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Post 20

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 5:58amSanction this postReply
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To be clear:  our modern culture threw $100Billion with a B of bored capital at the Facebook IPO...an entity that employs about 3500 people.

 

That same entity just recently threw $19Billion with a B of bored capital at 'WhatsApp', an entity that employs 55 people.

 

Wither gradient going anywhere?

 

To me, this isn't evidence of a nefarious plot; this is evidence that, without the boundary condition of dirt simple 2D geopolitical gradient, intellectual frontiers do not create broad opportunities; they create opportunities only in other narrow intellectual fields, and that fact-- not our current ratcake political theories -- is the source of increasing disparity in incomes and wealth.   If there is a societal/cultural need to raise outcomes for more people, it is not by enslaving success in the service of subsidy in some kind of half - assed targeting of stasis and equality(were all eventually equal at 0 under that plan), but in intelligently redirecting success into areas that recreate frontier and gradient and broad opportunites.

 

In the past, with the existence of 2D surface gradient/development wave,  the existence of an actual frontier and the resulting gradient of opportunities resulted in intellectual frontiers creating broad economic opportunities;  a Bethlehem Steel employed 330,000 Americans and created broad economic wealth.

 

The effort to put 12 sets of footprints on the Moon was not for those 12 astronauts.  That effort and reach went all the way back to Huntslville Al, Los Angeles, CA, Bethpage, NY, Houston, Tx, Cape Kennedy, FL, and to all the research universities and labs where human beings imagined and reached.   That was the result of the gradient of needs and opportunities extending from earth to the Moon...

 

That spark is still alive at places like SpaceX and even, deep within NASA.    But that spark is a sideshow in a -culture- that is slouching towards ... Facebook, etc. in $100B sized whacks.

 

regards,

Fred

 

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/07, 6:09am)



Post 21

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 9:50amSanction this postReply
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guess our sheeple (how's that business-plan coming Jules ;) would rather have faecesbook and whatever-app than a spaceship to Mars - you can remain comfortably seated on your couch and the first interplanetary twit will certainly post some pretty picture for you to enjoy ... not to mention those poor sods going up there will not be able to come back - but I'm sure they'll come up with a solution for the bereaved to 3D-print virtual flowers on the red-dusted graves of the heroes who went there to send them back the first non-Terran crap-post - it's gonna be a shit-storm on the net :D

 

PS: all sarcasm aside - it is their choice to waste trillions of fake value-proxies instead of building one real value - whether you agree with that choice or not

ironically I had a similar discussion with a colleague a few days ago: instead of bemoaning the total 'less-than-intelligence' on the web one smart enterpreneur could trawl all that useless information out there and turn good profits from it - if she posts a picture on faecesbook of the guy she met last night at the headbanging-caterwauling, because he's still in her not very stylish bed waiting for breakfast, you could sell that information to Amazing and she'd get an immediate response with the perfect wedding dress, or the newest bedsheets to make that bed attractive enough for him to stay ;)

I know that sounds like more of my usual sarcasm, but think about it: if mankind wants to deal in crap, call it fertilizer and sell it :D

 

(Edited by Vera S. Doerr on 7/07, 10:02am)



Post 22

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 12:34pmSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

Ha!

 

Well, the telephone -can be- used mostly for crap, and TV and Radio -can be- used mostly for crap and the Internet -can be- used mostly for crap, but there is some small amount of bandwidth -- some tiny fraction of the promise -- that yet drives the rest.   It is not the other way around.   King Consumer slouched on the couch might be a massive gaping maw waiting to be filled, but it does not fill itself, nor can it.  It can be pandered to for transient power over a dead carcass, but it cannot be driven to create beast.  That is what the minority does with its tiny slice of all that wasted bandwidth.

