Evening (monster problem circle)

Parameter:  We have a monster.
Problem:  It eats children.

Monster's rationale:
It justifies children consumption as a useful service to the community burdened with young hooligans.

Reaction:
Eating children does not benefit the community. It reduces the future potential of the community and while on the surface the beast's statement seems plausible, upon digging into the data we find:
    A. Demons do not eat, on average more bad kids than good kids.
    B. The opposite is occurs.
    C. On average, hooligans are significantly eaten less times by monsters.

Counter:
The Demon says that the loss of good kids is still justifiable in the short term to get rid of the current problems of hooligans, and assures us that in the future it will return to eating more or even exclusively hooligans. It counters that any dead hooligan is good for the community, and regrets the undo consumption of good kids. 

Questions:
1. Why do Monsters eat less hooligans?
2. Do Monsters like the taste of hooligans less than ordinary children?
3. Are Hooligans more difficult to catch & eat.
4. If #3 is true, why are hooligans more difficult to catch?
5. Are children the only slayers of Monsters?
6. Are hooligans, a subset of children, the only slayers of Monsters?
7. Do child slayers grow up to be hunters?   


New Parameter: We have a Hunter.
Problem: Hunts for monsters always kill a lot of people, including children.

Obfuscation:
The Hunters justifies execution of people as a useful service to the community burdened with too many Monsters.

Morning (idea leader sum)

I've been thinking this morning. HA!

Now you get to listen to my crazy ideas, which also means that in the world there are probably several hundred thousand people with similar thoughts. Some of them will be in a position to implement action. I just send my action potential along and hope its summation results in real action by someone, anyone, somewhere, or no where.

Now, what is my simple stream?

The thinking goes something like this.

• History/evolution
• Single leader for small to medium size group of people
• Son's of God, Kings, Emperors, and Absolute Leaders
• Advent of Democracy (still dependent upon single Leader)
• Advent of Communism (still dependent upon single Leader)
• Both were/are "perverted" by the vestigial tail of Absolute Leaders
• Groups have become massive

The main idea is this.

The historic archetype of a leader represents a downward flow of implementation. In times of uncertainty, the group looks to the leader, and takes on the characteristics of the leader by automatically following his orders.

The current era changes to an upward flow in leader building and implementation. During all times, the group gives the leader his characteristics. The more asynchronous the group is, the more distorted the leader becomes, and there is no real resonance between him and the greater community. As a consequence, implementation of action is slowed. However, since there is no longer a tiger in the boat with us, we have the luxury of a slower implementation time.

Viewed in this light, contemporary conflicts can be interpreted in a binary versus non-binary mode. In the Absolute Leader/binary mode, a single person takes action against another person. Therefore when the group takes on the characteristic of its leader, it takes action against those people represented by the opposition. The spill-over effects are implementation of idiosyncratic polices of that leader (racism, bigotry, etc) which don't really benefit the single massive group.

However, today's Leaders live increasingly in a non-binary world. We, the groups still revert to a binary system because this is in our genes and history. Yet, as groups begin to self-organize and synchronize its consensus, the leader becomes a true "representative" voice. The group benefits by not taking on the bad qualities of the leader. We won't go out and start killing people the leader doesn't like.

This process in ongoing. Individuals self-organize into groups, which then aggregate to form higher ordered groups of consensus. We don't need to take on the characteristics of the leader in order to build consensus. We project our own characteristic onto our leaders, whether that leader has those characteristics or not!

As this projection becomes more aggressive, I think the strong and charismatic leader will be marginalized in favor of ones who can better integrate and manage all the many different characteristics being pushed onto him. Case-in-point, Mitt Romney. When those "pushes" are too disparate, even someone as malleable as Mitt can't manage it! And we see this, even in our legacy binary mode of interpretation. The trick now is to figure out how to synchronize our voices in a chaotic way! Don't worry, we are doing it real-time.


Anywho,

Crazy talk.

Afternoon (Kentucky coal Guantanamo)

These streams of voices and images goes in and mixes and out comes something unexpected AND expected. How would you characterize this synchronization? The same conclusion arrived separately by many individual ingesting the same info feed mix. Is it like a Police song?

