Can the Universe scream? (uh. the
missus thinks I should remind you of this.)
ABOUT US. Are we a
political site? Over the years, we've talked about
absolutely everything here: politics, sex, cars, dogs, science, music,
movies, television, art, writers, religion, the Internet, songbirds,
cities, rural life, sports, family, friendships, and the meaning of the
universe and everything. Last week, InstaPunk had a post titled The
New
Civility, which generated a set of comments you're unlikely to see
the
like of at any other site. So I thought I'd just show it to you the way
it all unfolded. I know people get bored with comment strings when they
stray from areas of their own personal interest. But this one's
interesting as a whole. It kind of has it all: an interloper who wants
to hijack the discussion, regulars who are used to such antics and
unimpressed, warm personal asides in the midst of apparently deadly philosophical combat, and a distinct turn, which is our unique hallmark, toward
the meanings of things, including the value of (relatively speaking)
absurd debates in the backwaters of the Internet. Do we take ourselves
seriously? No. But we take our arguments and individual communications
seriously. Perhaps that's why our little community is more interesting
than most.
Eduardo 2011-01-13
12:11:00
Nothing new underneath the sun. Indeed.
pete 2011-01-13
12:21:00
It is a fight to the death. While I tend to criticize
Republicans
mostly (because how statist they tend to be), Democrats can
legitimately be described as psychopathic. They want the total state.
State control of any and everything, no matter the evidence against
their view.
The
consequences? If you run afoul of government edicts, no matter how
trivial, you could wind up dead. Sufficiently resist a mere traffic
ticket, and the cop will execute you. You can apply the same scenario
to countless other ways government interferes in our lives.
Democrats
want the government interfering or controlling every aspect of my life.
Therefore, and maybe without even realizing it, Democrats want to kill
me. (Republicans just want to kill... ok, not now...)
This
is even more true if we're talking about society as a whole, because
Democrats are openly hostile to the only thing that is really keeping
literally billions of people from dying: the market.
J. W. Helkenberg 2011-01-13
12:25:00
I find it rather uproarious you have decided to argue that
psychopathic
behaviour is limited to one side of the isle, or to one side of the
political dialogue. I think what you might mean to say is, perhaps,
that one side launched a psychopathic propaganda machine and that the
other side has been playing catch up ever since (King George would
agree with me here, but for different reasons). I would think that you
were a better student of history - everybody knows the wheels fell off
with McKinley and his mailers (the first time in our long and storied
history that political clubs were disbanded in favor of the now
prevalent mailer and attack ad approach, thank you Mark Hanna).
Anyway,
what you are railing against is a symptom, not the actual ailment
itself. Fact is, hardcore animosity and violent rhetoric sells. If you
want to change the tone, eliminate Neilson ratings for newscasts. Oh,
no way! Can't do that! How would we know if the advertising dollars are
being well spent?
Let's be real here, we are living under
a media system that is 100% focused on sustaining its own interests,
and when the chum is in the water the sharks even attack each other,
for the smell of blood is the smell of money, and the producers are
already licking thier chops (or rotating in new teeth, in the shark
analogy) and there is nothing either 'side' can do with regard to
*that*.
It is not the political process that is decaying,
nor the people (so much), it is the fact that the Fourth Estate is now
run by greedy self-serving anti-politico's whose only interest is
profit and whose integrity is defined by thier bank account statement.
Period. Nothing changes that. Or, maybe a bunch of bloggers can stem
the tide, but if they can't sell Tide I seriously doubt they are going
to get any play.
This message brought to you by Apple's
new iPod. Remember: "Psycopaths may spend most of thier time listening
to an iPod, but that does not mean the iPod is to blame for psychotic
acts of violence."
Whew. That makes me feel A LOT better.
Pete 2011-01-13
12:28:00
It occurred to me:
Advocating socialism is at once a death threat and a suicide
note.
J. W. Helkenberg 2011-01-13
12:39:00
Bad, bad rhetoric. I mean, is it any wonder our society is
disintegrating into violence and chaos with videos like this to feed
hate filled hearts? This was produced by High School Students for god's
sake! Stop the madness already!
"I
find it rather uproarious you have decided to argue that psychopathic
behaviour is limited to one side of the isle [sic], or to one side of
the political dialogue. I think what you might mean to say is, perhaps,
that one side launched a psychopathic propaganda machine and that the
other side has been playing catch up ever since (King George would
agree with me here, but for different reasons)."
Ah.
Canadian or Brit. I don't care which one. Neither of you know how to
write anymore. "I think what you might mean to say is, perhaps..." uh
uh. What I mean to say I say. If you didn't see it in what I said, I
didn't mean to say it.
You're an ass, and I think maybe
it's about time you got off my site. You use up an awful lot of
bandwidth saying absolutely nothing of value. Please go away.
That's
being polite. If you prefer, I can take you apart one molecule at a
time. That would be boring to my regulars, though, so I'm, well, being
polite.
Or should I find some four syllable word that says "go away"
in terms you can understand?
superobserver 2011-01-13
01:23:00
IP: That is the spirit. Neither side, from underneath a rock.
Words,
well, yes. I see that bells can still be made to ring, even when they
are cracked. Fewer words better than many, the tremendous volumes of
bandwidth I overtake speak volumes to your knowledge of bandwidth.
I
am old, so old that it hurts to remember I never learned to read right,
and that words swim around like fish out of school. Maybe every other
post I could insert some puffery, like, "Your words are a clarion bell
bemoaning the filth of inaccuracy and the righteousness of certitude."
I could do worse than to say it would not be puffery, "my mentor"; it
is sagacity that is evidenced in my effrontery. I do not sling cunning
salvos? Perhaps you have been wounded by your own victory?
