with a North Korean central bank official.

The North Korean banker said international sanctions, natural disasters and the fall of the communist bloc had created economic hardship.

This has forced the North to adjust its currency, Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

Under the new system, an old 1,000 North Korean won note will now be worth just 10 won.

I'm thinking of setting up Google Voice, so I can have one phone number that, for example, rings my SkypeIn phone number while we are in India, so that calls go to my laptop there rather than just my inaccessible cellphone. Not only does this give us a shot of getting the call, but also makes it easy to get our voicemails.

Anyway, I am facing the paradox of choice - with so many exchanges and phone numbers to choose from, what 7-letter word will convey the essence of my being? Here are some of my favorites (from among the 3-digit prefixes Google Voice has access to in local area codes[1]) appears below the cut. I expect to use this # to replace my cell, which means it will be my main personal & professional number.

Upon searching, most were taken. Here is what is actually available from those I liked:

glitter, enliven, malefic, nakedly, majesty, softest, psyches, psychic, askance, aplenty, minimal, minimax

[1] Not that localness really matters for price anymore, but it makes it much easier for local people to remember the number, as they don't have to remember the area code as 3 abstract digits, but rather, they have a single variable that just thinks "San Jose / Peninsula / SF/ East Bay"

Immediately after the issuance of the Declaration of Sovereignty, the Republic of Sunland turned to a number of countries (Nepal, Lesotho, East Timor, etc.) with a request for official recognition. At the moment we have received an official response only from the Principality of Sealand. In particular the message reads as follows:

“We note your initiative with interest but unfortunately cannot entertain relations with movements which contradict international law; you mention correctly the legally established status of the land you are intending to appropriate from Norway without negotiation.

We would be pleased to consider further your proposals once you can produce secession documents endorsed by the Norwegian government”.

In this regard, the Secretariat of External Relations of the Republic of Sunland is authorized to say the following.

We fully and unconditionally recognize the Antarctic Treaty 1959 as an international legal foundation, which governs the status of the continent. Under this Treaty, Norway has the right to set up its territorial claims to sovereignty in Antarctica. However, the other countries have exactly the same right. Under the Treaty, no Norwegian acts or activities create any rights of sovereignty on the Peter I Island. Accordingly, from the standpoint of the Antarctic Treaty, the basis for possible negotiations between the Republic of Sunland and Norwegian government may be the recognition of Sunland's claim to Peter I Island. For our part, we are ready for such talks and we will welcome the good will of the Norwegian negotiator.

We hope that the Norwegian Government respects the Antarctic Treaty as we do and recognizes the freedom of scientific research in Antarctica and international cooperation for these purposes. For our part, in full accordance with Article III of the Treaty, we are ready to make an information exchange with Norway regarding plans for scientific research expedition to the Peter I Island and ensure free access to data and results of scientific observations.

In our opinion, the use of the terms "appropriation" and "secession" is not quite correct from the standpoint of international law since it assumes the recognition of full Norwegian sovereignty on Peter I Island. That is obviously contrary to the Antarctic Treaty.

04.12.2009

The Secretariat of External Relations of the Republic of Sunland
http://new-libertalia.co.cc/

December 20, 2009 12:00 PM (New location)

Open discussion on the healthcare 'crisis'. What is the best way for an individual to deal with medical situations in the face of government interference? Do you want the results of your annual physical to be posted on some poorly secured government website? Do you want the IRS to send you reminders to go to the gym or lose your tax deduction?

Panera Bread
888 Commonwealth Ave
Green Line train B @ BU area
Boston, MA 02215
(617) 738-1501

It seems British writer Cyril Northcote Parkinson and his Parkinson's Law have not been mentioned here. I think it is a good insight about how governmental bureaucracy grows. Here is the original article and here is a short version.

"
Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work to be done are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish or even disappear.

. . . we may distinguish, at the outset, two motive forces:
Factor I. An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals and
Factor II. Officials make work for each other.
. . .
"

Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Great Britain's overseas empire declined (indeed, he shows that the Colonial Office had its greatest number of staff at the point when it was folded into the Foreign Office because of a lack of colonies to administer). The total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."


A modern version is that no amount of computer automation will reduce the size of a bureaucracy.
Historical analysis of bureaucracies such as the Australian Tax Office shows that massive software automation has not increased their real efficiency since the 1950s. Any increase in the efficiency of individual workers has simply been consumed by increased bureaucratic complexity, as predicted by Parkinson's law.

