Category: Sociological, psychological notes

Top 10 things that interest you

Where the title is a total fake, just to get higher in the pop rankings. Of course. Because that’s what life is all about and a top five wouldn’t have done the trick.

Now then. On the subject of Roman decadence. Or not, because you’d not like discussions of US pre-elections in light of societal developments there. Still, the subject is interesting as it demonstrates again (after Argentina’s Peron age, and Italy’s B.rl.sc.n. age, and the dreadful general state of Duts politicks) that the ones aiming for democratic perfection, may by and large have arrived at the end game of the moral era. As in the link here and according the jeer of some ill-guided closed-minded utopian (isn’t he?) at the end regarding e.g., Greenpeace but of course taking not broad a scope enough.

To rest my case, The similarities are striking including the varying prolongment of the demise…

And:
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[Devil’s detail ..?]

Quick Note: Big Data or ..?

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing with pebbles on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me” [I. Newton]

Whence my feeling when reading this, that I was looking into Big Data ..? Maybe Big Data could be made to work when set loose on the world’s major problems. So, no petty process analysis or what have we; onto serious fruition!

But then, it turns out that such problem solving, in particular such problem solving, needs no more data but can be solved, as shown throughout history, to be solvable without it and where data was available (yes, far more commonly available in the heads of otherwise decent much less looking-away kind of people) it wasn’t used properly or even in opposition.
Apart from the applications where it is used fully wherever more comes available and still not bringing us much closer to eternal humanitarian bliss.

For the humanity’s departure:
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Plusquote: You’re not perfect

Even at the Computer History Museum most of the devices on display stopped functioning many years ago.
This time, not one of my own but quoted from Ray. Pointing out that it’s not that bad if you fail at having the perfect IT management (systems/operations) in the universe — even if you’d had forever you wouldn’t succeed so take it easy on the minor non-compliancies.

So, this in a series inspired by this here Expert, some more of my own (heh) personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

Capice? And:
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[Once – not forever – the newest, carved in / out of stone; Reims]

New category: Miss Quotes

Quite literally, literally. The quotes, of motivational nature or other, that you meet every time again — but aren’t, since they are garbled versions of the original. And the original had much more profound wisdom, or was even true where the misquote isn’t.

Heard often, lately, lame defense for some that utter the most ridiculous lies:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
(“Je désapprouve ce que vous dites, mais je défendrai à la mort votre droit à le dire”)

Which commonly is attributed to Voltaire (no surname needed), and refers to freedom of speech and democracy at large, even to the point of complete breakdown of ethics when falsely claiming Purple Hearts etc. But then, what Voltaire actually said was
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.
(Essay on Tolerance)

Which is something else entirely. E.g., it starts with ‘Think’ — that so many don’t do, most by not being able to. And, ‘for yourselves’ which has the element of ‘and keep the results to yourselves as well, no need to blabber and reveal your thinking was garbage’. And, it’s a privilege. Nowhere does it say that you have the right to disturb anyone’s peace with you failure of logic. See the above link on false claims, and also refer to current-day elections politics in some global backwater…

I’m off to some wine tasting (business, not volume..!), so I’ll leave you with:
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[Remark-wise, related. At Condoníu]

The lion’s share of SOx

Anyone dare to guess whether ‘SOx’ and all the totalitarian-bureaucratic tendencies that still dominate the organizational world of today, over the chaotic-environment-forcing-to-retreat-into-more-sober-flexibility upstarts, is the lion that roars just one last time before being overtaken by younger more vital rivals, or is it a resurgence in greater scope than ever before of some History’s greater trends ..?

This, with of course higher-frequency but (much) smaller-amplitude cycles being layered onto it, producing an apparently random but wavelet-transformation-traceable ordered (or at least, causally correct) pattern — which may or may not have a direction other than zero, through the aeons. Staying far from pretending that humanity by any worthwhile measure is better off than in all previous times, which is very highly doubtful …!

