Messages

61

Apple Talk / Re: Help me get banned! Win prizes!

« on: January 15, 2018, 03:25:20 am »

Yes, YOU can help me get banned! Apparently accounts aren't deactivated and you can't ask to be banned.  So, I need YOUR help. 1) Post  ideas here on how I can get banned as quickly as possible. Nothing illegal and nothing overly insulting please.  2) Report as many of my posts to mods as possible..... I have some ideas. The post I made that pissed folks off was made when I was drunk ( who knew Discos were so sensitive?) so I figure more drunken posts is a good idea,  except it's gonna be real fucking boring for me to do this sober and even more so drunk....  well, I've got other ideas.  PLEASE HELP ME GET BANNED.  Prizes will be awarded to the best, most effective ideas, from my collection of odd found items and some of the  (smaller) side-show oddities I've collected over the years.  I AM SERIOUS. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.  You can win really cool stuff! And have the satisfaction of doing a good deed by helping a fellow somewhat sentient being out. Thanks in advance for your efforts! I can't do this without you!

Why?

62

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 12, 2018, 06:01:35 am »

Hello, I'm back. I bear no ill will.

That's okay, I bore it for you.

I knew I could count on you, man!!

63

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 02:10:00 pm »

I see us leveraging our core competencies in order to implement a solve involving mission critical turnkey solutions.

OH YES BE LIKE THAT YOU FOUL-MOUTHED DISCORDIAN DIEHARD! THAT'S HOW I LIKE IT! LAY INTO ME WITH YOUR BRASH WITTICISM AND YOUR BOMBASTIC CYNICISM!!! AAAAAAA!!!

64

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 02:08:03 pm »

In American politics-----

When we come out of the Trump Times, we will be reborn.

One of the reasons I think American politics has been jammed is our inability to consicely articulate the real sides and stakes. Trump is a human embodiement of what's wrong, and as such, can be used as shorthand symbol. (sort of like how Hitler is a moral touchstone) If Trump's exit is spectacular enough, then no one remotely like him will be able to follow the act.

tl;dr accelerationism, but the good kind

Excellent vid. I think we may be on the same page. Increasingly, I just see the significance of the state wither away slowly and variably all over the globe. P.M. in Bolo'Bolo was a little too optimistic, but the general gist of the process seems to have at least a fighting chance of playing out.

65

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 11:56:06 am »

I still think Bruce Sterling's short story was truly visionary:

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/maneki-neko/

66

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 11:52:40 am »

World treaties to mitigate climate change are unrealistic, but

a planet teeming with humans who begin to move around freely as is their birthright, and a healthy and strong opposition to the ubiquitous surveillance panopticum that will surely still be on offer from the 1-percenters and possibly their machine buddies.

isn't?

OK.  Have fun with your masturbatory thread.

PS: "Human nature" isn't an argument. But you already knew that.

Awww don't be like that now! I do my masturbation elsewhere. I know that the expectation of a healthy, nay, strengthening human resistance to the machine seems pretty far-fetched. I also know that mass death and indeed mass murder are pretty much on our cards now. But the size and nature of the events constituting the catastrophic collapse is hard to predict, because new tech is going to be emerging at an increasing rate. The somewhat more conscious types over here are worried that the Putin-Orban-Polish nutcase conglomeratum will try to shut down/limit/fully survey our interwebz within a reasonably short while. But it won't happen if we can help it, and on the balance I'd guess, if I had to, that we will be able to help it. The shift to non-economic models is palpable: a minority, but no longer a microminority increasingly manage growing aspects of their lives outside the money economy. I see some reason for optimism.

67

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 11:47:11 am »

I for one hope that there's a steady increase of meaningless phrases used as conversation tool. We as a humankind could replace all the small talk with blabbering nonsense, and nobody would even notice the difference.

Away thee with your brute cynicism! 

68

Apple Talk / Re: Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 10:10:42 am »

That we have a regulated international agreement which will stop the planetary temperatures from increasing more than 3C, plunging the world into a nightmare scenario of food and resource wars, mass migration, nativist politics, depopulation via austerity politics and increasing authoritarianism.

It's not going to happen.  But it could.

Okay, I fully agree, so in one sense that's an optimistic but unrealistic scenario. It is unrealistic not because of physical feasibility, but because of human nature. So what's your optimistic but realistic?

69

Apple Talk / Hopeful but realistic ten-year scenarios

« on: January 11, 2018, 06:52:16 am »

Hello, I'm back. I bear no ill will.

So what's your optimistic but realistic scenario for 2028?

If you believe you can actually predict that scene (I think it's up in the air, even though the climate is highly likely to get much shittier), I'm all ears for that, too.