Mexican flu, swine flu, H1N1, hiney, the 2009 flu pandemic, the "A" flu (romance languages)

What does it about something say if people can't settle on a name?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

Apparently Eric Drexler has been blogging for a year at metamodern. I am not actively interested in nanotech (there are far more interesting things like it than I have time to keep up with), so I'm not going to read his blog, but his collection of most popular posts of the first year is excellent. Short yet interesting posts on the nature of science and multidisciplinary knowledge. Some teasers to get you interested:

"Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others.

This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it."

"It takes far less knowledge to recognize a problem than to solve it, yet in key respects, that bit of knowledge is more important: With recognition, a problem may be avoided, or solved, or an idea abandoned. Without recognition, a hidden problem may invalidate the labor of an hour, or a lifetime. Lack of a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
...
This sort of knowledge is a kind of specialty, really — a limited slice of learning, but oriented crosswise. Because of this orientation, though, it provides leverage in integrating knowledge from diverse sources. I am surprised by the range of fields in which I can converse with scientists and engineers at about the level of a colleague in an adjacent field. I often know what to ask about their research, and sometimes what to suggest."

Livejournal, my reticence and absence has been excusable! I'm sorry!

I just got home from a ten-day trip to the UK. The circumstances of my leaving make me very, very sad so I was tempted to pretend the trip never happened, but it'd be unfair to all the amazing people I met, and mostly to myself. This is going to be a weird post (posts, actually. a weird posts) because the dude in the post and I are not together anymore so I feel extremely extremely creepy and weird (and progressively creepier as I write this post), but no matter what the weather he and the clouds will still be beautiful and it'd be creepier to pretend like he wasn't there or anything. Anyway, it was great and I worked all summer to afford it and forgetting it would be impossible and unnecessary.

I arrived in Edinburgh on a Friday morning and the skies were predictably grey. James and I took a taxi to his sister Victoria's house where we were staying, and mostly spent the day napping and watching "2001 A Space Odyssey", which is a good date movie because it makes you want to die and throw up both at the same time.

We woke up on Saturday to a great change in weather: grey and rainy. I put on my 80s business suit and we hopped on a bus into the center of the city to see James's studio where he makes the books of comics. After dragging my dead body around on the floor, we took another bus to George Street and I giddily shoved James into every department store in the city. We were mostly searching for haggis, and if you'd think the one place you might be guaranteed to get haggis would be the middle of the, uh, SECOND biggest city in Scotland, then you are so wrong. I got my mom some Highland Koo shortbread from Marks & Spencer and ran through the aisles yelling about Jelly Babies. We bought a swede (THIS IS A RUTABAGA WOW), some carrots, and some potatoes and hopped on a bus back home. Mary is a dumbass and Scottish bus drivers do not abide dumbasses, so when I was alighting from the top part of a double decker bus, it lurched to a stop and I fell and slid down:

On Sunday we went to see "Fantastic Mr. Fox", and it was great! It was a perfect Thanksgiving movie, and something very familiar and American (a Roald Dahl story American?! Noo) when I was so far from home. We came home and watched Coraline in 3D, which is extremely beautiful but not very good!

We really packed all of our adventure into Monday, which we started off with climbing the 287 steps of the Scott Monument (and we did indeed get a certificate for hoisting our lazy asses through the narrow stairways). Every time another set of tourists passed us I was sure someone was going to die, and I hope you guys won't think me a bad person for admitting I hoped it wasn't me. We went to H&M to replace our respective pairs of skeleton gloves (we weren't just getting matching gloves duh shut up). We walked across the bridge to the Royal Mile, and saw the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and ate at this crazy place called Frankenstein. It says "1818" on it so you know they actually built this burger pub the year Mary Shelley published her novel, which makes extensive mention of her love of burger pubs.

We went to (THE GODDAMN REAL AND AUTHENTIC AS OPPOSED TO THE FAKE) Mary King's Close, which is a medieval stretch of road in Old City that was built over in the 19th century. It has a lot of history associated with the plague outbreak and ghosts, and the tour involves the tour guide repeatedly scaring the shit out of French tourists by making loud stomping noises. We finished off the day with gingerbread latte!

( in a fairytale city with a fairytale burger )

Soon is the time when I will post about our trip to London! It involves vomit and the trumpeter from Madness!

Do you often get people's contact information in emails on your desktop, and type them into your Android phone?

Since Android contacts and Google Contacts are the same thing, you can instead go to:

http://www.google.com/contacts

And manage your contacts in a nice web interface. I find it much quicker to copy & paste phone numbers and addresses to Google Contacts than to open my phone and manually type them in.

Struggling media will need government help: US congressman

The newspaper industry is suffering "market failure" and the government will need to help preserve serious journalism essential to democracy, an influential US congressman said Wednesday.

"The newspapers my generation has taken for granted are facing a structural threat to the business model that has sustained them," said Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California.

...