I was thinking about Kentucky coal miners. Why? As I have previously mentioned, I will soon be making the same salary as a Kentucky coal miner; yet I have as PhD in Biochemistry. I  can appreciate why a coal miner would like to hold on to his industry and salary. And logically you can appreciate why Senator Rand Paul's position on energy is this. It will be very hard for a miner to recover his salary value, even with extensive retraining. Can he be retrained to do what I do, and would he be satisfied making the same amount after all the additional training?! It is unrealistic... maybe.

I know my climate change stance is effecting real people. I know that coal burning plants are just bad for the environment and the national energy mix must change if we are to lead the world in managing this problem of climate change.

How can I help miners recover their standard of living without going back to coal mining? Should we do it cold turkey or a gradual weening? How do we speed up and also ease the transition?

The two senators from Kentucky are Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. They honestly represent their state. If we want McConnell and Paul to vote differently, then we must support the people in this time of transition. If you ask any coal miner whether he wants his son to do the same job, he would say no. Everyone knows the direction and the solutions; we just drag our feet because that is the way we are.

I focus here because I perceive a synchronous voice also on the issue of Guantanamo. Senator Paul still believes in the Constitution and eventually he will also support life under the Gospel of Paul. It is just political will he needs from the people.

I have two weeks to pack everything and move to Maryland from Germany; yet I sit here writing about ways for effecting real change, dragging my feet with all talk. I have to get involve directly, and perhaps once I am back in the States I will "move" again. 

Some interesting links connected to Kentucky and this stream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_from_Kentucky

Notice the 18th Senator in class 3.
John J. Crittenden
Notice what he tried to do politically vs. the party he joined after the Whig party left.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing_Party

 "The Know Nothing was a movement by the nativist American political faction of the 1850s, characterized by political xenophobia, anti-Catholic sentiment, and occasional bouts of violence against the groups the nativists targeted. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to republican values and controlled by the Pope in Rome."

American politics, same same but different. Xenophobia and sectarian violence. Sound familiar?

 

Morning (job chassis social)

I am starting a new job next year.

I'll be making as much money as a Kentucky coal miner fresh out of high school. However, if I reflect upon this, it makes sense. I consider the cost of living in the US. I consider the occupational risk of mining: health (black lung), accidents, etc. All these things result in roughly the same salary.

I've had a liberal education and a carefree life pursuing research into life's meaning at a molecular level. I should be paid a premium for that advance knowledge. However, that premium is about the same as the premium given to coal miners for their occupational risk (or should miners be paid more?!). Let's take a look at what we mean by premium and what exactly we are paying for.

On average, a coal miner, me and a CEO of some startup cloud company, are biological the same machine. This means a sophisticated organic locomotion chassis on which an advanced neural network is mounted. It has been argued that the advanced neural network mounted on the average CEO chassis is better at making complex decision regarding an ever changing community network than me or the coal miner.

I disagree. CEOs on average don't make better decisions than a Kentucky coal miner. If a CEO or a coal miner were given ownership of a company, on average, over time with multiple trials over many companies, we would see that both perform about the same in regard to the success of the company. Of course we can't run this experiment, and in the real world with all that money the CEO's voice is louder and people are evolutionarily conditioned to believe the louder speaker. He is shouting because of some imminent danger coming to eat us! But in reality he is shouting to hide the fact that his decision making isn't better than you or me.

This doesn't mean you or I can go out today to become a CEO, or that we would be successful at it if given only one shot. But if given the opportunity and observed over multiple companies you would see that our success rate would be about the same as any current CEO.

If my hypothesis is correct, then we have to ask why we pay CEO such a high premium. This premium is specifically for their decision making ability. Isn't it? Or are we paying for the social network that they have developed over time? The premium on the social network should be high, but if that is where the real value is, then we should acknowledge this fact!

And when we talk about increasing the opportunities of all Americans, what we should be talking about is increasing access of Americans to these social networks. The old social networks were difficult to open up. They tend to be closed and clique-ish. The new networks are much more open. Let's keep it that way.

Just my 2.3 cents.

-J

Morning (korea abortion gaza)

These are the streams that are running through my head.

I am starting to put other people's stream into Google Reader and searching their streams for keywords. Eventually, it will be media, data, and not just words. It will be semi-automatic.

That is why I was thinking about Korea. They are very wired. They have a split personality too. What will happen when the two merge again? It must happen. The Korean-corporation is awakening, stretching, and yawning. I will translate with Google Translate.

>g.translate.english-korean

//
제가 한국에 대해 생각 해봤는데 이유입니다. 그들은 매우 유선 있습니다. 그들도 다중 인격을 갖추고 있습니다. 두가 다시 병합하면 어떻게 되나요? 그런 일은해야합니다.한국 회사가 떴다 스트레칭 및 하품 있습니다. 나는 번역 Google과 번역 할 ...

 

jega hangug e daehae saeng-gag haebwassneunde iyuibnida. geudeul-eun maeu yuseon issseubnida. geudeuldodajung ingyeog eul gajchugo issseubnida. du ga dasi byeonghab hamyeon eotteohge doenayo? geuleon il-eun haeyahabnida. hangug hoesaga tteossda seuteuleching mich hapum issseubnida. naneun beon-yeog Googlegwa beon-yeog hal ...

//

There is a strong Christian current that runs through the country. I push the Korean stream to see what will happen. My stream flows thru abortion on Facebook and I've just immersed in some ranting from the Rachel Maddow show. She's smart, or at least her voice is loud, maybe not as loud yet as Fox News but she is trying. The loud voices; that is another stream, and Jon Stewart commented about it during her interview with him. But back to life, back to reality; back to life, back to reality.

Rachel makes a smart comparison in the context of US culture. She chose to juxtapose the idea of federal regulation and abortion. She shows brief video snippets of people declaring "I am proud of my pro-Life record."

What would a Korean say?

The government should recognize that life begins at conception. OK. But my immersion in the stream clearly shows that it makes no legislative sense. Should the federal government tell rich liberal women living in Hollywood that they can't get abortions. Sure. But you know they will still get them! They are wealthy. California has the highest abortion per population rate. (you can go to a gov. site and check or you can just trust JoJoBrand). Should the government tell a teenage girl that she must keep her rape baby because there is no exception to the sanctity of life. How about the wife of a man who refuses to use contraception? She wants to at least space the children a little farther apart. She must choose the question of life and death because her husband doesn't want to use a condom or let her take birth control pills? Who should we send to jail? The wife or the husband? Who should be punish and who should we love? Is that a good framing of the discussion? What are we really talking about here?

On my computer I can stream live images of Gaza, but I can't see live images of drone missiles making exceptions to the sanctity of life. What are we really talking about here?

We need more contraception! If you really believe in both the sanctity of life and the quality of life then we need more contraception. The USA is a rich country. We can afford free contraception for ourselves. More contraception equals less abortions. That is the biology of conception and contraception. It is legislatively possible and it makes sense!

I stretch the idea a bit. We are now the prophylactic force behind the sweet love of Egypt.

Viral Gangnam-style. Death to Israel video game, except it's not a game or a funny video. Attack ads and demonizing of the opposition. Can you imagine? How can we trust each other when there is real casualty behind the posturing? It is a little too late for contraception here. These two rape babies are here, born already. And now the young women of Egypt and her big sister, USA must take care these two little ones, and make sure they don't destroy their room while growing up. It's a loose metaphor but I like it. In the long run, it doesn't really matter so much.

Israel will be gone (even with nukes). Palestine will be gone. English will be gone. Deutsch will be gone. Sure, they will still be here, stored and protected in redundant off-world sites and eventually off-solar sites so we can remember and reflect, and then probably forget. Yet even this scenario is predicated on the assumption that one of our variants survive into the near future. It might not happen.

Silver, liquid metal things living on a Hoth world of I, me, and Robot via Spielberg playing on an Asimov-mountain and not a Kafka-burg. The future? Maybe, but I don't think so. The corporate mind of the Movie circle is still too old-skool.

In the long race we are all dead.

2x6
Economy. evolution.
Camus. science.
Silver. chimeras.
Quantum. intelligence.
Transportation. cognition
xo. consciousness.

xo-JoJo

Afternoon (cycle picture dream)

It's Sunday. I've had some breakfast and posted my picture. The thoughts, images, and dreams flicker through me and I can barely comprehend them. On some level I understand, on some level I feel too much, and yet at some other "holistic" level I don't understand. I will never understand. I am only offered glimpses, shadows on a cave wall some would say.

Here are the things I am selling today:

Vittorio's table, the self-assemble shelf, and gifted chairs.

The table is apart already because they need to fit it into their car. I can't with the shelf. The pieces are screwed together.
We took it apart anyways and they took everything away. A nice french couple. They were looking at the same apartment as Gonca (who took the Ikea dresser).


