Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Last month, I was thinking a lot about polyphasic sleep schedules. I didn't manage to discipline myself in such a schedule yet, and my feeble attempts only combined with procrastination into reducing my sleep time, to my ultimate psychological downfall. A more reasonable target will be to shoot for simple biphasic sleep, with a regular nap in the afternoon after a regular lunch: when at ENS, I met someone who did quite well this way, which is also the way it was done for all children in my kindergarten. When I manage that, it will be time to add more naps and do less sleep.

However, short sleep schedules have the power to bring more lucid dreaming. And with my reading about lucid dreaming, and my recurring disappointment since I was a kid at not being able to take notes in my dreams that I could leave to my waking self, I had this most interesting meta lucid dream.

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My friend Gavin not only orks cows, he also dispenses wisdom. Tell him you want free high quality education for everyone, he'll reply that he wants free high quality education for everyone and a pony. So you want free health care? I want free health care and a pony. You want higher minimum wages? I want higher minimum wages and a pony. You want to be paid for nothing? I want to be paid for nothing and a pony. You want peace on earth and end to disease and hunger? I want peace on earth and end to disease and hunger, and a pony. etc. Why haven't I thought of it before? After all, who doesn't want a pony? It's cute. It's natural. It's cuddly. Everyone wants a pony, especially if it comes for free! I want a world where people are less stupid. And a pony.

Mon ami Gavin est plus qu'un simple collègue, c'est aussi un sage. Dites-lui que vous voulez une éducation gratuite de haute qualité pour tous il répondra qu'il veut pour tous une éducation gratuite de haute qualité et un poney. Vous voulez une couverture médicale gratuite? Je veux une couverture médicale gratuite et un poney. Vous voulez un salaire minimal plus élevé? Je veux un salaire minimal plus élevé et un poney. Vous voulez être payé à ne rien faire? Je veux être payé à ne rien faire et un poney. Vous voulez la paix dans le monde et en finir avec les épidémies et les famines? Je veux la paix dans le monde, en finir avec les épidémies et les famines et un poney. etc. Pourquoi n'y ai-je pas pensé plus tôt? Après tout, qui n'a pas envie d'un poney? C'est si mignon, un poney. Si naturel. Si calinembrassande! Tout le monde a envie d'un poney, surtout s'il est donné gratuitement! Moi, je veux un monde où les gens ils sont moins stupides. Et un poney.

In a previous post, I told you of a door hack one of my colleagues did, and what social concepts it illustrated. Mind you, when I was younger, I also did my own door hacks. My former clubmates from the Club Informatique of Lycée Louis-le-Grand may remember one that I did long ago, back in High-School. In retrospect, I realize this anecdote too may illustrate a number of interesting social concepts.

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Here I am in a new world. Safe and rested at last after a long journey. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life for me. And I'm feeeeling good.

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On the first weekend of April, I attended the Spring 2005 Convention of Libertarian International, in Sofia, Bulgaria, as organized by the Bulgarian Society for Individual Liberty. I was a speaker, and my speech was about Capitalism as the Institution of Ethics. The notes for my speech are now available on my web site.

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On se souvient rarement d'un rêve, et rarement des détails, sauf à la rigueur de vagues détails, juste après s'être réveillé. Celui-là m'a donné envie de vous le raconter en brodant un peu pour recréer tous les détails et supposés implicites, qui semblent évidents durant le rêve, et indicibles après. C'est l'histoire d'un jeune couple glamour qui a tout pour être heureux mais ne l'est pas.

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I've recently discovered the word captcha. Of course, I already knew the concept. I first faced it on the internet long ago, quite possibly at the time when there were still free SMS services and they tried to limit abuse. Then, I wrote about using them in my article stamps vs spam.

Captchas are an inconvenience, but that's their whole point of them: they are a economic signalling device, by which the solver proves that he cares by accepting a sunk cost. The real problem with captchas is that they can be defeated, thanks to distributed porn-processing. Or maybe not.

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This weekend, I've been sorting a lot of old paperwork from my previous life, trying to find a few things to liquidate all my pending business in France. My oh my. I just re-saw Brazil and it feels so true-to-life.

While digging through the pile of paper, I found a few melodies I had written, but also this AFCish haïku:

Thunder in a tin
Waves of flesh, seeking mates
Failure self-fulfills

Petit extrait du lavage de cerveau insidieux effectué par les rédactions télévisées soviétiques francophones (RTBF, TF1, F2), ce dimanche soir.

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Si vous cherchez un endroit romantique pour une soirée à Bruxelles, allez donc au Grand Mayeur, restaurant tsigane russe, place du Grand Sablon, où un petit orchestre tsigane au violon virtuose vous ravira de 21:00 à 02:00.

In a bus to NYC early in January 2005, I met this gorgeous girl who was reading a course in Economics. The textbook was open on a praise of the Fed and its role in regulating the National Economy, with an opposing page in a special color denoting higher science, that justified this role based on one macroeconomic equation by Keynes. It was too tempting, so I started a conversation.

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While in the States, I had an argument with, of all persons, a French man. He argued for relativism, that true and false do not matter, and might not exist at all, that every situation is unique, etc. Yeah sure! His example went that everytime he heard that same Opera was unique. And my reply was that everytime he'd have to listen to the noise of a jackhammer for two uninterrupted hours would be just as unique. He was an extreme example of what Ayn Rand called the anti-conceptual mentality.

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When I was in the Boston subway, I saw the following advertisement on the red line, saying that Math is Cool. The next day, the advertisement was gone. Maybe math wasn't cool anymore. But then, there were still ads for learning philosophy, teaching english, etc. Things like that make me feel like Boston is just my kind of town. Think about it: a giant multiversity campus with lots of fascinating museums!

Les couloirs du métro annoncent Pharaon à l'institut du monde arabe, à grand renforts de sponsors étatiques et para-étatiques. Pourquoi pas Dalai Lama à l'institut du monde chinois? Chef Hutu, à l'institut du monde tutsi? Inca à l'institut du monde ibérique? Roi Champa à l'institut du monde vietnamien? Hannibal à l'institut du monde romain? Néanderthal à l'institut du monde Cro-Magnon? Et d'abord pourquoi un institut du monde arabe plutôt que d'aucun autre? Attention, si on laisse faire la vermine qui instigue une telle mascarade, dans quelques années, à l'institut du monde arabe, ce sera Premier ministre israëlien bientôt suivi de Président français. La collection a vocation à s'étendre autant qu'on la laissera faire.

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Now that I have a newly working Lisp development system running Debian, complete with XEmacs, CLISP, SLIME, SSH and CVS, I have taken time to publish my Common Lisp software in the updated form of asdf packages, ready to be installed with asdf-install. Yup, that packaging software is named ASDF. Not SHRDLU.

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I left the New World and what is left of New Amsterdam, and am now in Old Amsterdam, in the Old World. My oh my, there's a change indeed.

It's nice to have friends everywhere. Time to practice my double dutch.

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I am François-René Rideau, a one-man think tank from France, and the webmaster of Bastiat.org. Since I realized tonight that time is expensive, I will be short. Iris asked me to answer the question: What is the reaction in France to Ayn Rand's ideas? Well, the answer is quite short actually: <french accent>The reaction to what???</french accent> In France, Ayn Rand is even less known that in America. The difference is that in France, academics don't even have to find a pretense so as to dismiss the significance of Ayn Rand, that is hardly ever brought about.

But the problem with the silencing of libertarian ideas goes much further. Consider that free trade was relatively popular in 1776 after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. At the same time, socialism was mostly unheard of. Nowadays, free trade goes mostly undefended, while socialism is the semi-official religion of the day. So this is not just a matter of new ideas that haven't had the time to spread.

Ayn Rand insisted that the superiority of objectivist ideas resides in their rationality. Well, for an argument to be accepted, there are four steps which must be overcome: the argument must be heard; it must be listened to; it must vanquish prejudices; it must be understood. Only on the last step does rationality matter. For the rest, we must develop our skills at rhetoric if we want our ideas to compete on par with those of our opponents.

Having fun together is nice and well, and we're enjoying tonight (at least, I hope); but it only goes so far in terms of advancing Liberty. To advance Liberty is to convince other people of the nature, validity and importance of human rights. And convincing other people is a long and difficult task. It is an Enterprise of its own, to be approached as such. We have limited resources; we must manage them properly. With these resources, we must develop and market our ideas and arguments. Usual marketing techniques and pitfalls apply. We must define our targets, and cater to their needs. Most importantly, so as to survive and to extend, we must follow the bottom line: the self interest of the participating individuals, the sustainability, hence profitability, of the structuring institutions through which we advance Liberty.

Liberty will not prevail by chance. It will prevail because some people will have taken its success seriously, and will have undertaken the task of heralding it rationally. You can be among these people. You can become an activist. Or you can fund activism by people who specialize in the field. You may decide to fund my think tank, or another libertarian organization. In any case, it is your responsibility to entrust proper resources to people who will advance the cause of Liberty. Because you are the ones who know better.

Thank you for your attention.

I'm coming today. I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!

Yes, this time, it's serious. I'll be coming to NYC, after all. I'll be spending the New Year's Eve there, and leaving on the evening of Monday January 10th. I'll also be in Boston on January 2-4, and back to NYC on the afternoon of January 5. If you'll be around at these dates, maybe that's the opportunity for you and me to meet there?

A Nous Deux, New York!

Places I am committed to visiting in 2005:

• Sometime in January: the south of France. I have friends and family there. During the transition between two jobs, it's a great opportunity to go there. If I go by car, depending on my January schedule, I'll probably stop at Lyon.
• In April 1-3 2005, I am scheduled to go to Sofia, in Bulgaria, so as to speak before the Libertarian International Spring 2005 Conference.
• In July 10-15 2005, I would very much like to go to St Petersburg for the ISIL Conference.

Places I am planning to visit in 2005, without confirmation:

• Maybe in January, New York. I might have an interview in the east coast in January, and if so I'll definitely stop at NYC, because I know I need unique New York.
• Amsterdam. If I do that New York trip, I'll definitely stop over at Amsterdam to meet friends. Even if I don't, I might go to the Chaos Computing Camp this summer if it happens in Holland as was decided, and the dates don't conflict with the ISIL conference.
• West Germany. On my way out of Luxembourg, why not tour a bit in the area?
• Switzerland. I might get a job there. Or I might just visit during the Libertarian Week-end of Pro Libertate.
• If I can afford it (money and time), I'd like to go to Asia (Japan? India? Vietnam?). But since I don't even know where I'll be working and living, this is probably more of 2006 travelling.
• Who knows where else I can get myself to?

So, if you're in any of these places, or intend to be at the same time as I, why not meet?

Diverses entreprises m'ont fait passé des entretiens d'embauche. Mais j'ai aussi accordé d'autres interviews, dont la suivante que vous pouvez lire sur Liberté Magazine.

Another important way in which americans are free and french are not: in public messages, whether in ads or in public venue regulations, the main way that people are enticed to do things, in the States, is you can do it, you can help preserve the environment, you can achieve something for yourself, etc. In France, it's you must, whether you like it or not, you cannot, because someone who knows better than you has decided it this way. Of course, this is more visible in public regulations than in private advertisements, since the latter always rely on the good will of the consumer. Still, even french ads more often than not resort to bad conscience and other forms of self-loathing. This is not something to be found in the States.

I greatly enjoyed driving on highway 101 between San Francisco and Mountain View. Part from the reason was the nice rental car. I liked its automatic gear box a lot, though I couldn't manage to use it till I had some passerby explain to me that the brake pedal also served as the clutch. All the americans I met were so very nice, except for a civil servant from MBTA (who was notably lacking niceness though without being rude). Reminds me of Japan -- however, though the japanese might have seemed even nicer, I couldn't understand what they were saying, whereas I can speak english and enjoy american niceness.

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I may have been out of the loop, but I was happily surprised to see how Linux was present everywhere during my air travels. First thing, I hear Dell spending several minutes in an on-flight radio program explaining how it installs RedHat Linux on its servers, or whichever other flavor of Linux suits their customers. Next thing, Oracle bought all the ceiling ads in SEA airport to say that Oracle makes Linux unbreakable. In San Francisco, Veritas puts Windows, Unix and Linux on par. Finally, on my trip back, the in-flight entertainment system by Panasonic reboots in Linux: I could see the penguin on my neighbour's screen as he desperately twiddled the command pad. Wow. Linux has gone a long way in thirteen years. The free market works around information protectionism, slowly but surely.

I went to Boston so as to attend LL4. I was disappointed to find that none of those great PLT guys could or would come this year, but all in all, it was a nice event, with nice people, and the last session was particularly entertaining, with presentations about gooze and frink.

What was even better, I got to meet two friends that I find truly impressive, each in his own way: Jay McCarthy and Denis Auroux.

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I'm HOME.

That is, I'm in the heart of the Silicon Valley, visiting companies and campuses full of particularly bright people, meeting like-minded friends sometimes surprisingly so, enjoying a bright blue sky and a warm weather in December, living in an extraordinarily rich country, crossing a lot of generally welcoming nice and positive-minded people. What more can you ask?