Well trolled! It’s time for me to turn of the news for a while. I am
even closer to hysteria than usual.
I want to say it shouldn’t MATTER who said it; it should only matter
whether it’s true or not. It’s the “true,shmoo
<https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/this-website-works-better-in-microsoft-edge-160fa918-d581-4932-9e4e-1075c4713595?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us>!”
move that drives me crazy. I concede that complexity thinking should
turn us all into hopeless dyonesians, but I will not have it!
N
Nick Thompson
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
<https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
*From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
*Sent:* Friday, November 12, 2021 9:46 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in ethological
studies of bird flocks
Nick,
Nothing you say below or said in the original post is false. All are
true. Trump could not have written what you wrote, he lacks the
literacy as well as the ability to avoid "hyperisms" in his speech.
However ... each of your points about the Chinese in both posts have
been stated by Trump; albeit in his distorted/garbled playground bully
vernacular.
The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong mouthpiece with a huge anti-China
bias. Nevertheless it has/does publish essays and news pieces that
also state, just as eloquently as do you, the same points and warnings
about what China is doing and why.
What I am teasing you (trolling with a huge smile on my face because I
think the world of you) about — via the ad hominen — is the fact that
"truth" (non-falsity) of the statements made are somehow made
dependent on the identity of the messenger. When Trump or the Epoch
Times makes the statements they are racist cant, but when Nick states
them, they are wisdom to paid attention to.
davew
On Thu, Nov 11, 2021, at 10:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Dave,
So, ad hominem aside, which of the assertions I made are false.
Is Hong Kong not being digested as we speak? Is pressure not
increasing on the Taiwanese? Are islands not being built and
fortified in the international waters around China? Are the
Uighurs not being confined in work camps? Are the Chinese not
massively deploying surveillance technology? Look, I don’t hold
it against the Chinese. Given our behavior in the last decade, I
think a very good case can be made for the superiority of
authoritarian rule in the avoidance of economic and social chaos.
If democracies are capable of producing Hitlers and Trumps and the
current Turkish and Hungarian leaders, which exactly IS their
special call on our loyalty. Could that loyalty just be so much
romantic twaddle. The democratical citizens of Athens murdered an
entire defenseless city of their fellow Greeks—put them to the
sword, I believe is how Thucydides put it. I don’t happen to
agree with the argument, but I don’t have to think of the Chinese
as some hideous yellow peril to believe that they sincerely
believe it. I just have to think that they are expanding, as we
did after the cold war, into a vacuum left by our own sudden
ambivalence concerning our own values. I don’t believe that Trump
could have written the above, but even if he could, a stopped
clock has to be right two times a day (or only once, if it is a
twenty four our clock.)
I would love to believe that I am wrong about any of this.
Democracies are caving all over the world and I think it’s fair to
say that a majority of americans have given up on the idea as well.
The one thing I am desperately naïve about and that complexity
denies is that it is valuable to think ahead, to plan, to share
plans with fellow citizens, and to follow some fair rules for
arriving at a consensus, being ever vigilant for the perils of mob
psychology and group think, before taking action. All of that is
in peril, right now, and when the history is written it will have
been us that let it happen.
N
Nick Thompson
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
<https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
*From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Prof
David West
*Sent:* Thursday, November 11, 2021 9:39 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in ethological
studies of bird flocks
Nick, get out your dagger repellent you Trumpist you!
I have heard, almost verbatim, your entire paragraph from the
mouth of the Donald, and seen the exact same notions discussed, ad
nauseam, in Glen's favorite newspaper, /The Epoch Times./ [Don't
shoot me glen, it is a joke.]
davew
On Thu, Nov 11, 2021, at 11:57 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Steve,
Well, I may be the victim of recent “neo- (aka archeo-)
liberal” pod casts, but I really get the impression that the
Chinese are going for it, boasting a Chinese Exceptionalism
every bit as toxic as the one we have espoused. From their
point of view, this moment in history is the analogue of our
moment after WW two. They are ready to move ahead and there
is nobody “out there” with the organization or resources to
oppose them. Why would they not take the opportunity? The
age of sino-hegemony is upon us. We either pull our socks up
politically or settle down to be the new Yugoslavia.
Nick Thompson
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
<https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
*From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Steve
Smith
*Sent:* Thursday, November 11, 2021 11:58 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in
ethological studies of bird flocks
Nick -
I asked this because the style of your statement felt like it
had the flavor of Cold War Rhetoric which I was (also) raised
on. I (want to) think something more sophisticated (and
interesting) is afoot today and that while I don't want to
fall into the low-entropy stylization implied by this CCP
Spectre, I *do* want to believe (or seek) something good that
the CCP "great experiment" might have found while we were on
our NeoLiberal hyperCapitalism "great experiment". Is there
room to learn something (humanist/humanitarian) from them? I
believe StephenG's familiarity with China in modern times (as
well as others) may offer us some parallax?
- Steve
On 11/11/21 10:42 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Steve,
No. You are right on target for the thread. My
understanding of the present Government is that it is
absolutely convinced that the centralist, technological,
authoritarian model of government superior to other models
and that this is their time to demonstrate that
superiority. I can really imagine some CCP leaders
reading this research and thinking, “mmmmmmmmm! THAT’S
interesting. In my back yard, back in the sixties, there
was a teensy little CIA research station figuring out how
to get animals –dogs, ravens, pigeons, donkeys,
what-have-you, to carry bombs for them, using a
combination of training and neural implants. When the
gave up the project, they left behind two gigantic glass
carboys filled with pickled dogs heads.
The Shadow Knows.
Nick
Nick Thompson
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
<https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
*From:* Friam <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
*Sent:* Thursday, November 11, 2021 11:22 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in
ethological studies of bird flocks
Nick -
Chinese science moves ahead in the development of the
ideal society.
I don't mean to be flip in my question, but have to ask if
you are being flip in this statement? Can you say more
about what you think the Chinese gov't/people/culture
might be "trying" to do, either overtly, or implicitly by
simply following their individual goals/interests/desires?
I believe that the collective dynamics between
Nations/Peoples are what is dominating the
movement/evolution of humanity (cultural, not genetic) and
that it is like an N-body problem in complexity and
subtlety but is effected primarily through network relations.
Like Gene Expression Networks, I believe that the more
important "memes" (I think this is a useful but risky
metaphorical binding that Dawkins coined for us most of a
career (for me) ago) are those that are _regulatory_ which
is why the likes of Trump and Bannon and Stone and the
whole cabal of supervillians we are coping with these days
focus on things like "fake news!" and "big lie!", etc.
In the spirit of McLuhan, "the medium IS the message", the
medium itself becomes the _thing to manipulate_ like
trying to disrupt the news credibility and the election
process as well as becoming the definition of a tweetHole,
and using Facebook to disseminate dysInfo etc.
I know this is an acute threadbend, you were trying to
talk about birds and flocking and experimental techniques
for studying same... if you do feel inclined to answer,
it is probably best to rethread.
https://jin.imrpress.com/article/2020/1757-448X/1757-448X-19-3-443.shtml
If the robo-pigeon is a dominant member of the flock,
you can make the flock do loop-di-loops by commanding
the robo-pigeon to loop. If subordinate, the
loop-di-looping behavior of the robopigeon has no
effect on the flock. A robo-pigeon is one with a
brain implant and pigeons are operated on AFTER their
dominance in the flock has been determined.
I hope I have this all right.
Nick
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