glen -
As usual, I ignore all the places where we agree and emphasize the
disagreements ... because life is more fun that way. 8^)
I understand that... though it IS my habit to acknowledge the things I
agree on to more starkly expose the ones I don't (or at least I try to
do that).
I'm not sure when it happened. But at some point I began to buy the
idea that politics is deeply embedded in everything. I think it
started when I moved to the bay area and heard people (constantly) say
things like "that's just politics" ... implying that whatever they
were talking about was somehow not politics.
This is very much the Glen I know... a particular subdiscipline of
contrarianism?
This article reinforced my position just this morning:
Enough With This Basic Income Bullshit
https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bullshit-a6bc92e8286b#.1xcadg3vf
I'm reading it now, though the rich hyperlinking to interesting side
topics and references is causing some intellectual ablation! I've come
to recognize something like a "0th world problem" which are issues that
are even more abstract and relatively empty than "1st world
problems"... That is what I'd call my experience with this rich
offering you made. thefamily.co is all new to me BTW... thanks for that
too!
As a result, I began following all the politics I could stomach as
closely as my [in]competence would allow.
Though I think gay (LGBTQZedOmega) and reproduction rights would have
been retarded and a few (other) conservative Xtian rights would have
been advanced differently but...
Maybe. I resist our "great person"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory) tendencies wherever I
find them, though. It's reasonable to speculate that Obama had much
less to do with those advances than we might think.
I agree with dismissing the GPT in first order effects, but I think
there are many second order effects which are much more significant.
Sure jOeBama couldn't pull us out of Iraq/Afghanistan or shutter Gitmo
or ... and ... the way we thought he would/could/should... and we can
postulate reasons and excuses until the cows come home for that. My
point about the things that *were* achieved under his watch and the
*different* ones to have likely been achieved under a
Wealthy/Conservative/Mormon Romney relates to the spirit of the
community. An unfortunate example might be the current focus on police
abuse, particularly in urban african-american communities. I think the
minimal empowerment of having our first black president may have lead
both to the popular pushback against the abuses and possibly even
generated more abuses? Under our first female president, I think we
will likely see some significant shifts in gender issues, not
necessarily because Hillary is a "Great Woman" who would single handedly
"lead us forward", but just because of the social tenor set by her rise
to the top of our political game.
But it's also dangerous to argue that some event/process would have
happened regardless. That's a typical flaw of my libertarian friends
who'll claim that advances like artificial hearts or whatnot, despite
being government funded, would have emerged even without government
funding. Criticalities (like "great people") probably do play
some/much role in some/many cases. I'm simply skeptical that we can
tease out which cases.
I think this is an acute example of the things dual/hybrid models which
include both discrete (particle, agent, etc) and continuous (field,
patch, etc.). I am hypothesizing that the individual (great person)
does less in their direct role, exercising their personal/professional
agency than they do by setting a tone, representing an ideal... and that
doesn't just include their sycophantic followers, it includes their
vitriolic opponents as well... those who "rise up against". I think a
good deal of our gridlock in the government was a reaction to Obama both
as a black man and as a (presumed) liberal, more than anything he
specifically did or did not do.
In short, this game has absolutely nothing to do with the
idealistic system(s) framing Arrow's or Condorcet's propositions. And
that may partially explain why markets would be more robust predictors.
Excepting, I would contend that "this game" is *shaped* by the lack
of viable paths to successful 3rd party intrusions INTO the game.
Well, good games, games that I find _fun_, anyway, are always
co-evolutionary with implicit objective functions. Boring games are
those with unambiguous rules, zero-sum outcomes, etc. Were I to run
for a large office (or participate on the campaign of someone
running), I'd regard the viable paths as part of the game, not
isolable merely as the context of the game.
I am not arguing against the strategies of the two major parties or
their candidates. I understand why they want to keep the game defined
for their own purposes. I also understand why the wannabes wanna change
the game up. What is more puzzling to me is why/how "we the people"
can continue to *pretend* we are unhappy with the status quo while all
but *citing* the status quo as the motivation for our behaviour? "I
HATE our polarized two party system but I won't even LOOK at the third
parties because THEY are not viable in our current context!" What? How
will they ever BECOME viable if you won't give them any consideration?
For me, this moment of clear and extreme disaffection with the party in
the first part and the party in the second part, is the perfect
opportunity to make some inroads into the very change we *claim* we
want. Oh well.
Perhaps this is why, during near-drunken argumentation, people always
accuse me of private definitions and "moving the goal posts". 8^) Who
says I can't move the goal posts? What game were _you_ playing?
I have played a variant of battleship where each player is allowed to
move one ship after each salvo from the other player. It is at least as
interesting as the original.
Yes, I would have thought this directly in the camp of "applied
complexity". I have a friend working on election security:
http://freeandfair.us/ But that work is too "close to the metal" for
me, I guess. I'd prefer a systems engineering project experimenting
on geopolitical systems in general. I imagine there are lots of
people doing that work, breathing stale air in faraday cages peppered
around the country housed in various nondescript buildings.
Oddly, NM is a great place for faraday cages without stale air! As you
may guess, contemporary adobe structures make pretty fair faraday
cages... at least if they have stucco netting (or better yet expanded
metal plaster-lathe) and metal (rather than nylon) window-screens...
just make sure the two are well connected (stucco net and window
screens) and the embedding in the adobe on a foundation makes a pretty
good ground. By having lots of thermal mass (adobe, preferably double)
you can leave the windows open and solve the stale air problem.
I haven't done careful analysis or research, so the density of stucco
netting might not be fine enough to handle all frequencies, but it sure
does work well to attentuate/absorb wifi, bluetooth and cellular
signals! I'm doing a pilot project in a small farmstead in NNM to
deploy/test/prototype a village-telco mesh and I'm *very* thankful that
the window screens are nylon (and NOT electrically connected to the
stucco mesh)... on most of the buildings...
People unfamiliar with NM architecture would call most of our farmhouses
"nondescript".
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