mdakin

No, I would have cited it. Rhetoric. I'm starting to realize that my zeitgeist has diverged from the zeitgeist of hacker news such that my comments are not understood by the majority of the readers here. C'est la vie. In-person interaction is best.

Major "national security asset." <cough, cough, puke>

e^(pi*i)=-1 -- Definitely right.

1+1=0 -- Definitely wrong.

Math has been around the entire time. So have right and wrong.

"While the socialist left has fantasized for generations about global revolutions and global class wars"

Global-scale revolution would be rare and unprecedented, however national-scale revolution is extremely common, almost all nations have, are having, or will have one. USA would not exist without our national-scale revolution around 1776 and then the follow-up act around 1812. France wouldn't be as it is today without its 1789 event. Today it seems as though the people in the Middle East and Eastern Europe want things similar to those things Americans and French wanted ~ 200 years ago. And so such revolutions have continued up to this day. One is happening in Ukraine right at this very moment. [0] Don't worry though, it's not televised, and the NYT characterizes the situation merely as a "crisis." [1, though to be fair, the article and its wording were more soft-ball in the past than it is at this moment in time].

I believe the probability of something like that happening in the USA at this moment in time is small. I think the USA is at a different point on the sociological development curve and the USA's problems have morphed in such a way that it should be possible to sort them out either by modifying the government (which is the entire purpose of the orig. architecture of the government, though it's been perverted by generations of asshole politicians) or building "Foundation-like things" on top of the existing economy. The mass of people in America are beginning to see the cause and effect relationships that have hiddenly influenced humanity for millennia. The cause and effect relationships of our current national situation will becomes more and more apparent to a larger and larger portion of the population with time, and at some point a threshold of action will be crossed, and some sort of change will occur. Dubious people at the core of the dubious phenomenon generally speaking no longer have mercenaries, and only have limited influence over the government. And everyone knows where these people live because rich people tend to cluster together and live in the same neighborhoods. When the country was founded the "rich people" who were "pulling the strings" were back in England. And we won anyway. So it's a much more tractable problem now that all the players are in one place, and everyone can know who they all are, where they work, and where they live. I can't wait until a critical mass of people feel like peacefully solving the problem.

One of the things that I think is most interesting about this Ukraine story is how it has def. been "blacklisted" by the mainstream media in the USA-- essentially even the NYT, which is using doublespeak at least some of the time in its reporting about the happenings. Why is this blacklisting/whitewashing occurring, esp. in a country (USA) that was founded by a bloody, violent revolution? Understanding that cause/effect would be very important to helping America at this moment in time.

If we take the pulse of Belarus, we see that the authoritarian dictator there has made clapping illegal in response to similar dynamics playing out there. [2] Yes, this really happens on Earth in 2014.

[0] http://zyalt.livejournal.com/984735.html [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/europe/ukraine-leade... [2] http://www.economist.com/node/18929417

Hehehe, she lives 1/3 of the way around the world, and I'm not rich so that's def. not my objective. Plus how can you hit on someone you've never even seen? Personally, I don't want to go much more down the rabbit-hole of a conversation that involves "caste systems" in a public forum, but this is the sort of thing I talk about with my friends. That and I've been randomly making friends with people on the Internet since I was a little kid! (Probably explains everything about me really.) :)

?

I've been by the bay for going on seven years and I'm just now starting to perceive this caste-system aspect of the place. I perceived it first as something that I call "dynastic culture," which is, I think, how it shows up on a individual basis. But when you collect together in the same place a bunch of people whose consciousnesses run "dynastic culture," you end up with a caste system emerging at the more macro scale. Anyway, I suspect I would enjoy corresponding with you. If that's mutual, my email is mpdakin at Google's service. Cheers!

An angry man punched him because a critical mass of humanity continues to choose dystopia over utopia.

All of the specifics and examples in that article really are just symptoms of dystopia. The phenomenon of mentally ill people running around on the streets punching people is merely just a symptom of dystopia.

If you want to blame something-- it's not tech companies, Google, Twitter, etc. It's human nature in general, and it's the dystopian beliefs and behaviors of a group of assholes+morons alive on this planet right now who collectively pull humanity towards dystopia by their actions and behaviors in the world relative to the other humans they interact with.

Humans on this planet at this moment in technology-time have all the technological know-how to create a world-wide utopia-- theoretically, it could be done in a matter of months. Unfortunately, there is a critical mass of humans who prefer to live in dystopia. And there are many in that critical mass who are willing to kill other people who disagree with them. So dystopia is what we have at this moment in time.

Free will's a bitch when there is a critical mass of dystopian assholes+morons on a planet. The behavior of that critical mass of dystopians has a sort of spooky action at a distance for the rest of humanity, even those who are not directly connected/interacting with the dystopians.

I can't wait for dystopian actions, behaviors, ideas, models, philosophies, religions, corporations, and governments to die, finally.