Before I took the table apart, I took the "almost finished breakfast on the table" picture. What did I have for dinner last night on the table? Here.

Blogger isn't really up to fancy picture display yet. No more angled table images but for sure more dinner pictures. Later.

And more wine pictures, just on a different table.

 You get the gist.

(it's chicken)

A Dornfelder from last night..

If I could only stack the pictures and compress the time like it feels. Still. The images are fragmented, spaced like I see my memories.
I put up pictures here.
We put up pictures on our walls.
For me it is a cycle of putting up and taking down physical pictures. I go through different but same emotions everytime.

There is Lil's black and white picture framing a boat. It is dated 1998, when I left LA and went to Boulder for Graduate School.

There are the Kanji from Ikeda sensei and the odd deconstruction of women pictures preserved in polyurethane shoe fix gloo. Boulder days of practicing Aikido, and then fixing paper in rubber while living in Julie's place. Maybe the artist spirit moved me then!

And what else? The calendar from 2009 giving classic art images. 2009 was a busy and good year. A stitched together photograph of a Thailand jungle was from then. Pictures of gramma and me and mom and ta re and the cardboard pieces from a care package sent to me by my nieces. Life in Vietnam circa 1970-71, LA circa 1998, Boulder 2002-6 and Tuebingen 2006-2009, all on my wall. My timeline.

It is like Aikido. You can't learn it by talking about it. You have to go through the motion. The movement is putting up and taking down physical artifacts with hyper-linked connection to various neural networks. I go through the movements that others have done with love. What does it feel like? I can't describe it. I just go through the movements. You have to go through the movements. Social muscle memory networks linked to group cognition.

I keep telling myself that when all this is more settled the pictures will come back up. And they will. They are all slices of time's passage that I've cut away and taken with me, artifacts with memory traces linking places and people and times and wine and fun and laughter.

These artifacts I will keep and go through the motions again.

But I will put some here too, as you do. An electronic artifact who's persistence might be longer than any real object.

These objects are organically in you, in your brain and now on extended network you create to store memories for random access. How will these extended networks alter the movements we do?

Regardless, if they last longer than expected, I will be happy.

Morning (noFog nass fragment)

It's Friday! Time to relax and sleep in tomorrow.

Yes and no.

I am in transition. My country is in transition. My world community is in transition.

A friend came by last night to pick up the Ikea dresser I bought last year. It is starting, the time that I must leave Germany. All these bits and pieces of stuff that has no meaning to anyone else are being giving away or sold for a few euros.

I'm looking at a cheap, self-assembled shelf. I bought it from the previous guy living in my tiny apartment back in Tuebingen. I brought it here to Magdeburg, but now I leave it here. It won't hold anymore memories. The object itself is an Artifact, a magical thing which holds part of my past. I will sell it to someone.

I was told to cherish the memories. That's kinda obvious, isn't it? I must take the magic from the object back into my head and transfer it here so that when my organic brain fails, at least some fragment of the magic lingers on, or maybe is transformed, used for some other creative endeavor. The magic is cheap and can't be sold. Idiosyncratic and highly personal, it carries no value except for those who know it, who created it.

The shelf held my books, which are now packed away or electronically stored because I had suspected my transient life-style would demand more flexibility. Books read and stored away in boxes and now at Amazon. It's always difficult for a bookophile to give up the book and to remember what is important is the story. It's always difficult for a magician to give up the talisman even though he has reabsorbed the magic back into himself. Stacks of science paper on the shelf are also long gone, moved and then left behind except for the story which runs through my head:

Combinatorial regulation with transcription factors, epigenetic integration, facilitation from womb impact, contact, contacting space and you and me. Poisons and gift in curative dosage. Regenerating axon fiber optics to nucleus of an activated T cell.

The small TV was given away a long time ago, but the plant is here. What will I do with it? A living thing. I will also give it away. Someone else will take care of it. Perhaps it will survive long after, like other plants from fraternity rooms, drunken youth, and midlife transition.

I played the artifact card, but it is not tappable. It is not regenerative. I can only use it once, and then it breaks, fragments and goes to the discarded stack. Perhaps there lurks a spell or incantation still to draw, which let's me search through the discarded deck and reclaim a cheap, shelf-made self. My deck has always been green, partly regenerative, partly reflective and recursive, a self-made reclamation.