But
aren't you the god of this domain? Particles are your specialty -
remind me why poetry was banned from the Academy. Or don't. I am using
this thread as more evidence of my existence. In that, I aim to make
punks famous. It will be an incidental type of fame but one could do
worse.
Inkswitch.
Also, won't you admit the
first 27 seconds of this video bear a hyperbolic resemblance to the
current difficulty the right faces in picking a viable Republican
candidate (presumably to oppose Obama) in 2012? I write more clearly in
Mandarin, btw. Such a lucid language. RISC versus CISC, that is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rthl_O4_G2o
[The rest of the video weakly resonates with the predicament,
and helps understand the 'kids take' a little more well.] haha
Veritas.
Gnardo Polo 2011-01-13
01:27:00
The psychopathy does seem related to education, doesn't it?
The more
educated you are (or think you are) seems to be proportional to the
amount of utter bull you are willing to accept. By education, I mean
degrees and schooling, not knowledge or thinking.
So
it comes out in different ways. The left seems more inclined to
violence, but then again, the philosophies of the left practically
demand it. At the same time, the right seems unable to confront anyone
forcefully, and for a similar reason: their worldview demands true
tolerance.
It's why we keep wondering when the right will truly defend
themselves.
Good
news: the less schooled masses, with the availability of more
information, are becoming more truly educated, and are showing signs of
thinking for themselves.
Which means that this is about to become even less civil than
it is now.
Diogenes 2011-01-13
01:29:00
IP: two compliments in one day! I hardly know what to think!
Made my
week, at least. [although I am at that other place with the same
initials, whose saying rhymes with "Go Ducks"]. Thanks.
Helkenberg:
[You are about to see the difference between a Hadrosaur's and an
Allosaur's repsonses] Pete got it directly, but you have missed the
point. He sums it up in one sentence. Hostility and rhetoric are of no
consequence in this battle. That "issue" is a distraction, and it is
intended to be a distraction; and that's part of what's so dismal about
this whole week's business.
A renaissance lit scholar
named Stephen Greenblatt referred to the Elizabethan culture [wrongly,
i think, but that's way off the track] as "totalizing and
totalitarian." The left's project is totalizing, totalitarian, and
millennialist: when they have complete control over us all, and we are
entirely obedient to their ideas, then perfection will reign on earth.
This is why they are aligned with the Islamists: both are identical in
these characteristics. And all means are justified in bring the new man
into being, including killing me or forcing me to behave their way.
I am not a number, I am a free man!
Period.
republicans? If they arent' statists, fine. Otherwise, out
with them.
But the strategy, tactics, and ends of the left are inhumane,
anti-human, psychopathological.
C.S.
Lewis's greatest work was "That Hideous Strength" -- too bad he, like
so many, relied on magic to defeat the antagonists. There is no magic;
there is only us.
What is astounding is that our society
is NOT disintegrating, as you claim. It is in precarious straights, but
it holds yet. I worry that it might disintegrate, but it is not doing
so now. In fact, the fact that we are fighting back is highly
encouraging.
Think for a moment what an accusation of
racism is. It is intended to destroy the other person and his ability
to respond, while at the same time forcing him to defend himself on
fraudulent terms selected by the person who plans to destroy him.
Psychopathy. Pure and clear.
IP 2011-01-13
01:44:00
Super:
"But aren't you the god of this domain? Particles are your
specialty - remind me why poetry was banned from the Academy."
Yes,
I'm the god of this domain. And particles ARE my specialty, which is
why the Academy ain't so fond of the poetry of particles anymore.
Particles choose. Which means the universe isn't an abacus. It means
that being the god of this domain is equivalent to being the god of
every other domain. And because I'm a poet above all else, I am a
particle who not only chooses but chooses beautifully.
Why the whole world quakes when InstaPunk roars.
IP 2011-01-13
02:41:00
Diogenes:
Gotcha!
I'm
not going to expose your secret. But let me tell you a family story. My
mother went to Hio State. Her parents went to Ohio State. One of my
best friends, a Marine, lives in Columbus and sometimes closes his
emails with the phrase "Go Bucks."
I can't tell you how
long and cruelly I have suffered with Ohio State's battle against the
Pac 10 and other awfulnesses. I just have. Like all Buckeye fans.
This probably means nothing to you, unless it does.
Sorry.
Didn't mean to interrupt your day. Or anything like that. But who's
that fat coach they just hired for the Wolverines? Sorry. Forget I said
anything. My brother-in-law is a Wolverine. The way he talks about
Buckeyes, I'm thinking he must be a psychopath.
But you know how that goes. Unless you don't.
superobserver 2011-01-13
03:29:00
Diogenese, the antagonism I 'evidence' as I lash out against
"the
intolerable certainty of an incontrovertible future" is triggered by
one of your statements:
"In fact, the fact that we are fighting back is highly
encouraging."
This
statement, after you deny the disintegration. The enemy of people is no
'thing' it is a 'state of mind' really, that is my hypothesis. But a
state of mind is a 'near thing': like hunger and the drive to reproduce
are states of mind (over which we exercise little or no personal
control), can we honestly say that we understand the stability of the
human state of mind, outside the narrow and restrictive context of our
currently stable cultural norms? There is no fight to be had, there is
no victory to be achieved, because what is impending is not a political
crisis, it is an existential one.
Particles are restricted
to only one law (really), and to this one law all Man-made, Natural and
Emergent phenomena are bound: Entropy is never decreasing.