 

It is the concept of gradient that drives markets, and the argument is, that only in the presence of geopolitical gradient/growth paradign do intellectual frontiers create broad economic opportunities.  Otherwise, without that 'dirt simple' geopolitical gradient, intellectual frontiers spin off into eddies that create opportunites only in other intellectual frontiers, going nowhere and providing jobs for fewer and fewer of the King Consumers.   This, to me, is what is at the foundation of the growing disparity between haves and have nots, why income and wealth disparity is accelerating.

 

 

What are the alternatives?    Shepherd King Consumer into the purely intellectual frontiers?  Not happening.

 

Seriously...what are the alternatives?   If nothing, then all now is an end game and we are in the rats on a sinking lifeboat stage of the festivities, and some rats scramble better than other and will survive an additional 15 minutes. then what?

 

But that is entirely consistant with the end of gradient; the transition to stasis is an end game.  The end of economies.

 

Canary in the coal mine:  you are laboring in the bits and bytes arena as an independent.  Me, too.   Then you've noticed the changing nature of what folks ask you to do for them, and have sometimes been shaking your head. I like you have saluted the flag and bid on and got my share of doing what folks claim they want to do, and have sometimes been disheartened at the nature of what that is.  Not always.  But these days, increasingly.

 

As you say, no matter what you call it, sell them what they say they want.  It pays the bills.

 

Obama recently announced that Ike's MIC is actually building Iron Man.    They are hiring the special effects studios who built the suit for the movies.    It's part of the new Community Organizer/Poliical Scientist view of systems engineering: fantasy first, physics later.   So far it is expensively shitting the bed.   Physics is a real bitch.   But the animated promos are killer.



Post 23

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 1:52pmSanction this postReply
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which is why I postulate a total strike against humanity - every man every creator should have his production withdrawn as it will be used as 'fertilizer' - that's human nature ... sadly they don't do that - be it because they believe in the value of man, have hopes for a better future, or simply play along as there's not much else to do around here (oups - that would be me - bad Vera)

 

and I have indeed noticed, that my technical expertise is no longer requested by my customers (welcome to the bore-out club) - the last three projects I was the best paid Kindergarten-Tante you've ever seen - pity they have a deficiency of daynurseries around here or I'd have offered them their services and pocketed the difference ;) plus they'd have done a better job than me :D

 

PS: that was one reason why I chose IT as a profession - it's well paid and I don't have to invest my intellect - literature, drawing/photography, trekking all would have been valid career options for me, but all of them would have been an expression of my own values, of my creativity - glad I did not choose to sell them

 

PPS: love Iron Man - finally a selfish 'genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist' (the last bit with the boy scouts I never took seriously ;) - they'll never get him built until they get the selfishness right :P



Post 24

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 3:48pmSanction this postReply
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"The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

 Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun..."

-W. H. Auden, "Stop All The Clocks"

 

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 7/08, 4:20am)



Post 25

Monday, July 7, 2014 - 7:48pmSanction this postReply
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:) Very nice to see you Joe.



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Post 26

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - 1:14amSanction this postReply
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very romantic notion Joe :)

being myself a disillusioned romantic I cannot help but be moved - but I stand by my earlier comment: just like Auden uses his bereft subject to 'adjust' the world around him to his own loss, humanity uses the world around it to 'adjust' it to it's own destruction ... pack up humanity - we've waited long enough for a potential to become an actual - or how long do you suggest we muddle through til that promised day?



Post 27

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - 4:26amSanction this postReply
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Vera: "We've waited long enough for a potential to become an actual-or how long do you suggest we muddle through til that promised day?"

Good question to go with Fred's earlier posted image...

 

 

 

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 7/08, 4:41am)

 

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 7/08, 4:41am)



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Post 28

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - 5:53amSanction this postReply
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so you, me and Fred go to Mars with Buzz - but I'll not open a faecesbook account to quack about it :P

love the cover - Thanx :)



Post 29

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - 4:49pmSanction this postReply
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VSD: " it is their choice to waste trillions of fake value-proxies instead of building one real value - whether you agree with that choice or not...'

 

No, Vera, it is not; and that distinguishes the wertfrei Austrian economists from the Objectivist radicals for capitalism.  It makes a difference.  

 

I have written about the wonderful social economy of Cairo 1600.  A slave woman could sue in a court  of contract law when in Europe of 1600 a noble woman could not.  Two merchants bought a whole street, house by house, and turned it into a mercantile emporium, without eminent domain; and fully respecting of the property rights of the previous owners.   But that wonderful mercantile milieu was a moment in time, cut loose from any understanding of individual rights as the natural state of humans.  So, it did not last.  A mere shift in trade routes left Cairo a backwater.

 

Boston prospered.  Dumping the tea in the harbor - The Boston Tea Party - was a pivotal event leading to American Independence -- and ultimately more rights than any Muslim slave woman dreamed of...

 

Mars awaits while Facebook is here specifically because of the collectivist-altruist-mysticist influence that still dominates the wider Western culture.

 

See my blog about "Razorboards in the Workplace" here



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Post 30

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 1:57amSanction this postReply
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Michael,

I didn't say it doesn't make a difference, however if you want to have the choice to live by objectivist standards, you cannot take that choice away from those who want to live with slaves - you can't force others to be as enlightened as you are, as productive, as rational as you know the human species could be

in the ultimate consequence you'd have to lead a crusade of objectivists - of course with reason only - but your reason would have only minimal effect on the masses of the non-rational and thus would either have to be backed by force (big no-no) or a lot of patience and even more effort to educate them over several hundred generations ... and the outcome would still be in question, as mankind keeps sliding backwards after each great leap ahead - as your own examples show ...



Post 31

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 4:50amSanction this postReply
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Vera:

 

" as mankind keeps sliding backwards"

 

 

Yes, so many steps forward, and so many steps back.    I'm beginning to think it is a Universal law of some kind...the game is apparently kind of rigged in the long, long term.    Without constant effort and exertion of local energy, the local neighborhood runs downhill.   The Universe's laws even arrange things so that even standing still is running down hill.      But in that Universal sense -- the same sense that gives the arrow of time (increasing entropy and disorder, consumption of all gradient), that is an extremely long term ride, and along the way, there are plenty of local hills, and lots of gradient.    The cultural aspect is, are we in a local tribe running uphill, standing still, or running downhill?

 

 

regards,

Fred

 

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/09, 5:04am)



Post 32

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 5:03amSanction this postReply
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An odd observation, made by others.  (I forget for the moment where I saw this; a consequence in myself of the very fact.   I think it was a Youtube video...)

 

If you take a picture of an object, say, a building, at two far enough separated points in time, you will have two static images of the object.   But just looking at the images, we can generally distinguish which image was taken in the past and which was taken in the present.    The building might have new windows, or a new addition, but in general, without great effort(and the results of that effort will be disorder elsewhere, swept under the rug so to speak) it will show signs of 'age' and based on those signs, we can infer the direction of the arrow of time.

 

Is this is mere consequence of the passing of the time, which we have learned, or is it fundamental to the concept of time in a Universe that is slowly dissassoicating all gradient and inexorably grinding down to some dim gray 3 deg K ... 2.9 deg K .... 2.8 deg K.... completely uniform future without significant gradients?

 

Does that observational fact apply in some sense to mankind itself?   Certainly to us as individuals, even if we are more atune to this process in our old age than we are in our youth, but that is not what I mean.  To the species?  To civilization.

 

I wonder that because we are -not- the same nation we were even 50 years ago; I doubt we are much the same species we were 1000 yrs ago except in the most trivial of ways.   I'm thinking more of the spine than the brain..

 

regards,

Fred

 

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/09, 5:07am)



Post 33

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 5:54amSanction this postReply
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can't really say Fred - not enough conclusive data or not enough available distance from the subject ... all I can do is contrast and guess - one example:

the brain created all these fancy developments of technology just as the pharaohs probably did in their time or any high culture before that: 'mankind marveled at it's own magnificence' - but our stomach is still eating mostly the same fare as they did to keep that brain going ... it has even become a 'scientific fad' to eat paleontological diet (to go beyond the lentils), which is supposed to be much healthier and more natural for the human body ... not that we know for sure what they actually ate in those days - some archeological paper I read recently is going to some length to prove that Neanderthals had grain in their excrements - and not just from chewing medicinal herbs, but enough to prove that their diet was not all meat and nuts and berries, but also cultivated grain

so we may exchange the fur for clothes, the cave for skyscrapers, the stone wedge for the latest 'wearable' gadget, but basically we're not that much different ... oups - almost forgot the disclaimer: of course I prefer the latter, but as long as I'm dependent on the former just in different form, how far have I really 'developed'?

another example of mental development: how many imagined or existing alien life forms do you know that are not 'humanoid' - how many of those are not even physical or dependent on physical matter to be 'real' - and how many of those have completely different axioms of defining existence? reached the far reaches of theoretical maths and physics yet? even our most cherished and most developed feature, our mind, is still mired in it's body and does not stray too far from it's needs



Post 34

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 6:58amSanction this postReply
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Michael:

 

Enjoyed the 'Razorboards' piece.   

 

I had a summer student working with me once, for a couple summers back in the mid 90s. He was a smart young man.   The first year, right out of HS, before his freshmen year of college, he was eager to learn.   By the second year, after a year at school, he was telling me that it was beneath him to program in any language that didn't have garbage collection.     I think he 'learned' that at school.   What he learned would serve to isolate him at many layers of abstraction above the spinning machines.   I saw 'this' happening in the late 70s as a young development engineer; increasingly, new arrivals were huddled up around the new vector terminals, staring at 2D pristine meridional views of machinery, and not down in the lab pouring over ripped apart machines alongside of HS grads who have been building these machines for decades,  with worn bearings and leaky seals and rubbed rotors, getting their fingers dirty and seeing where designs have fucked up.  'This' being, ever more abstract layers appearing between the developers and the spinning machines.   At some point, we become too separated from reality when we focus exclusively in a virtual pristine simulation of reality.   Before you know it, UN Panels are basing policy based on the outputs of uncalibrated computer models, as if they were reality.

 

What I am about to say, I've said many times, like most of the BS I say.   I don't intend it to apply to everyone.   But when it comes to technology, at least in the USA, I see a tendency for us to be raising riders, not drivers.   There are far more folks interested in playing games than designing/building games; there are far more folks entertained by pressing buttons and appearing to be in control than there are folks who grok how linear algebra hurling triangles at a 3D pipeline relates to creating the experience, or are interested in the technology underneath the buttons and close to the spinning machines.   Way more folks wearing shades and pressing buttons than pressing keys and writing shaders.

 

As I've pointed out before... F14, F15, F16, F117, F18, B1...and certainly B52 ..   all rapidly developed, including their avionics, before or during at time when PONG was state of the art video gaming.    Modern breed of engineers with more computing power on their desktops than existed in the entire USA when the B52 was developed, with the advantage of access to every program that preceeded them, spent over 20 yrs developing the F22 and F35.

 

And yet, we are not even raising a nation of game developers.    We have raised a nation of game players. Of Razorboard riders.    Riders, not drivers.   The drivers are still to be found but are fewer and far between.  It is tech that creates a demand for tech; otherwise it is just guys in suits banging out shrink wrapped plastic for riders who have been convinced by flying dreadlocks in silohette...or maybe the image of a 'brilliant' curmudgen skating by on his Razorboard-- to want the latest plastic thing.   Gee, I can skate on my Razorboard; I can appear to be brilliant, too.   That, too, is the power of glamor.

 

regards,

Fred



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Post 35

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 3:56pmSanction this postReply
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http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/first-ever-athletic-scholarship-for-playing-video-game-league-of-legends/

 

Sad but true Fred.

Button pushing on steroids.