I call these anti-creative people of the world who work to hold the world of humanity fixed in one conceptual place/time "The Lords of the Status Quo." These "lords" are great in number, but always individually weak. This group somehow combined forces with "The Lords of Hierarchy"-- those who built and currently inhabit the hierarchal social structures that last throughout time (e.g. Corporations, Religions, Governments). That combined force is the most powerful abstract entity that I know of on this planet, and has somehow managed to impose its collective will over everyone on this planet. (Drone strikes, anyone?) If you want to understand the combined group you want to understand "Slave Morality." They are all something like Slaves. The creatives are best understood using "Hero Morality." I can't wait until this world's "Slaves" finally free themselves. I am generally an anti-Nietzsche thinker and I believe his ideas should be taken with a huge handful of salt, but I think the Hero/Slave archetypes actually do explain a lot about this (effed up) world.

"Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology! Ain't got time to make no apology" -Iggy Pop

There are people who work on the ethics of science and technology full time and they are awesome. If every technologist worked on ethics full time nothing would ever get done. I recommend checking out the work of the STS department of MIT though Open Courseware if you are interested in ethics.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/science-technology-and-society/

Also, if there is actually something unethical going on, it's best to enunciate it using straight/clear prose following the satire if you actually want to affect the external world.

I... want Rome to burn. The authoritarian, hierarchal power structures that exist in this country/world ("Rome") are in need of re-formation or collapse. I'm not interested in participating in that process though. I certainly would never have architected a system of the manner that exists, and I'm not interested in helping the a-holes who did do that debug it. I'd rather just live awesome, think, feel, and make cool stuff when I'm in the mood to do that.

The thing that concerns me about SF Bay Area Startup Ecosystem is that it is def. neither a meritocracy nor a technocracy. (Those systems, properly implemented allow great new things to come into the world, without the side effect of king-creation.) Right now, California is dynastic. Dynastic money, flowing into the hands of people who adopt a dynastic culture, and creating the weak sort of creations that dynastic people end up creating. It makes people rich, and dynastic, one startup team at a time. That's a problem for the world! Once the bulk of the genius-level people now tied up working on dynastic projects or on online advertising/email delivery for some behemoth company wake up to the true nature of the reality and start operating in it as true creators things will start to actually get interesting and awesome.

In the mean time I'll enjoy the delicious beer, food, and weather. And Tahoe once there's enough snow.

I don't see this as a good/bad/moral calculation. I see it as a practical calculation. We don't need to go into the moral domain when the cause and effect domain is capable of completely outlining the problem.

Working on high tech is dangerous as long as the world is run by warlords and the USA is a surveillance/police state. The last several rounds of high-tech have been utilized by a dynastic, authoritarian power-class to make the world a more horrible place while benefiting themselves, their families, friends, and other cronies.

I think hard problem vs. social media problem is a false dichotomy. I wish people would focus on wise problems. High tech is too dangerous at this moment, even though it's the best stuff to work on long-term for humanity.

I think you're right about the "attraction of advertising." But the real attraction there is that (1)+(2)=(money pump). And these companies don't seem to know what to do with the type of money pump they are capable of building. It just sort of piles up. :)

I've had an idiosyncratic but highly useful definition of the word 'genius' since I was a little kid thanks to my mother. She taught me that a genius is an intuitive/rational thinker-feeler-person who was lucky enough to somehow line it all up for humanity in his/her mind and bring something big into the world that changes it for the better. If you think about all the real geniuses-- that criteria holds.

There is not much academic research into genius these days but there is research into intuitive people and intuition. And there is also related work in psychology about self-actualization and the other mental-processes.

But eventually it all comes down to someone doing something breathtakingly interesting-- you can't really roll that step off an assembly-line.

I percieve one of the problems with the world right now is that lots of the most highly-competent/skilled people are sort of holding off doing big things, esp. with technology. The number of intuitive man-hours that have been poured into the subject of online advertising is staggering. Those people working on that are capable of actual works of genius. But instead they feel motivated to work for a big company on long-term useless problems. But I understand this: if you look at what the last waves of true high-tech are i.e. computer/communication/aerospace/nuclear vs. what their "fruits" have been i.e. surveilance-state/police-state/military-industrial-complex/mass production and mass proliferation of WMDs. It's quite disgusting.

Anyway, I know why I'm working on "social technology" and "consumer technology" instead of "high technology."

You seem to only be able to see the world for the way it is now, and has been over the recent past. Getting stuck on these thinking patterns is self-limiting, much like getting stuck on a programming language like PHP-- both are one-trick-ponies. We thankfully live in a world that, long term, is driven by imagination and possibility. And not always are the "leaders" complete and massive assholes (which is our main immediate problem at this moment in time).

Agreed. I also believe there is a sociological component. A situation such as we have is only possible when a critical mass of engineers/scientists/creatives/technicians consciously choose to work on anti-human technology. The political assholes could not develop this anti-human technology on their own.

"But he has nothing on!"

I guess they don't eat their own dog food.

Yeah, I think the "Communist methods" that were tried in Eastern Europe and Asia are generally horrible ideas. And those methods are now tied up with the philosophy for better or worse. I def. don't think those methods work.