Now,
human society has a well-ordered formulation: based on predictions
regarding modes of conduct, we think that aside from a few maniacs,
anarchistic chaos is a far removed 'mental mode of conduct'. Well,
buddy, I am here to be the bearer of some bad news: It is *patently not
the case* that the inheritors of this great nation are (at all) well
equipped in the formulation of complex instruction sets. Rather, they
instantiate reduced (specialized) instruction sets - as a result of
this, the granularity of our ever-improving technologies (+blogs,
+videos). And by granularity I mean simply that the family doctor used
to show up on your doorstep, because he had no 4-ton superconducting
magnet (MRI) in tow. Where did the MRI come from? Man increasing the
entropy of the universe (or, at least, not decreasing it).
John
Adams brother wrote a little book about how all political societies
seem to achieve a point of maximal political stability, and then
proceed to evolve rapidly into totally anarchistic out of control
fallen empires (no matter how big or small, the natural tendency of
political economy is akin to performing a highdive into an empty
swimming pool). wish I could recall the title.... he remarks how he was
afraid to publish it, for fear of it being embarrassing to him and his
brother. I mean, who could buy such an idea, that the more effective
you are the closer to anarchy you become? -->then I read "The Goal"
by Goldratt and knew immediately how our cultural 'fate drama' was
going to play out.
Ants are in the sugar.
Anyway,
what matters is: My (personal) measurement of this thread indicates
that your reaction to it is a 'fait accompli' at best, and a symptom of
the above mentioned irreversibility at worst. To avoid at least
tinkering with this construct (spontaneous cultural decoupling) is an
indication to me that people will not treat the possibility that the US
government is on the verge of a fractionalization that (must/might)
result with large numbers of people decoupling from societal norms and,
as predicted elsewhere, behaving in ways no deterministic model can
predict.
Fine, it would take more than a conspiracy of
dunces at this point in time to destabilize the aggregate demand placed
upon a hyper-industrialized and global commodities infrastructure, even
in the midst of catastrophic natural disasters Rio Tinto can make an
adjustment. I know they can; also, didn't that Obama chap just give us
the best estate tax rate since the 1930's - I mean, as a pragmatist it
is a victory, right?
Every jot and tittle counts for something.
The
only way you can stop the liberal machine now is to pray that the sun
has a coronal mass ejection strong enough to fry electrical devices but
not so intense that it kills more than a few billion people
[Note:
The liberal dream is realized in the machinery itself, is in fact a
dormant aspect of the technologies we are adopting in the private
sector. How can we stem the demand for the liberal dream/nightmare when
it is coupled to the information technologies we depend upon to deliver
us our 'facts' and our 'facebooks'?] ----> We cannot. Rather must
brace for it and make a plan to outlive it.
Obviously
fiction! Just a poet-deviants ramblings. Nothing to be troubled with,
doesn't even reference the current 'players' and VIP's who really
matter. Like the 2012 republican Presidential
Candidate.............still waiting.....
Diogenes 2011-01-13
05:13:00
IP: I've been here since 1978 and met Woody! One time you
wrote about
the locution "THE Ohio State University" and I was going to explain it,
but thought better than to waste everybody's time. Hah! Yeah, you got
me. But it isn't a secret [and I'm not as clever as your hadrosaurus
joke, either].
Oh,
the fat Wol... uh, coach at least knows not to mention us out loud.
Maybe next year will be fun. And the SEC curse is now over, at least,
sorta.
Superobserver: I remember Chris McCandless and his
self-chosen nick name. And Tim Treadwell. Talk about disintegration.
Why have you changed your name, but not your assumptions?
superobserver 2011-01-14
07:56:00
I changed my name because, well, doesn't that make me an
anonymous
poster? Hilarious that anyone thinks anything is anonymous in the
pipeline. I mean, I can set up a proxy and I can turn other peoples
computers into slaves and I might possibly be able to produce a
polymorphic virus that implants during the handshake protocol and hides
itself in bad sectors on your hard drive, resulting ultimately with a
complete information meltdown worldwide. But nothing, I repeat
*nothing* is anonymous.
Also,
I am wondering if the irony is lost on me: the image of the two people,
one stabbing the other in the back, on "The New Civility" post. Do any
of you know the website that image came from? Anybody?
Well, I think that is enough serendipity for one morning.
Eduardo 2011-01-14
08:00:00
Super Helk:
You are a lugubrious bore. I hope your entropic, existential
particles figure that out. Soon.
superdisturber 2011-01-14
08:44:00
Let a painter stand in for me on this one. That is all I will
ask of you right this second.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire
Or reference your previous collateral experience regarding the
series of paintings by Thomas Cole, "The Course of Empire".
Srsly, what phase are we in?
I
have my own fame to worry about (congrats on being you, whoever you
necessarily are). The internet is free, though locally everywhere
fascist in the most personal sense. Sadly, Zarathustra has something
meaningful to say about this.
If only I could remember it.
Zarathustra 2011-01-14
08:55:00
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be
overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
"All
beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want
to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather
than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful
embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a
laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from
worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and
even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.
"Whoever is
the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant
and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
"Behold,
I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let
your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech
you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe
those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they,
whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and
poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"
apotheosis 2011-01-14
09:17:00
It's as though Penny ate an entire thesaurus.
Eduardo 2011-01-14
09:21:00
"It's as though Penny ate an entire thesaurus."
HAHAHAHAHA! That was awesome.
IP 2011-01-14
11:22:00
Superboob:
Cute.
So you're the new determinism. The Joker standing above the inevitable
model of entropy as the slayer of nations. That's your kick. Being
superior to it all.
I don't doubt your capacity to be a
vandal because it's deep in your philosophical nature. Just like your
profound misreading of Nietszche, who was more outraged satirist than
philosopher. His uniqueness was that he was a German with a sense of
humor. Something you don't have, to your fatal detriment. You have wit
and think it a synonym. It isn't.
But not every human
being is a vandal, and not all developments in physics and society are
accounted for by entropy. There is also a force which puts things
together and makes them resilient against destruction.
Only
a fool would claim at this moment in time to understand what is
inevitable in the dynamic brew technology has created in our world. It
MAY spiral into decline, but it may also rejuvenate, empower, and
liberate the ordinary people who have historically been victims of
increasingly centralized and psychotic power structures.
This
isn't wishful thinking. It's a function of an exponentially increasing set of
societal variables whose interactions no one can confidently predict,
unless they're egomaniacal delusionaries surfing on a wave of academic
language.
Your assumption is that when the variables
escalate into the realm of chaos, i.e., unpredictability, the
unavoidable result is accelerating entropy and therefore total
breakdown.
But the history of Human culture is actually
the generation of successively better metaphors for the way everything
in the universe works. Your arrogance aside, we could be on the brink
of metaphor breakthrough, one that offers promise rather than pain as
the inevitable result of human effort.
One thing the
entropy champions find hard to explain: all those doomed and dying
empires, forever falling apart in the past, somehow keep advancing --
not linearly but on the whole -- oddly nondestructive effects like
increasing lifespans, the comfort that makes possible art and
contemplation, and the freedom to live lives less as slaves of the
power lords and more as individuals who can aspire to meaning and even
a sense of the divine.
I know you think you're
intimidating. But you aren't. If I'm reading our commenters right, and
I think I am, you're coming across as kind of sad. I don't doubt you're
smart, in your way, but that's a key point. Smart is part of the
equation but it's not the whole equation.
The people
you're trying to dominate here aren't victims of anything. They're
parents and citizens who have a very good sense of what their lives
mean, whether you think they mean anything or not. And that's a much
more powerful force than your patronizing scientism can ever comprehend.
One
final point that may be lost on your nationality, whatever it is.
American exceptionalism. There has never been a nation like this one,
whose citizens made a distinct positive choice to come here and compete
for what they most value. Which is to say that we might just escape
all the unbreakable rules of history and survive for yet another
lustrous day.
Besides, your scientific postulations are
bankrupt. There is the physics of particles, to be sure, known as
quantum mechanics, but a hundred years in there is still no quantum
theory that explains the precise behavior of particles. It still looks
very much as if individual human consciousness has a role to play in
the deepest behaviors of the universe.
In other words, you are "super" only in your mind. Not here.
And not in the physics that anyone can irrefutably confirm.
Note
that I haven't even attempted to ban you. I just suggested you should
go away. Because when all is said and done, you're just not very
interesting.
Alfa 2011-01-14
12:05:00
At Apoth:
"It's as though Penny ate an entire thesaurus."
Lol. Bang on.
J. W. Helkenberg 2011-01-14
03:50:00
Brilliant, I haven't even listened to that Obama litany and I
know
already that what you just elicited in me cannot be superseded by the
words of any supercilious pompous ass. No way.
Just a few points:
"...like
your profound misreading of Nietszche..." They are just words, and
Kauffman's words at that. I cannot misread them, though I can misjudge
them. But then we arrive back at that problem of determining whether or
not humans in this age are adept at comprehending (recognizing) complex
instruction sets; both our minds apprehend with perfect clarity what is
changeless (in a book, for instance) while we may trade (unfriendly)
blows over what is irreducible in our personal prejudices. Our
"meaning" is personally derived from what is changeless.
Entropy
puts things together, not as an aphorism but as an irreducible
constraint over which nobody exercises any authority. Complexity is a
measure of entropy, and while you see the 'progress' as representing an
additive, positive, anti-entropic series of contributions (to wit, the
library of human awareness grows larger all the time, chock full of
fact and wisdom and (negation of falsehood)), I see this process of
'improvement' as arising from a diagrammatic necessity tied to the
operation of a cosmic law, again one over which no person exercises any
authority.
You stated: "But the history of Human culture
is actually the generation of successively better metaphors for the way
everything in the universe works." It is also, maddeningly, the
discovery of processes that are not explained by the 'metaphor of the
moment'. Your 'better' arises from a quest to describe what cannot be
predicted by the current model, springing from a black hole (literally
and metaphorically) the arrival of a new interpretation comes at the
tit of the current inadequacy. To be the 'discoverer' of any advance is
also the greatest arrogance anyone could ever hope to promote ---->
laws are inherent in the data, and the verbal description of the data
table is always restricted to being a verbal description of the
elements---> the system that constrains our awareness is the same
one that enable us to transcribe our personal metaphor into a string of
symbols; enabling a meme (or just a string of words) to be stored and
transmitted necessarily constrains 'understanding' to the mental
declaration of a word (or string of words).
To quote
you: "Only a fool would claim at this moment in time to understand what
is inevitable in the dynamic brew technology has created in our world."
What is inevitable is complexity, what is relative about complexity is
that it is a personal judgment as to what 'complexity' is a measure of.
Necessarily, emergent phenomena either are or are not predictable
(based on possessing a sufficiently general description you ought to be
able to determine the probable outcomes for a system comprised of
finitely many units, said units possessing many individual degrees of
freedom, but whose total energy (as a global system) is tied to some
overarching constraint. Specifically, Moore's Law is a general
schematic operator that tells us what the processor speeds must
(likely) look like over time, and it is pretty damn accurate). Is it
safe to generalize when we have enough empirical data to confirm the
trend? Not when we are describing dynamical systems of humans,
apparently.
You said: "The people you're trying to dominate here aren't
victims of anything."