 

(Edited by Jules Troy on 7/09, 3:57pm)



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Post 36

Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 6:37pmSanction this postReply
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Vera, even though philosophy supplanted religion as the primary source of moral teaching, people still worshipped gods in Athens. Aspasia, Anaxagoras, and most famously, Socrates, were prosecuted for impiety.  In the Renaissance, millions of people did not seek to become l'uomo universale.  In the great age of industry, 95% of the people in America lived on farms.  Historical trends are created by some; and everyone else just follows.

 

I have seen changes in the last 50 years that indicate broad and deep improvement in the general culture.  

 

In baseball, you can strike out two out of three times at the plate all season long, and lead the league with a .333.  Edison paradigmatically tried nine or ten thousand filaments to get one that worked.  My point is that in America, we do not count the failures.  We only reward the successes. 

 

First we took Manhattan; then we took Berlin.



Post 37

Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 3:49amSanction this postReply
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Michael,

go ahead and take Moscow, HongKong, Tokio, too ... I'll come visit the ruins in 2.000 years and check your dietary plans ;)

I'm not denying cultural or technological development (those come and go in waves) - my point is species development and that's pretty scarce ... or simply (very much) slower than I'd like it to be ;)



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Post 38

Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 9:04amSanction this postReply
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Jules:

 

ugh.

 

 

I've seen youngun's playing these virtual sports games and 'configuring' their player/avatars.    Press a few buttons, slide a few sliders, and 'you' can be effortlessly bigger, stronger, faster, more 'athletic.'   Well, mainly, the thumbs.     Instant gratification.  Instant results.   'success' in a virtual world, without effort.    Might as well be selling crack to addicts.  ALmost precisely the same process of gratification.   No, seriously, it takes some skill to light that pipe.

 

But don't diss steroids like that; steroids do not make anyone bigger, faster, or more athletic;   steroids permit faster recovery between workouts, allowing a more strenuous training regimen than without steroids.   The -results- of the more strenuous training regimen is getting bigger, faster, more athletic.

 

Steroids are as much 'cheating' as vitamins are.   If someone takes steroids and sits on a couch for three months, nothing good will come of it.   They are not magic pills.

 

Steroids up until at least the 70s were legal in sports.   There was a period from the 50s until the 70s when they were not only legal, but totally uncontrolled(no prescription from a doctor required, like in the 70s)

 

And did we notice?   It wasn't until steroids were 'banned' from sports, chasing all the legitimate doctors away, that HS teams started looking like college teams,  college teams like pro teams, and pro teams like those virtual freaks on Madden 2014.   Which makes me suspect, the reason for the ban was to exactly chase the doctors away, to encourage more athletes to go full bore nonstop cowboy so that fatasses in suits could ride them like trained ponys.

 

Sure; it's modern vitamins.  They got suddenly much better, coincidentally, when steroids were 'banned' from sports.   As if.

 

Would I rather see my son taking steroids, under a doctors supervision, with weekly blood work (like in the 70s) and running up hills, working out 7 days a week in the off-season, or would I rather see him sitting on a couch sliding sliders and playing Madden?

 

It's not even close.   But today, unnecessary, at least with 'scholarships' for game playing.

 

For game making?  I could understand that in a heartbeat, and applaud it.  There would have at least been some brain muscle exerted.   But game playing?   Sitting on a couch and playing a game made by some other creative mind?   A total rider?

 

Nothing wrong with enjoying a game and being entertained by someone else's effort and creativity, which Mom or Dad paid for at $49.95 a crack.  But being rewarded for it?   

 

Reminds me of handing Krugman a Nobel prize for making the observation "More than one nation can manufacture automobilies."   Attaboy, Paul, here is your cookie.

 

regards,

Fred

 

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/10, 9:06am)



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Post 39

Saturday, July 12, 2014 - 6:37pmSanction this postReply
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re #31 - if that were true, the ancestors wouldn't have made it past the second set of caves, let alone reach the heights of today - so blow yer nose, gird yer loins, and move onward - and re-read IF.........;-)

 

(Edited by robert malcom on 7/12, 6:37pm)



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