But it's time to pack up the playing cards, at least for now. You win. Take the card that you wanted. I hope it makes your deck strong. I buy another starter deck hoping to find that one interesting artifact, spell, or creature card that will fit nicely into my current odd assortment of memory and manna.

3X3
fragment. nass. noFog.
magic. regeneration. artifact.
books. memory. manna.

Morning (syncing random u)

It is odd. Really it is; By nature we are designed to look for signs and omens, like chickens who adopt odd behavior, idiosyncratic routines in a naive attempt to recapitulate the conditions that cause the dropping of the food pellet.

We are social, pack animals and yet we've created tiny matrix boxes of isolation, and then connected them with a magic that will soon be greater than the spoken word, the tender touch, and the primordial family root. Do you understand? You do, but you choose to rejected it.

A mouse in a plastic box, eating as much as he wants, running in circles, exploring a 4x2x2 cm world and thinking he knows the mind of God. And every now and then plucked up by his tail and allowed to mate with an equally frighten, lonely, and socially sanitized female. Coupled and with spooning in mouth, we eat our comfort food.

It's just food. Organic connections be damned!

We don't make food that fit us, rather we change our biology to fit the food. It has always been so. That is why we have been so successful. We adapt. We are plastic (pun intended). We are beginning to fit our biology to the food and drink we make. You might protest, fight it with all your might, but the reality is, this is what we are doing.

It's just food.

It's just water.

It's just soda and pop, father of all sugar drinks. It encapsulates all our vestigial quirks. The essential need for water and sugar. But that's not enough. The wiring dictates an addiction for sugar highs, and caffeine vigilance. And supply-side economics gladly give us our Monster drinks.

OK. Enough raving for today. I take a shower, and go outside to my patch of green grass. There are industrial chickens who are certified organic because they too have a little patch of outside next to their "roost", but they never step out because that is not the life they know.

We can't go back to being free range fouls, but this roost stinks.

Morning (politic moving orange)

>sync.intercorrelation

I've moved on. I am now pass the election. It doesn't really matter for me because I will win either way.

Don't you understand? Whoever is elected must, by the alchemy of modern politics, become a centrist. I am a centrist moving.

I like to think of it like two siblings at the ice cream counter, or if you are in Europe, at the gelato counter.

One wants vanilla ice cream, the other chocolate. They have to fight it out but not with fists anymore. And at some point, one yields and they both get the same flavor ice cream. You will be happy because you got vanilla, and I will grouse, still wanting chocolate.

We seem to miss the point that we both have ice cream.

Can you imagine fighting with fists? Are the problems we face so dire that I will kill you to get my chocolate gelato?

You are trying to convince me that it is still the old choice, of eating or not eating. Really? Fat kids are throwing away food at lunchtime and then complaining that they don't get enough to eat. Really?

Absurdities of looking at the real statistics. Of course it isn't me, not my kids.

I will be the first to cast the stone. I still waste some food and generate some waste. I measured it. In 3 weeks, I generate about 1kg of plastic/gelb sack waste and 1kg regular waste, and about 0.1kg bio-waste. I don't have kids to worry about. And for that waste-footprint I demand my flavor!

It is ice cream DAMN IT!

I don't care how you argue. Chocolate is evil. Chocolate is communism. Chocolate is really shit. If you want some I can scoop it from my ass and smear it across your face. Is that what you want, chocolate?!

Please. You're making a spectacle of yourself.

It is ice cream.

And next week we will decide again on the flavor. Maybe instead of vanilla we will have strawberry. Doesn't matter. Maybe we will have the whole counter of flavors. Can you imagine! We will be there arguing the whole week instead of eating ice cream! At this point even a third flavor is a nonproductive idea.

We reduce it down to two dots and then choose, yet there is a whole dot matrix full of flavors! Maybe we, the two kids need to learn a bit of matrix math. Let's start with a linear array.

I remember late nights with Pete in the Math building cramming for calculus. I remember how to add one matrix to another. I can multiple them too! There are define rules to do matrix math.

Efficient, high-throughput politics! Is that the third path? A way to shutout the money-voice? Are my web-based politicomatic tools there in the cloud yet? How do we go about comparing two politicomatic arrays? Vector addition? How do we just move and avoid this stasis of staring at dots?

OK. Alles klar.

sync (Living Corporal Jo)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/103264956756440848358/posts/7Zm9VzsriwK


I want to embrace this message.

Still, I am trained to think a certain way; taught to say to myself, whenever reading a scientific paper, "what is missing here?".

The data is solid, the interpretation sound, yet what are they missing. There is always something missing. That is the fun, excitement, ego trip that is at the heart of science. I am testing my skills against the best.

I turn the statement on its head.

Corporations can't abandon people. Only people can abandon corporations. Yet, it is hard to abandon the oil corporation, the technology corporation, and the food corporation.

I like my creature comforts. I don't want to go back. For me in a way, "it is just food". Bio-food oxymoron or GM-food space-farmed.
//http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/

We are talking about me here. The average Jo. Much as I fancy the idea of spinning our cotton and weaving our own clothes, it's not going to happen. Why?

I like to play games. Drink soda and smoke. I form minicorporals within the soul that animates this living democracy.
//JoJoBrand hates smoking.

"Do the right thing" you say.
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_the_Right_Thing

And so?
//spoiler alert - begin
When the climax comes, do I heave the trash can into the shop keeper's window?

//spoiler alert - end

Throughout our evolution there have been bottlenecks. Throughout our evolution, violence has been the ultimate arbiter of disputes. At these bottlenecks there has been intense selective pressure to attenuate aggression within the group.

At the heart, aggression fights with cooperation. We cannot survive as individuals but we like to fight because that is also about survival.

Some have tried going "Into the Wild" as an individual.
//"After surviving more than 100 days, he is thought to have died on August 18, 1992. >wikipedia
//http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/

Let's forget this romanticism, which is just ayn Hollywood romanticism. Average Jo doesn't want to wander into the wilderness, especially not in winter time! Let's just send an interlaced Brian, and when he fails, we still have an e-minicorporal of experiences from a Brainstorm that released his soul.
//http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/
//http://brianonearth.blogspot.de/

Hardcore science and critical thinking devolves into movie legacy and science fiction. That is how the average Jo's mind works.

The attenuation of aggression at the bottlenecks of sequential ice age explains a lot.
It explains why we lost our fur and hide our ovulation.
It explains the wiring of a host of brain networks.
It postulates possible emergent behaviors within new group.



To this point, attentuation. Pass this point... transformation.
//If you have a hyperactive child, put him at the blackboard helping to keep score for the class during the game instead of beating him into conformity.

What am I talking about?!

Do worry. Just keep moving and doing. Nothing to see here.
Do the right thing, but try not to kill anymore.

Try to keep your group from killing anyone.

Do what you think is right, but don't ask the average Jo what is right, he doesn't know. He is busy doing and speaking of himself in the third person.

Living democracy.

At the center, every corporation says they exist first to increase the quality of life for everyone, then comes profit.

As the spiritualist MLK once said, "All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper."

I say the same of corporate American. Be true to what you say in your Mission Statement.

Yet the allure of profit leads the ship astray.

1. Hiding and distorting data on smoking and climate change.
2. Non-fat potato chips with anal leakage.
3. Decreased Parkinson's symptoms with increase libido, and risk of gambling!

It is the largest experiment we have conducted! We have combined supply-side dynamics to pharmaceutical experimentation. Are we increasing the quality of life or just changing it. Progress is like talking to street sellers in a Bangkok market place.

"what is this?"
   "dried yellow fruit"
"what is this other yellow thing then? Is it better?"
   "Same, same. But different."



At least we have placebo and longitudinal studies... right?

What's a better way to live our democracy?
Are we improving our quality of life or just changing it?

I don't know.

Like I said, I'm just an average Jo.
Actually, I'm average squared; JoJo.

Morning (moving leaving transadition)

Good morning my Friends.
(I don't want to say Plusers, or FB, or Twitter, what ever circles for which I can't speak the tongue)

>interlace
sync.//

The thoughts come and go. I can't seem to hold them for more than a brief caress from an almost forgotten lover. It is a time of transition for me and for my country! HA! For your country too!

Where do we go my friend?

Do we allow, as Larry Wilmore so elegantly spoken on the Daily Show, a part of us to jolt our collective amygdala with vitriolic pulsing waves to stimulate our fear response? Are we shocking our feet, conditioning ourselves to freeze in the blue box. Remember! It is a bad box to be in! We need to move, to run but not away.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/wed-october-3-2012-rand-paul

//stream.first section.black correspondents//

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wilmore

We need to train our group muscle memory, a system more insulated from these shocks. A system that allows us to still move in the face of verbal/political/actual violence. Can these daily group muscle memory training let us resolve conflicts by neutralizing the vitriol. I have no idea what that "muscle memory" is! It somehow involves science and fact checking, but these are just the techniques. The practice we must do daily. Critical thinking. Group critical think. Still the ancient system controls our movement, and we have to train again today, over and over. Yet, who is guiding the shape? Where is the Yellow Emperor telling/teaching us the form? The different schools are forming, modern koryū for wandering artist to test their sword play. Perhaps we are witnessing the birth of shape and movements for a more sophisticated political kung fu that is still violent, but controlled with not so much blood, and death, and orphans wandering the streets hungry.

What the hell am I talking about? Never mind. Don't talk too much, just do, move, practice. The shapes are there.

I need to go train.

peace.

Afternoon (Friend politiking R&D)

Good afternoon. It is Saturday, so I let you sleep till afternoon.
This morning, I wrote to a friend and gave my take on US politics.
(by the way, I choose Research & Development over Republican & Democrat)

sync.//

You know I am voting Obama. He is the best option moving forward. All the liberal and conservative "funny" post on social networks and "attack" ads on other media are all partisan fireworks.

In the area of foreign policy, where the president has the most control, Obama has been excellent. I agree almost 100% with his approach. I still have problems with Syria and Guantanamo, but these things I will push again after the election regardless of who is president. Not so much attention has been paid to what he is doing in the Pacific/East/China, where again I think his administration is doing a good job. He and his administration have established policies that will work in the long term.

In the area of economy, the president has only so much control. If you think a president's leadership (8yr max) has a major effect on the economy then you are delusional, and I could then effectively say that President Bush lead us into economic disaster after 8yr of robust economic growth under Clinton. It is a silly argument. However, the leadership does help anchor economy growth expectations, much like Fed Policy helps anchor inflation expectation.

From my meager understanding of economics and the global finance crisis, monetary policy has been correct. Moving forward correct US fiscal policy is needed. That means hard choices. I am more confident in Obama than Romney at making these hard choices. Romney will make good choices too. He can compromise and come up with good plans. I give you as an example the Health Care plan for Massachusetts. I am sure if Romney becomes president, Republican-person will be very angry at some of the eventual policies that will be made. That is just the nature of the beast. (Of course, Republican-person and his brother will blame it on the Democrats, ie me and my uninformed and ignorant, or naive and utopian-delusional sister for "making" Romney compromise)

But I understand where Republican-person is coming from and the tendency to vilify the opponent. This is one way to get outliers (like yourself, loose-Republican) to stick with the group (Republicans). This won't work with me (not outlier, Liberal) or his brother (not outlier,  Conservative). However, if we just go in every direction, where every single group goes off in the direction they want to go, then we end up going no where (I keep thinking Israel politics). So we have to play this game, of building consensus into an easy choice: R or D. And we have to do this every few years. And vilifying the opponent unfortunately works in building group cohesion and thus helping, in a way to make the R or D choice.

My fear is that there is no long term direction! (long term meaning 50, 100, 200 years from now) Right now we can't seem to see even 10 yrs down the road. Individuals do, but the group just can't. No one wants to lose their car just so that someone else can get a free ride. This way of thinking is correct and true in some ways. But it is not totally true at the group level and to make policy with this way of thinking is completely wrong. Which groups are getting the free ride? It is too easy then to say... the Jews, the blacks, the gypsies. As individuals we would never think this, but group dynamics work in odd and unique ways.

Group behavior is reflected how many people, in sum do things. They do things that are easier to do. It is too complex to explain the in and outs of Healthcare reform, Marginal Tax rate, Wealth Gaps, the channels (no one really knows) of how Monetary Policy effects the economy.

This vilifying of opponents, this one mechanism to building group consensus is archaic yet effective!  However, I think in the long run, it will get us into even more trouble. Can't we build group unity and consensus structured around data and science?! I know that data and science can still be subjected to interpretation and distortion and abuse but at least its not so ugly. At least it offers a more muted, rational, calmer way of decision making. Maybe.


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Morning (Cooling Coffee Fire)

Good morning. How did you sleep? Did you dream?


>sync.//

I've been listening to my NPR podcast.