Now
you have really got me laughing. Of course *they* are not victims, they
have had everything they ever wanted. It is their grandchildren that
are doomed ----> but what culture, decoupled from morality and
common sense, isn't doomed? Maybe an eternally more complex culture can
avoid entropic forces?----> I guess grandpa will never fully
understand why porn is so addictive, being how he turns his head and
would rather die than watch any of that torrid stuff. Kids, however,
love it (make it!). In fact, for many it helps offset the cost of a
higher education. It is comforting to know there are alternative
earnings strategies for so many of the kids today. *Hot*.
Also by you:
"It still looks very much as if individual human consciousness
has a role to play in the deepest behaviors of the universe."
That
does not sound very conservative to me. Are you suggesting that the
human mind may possess faculties that enable it to engage in activities
that could (for lack of better terms) only be described as "6th
sense-ational". If I am reading *you* correct, I think I can
confidently state, to God and Country, that some poster (whose identity
I cannot confirm) just awakened to the dawn of a new synthesis. But, my
good anonymous friend, if you go there, to the world of dreams, don't
forget to take a thread with you. You'll need something to pull you
back down from the Atman.
Your words: "I know you think
you're intimidating. But you aren't. If I'm reading our commenters
right, and I think I am, you're coming across as kind of sad." I *am
sad* you fucking deuce, my culture (apart from some pricier gated
places and such) resembles Somalia more than it resembles Academy!
$14,000,000,000,000.00 is enough to scare a *reformed* Monetarist, let
alone a pragmatist!
You all misread me; my sadness prevails. it is not as an enemy
of conservatism that I encroach on your reliquary.
2011-01-14 04:26:00
it is not as an enemy of conservatism that I encroach
on your reliquary.
...you're really kidding now, right?
IP 2011-01-14
05:39:00
Helk:
Actually, I'd love to debate you. But I'm faced with one of
two cases: 1) you can't write; or 2) you can't think.
The fault is not mine. I defy you to find anyone who can make
sense of your comments.
I write understandably. You don't. That makes you the fool,
not me.
I
do have a theory: you're just one more obnoxious Brit. But I'm prepared
to be wrong if you can find some way to write a single goddam
comprehensible sentence.
Lake 2011-01-14
07:29:00
IP, this site seems to be a Strange Attractor. Penny has not
been gone
long, and this bizarre distraction crops up. My instincts always
suspect a conspiracy... or an inside job.
But
we can tell that you're genuinely distraught and have been making deep
points about the current travesty, so I don't think it's you, spinning
another fascinating (if long-winded) character. Not anymore.
Hard to know what to make of it, though. I, too, am waiting to
hear a basic, simple, and honest point from it.
Pete 2011-01-14
09:21:00
(back to,the actual conversation, if that's ok...)
"Bad,
bad rhetoric"? Hardly! Provoke the opposition to go as far as they're
willing to take things. We need them to show themselves. Better that
people understand the true nature of their surroundings and the
players. (Referring, of course, to the electeds. Last weekend's tragedy
had nothing to do with politics.)
I think Rendell is 2 for
2 lately ("wussified Americans" and telling the press to grow a few
more layers of skin.) Again - and I'm someone with little confidence in
elected Republicans - the problem starts with the left. If our most
intimate acts must be politicized, how can you not expect violent
backlash. While there is such a thing as a "Christo-fascist", most - by
far - "right-wingers" just don't want to be legislated and regulated
into sin and blasphemy.
That, and deep down they know all tax is theft, even though
they'd never go quite so far.
Reagan's Rotting Corpse 2011-01-15
04:59:00
"They are assassins targeting our lives and liberties. They
hate us. They intend to kill us."
"I do have a theory: you're just one more obnoxious Brit."
"I'm
from the country. We have a greater critical distance than most of you.
That is, you get too close and we back away or make YOU back away. What
we country folk have noticed about middle easterners (sic). They stand
too close to you in the subway, in line, and in every other situation
too. You city people may be inured to it. You're so close to everyone
every day you create the necessary distance by living your lives
looking at the sidewalk or sucking on your cellphones. We aren't inured
to it. There isn't anyone in any tavern or pool hall in south Jersey
who doesn't know that the guy who stands too close to you is preying on
you or seeking to dominate you. That's when we push back. Sometimes
very damn hard."
"Ich
liebe Den, der freien Geistes und freien Herzes ist: so ist sein Kopf
nur das Eingeweide seines Herzens, sein Herz aber treibt ihn zum
untergang." F.N. Also Sprach Zarathustra
Those are not Kaufmann's words.
Pete,
in one way you're right: we ought to get back to the discussion. On
another hand, maybe the dispute with [S]He-of Many-Annonymities [M.
Helkenberg] is very precisely to the subject. If not, please think of
me as a beagle getting distracted by a scent... and mixing my prior
metaphor, I'm afraid.
Helkenberg: Your actual expression
of fear about our $14T debt and its consequences for our descendants
makes me think that the rest of your outpouring is a defense mechanism
you've developed to protect your mind from a world beyond your ability
to understand and a life beyond your ability to control. Get over it,
dude; your answers don't answer and your obfuscatory logorrhea cannot
protect. Face that abyss and be free.
You make a lot of
assumptions. You say, "They [commenters on this blog] have had
everything they ever wanted..." You have no idea of the depth of your
ignorance; I'll leave it at that lest I become impolite. You attempt to
demean IP's oblique introduction of Heisenberg into your plaster of
popular physics. These abstractions regress forever: all answers, even
contemporary physics, are products of human consciousness. Godel
answered this-- what? -- 100 years ago. Jeez, don't waste your time
trying to cope with this reality by grasping onto yet some other
product. It is identical with somebody thinking that their deep empty
anxiety will be cured, this time for sure, by buying a new car or
having a bigger home, or getting drunk one more time. Just face that
abyss buckaroo, and when it looks back at you, that'll be you in the
mirror.
As Joe Bob Briggs says, I'm surprised I have to explain this
to you.
Anyway,
Helkenberg, I have this hunch that you're a bright young guy at a
decent school trying things out. Keep trying. You'll grow up. If you
are indeed young, well sorry about what my parents' generation did to
you, money wise; but life has always been nothing but work and
suffering. The Protestants figured the work part out, to our benefit;
everybody Christian or Jewish already knew the suffering part.
Read
Milton and Samuel Johnson [Rasselas is a good place to start with ol'
Sam; figure out how it relates to Bob Marley...]. Paradise Lost,
really. Try it. Milt knows things you don't.
On the
anonymity of IP: hah! Most commenters here know who he is better than
I, and I think with about ten minutes work, I could have a map to his
house. It takes time to understand the blog's actual project.
Oh,
and Aristotle's culture resembled Somalia a lot more than it resembled
your idea of Academy... and neither resembled anything today, anywhere.
The
other side of the sociopath [a slight difference form the psychopath, in
my private usage] is the entirely unexamined sociogene. That creature
whose superiority is energetic enough to create immense value [I'm not
talking about perfection, though]. On May 1, the Church of Rome will
beatify John Paul II.
It is American exceptionalism that I
refuse to give up. I would rather be poor and attempting to work
through the world under my own responsibility, with little government
and lots of freedom; than to "have everything I ever wanted."
Lake: Strange attractor indeed. I guess I'm contributing to
the strangeness.
Pete: sorry for my part in the distractions. Tax is theft,
yes; no regulation into blasphemy and sin, yes and yes again.
IP:
I don't think he's sad, unless he's our age [in which case... Holy
Mackerel]. I just think he's young and has read a couple of books. I
think I've read them too, but I didn't memorize them... the "Atman" b-s
gave it all finally away.
But you know, each and all,
"encroach on your reliquary" will be exactly right if we lose the
battles we are in and are facing. Everything even the best of us has
thought or done will be replaced by the darkness claiming to be light;
and this little bit will appear exactly as a reliquary appears to a
Sotheby's appraiser. So once again, face that abyss! Work through those
ineffective defense mechanisms!
J. W. Helkenberg 2011-01-15
01:13:00
Those are not Kaufmann's words.
Exactly, but they are words none-the-less.
$14T debt, obfuscatory logorrhea cannot protect; faced that
abyss and I *am free*.
You make a lot of assumptions
--->forecasting
by its very nature consists of imprecise statements regarding some
(authored) evolutionary operator as it transforms a field of real
entities. The scope of our generalization is determined by our choice
of words (elements).
[I do] demean IP's oblique introduction of Heisenberg---> I
make it exact.
Goedel answered this-- what?
I
will destroy you and your obnoxious ignorance! Speak not of things you
conceptualize only through the action of a WORD. I *become
incompleteness* when I manufacture a finite string. Summate that abyss,
or don't.
Re: All finite systems (of logic) close around
their own (self-evident) solutions (via the limit imposed by *scope*).
Incompleteness (in your sense) is not a product of a physical reality,
any more than Zeno's Paradox is a serious hindrance to accuracy of my
arrow, rather it is a byproduct of continuous (classical) reasoning,
and while this makes for fun mental acrobatics, it creates less than
zero value for those whose business it is to find closed solutions for
real world problems.
Read Milton and Samuel
Johnson-----> BE THEM (oh, I am sorry, this reduced instruction
produces a null pointer in your mind. Well.)
The global mind is simultaneously real.
Have
you ever killed a bear, up close, with a spear? I know someone who has
- are his thoughts available to me? Him, under the squelching fire of
an August sun, at Paradise, me near a tree, him hanging from the tree,
rope tied to two wooden spikes in his back, dangling, in the sun, with
no water nor food of any kind, on a "vision quest". I refused taking a
sip of the hanged mans tea....his cactus tea.
What, exactly, am I doing there, with my brain mere feet from
the brain of this laughing man, this superficially pained man?
The
classical mind says that I am just sitting there, drunk or not drunk on
the spirit of my molecules, my context constrained to a word-view; by
possessing a vocabulary I reconcile my state to the expression of a
particular admixture of tokens. But what is thought, and vision, and
what is the biosemiotic transaction(s) involved with processing
empathy, and rage, and intuition?
Das Ich ist unrettbar. Die Vernunft hat die alten
Götter umgestürzt und unsere Erde entthront. Nun
droht sie auch uns zu vernichten. Da werden wir
erkennen, daß das Element unseres Lebens nicht
die Wahrheit ist, sondern die Illusion.“
On
that note: We have a finite number of participants in our closed Earth
game. I got a friend right now in NYC that wants to turn (this) you
guys into a 'big deal', to be heard not just by those present in this
cave, but by millions, and potentially billions, of ardent suporters.
We create the supporters in advance, and then we tell the supporters
what to do and what to think, in exactly that order. And they do it,
you included, and so this *is* the Age of Reason, and if you don't want
to be spit out as lukewarm (at best) and fetid (at worst), prepare to
become one local mind. Say it: "I am all minds everywhere." Say it
again: "I am all minds everywhere."
Of course, you can
prove my (hook shot) assertion incorrect, because my ability to see all
minds is not extensional, and so therefore you readily awaken to a
personal fact, that I am inane and just pulling your chain. BTW, it is
hard not to at least try to free those who are chained; at the core,
Death lashes all beings to Her House.
*****Your
assumption is that when the variables escalate into the realm of chaos,
i.e., unpredictability, the unavoidable result is accelerating entropy
and therefore total breakdown.*****
I used to think this
was the rule, but no longer. There is no escalation, save from the
perspective of those whose local judgment alone determines the relative
pace of advance and decline. What there is, however, is a steady
progress from indeterminacy to superselection (einselection
specifically but suffer for me). The words used to assign meaning to
our investigations are themselves the critical constraints. A far
greater complexity and far greater chaos is introduced by a semantic
system that conveys thought as thought, via the 'over-word'. How?