"We cannot risk the loss of an informed public and all that means because of this market failure," he said.

Be you a libertarian or a minarchist or a voluntarist or whatever, it's important to be well versed in the curious dialect embraced by the modern socialist-authoritarian movement for two key reasons: one, simply for the sake of absorbing a greater breadth of knowledge on this sociological/psychological animal, and two (far more importantly) to spot bullshit quicker than any other known method known to man. Here's what Henry Waxman and the rest of the vermin have taught us about "market failure":

* AIG: Market failure
* Lehman Bros.: Not market failure
* Fannie/Freddie: Market failure
* Bear Stearns: sort of market failure
* Auto industry: Market failure
* Illicit drug industry: Not market failure
* Dangerous drugs slipping past FDA: Market failure
* Countless drugs that will never come to market due to FDA: ???

In other words, nothing. You can't learn squat from it because the concept these two words supposedly encompass does not exist. Calling a subjectively deleterious event or condition a "market failure" would be analogous to Michael Phelps calling a swim loss an "Olympic failure." For whom is this loss the failure, Phelps? Certainly you and your endorsements and sponsors. Questionably certain elements of the population at large such as your family and fan base. Certainly not for your opponents in the race. For whom is this loss the failure, Waxman? Certainly you and your constituents in the wealthiest district of media-driven LA county. Questionably certain elements of the population, although they obviously don't care enough to pay more to offset the lack of interest. Certainly not the paper's competitors who have developed a better concept.

The idea of "market failure" arose for precisely the same reason as our democratically-elected overlords arose: some men feel an innate superiority to and desire for dominion over their fellow man, and will delve the depths of human conscience (and the peaks of human creativity) in order to convince others that they're right. "Market failure" is Waxman projecting his feeling that his and his most important constituents' interests are paramount to everyone else's, no different than the "war on terror" and the previous administration's middle east interests. A government "of the people" is the modern mechanism by which these sinister men bring their fantasies to fruition. The government is the problem. If "democracy" (of any flavor) requires a state to function - a group of overlords, however appointed or anointed - then democracy is broken, empirically, historically, conceptually, morally, ethically, pragmatically, and any other way you care to dice it.

Hypothesis: humans have a strong attraction to interpersonal drama because in a 100-person tribe, everyone's lives are intertwined and you can't ever get away from the people involved, so drama was more relevant and important than in our modern society with looser, larger social networks.

Из всего многочисленного, наверно, интереснее вот тут. А вот серьёзный разговор зачем-то. Ну и у Аввы (но там получилась неожиданная путаница, которая, впрочем, многое прояснила).

Update. Оказывается, тема свободы слова людей таки волнует. Или это кошки?

Update. Развитие событий: картинка; документ с продолжением. Но последнее уже хтонический сюр.

Does UBC have a weather station with live broadcasting?

I suspect UBC is a degree or two colder than Kitsilano.

Do people ever consider microweather when they make real-estate decisions?

I posted on my personel LJ a few days ago some views on various things. Below, I've excerpted one huge chunk of that post and reposted it here, in order to break up the usual spam that has become so typical of this community. My view is quite simple: with the recent, idiotic moves the government has taken in this crisis, we are now moving towards an economic collapse. Not any ordinary collapse, but a full-blown, "OH SHI--" variety. I've been skeptical of this before, noting that our economy has been incredibly resilient for decades and we still have the largest GDP in the world, more than triple our nearest competitor, but this is just too much. Adding insult to injury is Mish's recent outlook on unemployment, which shows it will be high for a decade, and this gem from Mises on the minimum wage, which effectively bars anyone under 21 and recent college graduates from getting a job. Adding those two into this mix, and not only is unemployment going to be high forever, but the economy isn't going to lift out of it either. I've given in to the naysayers and doomcallers. We're fucked.

Also, sorry about the writing. It was done kinda hastily the last time. Didn't put all that much effort into making it look good.

(BTW, Lucy, this is how you do it.)
( Out of control government spending and moronic fiscal policy that is dooming this country to economic ruin )


## `*` is the hyper of `+`, `^` is the hyper of `*`
> hyper <- function(fn) function(a,b) Reduce(fn, rep(a,b))

> compose <- function(fn1,fn2) function(x) fn1(fn2(x))

> hyperoperation <- function(n) Reduce(compose,listRep(hyper,n))(`+`)


('rep(obj,n)' and 'listRep(obj,n)' just return a list containing 'obj' n times. I had to invent 'listRep' for technical reasons, namely passing closures to 'rep' returns an error: "object of type 'closure' is not subsettable")

( get it yet? )

Или: о вреде воздержания.

http://lenta.ru/news/2009/12/02/blue/

Всё, домой пошёл.