They had an interview with Dan Ariely.  He has written a new book, and it is about cheating and probably summarizes his research into this fascinating topic. It is a book I should read when I have a moment to breath, a slice within space-time-JoJo.

Another NPR interview was with a Christian who started a more open church. I forget the details. The only thing I remember is his observation that a group of people tend to vilify another group to build cohesiveness within its own group. People from other religions instantly recognize this behavior within their own group and remark in agreement with him.

It is true, isn't it? I wonder what the biological basis for this is? Is it just a random strategy adopted millions of years ago as a way to create cohesiveness and cooperativity within a social group? The more important question for us is-- is it a good strategy to keep moving into the future? This mechanism threads its way through so many aspects of how the world functions. It shapes how we think and react to others.

The US elections are coming in November. Democrats vilify Romney to build enough cohesiveness within its voting block to win. The Republicans do the same. It is a common theme in competitive sports. It shapes our views on how a business should be run. It is branding. Google Plus vilifies Facebook to build group cohesiveness, to gain market shares. It is a tool leaders have used for centuries to move people because inherently, the individuals are fast moving particles, but the ensemble moves with agonizingly slow speed. Is the mountain the people?

By this thought stream then, there are three ways to shape and move the Mountain: Wind, Fire, and Water. In my mind, I instinctively put the mechanism of group vilification under Fire. What goes under Wind, and Water?

I did not know that the word 'volcano' comes from Vulcano, a tiny island next to Sicily. Somewhere in that Roman forge, Fire was used to smelt earth's ore into might sword and shield. Yet farther back in Greek memory there is a finger of God, a might twisting Aeolian Wind ripping through main street and asphalt. Deeper still near Darwin's origin, the Grand Canyons carves with flooding Water. Yes, they are all destructive forces at some point. We need to explore how WFW transforms E.

I feel that there should be some water and air mixed in with the fire to build a stronger us into the future. What are those mechanisms? Keine Ahnung. No clue. I take a shower and go to work.

Voting & Science

Here's what we do when we write science papers:
1. Cherrypick data that fits our narrative.
2. Write a narrative that fits our model
3. Come up with hypothesis that "test" our model.
4. Publish our data and model, structured around the narrative, for our peers to review.
5. Peers (us), accept the narrative with reservation.
6. Everyone know that models are always half true. (Completely false, especially when the system is dynamically changing as we try to model it!)

Isn't the political/governing process that same?!

1. Each side picks data that fits their narrative.
2. We write a narrative that fits our policy.
3. We propose congressional bills, which are specific instances of policy.
4. We present the written legislation to our peers.
5. We pass legislation to "test" our policies.
6. We know part, or most of it is wrong, but then again, the fun is the testing!

Fun you say?!@#!&^!

Sure, there is hardship. We have to eat Mac&Cheese instead of steak for a few years. We burn more fossil fuel to make more plastic drinking bottles and cheaper cigarettes in wild Bohemian Wall Street Hippieish Waltz, making sure to stay hydrated and nicotine filled. 

Hmmmmm. Is there a breaking down of two old narratives?

1. I don't have to go out and kill my neighbor so that I can survive on his food. (selection)
2. I don't have to cooperate with my neighbors to scavenge for nuts and spoiled carcases, leftovers from real predators. (cooperativity)

What is the new narrative that replaces natural selection or cooperativity? We still live by both, but paradoxically we don't really live either anymore.

Normall Killing

I keep saying we should stop killing each other, but what do I mean, really?

- The killing at individual levels are highly idiosyncratic and there are hypothetical situations where I think killing another human being is still possible.

- The killing at group level is also idiosyncratic, but the reasons are increasingly or were never justified.

Examples and solutions:

Abortion: The reasons are variable (personal and context).

The government's role? Provide a clean, effective mechanism for this highly individualized form of killing.

My role? Support you in what ever decision you make.


Murder: The personal reasons are consistent (money or sex or delusional) but the context is variable (jealous lover shooting, bank robbery, movie theater shooting).

The government's role? Provide a clean, undistorted, and effective mechanism for the distribution of money and sex. Limit the destructive impact of black swan/sheep events without overly restricting personal freedom and more importantly personal initiative.

My role? Offer my love, money, and life.


War: The reasons have been and are very consistent.

The government's role? Provide a clean, effective mechanism for this highly mechanized form of killing in mass.

My role? To limit the use of this mechanism with extreme prejudice.