Across a network of minds whose [O2] nuclear spin states are (to
varying degrees of susceptibility) simultaneously coupled (entangled).
Instantaneous communication ---> locally, barely better than cell
phone speeds, but across cosmic distances the advantage of
instantaneous networks become obvious. It (as I.T.) is manifest in the
local creation of the 'missing exotic state of matter' ---> our node
(on the cosmic-scale network of Real 'exotic matter machines') becomes
extant as soon as we know how to address the other non-local but
simultaneously real machines that maintain this special state of matter
----> they (the machines), do not communicate at the speed of light,
at all, because light communication is Grandpa shit and sooo yesterday
that I literally cannot comprehend it.
Such a machine is
possible due to the fact the human mind operates on exactly the same
paradigm; our physical brains exploit this exact property of quantum
scale interactions. We are entangled with everything that has existed
previously, and all that will exist, as a function of the fact the
total energy of the cosmos is a conserved quantity.
The future self is inevitable, whatever form it takes.--->
No Joker here, a man in a hole perhaps but no Joker.
*But
you know, each and all, "encroach on your reliquary" will be exactly
right if we lose the battles we are in and are facing.*
You
are soooooooooo goddamn right, but based on your current perception of
what constitutes 'thought' and 'transmission of thought' I don't think
you are at all equipped to win the War, even if you win every single
battle.
By the way, I have made Steers of Bulls, and I
have smelled the cauterizing flesh, and kicked the balls from the dirt
into the awaiting jaws of my hounds. I am Country in the oldest sense.
slasha 2011-01-16
02:19:00
What could be more sociopathic than people who mass consume
mass
produced mass information...and mistake it for reality?
superobserver 2011-01-16
10:04:00
Why beat a dead horse? Practice makes perfect.
I
was relating my recent series of outbursts to a friend of mine, a
professor of physics, as I helped him set up an experiment. What he is
looking for is a quantitative approach for modeling voltage discharges
measured for supercooled fluids undergoing a rapid phase transition
from liquid to solid.
The experiment consists of taking a
u-shaped tube, filling it a little more than halfway with H2O, adding a
few grains of ordinary table salt (non-iodized) and then placing the
tube in an ethanol cooling bath. We watch as the temerature of the
fluid approaches 32f then down, down down to around 0f. It is still a
fluid, just sitting there in the tube, stubbornly refusing to
acknowledge its own desire to become a solid.
So, the
prof suggests I take up a pencil and gently strike any given side of
the u shaped tube. I do this, and as if by magic the liquid becomes a
solid-slush.
Now, this is boring as shit right? I mean, who the fuck gives
a flying rats ass about this?
The
pro.f senses my total lack of enthusiasm, as my only reason for being
there was to tell him about a bunch of dunces I met online. Well, he
then asks me to wait, because he tells me that in this experiment of
his, all the answers I seek are to be found. He then hooks up a
voltmeter to the water in the u-shaped tube (by placing one bare wire
in one side and one bare wire in the other, then plugging these wires
into his voltmeter).
"Watch," he says, "and learn." He
supercools the liquid and strikes the side of the tube and, voila, he
buries the fucking voltmeter. Buries it. Like a veritable lightning
strike.
I then *explain to him* that the disorganized
molecular lattice of H20 molecules at the superfluid point has a
potential organization that is *not realized in the superfluid state*;
due to the absence of a nucleation site the crystalline lattice
structure of water cannot evidence itself; there must be a precedent,
an initiate, for the molecules to instantiate a new (internal)
relation. When he taps the glass, the added energy is enough to induce
a phase transition on the part of a single (or several) molecules,
thereby the state rapidly transmits across all the molecules and the
lattice becomes self-evident. I also then designed to explain that, in
the classical model, the temperature gradient is relative to gravity
(because the ethanol bath is lower than the top of the tube) and that
the NA and CL ions (it is a slightly saline solution, remember) have no
place where they fit in in this new H2O lattice, and therefore they are
expelled at a velocity that is proportional to the rate at which the
lattice 'spontaneously forms' - the voltage is registered as the motion
of a charge (na or cl) moving in the space near the wire, and that
given a few specific quantities being fixed at the outset, it should be
easily demonstrable that the voltage induced by motion of charged
particles being expelled by a lattice that forms relative to a
temperature gradient is given by a first order equation.
Bo-Ring.
Fucking lame show already. How the fuck does this help me understand
Deutsche-bag lamers who are fundamentally obsessed with bi-polar
politics? He then says something very profound, which has moved me to
treat you all with (quantifiably) more respect.
"In dem
Gitter sie sind, sie wissen es nicht. Sie wählen nicht ihre
persönlichen Beziehungen und Experiment nicht. Weep neun
Tränen für Na,
Cl, oder H2O. Das Experiment erlaubt kein Wandel. Der Versuchsleiter
muss sein!
Then I woke up to my Japaense bantam rooster,
Phaedrus, cockle-doo-a-dooing. I love that rooster. When it gets really
cold at night, I bring him inside and have him sit next to me as I work
online. He is utterly humanized, and when I get emotional he crows.
Sentience is (also) about registering unspoken sentiments. Also, the
prof and the experiment are real - what makes you think the dream is
any less real?
Lake 2011-01-16
02:34:00
Phaedrus? Is that a clue? Steve, is that you?
2011-01-16 06:43:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_DWlVzgYA
J. W. Helkenberg 2011-01-17
11:20:00
Das gericht ist Braucht!
Of course that superobserver idiot meant not to say a
superfluid, but a supercooled fluid. Head scratching, indeed.
Brizoni 2011-01-17
02:05:00
"Of course that superobserver idiot meant not to say a
superfluid, but a supercooled fluid. Head scratching, indeed."
What do you call that? Preemptive auto-satire?
IP 2011-01-18
10:49:00
Helk:
You still can't write. Which means either that you can't think
or that your thinking is opaque to others and of use only to you.
Therefore,
you prefer to react to what others write, always from an imaginary
position of superior perspective, a perspective which your own
elaborations of physics suggest to be impossible.
Simultaneously, you seek to show off superior knowledge and
assert that knowledge cannot exist except as egoistic delusion.
All your supposed learning has made you into a mere performer,
which is what you seem to decry here.
That's
why I say you are sad, regardless of your age. Because you are not a
very good performer. You're the magician who is so innovative he makes
a great show of putting a rabbit INTO a hat. All the theatrics can't
hide the fact that the trick is a bore.
Your only insight
is despair. Which is a prize purchased with far less verbiage than you
expend. Hopelessness is the easiest possible interpretation of the
human condition. It really doesn't matter how many circuits of Robin
Hood's barn you navigate to get there. The same destination could be
achieved with a simple "Oh shit."
But I do enjoy what I
call Cosmic Narcissism, the super-intelligence which describes the
entire universe as a chaotic meaningless mess inferior to its own
embrace of thanatos, as if some Mount Everest of perception had been
skillfully climbed, when the facts (yes, facts) are that a similar
decision might have been made quite simply and easily on far less
sophisticated evidence by Cro-Magnon man, thus saving us all the
delusional achievements of impossibly incompetent human consciousness.
Without which, there would be no Venice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7px4tH7A7o
You
want to talk about bears. I want to talk about civilization. Which you
equate with chickens, everything always inferior to yourself.
Sad. In your cosmology, the height of universal achievement is
YOU. And your penetrating insights about super-cooled fluids.
Wrong.
There IS a meaning to the human experience from which you are
inevitably and permanently locked out. It is the story of human drama,
achievement, courage, and aspiration. A meaning that can't actually be
refuted by any of your stunning attempts at rhetoric.
Which
will far outlast the peak represented by your derivative, presumptuous,
and, yes, inane cosmological theory organized around the godlike
brilliance of one J. W. Helkenberg.
One final word of
advice. Learn to write, or you will be forever crushed or swept aside
by a human capacity for faith that transcends all your loftiest
illusions about yourself.
There's no need to rebut you. You rebut yourself in every
strained, self-aggrandizing paragraph.
superobserver 2011-01-18
11:33:00
Ok you stupid fucking whores, listen up. you implied me
retarded and
naive for 'fearing' $14T. Ha! You must think me from the Ganges - I
don't bathe in shit.
Well, maybe one of these days it will be *you* who learn to
see like me? Biznatches.
I
am too stupid to read all that shit one word at a time, so I have to
see it all as one word. Get it? You see at least a page at a time,
right? Maybe both pages? Well, a book is a fractal and all I have to
see is 15 words or less and I have seen the whole book. Any 15 words.
The whole 'future book', that is, which is a fake book by your
interpolation.
Words die with the gods, but humans live (on/in) stories.
Hate
it; know that my insertion here is a necessary occurrence: My
inadequacy is the construct that evidences your superiority. That must
be your new speech writing tactic, btw. "The Republican inadequacy
evidences the Left's superiority.... not!" Must refocus the message on
Eliminating Laws.
Re-form the line!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NQBrlV1qnU
damn
shame about Camden, also. I am sure you will rush down the County Line
and park in front of some local taverns and make good with you locally
spent dollars, right?
LMFAO at the GTFO treatment of the
cops. Not. I am crying over America's apparent loss of appreciation for
the old ballads and dance tunes.
I give you the link
below because you have never seen it. That is the liars paradox
(because you see the letters just now), and mixed with my lie is an
investigation of what is inevitable. This *now* exists as a result of
your previous existence; your life amounts to little more than the
serial addition of discrete events to the Library. The 'dedekind cuts'
made by your 'works' (all y'alls works and deeds) now reveal themselves
to be serrated, gashed wounds in the near-dead body of our State
(*Lady* Liberty is my Goddess). Over-bandaged and under-nourished she
is defiled at every penstroke, ignored and now almost completely
forgotten. Our worship of her amounts to little more than fucking her
in every orifice and cutting her up a little more while we do so.
Sad
thing is, only a few people treat her this way, but all America is
watching, and everybody wants a piece of the action. Sick, fucking
revolting nightmare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi5nTb-NRFU
The
future is just another inevitable consequence of the past, just as this
portal (instapunk), itself one of a finite number of possible worlds
(.com, .net, .edu.....), *pulled me into itself*. Not my vision - IT's
vision. And we are all ensnared.
BTW, isn't that a new twist on the ol' jester theme. Your
twist, my cultural inheritance.
IP 2011-01-18
11:51:00
Super Helk:
"Ok you stupid fucking whores,
listen up."
Finally. The real voice behind the hyper-intellectual mask.
Precisely as expected.
QED.
You see? In the end, no physics, no dispassionate wisdom from on high.
Just the usual contemptuously juvenile and potty-mouthed pronouncements. (Probably by a German nihilist. Are we supposed to quake in awe of a one-man Blitzkrieg?) You be the
judge. Colossal waste of time? Or part of the sum?
Especially the imperturbability of
the InstaPunk "hoi polloi," who were never fooled. They just waited him
out -- and waited for me to make him scream. Mission Accomplished. What
we do here that no one else does.