But the first dare is what it’s about, here.
Hope and joy, humanity saved by its own creativity and the inherent dice-throwing of Nature [contra Einstein but that’s not the point here — Wovon mann nicht sprechen kann OR is beyond human comprehension] — XOR — despair and demise. Beyond short-term trends, where are we going?

Your call. In particular in Comments. Plus:
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[Suddenly, different. Even when not adapted i.e. ‘shopped. Girona again]

The Body of the Mind

Quick note: Still wondering whether the brain may function as smoothly when not connected in the most natural of ways with the body that feeds (…) it and vice versa.
Yes — decoupling of functions and/or replication of interfaces may solve some problems. But remain not ex ante sure whether in a logical sense, we miss something. The ultimate mimic game may still not be the real thing.

Sorry — some points cannot be dissed quite so easily, with stop gap arguments. And:

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[“It’s just a house, like a stone skin”…? Girona]

Plusquotetime

Diversity is joy and riches.

Another one in the series inspired by this here Expert, this here post continues the somewhat hopefully new series — with my own personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

The above might even require some exepelenaisijuhn. Where some approach diversity, of any kind, with fear, I consider diversity to be an asset at the mundane level, e.g., through creation of (evolution-enabling) robustness by partial pre-readiness against the chaotic changes in the (any def. of) environment. That some of the group however defined, will survive and no mass extinction is the effect of the previous perfected adaption (by definition), in itself should create calmth. All-individuals’ survival was never on the program (on the contrary, everything so certainly human life(s) will come to an end — trace the stories describing the utter horror and boredom of living forever…), and now, continuity can be guaranteed when diversity is cherished. One can even see the value to society of having some with less perfected adaptation to modern life that should be cared for as our hope for the future when we (?) ‘normals’ will be the misfits and the tough get going.
Also, uniformity is boring. Utterly boring. Think sheeple following $AAPL. Diversity, especially in society and the superset, art, has riches and value in itself. In flip image, those that oppose diversity-through-immigration often do so for an unconscious subliminal fear of being found out to be overly shallow… [Yes one can learn of other cultures from afar, certainly latter days, but meeting F2F in the others’ environment is still much preferred for its full-all-senses experience. To keep the world a better place, one of course then needs not flatten all culture to some happenstantial low(er/est) common denominator. That one doesn’t take over another one’s culture doesn’t mean one disses or dismisses it let alone one would (feel the need to) rate it lower — on the contrary, one could enjoy the diversity. And/or learn where others are in fact esthetically and ethically superioir, within losing one’s own peculiarities — again the fear of being found out to in fact be the lower life and having to give up one’s (implicitly, now exposed) inferior and/or underserved position.

I rest my case. And:
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[‘My house in the ‘burbs must by law be exactly like yours’ — said no one ever. BarÇa again.]

In support of TED ..?

A certain, distinguished ( ? ;-| ) R. Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near has some off the cuff remarks about becoming pets, Ted style. (p.32)
Which is a sligh against (later!) sages of the Musk, Gates and Hawkins class — and fully unjustified. Since the ‘Theory of Technology Evolution’ is a quasi(sic)religious circular argument paraphrasing Hegel with apparently quite carefully selected and probably redacted statistics and some ontological Technology-defeatism in the undertow.

And the rest is consumable but only when considering these initial ails as foundations hence only a particular Kuhnian discourse. Interpuncted (Eldredge/Gould style) with badly under- or misinformed remarks. E.g., regarding chaotic processes resulting in smooth exponential trends being not a coincidence but an inherent feature of evolutionary processes (p.73) — based on a misunderstanding of evolution, probably, since numerous times, the latter is made to appear like some purposeful decision making by individual instances of, or species as actors instead of happenstance sheer survival-luck. How much of the overwhelming evidence must one disregard to arrive at the smoothness!

The list goes on. But I will not. (Nevertheless…) read the darn thing and smile! Naivety is a good read, too. And:
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[Yes, take your meds. No need to swallow just the blue pill that the above book might be, though. Barça, of course]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord