Sometimes this place reminds me of a Starbucks.

[The Wizard]

Well, I am letting things slide.  I'm not spagging up Semaj's thread with this, after all.

Didn't really mind. The conversation was interesting. But don't mind the conversation shifting to a different thread either.

[Doktor Howl]

Well, I am letting things slide.  I'm not spagging up Semaj's thread with this, after all.

Didn't really mind. The conversation was interesting. But don't mind the conversation shifting to a different thread either.

Not sure how you found it interesting.  Most of it was talking about how great all the ideas will be.  But the ideas were never actually brought up.

Instead, we were treated to shit like this:

I want to go back to the idea of increasing the ability of culture-jamming and art to affect a culture.

Awesome.

I've been planning to try and organize a massive, focused strike on a major city using culture jamming groups. Just to see if they can work together, and whether the movement is capable of having an effect.

I think the answer is "yes", but the questions are "to what end" and "how".  Perhaps the latter will follow from the former?

What the fuck? 

[Captain Utopia]

This is the post in question:
  http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=25770.msg899442#msg899442

You did not ask me for a concrete example, you asked me how many real world application trials I had personally done.

GREAT POINT!  BECAUSE A REAL WORLD APPLICATION ISN'T ANYTHING LIKE A CONCRETE EXAMPLE.

Well let's break this down - you said I had an ivory tower plan, implying that I was myself unqualified in that jurisdiction, when I said that it wasn't you asked how many trials I had personally performed -- none, because my software isn't complete yet.  And so I conceded that point, and went on to qualify the jurisdiction that I was speaking from.

But now you say you wanted to know how many real world trials there were currently, if you had asked that question in the first place, I would have pointed you to here: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Active_projects

[Captain Utopia]

Well, I am letting things slide.  I'm not spagging up Semaj's thread with this, after all.

Didn't really mind. The conversation was interesting. But don't mind the conversation shifting to a different thread either.

Not sure how you found it interesting.  Most of it was talking about how great all the ideas will be.  But the ideas were never actually brought up.

Instead, we were treated to shit like this:

I want to go back to the idea of increasing the ability of culture-jamming and art to affect a culture.

Awesome.

I've been planning to try and organize a massive, focused strike on a major city using culture jamming groups. Just to see if they can work together, and whether the movement is capable of having an effect.

I think the answer is "yes", but the questions are "to what end" and "how".  Perhaps the latter will follow from the former?

What the fuck? 

"Yes" I think it is capable of having an effect.  "To what end" do you want to culture jam - what are you trying to achieve?  "How" are you going to do it?  Perhaps if you know what you want to do then it will be easier to figure out how to do it.

[Doktor Howl]

Well, I am letting things slide.  I'm not spagging up Semaj's thread with this, after all.

Didn't really mind. The conversation was interesting. But don't mind the conversation shifting to a different thread either.

Not sure how you found it interesting.  Most of it was talking about how great all the ideas will be.  But the ideas were never actually brought up.

Instead, we were treated to shit like this:

I want to go back to the idea of increasing the ability of culture-jamming and art to affect a culture.

Awesome.

I've been planning to try and organize a massive, focused strike on a major city using culture jamming groups. Just to see if they can work together, and whether the movement is capable of having an effect.

I think the answer is "yes", but the questions are "to what end" and "how".  Perhaps the latter will follow from the former?

What the fuck? 

"Yes" I think it is capable of having an effect.  "To what end" do you want to culture jam - what are you trying to achieve?  "How" are you going to do it?  Perhaps if you know what you want to do then it will be easier to figure out how to do it.

What information was conveyed by that post?

I mean, those are obvious questions for ANYTHING.  CU, I like you, but I have this horrible image of you holding a cigarette backwards and wearing Buddy Holly shades right now.

[Captain Utopia]

No one else had asked the question and I wanted to hear his answers. 

You're criticising me for not answering obvious questions (which I did), and also when I ask obvious questions (which needed answers).  So I don't really get the feeling that the criticism is coming from my actions, but from your need to criticise.

So why don't we just go trolling someplace new and have a good time instead?  This place is somewhat topical: hxxp://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org

[Doktor Howl]

No one else had asked the question and I wanted to hear his answers. 

You're criticising me for not answering obvious questions (which I did), and also when I ask obvious questions (which needed answers).  So I don't really get the feeling that the criticism is coming from my actions, but from your need to criticise.

So why don't we just go trolling someplace new and have a good time instead?  This place is somewhat topical: hxxp://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org

Sorry, I quit trolling.

[LMNO]

If I could make a suggestion:

I think that there are some people here who like thinking in Big Picture terms first, and some people who like thinking out the Details first. 

The Big Picture folks will put an idea forward as a concept, and suggest a few ways to get there.

The Detail people want to see pragmatic examples of how to do it.

These people will never agree on anything.

So maybe we can lay out a few ley lines, come to general agreement, then see how to tie it all together.

For example:

1) Current society has problems.  It would be good to change the culture.

2) Regardless of the pluses and minuses, technology is entwined with culture.

3) It would be useful to use technology to try and change culture.

4) Is there a way to minimize the risks and elevate the benefits of using technology to increase civic participation towards positive culture change?

etc.

Instead of saying "e-democracy is awesome, right?" or "show me how that would work", you can set a potential goal, and then work towards it.

Or something.


LMNO
-sees the potential from both positions (lmnuendo).

[Pæs]

If I could make a suggestion:

I think that there are some people here who like thinking in Big Picture terms first, and some people who like thinking out the Details first. 

The Big Picture folks will put an idea forward as a concept, and suggest a few ways to get there.

The Detail people want to see pragmatic examples of how to do it.

These people will never agree on anything.

So maybe we can lay out a few ley lines, come to general agreement, then see how to tie it all together.

For example:

1) Current society has problems.  It would be good to change the culture.

2) Regardless of the pluses and minuses, technology is entwined with culture.

3) It would be useful to use technology to try and change culture.

4) Is there a way to minimize the risks and elevate the benefits of using technology to increase civic participation towards positive culture change?

etc.

Instead of saying "e-democracy is awesome, right?" or "show me how that would work", you can set a potential goal, and then work towards it.

Or something.


LMNO
-sees the potential from both positions (lmnuendo).

This makes sense. Too much sense. I don't know if we should trust it.

[LMNO]

You're right.

BURN IT WITH FIRE!
   \

[Cain]

Details are more useful, however:

Within their own professions, people grasp the importance of narrowness; a car mechanic knows the difference between a carburetor and a radiator, and would not think of them both as "car parts".  A hunter-gatherer knows the difference between a lion and a panther.  A janitor does not wipe the floor with window cleaner, even if the bottles look similar to one who has not mastered the art.

Outside their own professions, people often commit the misstep of trying to broaden a word as widely as possible, to cover as much territory as possible.  Is it not more glorious, more wise, more impressive, to talk about all the apples in the world?  How much loftier it must be to explain human thought in general, without being distracted by smaller questions, such as how humans invent techniques for solving a Rubik's Cube.  Indeed, it scarcely seems necessary to consider specific questions at all; isn't a general theory a worthy enough accomplishment on its own?

It is the way of the curious to lift up one pebble from among a million pebbles on the shore, and see something new about it, something interesting, something different. You call these pebbles "diamonds", and ask what might be special about them - what inner qualities they might have in common, beyond the glitter you first noticed. And then someone else comes along and says: "Why not call this pebble a diamond too? And this one, and this one?" They are enthusiastic, and they mean well. For it seems undemocratic and exclusionary and elitist and unholistic to call some pebbles "diamonds", and others not. It seems... narrow-minded... if you'll pardon the phrase. Hardly open, hardly embracing, hardly communal.

You might think it poetic, to give one word many meanings, and thereby spread shades of connotation all around. But even poets, if they are good poets, must learn to see the world precisely. It is not enough to compare love to a flower. Hot jealous unconsummated love is not the same as the love of a couple married for decades. If you need a flower to symbolize jealous love, you must go into the garden, and look, and make subtle distinctions - find a flower with a heady scent, and a bright color, and thorns. Even if your intent is to shade meanings and cast connotations, you must keep precise track of exactly which meanings you shade and connote.

It is a necessary part of the rationalist's art - or even the poet's art! - to focus narrowly on unusual pebbles which possess some special quality. And look at the details which those pebbles - and those pebbles alone! - share among each other.  This is not a sin.

It is perfectly all right for modern evolutionary biologists to explain just the patterns of living creatures, and not the "evolution" of stars or the "evolution" of technology.  Alas, some unfortunate souls use the same word "evolution" to cover the naturally selected patterns of replicating life, and the strictly accidental structure of stars, and the intelligently configured structure of technology.  And as we all know, if people use the same word, it must all be the same thing.  You should automatically generalize anything you think you know about biological evolution to technology.  Anyone who tells you otherwise must be a mere pointless pedant.  It couldn't possibly be that your abysmal ignorance of modern evolutionary theory is so total that you can't tell the difference between a carburetor and a radiator.  That's unthinkable.  No, the other guy - you know, the one who's studied the math - is just too dumb to see the connections.

And what could be more virtuous than seeing connections?  Surely the wisest of all human beings are the New Age gurus who say "Everything is connected to everything else."  If you ever say this aloud, you should pause, so that everyone can absorb the sheer shock of this Deep Wisdom.

There is a trivial mapping between a graph and its complement.  A fully connected graph, with an edge between every two vertices, conveys the same amount of information as a graph with no edges at all.  The important graphs are the ones where some things are not connected to some other things.

When the unenlightened ones try to be profound, they draw endless verbal comparisons between this topic, and that topic, which is like this, which is like that; until their graph is fully connected and also totally useless. The remedy is specific knowledge and in-depth study. When you understand things in detail, you can see how they are not alike, and start enthusiastically subtracting edges off your graph.

Likewise, the important categories are the ones that do not contain everything in the universe.  Good hypotheses can only explain some possible outcomes, and not others.

It was perfectly all right for Isaac Newton to explain just gravity, just the way things fall down - and how planets orbit the Sun, and how the Moon generates the tides - but not the role of money in human society or how the heart pumps blood. Sneering at narrowness is rather reminiscent of ancient Greeks who thought that going out and actually looking at things was manual labor, and manual labor was for slaves.

As Plato put it (in The Republic, Book VII):

    "If anyone should throw back his head and learn something by staring at the varied patterns on a ceiling, apparently you would think that he was contemplating with his reason, when he was only staring with his eyes... I cannot but believe that no study makes the soul look on high except that which is concerned with real being and the unseen. Whether he gape and stare upwards, or shut his mouth and stare downwards, if it be things of the senses that he tries to learn something about, I declare he never could learn, for none of these things admit of knowledge: I say his soul is looking down, not up, even if he is floating on his back on land or on sea!"

Many today make a similar mistake, and think that narrow concepts are as lowly and unlofty and unphilosophical as, say, going out and looking at things - an endeavor only suited to the underclass.  But rationalists - and also poets - need narrow words to express precise thoughts; they need categories which include only some things, and exclude others. There's nothing wrong with focusing your mind, narrowing your categories, excluding possibilities, and sharpening your propositions. Really, there isn't! If you make your words too broad, you end up with something that isn't true and doesn't even make good poetry.

And DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED on people who think Wikipedia is an "Artificial Intelligence", the invention of LSD was a "Singularity" or that corporations are "superintelligent"!

[Cramulus]

I didn't think CU had promised us the answer to solving all of our culture's problems. the way I read it, he was pointing out a spot that positive change could come through; a new use of technology which he thinks has a lot of potential. I think it's a little off to compare PD to Starbucks because CU hasn't been running IRL trials yet, or can't predict exactly how it'll end. As much as the "UR EATING THE MENU" talk is a frustrating way of communicating, I'm also getting kind of jaded by the "You cannot succeed, humanity is dooooomed" response to anybody with a shred of optimism.

[LMNO]

Cain, that was a great quote.

I think I need to go look for that book now.

And Cram, it would seem the CU's thesis isn't a bad one, it's just lacking in rubber-meets-the-road pragmatics.

[Cain]

No book needed, it came, freely, from here

[LMNO]

OSHI -


It's not blocked at work.
:bookmark:

I know there's another thread about this around here.  I feel silly for not looking for it until now.