Re: Optimism for the USA
On 4/23/06, Doug Pensinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert J. Chassell wrote: An optimist -- and I am still an optimist -- will argue that in spite of forgone opportunities, the USA could help create a more civilized and sustainable world. Excellent post, Robert, you should have given it a Brin header. As for optimism, I'm afraid I've lost some of mine. Five years of W, the packing of the SC with legal ludites, the knowledge that a solid majority of the people in this country believe that the universe was created in six (literal) days, Eh? Cite, please! Or maybe not... I just searched a bit and found a few polls that put the numbers just over 50 percent. George Barna, who I think does some of the best research on this sort of thing, doesn't directly address it. From his stats, I would think the number is more like 30 percent. People believe all sorts of crazy things. Seventy-five percent of Americans think that the Bible teaches God helps those who help themselves. It doesn't. For what it's worth, I think it is true, in some mysterious way, that the universe was created in six days. But I don't think that it really happened that way. I wonder if a poll that emphasized that word you put in parentheses -- literal -- would show numbers as high. Popular Christianity has become propositional and prescriptive, rather than relational and narrative. Some of us are doing our best to get it turned back around. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Article: Software tracks mood swings of blogosphere
People blame communication issues on Mercury being retrograde. And they're stupid or ignorant people. FFS. I just don't get the whole astrology thing. It makes absolutely no sense when you consider the pairs of identical twins that were born within minutes of each other and then went on to have very wildly diverging lives. That's chaos theory. ;) Oh, I got an explanation on the twin thing just now -- in the case of twins, half the chart applies to one, the other half of the chart applies to the other. *eyeroll* Charts have halves? How do you know which half is which? Easy. One child is left-handed, so it belong to the left chart side. The other one is right-handed. Obvious. If both children happen to be right-handed, it because one child's natural left-handedness was supressed by the establishment. - Klaus _ This mail sent using V-webmail - http://www.v-webmail.orgg ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Cooperation and Competition in the Market
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nick Arnett Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 9:16 PM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: Re: Liberal Capitalist Fundamentalism On 4/17/06, Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think it is worthwhile to consider what the main advantage afforded by our present political-economic system: the harnessing of the baser desires of people for the common good. I think we're kidding ourselves when we think greed is the significant component of why our system works. Greed is good serves those who focus on wealth and power by giving them an excuse to disregard the reality that politics and markets demand as much cooperation as competition. I see at least two questions mixed together here. One of them is the question of human motivation. The other is whether only competition exists, or whether cooperation also is an important factor. The argument that cooperation is an illusion has been purported by Social Darwinists. As I'm sure you know they emphasized the law of the jungle. Everyone is in direct competition with everyone else. Cooperation and good faith are temporary illusions at best. It's a dog eat dog world. Altruism is unnatural and wrong (see Ayn Rand). But, this view is not at all integral to a democratic capitalistic system. Indeed, it is a position that is held by a relatively small minority. Liberal democratic systems require two components: 1) Some form of market economy 2) Some form of representative government. These can range in balance from the small government pro-business American system of the Roaring Twenties to mid-60s European systems that had significant government ownership of the means of production. In all of these cases, there is both competition and cooperation. Markets require both. Competition is frequently seen between like positions. Sellers compete with each other for customers. Buyers bid against each other to purchase the same items. At the same time, free trade, almost by definition, requires cooperation between buyers and sellers. Both must agree on prices, terms, warranties, etc. for the sale to be transacted. There can be cooperation between different sellers and different buyers. Cooperation between sellers usually involves working together to get more favorable selling conditions. One example of this is a labor union. Another is a cartel. And of course, corporations are cooperative ventures. Many shareholders pool their money together to pay for and profit from larger operations than could be accomplished by a single person. So, I'd argue that the existence of cooperation as well as competition has long been accepted as part of market economics. The critical aspect I was thinking of is not ubiquitous competition, but the actions of the various agents in the market to further their own interests. Clearly, there are times when it is one's enlightened self interest to cooperate with someone else. When I worked for a company, it was worth my while to do things that benefited that company. It was also worth my while to cooperate with vendors, since they product I needed to do my job. Now, I work hard to cooperate with my customers. I try to make working with me as easy as possible for them. But, I admit that I don't do it just because I like people. I know that a good, cooperative working relationship increases the chance of doing future business with them. So, to get back to your first statement, I don't believe that greed is good. But, I do believe that it is good for economic models to recognize that people are often greedy...and that self interest is usually a very powerful motivating force. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Governmental Balancing Act
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nick Arnett Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 9:16 PM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: Re: Liberal Capitalist Fundamentalism With our political system, this was a deliberate construction by the founders of the US government. By separating powers between the federal government and state governments, and between the branches of the federal government, they planned on the desire for power and influence by one block to perform a check on excessive power by other blocks. And how well does it work when the branches regard themselves as adversarial, as compared with when they acknowledge common goals? Sometimes worse; sometimes much better. One of the problems we have right now is that Bush has operated with minimal oversight for the last 5 years. The Republican Congress does not check to see if he has exceeded his authority. The Supreme Court has been reluctant to get into the questions of the authority of the Commander in Chief to do as he sees fit. We see the same problem in earlier times. The Supreme Court and Congress cooperated with FDR's detention of Japanese-Americans. The Supreme Court had to look at the Constitution upside down and sideways to do this, mind you, but no one wished to be seen as not cooperating with the war effort. It is not a competitive model. Otherwise, the rules would be set up so that one of the branches could win, accumulating greater power, but that's exactly what the system was intended to prevent. That would require winner-take-all as the only model for competition. The standard assumption in marketplace competition is that competition would be ongoing. IIRC, it's the critics, not the supporters, of free market theory who talk about one eventual winner. The competition between the members/leaders of the branches of the US government and between the leaders of the US government and the leaders of the various states was set up deliberately...and was set up to be ongoing. It was set up as an answer the question: who guards the guardians? The answer is that you set them up to guard each other. This is done by making excesses by one branch of government being perceived as encroachment on the power and privileges of other branches. It certainly hasn't worked perfectly. The US did end up fighting a bloody civil war. But, it worked far better than, say, the French revolution. IIRC, the balance of competition between various groups was not as well set up in France as it was in the US. One of the worst things happening in government today is that very sort of nonsense, particularly between courts and legislatures. You would want them to cooperate more? Many presidents wanted the same thing. :-) The most famous example is FDR's impatience with the Supreme Court that resulted in his attempt to pack the Supreme Court with justices more to his liking. After two straight elections that gave wide and increasing popular margins to FDR and the Democrats in their attempt to implement a New Deal, he was constantly thwarted by losing 5-4 votes among 9 old men. He proposed to the Senate a means of getting more cooperation from the Supreme Court. It didn't happen. Instead, some narrow votes did go FDR's way, and justices finally retired, and he was finally able to appoint Supreme Court justices, and the New Deal was allowed to go forward. As it was, FDR had the most power of any president since Lincoln. No president, since then, has gotten as much cooperation from other branches of government. I would argue that we are lucky that the Supreme Court and the Congress were not more cooperative with Nixon. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Article: Software tracks mood swings of blogosphere
Klaus Stock wrote: People blame communication issues on Mercury being retrograde. And they're stupid or ignorant people. FFS. I just don't get the whole astrology thing. It makes absolutely no sense when you consider the pairs of identical twins that were born within minutes of each other and then went on to have very wildly diverging lives. That's chaos theory. ;) Oh, I got an explanation on the twin thing just now -- in the case of twins, half the chart applies to one, the other half of the chart applies to the other. *eyeroll* Charts have halves? How do you know which half is which? Easy. One child is left-handed, so it belong to the left chart side. The other one is right-handed. Obvious. If both children happen to be right-handed, it because one child's natural left-handedness was supressed by the establishment. - Klaus OK, this works for mirror twins, a special case of monozygotic twins. I don't see how it works for any other sort, especially dizygotic. :) Julia p.s. I know one mom who has triplets where two are monozygotic, the third is different -- how cool is that? (So basically, instead of trizygotic triplets, they're just dizygotic.) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Article: Software tracks mood swings of blogosphere
On Apr 25, 2006, at 7:46 AM, Klaus Stock wrote: People blame communication issues on Mercury being retrograde. And they're stupid or ignorant people. FFS. I just don't get the whole astrology thing. It makes absolutely no sense when you consider the pairs of identical twins that were born within minutes of each other and then went on to have very wildly diverging lives. That's chaos theory. ;) Oh, I got an explanation on the twin thing just now -- in the case of twins, half the chart applies to one, the other half of the chart applies to the other. *eyeroll* Charts have halves? How do you know which half is which? Easy. One child is left-handed, so it belong to the left chart side. The other one is right-handed. Obvious. If both children happen to be right-handed, it because one child's natural left-handedness was supressed by the establishment. We lefties have suffered enough. Dave Sinister my achin' ass Land ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Optimism for the USA
Doug Pensinger wrote, An optimist -- and I am still an optimist -- will argue that in spite of forgone opportunities, the USA could help create a more civilized and sustainable world. Excellent post, Robert ... Thanks! It grew out of the discussion between Dan Minette and Nick Arnett on various paradigms throughout history. (The initial thread was `Liberal Capitalist Fundamentalism' which became `three paradigm shifts?'.) ... Maybe we can still do all the things you suggest, but it will require a sea change in attitude from where we seem to be right now. That requirement is for sure. But I am hoping that will happen. My optimism depends on changes both on the technical side and on the social or political side. Hence, von Neuman replicators that manufacture, and government that protects and preserves our environment. As for the consequences of the discussion, I am busy with my first science fiction novel. It inspired more writing. (The book is a socioeconomic proposal disguised as an adventure and detective story. It is what I would have liked to have read when I was 13 or 14. Of course, there are problems, big problems. For one, few others have the same interests I do. So its potential audience will be small. I just don't know whether it will be too small. We shall see. And in any case, I am not a story teller. (When the time comes, I will seek critiques, but the book is not there yet.) Besides my immediate problem, which is running out of money -- I was not paid for some work I did earlier, I am wondering whether the fellow has the money (if any of you have renumerative projects I can do, please tell me) -- the discussion and your remarks inspired me to write a thousand words more. Here they are. Filgard is a farmer whom Djem (pronounced in English, `Gem') and Leestel are visiting. On a totally different matter, not on paradigms, are my remarks on cows accurate? As a young child I was a cowherd, but have forgot everything in the years since. ... Filgard stopped pushing and the rock stopped moving. He said, Aristotle was right. When you stop pushing a rock, the rock stops. This was not what Djem thought when he stopped pushing, but he had to agree, Filgard was right. The farmer kept talking, Newton came along ... and distinguished between inherent idleness and the retardation you get from rubbing -- he extended the notions as metaphors or maybe he used existing metaphors and made them famous. He called the two concepts inertia and friction. So rocks without friction, like this planet, kept moving; and rocks with friction, like this one here, he patted the rock, stop. Aristotle had confounded the two ideas. Filgard looked at Djem, Aristotle probably had slaves to push the rocks. They would stop whenever they could. They would act dumb and pretend to worry too much. By acting stupid, they could hurt their kidnapper without endangering themselves. Humph! Acting stupid enabled a slave to be more idle than he would be otherwise. I bet idleness is the part of it that Aristotle noticed. He thought that idleness was a natural state of being. But Newton pointed out that rocks on a planet suffer retardation because they rub against the soil. Filgard kept following his train of thought. Newton came to distinguish inertia and friction. Newton's Laws are wrong; we know that. Still, his notions are good enough for much interplanetary work. Most of the time, you do not have to employ Einstein's ideas. And Aristotle's Laws, which I doubt anyone thinks of, work fine for pushing stones. Filgard stopped for a moment. There is much more to it than that, he said. Newton was articulating a paradigm shift. There were lots of little shifts, but I think he explicated the first big shift since the transition from the pre-agricultural era to pre-industrial agriculture. He stopped for a moment. In our culture, I think Aristotle explicated the previous paradigm shift, or Plato and Aristotle did, the one idealistic and the other not. I am sure that other agricultural cultures had their own men articulate appropriate paradigms. What were the characteristics of this paradigm? Leestel asked. Filgard explained, Newton put an emphasis on non-living things, like planets as dots in space. Because his equations could, in theory, be calculated exactly, the paradigm favored determinism. He looked at Djem as well as Leestel. It had definite theological implications. It affected how people interpreted their numinous experiences. Besides deterministic Calvinism, which preceded Newton by a very long time, his Laws articulated a change in his culture's relationship with its God: omnipotence got limited. The mathematical correlation with reality made God as
Re: Optimism for the USA
On 4/25/06, Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan and Nick, may I mention your names in the Thank You section? At the moment that section consists only of: Certainly... as long as you sign this three-page document certifying that your book is, er, I mean is not, subversive. And of course I'm kidding... you're welcome to thank me all you wish. Thank you. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War
I have not been posting here much for a while, sorry to drop this out of the blue on the list http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296 but it is about topics that have been discussed here recently. Best wishes, Keith Henson ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War
On Behalf Of Keith Henson I have not been posting here much for a while... How goes the war against the Cult? - jmh ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War
On 4/25/06, Horn, John [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Behalf Of Keith Henson I have not been posting here much for a while... How goes the war against the Cult? - jmh Well, the last I or Wikipedia have heard was that he had quietly decamped Canada for somewhere in the US. ~maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Optimism for the USA
In a message dated 4/25/2006 9:49:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For what it's worth, I think it is true, in some mysterious way, that the universe was created in six days. But I don't think that it really happened that way what the hell does this mean? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Optimism for the USA
On 4/25/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 4/25/2006 9:49:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For what it's worth, I think it is true, in some mysterious way, that the universe was created in six days. But I don't think that it really happened that way what the hell does this mean? I think it is true in the way that Shakespeare's plays are full of truth, even though the events they portray didn't really happen. Maybe the idea that everything was created in six days is just a way of saying that we should have a day of rest and gratitude every seven days. Maybe there's more to it than that. Creation myths have all sorts of truth in them, don't you think? I'm content to let it remain a mystery. Like many other things, I don't think that whether or not it is literal truth would make any difference in the way I live my life. I often wonder what it is that literalists do differently because they take a version of the creation story literally (I say a version because the Bible has more than one). What difference does it make, really? What does make a difference is that idea, which I embrace, that creation is an ongoing act of God, here, now, in this moment and those to come. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Optimism for the USA
Robert J. Chassell wrote: Filgard is a farmer whom Djem (pronounced in English, `Gem') and Leestel are visiting. On a totally different matter, not on paradigms, are my remarks on cows accurate? As a young child I was a cowherd, but have forgot everything in the years since. There's a lot about dairy farming here: http://www.katfeete.net/nucleus/ especially earlier in the archives. I never want to get involved in dairy farming, now that I've read it all. :P He started them walking. Time to go back to the farm house, said Filgard. They took a different route, this time past cows fenced in a large field. ... Several cows recognized the farmer and came up to him. He patted their noses; so did Leestel, and with a bit of trepidation, Djem. Filgard then give each a carrot he took out of a pocket. They are like horses, but more stupid, he said. The intelligence of a cow depends greatly on what breed it is. (Gleaned from the above-cited blog.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War
Keith Henson wrote: I have not been posting here much for a while, sorry to drop this out of the blue on the list http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296 but it is about topics that have been discussed here recently. Keith-- I liked it, although it seemed a bit long and rambling. Most of the ideas are familiar from your posts. I think the topic is in an awkward place, where it's not clear whether a scholarly or popular treatment is best for it. Good job, overall. Congratulations, and never mind the trolls. As for what triggers unprovoked war frenzy in a group, it's not clear to me that a memetic interpretation is best. One could also look at the situation from the point of view of individuals trying to coordinate their levels of hatred with the rest of the group. (I claim it is beneficial to an individual to share about the same level of hatred for outsiders as the rest of their group.) What you would call expressions of xenophobic memes could then be signals between group members, sharing what their hatred levels were. This might just be a difference in viewpoint. What exactly counts as a meme? Does a simple (unsupported) stereotype count? Some of your ideas might be testable, but I don't see any research on them that is particularly easy to perform... ---David ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The war against the Cult?
At 12:00 PM 4/25/2006 -0700, you wrote: On Behalf Of Keith Henson I have not been posting here much for a while... How goes the war against the Cult? Better since Tom Cruise jumped the couch and South Park took them on. They seem to be doing a fair job of self destructing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rathbun Keith Henson ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