As for me, I would like to see nation states weaken and voluntary, organic, small-group-based networks rise further.

I would like to see widespread fullerene printing available to the masses, with a flourishing, if still fringe maker culture to go with it.

I would like to see the foodprinter^TM, a portable device which, if pointed at a heap of general purpose organic waste and given sufficient energy, will produce slop that will sustain the human body.

I would like to see immune, neural, cognitive and digestive enhancements inching towards the mainstream.

I would like to see a planet teeming with humans who begin to move around freely as is their birthright, and a healthy and strong opposition to the ubiquitous surveillance panopticum that will surely still be on offer from the 1-percenters and possibly their machine buddies.

I would like to see the dragon irritated and scared, if not yet slain.

70

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

« on: March 15, 2017, 03:05:37 pm »

Could I have some input on this from my betters, please? https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-has-joined-the-trump-administration/ Is this likely to be a realistic assessment? (I mean apart from the foul language, which makes it quite clear that this is something of a partisan effort.)

Max Boot's a neocon, general asshole and long time critic of the Tea Party/Trump wing of the party.  He writes a lot about foreign policy, but he doesn't have any specific expertise, access or knowledge regarding Wikileaks and Trump.

THAT SAID, it turns out Trump adviser Roger Stone was in contact with "Guccifer 2.0", the alleged DNC hacker and suspected FSB sockpuppet, and it also turns out that UKIP leader and noted Trump supporter Nigel Farage is in close contact with Assange.

Assange has said he would leak info on Trump's tax returns if he was presented with it...but it is interesting that hacks on Republican figures, such as Colin Powell's emails, were released on the DCLeaks website and not via Wikileaks - only the DNC and Podesta hacks got that treatment.  The RNC has claimed it has not been breached by hackers, which I find somewhat unbelievable.

And then there's the timing of the most recent CIA release by Wikileaks.  The timeframe from the tools suggest that the hack occured last year, and US investigators are working under that assumption.  The files also appear to be more curated and organised for relevance than previous leaks, such as the infamous AKP Turkey emails, which successfully turned Wikileaks into the largest database of Turkish spam emails and viruses in the world for a brief time.  That the leak, which seems to have been prepared for a while, occurs as the US intelligence community is turning up the heat on Trump seems...very beneficial for painting the CIA as nefarious actors.

Thanks, Cain.

71

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

« on: March 12, 2017, 10:38:09 am »

Could I have some input on this from my betters, please? https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-has-joined-the-trump-administration/ Is this likely to be a realistic assessment? (I mean apart from the foul language, which makes it quite clear that this is something of a partisan effort.)

72

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

« on: March 09, 2017, 02:14:40 pm »

Thank you for guiding my fingers through the maze of google to find this treasure trove of fascinating information.

73

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

« on: February 28, 2017, 08:08:13 pm »

I'm sorry to have disappeared after reappearing (and even posting the quotes from Feyerabend, must look into that), suddenly got very busy, still am, but it's subsiding. I hope it's alright to post a video here, heard this yesterday, never heard of the guy before, but this song is positively Discordian to my mind... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zD1WveH3xI

74

Apple Talk / Paul Feyerabend

« on: February 03, 2017, 08:23:26 pm »

I know you'all is men and women of science, we've been over this, but still... guess you could say I'm sort of out looking for trouble here, but...

Today as I was looking for quotes about the purpose of philosophy (as a sideline to the main direction of this thread, please share any good quotes on that subject if you have some) and thought back to my favourite philosophers, and I remembered Paul Feyerabend. Back when I was actually studying the philosophy of science, I found him extremely interesting and very engaging. In the university library, I listened to casette recordings of a series of lectures he gave there 20 years earlier. So now I looked up some quotes by him:

"Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it."

"My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits."

"Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness."

"There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science"- except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche... There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age."

"Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God."

"The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find, then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or another."

"It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, 'objectivity', 'truth', it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes."

"Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions."

"The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education."

I still think his criticism of the naive-realist view of science is valid. I have also decided to make him a Discordian saint.

75

Apple Talk / Re: ITT I log the moments when I realize how bigoted my modern liberal beliefs are.

« on: February 02, 2017, 04:22:02 pm »

Can I join? When my previous marriage was over after 14 years, I spent weeks trying to reckon up, financially, the last several years, claiming that I had put more into the marriage, so I was entitled to more than half of the little that was left. Then one day I realised I was being a total asshole, that 14 years, 3 kids of living together is not something that can be or should be quantified, and trying to is a demeaning experience. The only thing to do was to draw a line in time (a recent one), at which the joint venture ended, and to divide everything in half at that point. It was liberating and somewhat shameful to change my mind on that, but I was and am still glad I did. It saved me no end of trouble.