America provides a stable foundation upon which new experiments may be conducted. I know it's critical to take care of and fix America within the system as much as possible so that it can maintain its stability. But I think the real value of America involves it being that stable foundation upon which different people can try different ideas. America is not as wed-to/obsessed-with the past as much as many parts of the world-- thankfully. As breaking away from the past is critical to the advancement of humanity.

I haven't read it, but I did love _Cat's Cradle_. Thanks for the reference!

I think labels can be useful when they are used to facilitate communication and understanding. But they can also be used as weapons and to manipulate people who have trouble communicating and understanding. I suspect we're on the same page. :)

I'm probably more of a social anarchist than anything, but I think labels are often unhelpful. The beauty of our current situation is that we can build it on top of America as it exists today. No need to label it-- just build it. :)

We're moving towards a future in which "working" will be an optional activity.

If you can get enough farms/factories producing the widgets of everyday life essentially for the sum of the input commodity costs, energy costs, and some small overhead (and the free market/technology relentlessly drives overhead towards 0), you wind up being able to take care of everyone-- but you don't take care of everyone with jobs. You take care of the people by enabling them to not worry about the basics of life. You remove the survival problem from the game, and allow people to choose between living little or thriving through voluntary creative pursuits. Some people will certainly focus on the creative pursuits, and generate wealth that enables them to thrive instead of merely survive. But I have a feeling that a bunch of people will focus on their tennis game instead (which is fine with me).

I don't think most people yet realize that this sort of model is coming into humanity's reach. Most people are looking for ways to recreate the solutions of the past. But that's a horrible idea-- the past had problems because the solutions of the past create problems. We're almost on the verge of a technological/humanistic revolution in which everything will be changeable. But things won't change if we keep recreating the past (or, more accurately, if our ancient social structures keep trying to maintain control of the population by merely tweaking what are actually completely obsolete mechanisms).

I hope we can overcome the status quo and turn this world into a true utopia, instead of letting it continue to become yet another of the countless possible dystopias that are outlined by science fiction and other speculative fiction, and which have constituted the dystopian reality that most people ever born here have had to live through.

I'm very optimistic-- I think the hard part is mostly behind us. The social power structures (the institutions that use money, violence, and killing to control people) have not routinely killed scientist and engineer society-changers for probably several hundred years, at least in the West. Money is still used to this day-- e.g. the VCs (and other financial industry and government people) hold the capital-- not some science/engineering/humanist foundation headed by scientists/engineers/humanists. I think it's possible to work within these constraints though, and to have a significant impact.

History and truth are often out of synchronization (esp. in these days of pervasive propaganda/active manipulation of the population using mass communication technology). The chapters of the human story that played out 15,000 to 5,000 years ago in Africa/Europe/Near East/India are still being figured out by a combination of archeological, genetic, and linguistic research. Concerning the worship of "Earth/Mother Goddesses" vs. "Sky Gods" (e.g. Yahweh, Zeus, Thor, etc.) and the interactions of the different groups of people who preferred (and oftentimes forced upon others) their own visions of deity, if you want to engage rationally on this topic, I recommend researching and understanding (and contesting in an actual rational manner if you believe that the hypothesis is false) the "Kurgan Hypothesis."[1] There are some good books about it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis

I've observed this phenomenon/pattern in both California and Massachusetts. Also by direct experience, I've found that there are certain niche subfields of software engineering that seem to be practiced long-term only by people of this "Guild" sort.

At this year's SF Documentary Film Festival I watched a great documentary about modern origami called Between the Folds. If you have the opportunity to see it you should take advantage.

The book to read about folding is Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art by Robert J. Lang.

See Table 5. Discussion is interesting too.

Teaching a kid that people (and by implication the kid him/herself) are inherently good/bad (or in any way "fixed") is a really bad idea for a number of reasons. He's trying to keep her mindset growth-oriented.

"There are no neurotics or geniuses or failures or fools. There are only neurotic moments, flashes of brilliance, failed opportunities, and stupid mistakes." -David K. Reynolds

A much better idea is to teach children to read other people's emotional state in the moment; to develop their intuition and teach them to trust it. It's that intuitive ability that will allow the child to escape arbitrary danger and to thrive in general.

I became aware of MBTI about fifteen years ago and it's been an ongoing fascination. I see it mainly as a useful conceptual framework upon which one may build a set of intuitive tools that enable effective interpersonal understanding. I've always felt it somewhat loose and inexact but unlike many of the posters here (borderline trollers actually) I don't have a problem with that looseness. And it's perhaps unsurprising that the type I seem to prefer to manifest is an extreme minority type both in the context of this site and in the context of the general population.

You seem to have a more rigorous and holistic understanding of the psyche than I do. I have a set of intuitions built from this framework. It seems you have understandings of additional surrounding frameworks, and probably a more clear understanding of MBTI itself than I do.

Do you have a reference (ideally a published book or books) that could help me expand my understanding of MBTI and the enveloping aspects of the psyche?