Dec 4, 2008

Progress: The Historical Dialectical Process has updated the US Policy on War for a 'New Age'

Robert Gates drafted and outlined his agenda and philosophy for the Pentagon in the new Obama Administration in the forth coming January/Feb 09 edition of Foreign Affairs called "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for the New Age".
Although we have not yet reached a declaration of win win foreign policy, we do see plenty of progress.  
What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign -- a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies.

As secretary of defense, I have repeatedly made the argument in favor of institutionalizing counterinsurgency skills and the ability to conduct stability and support operations. I have done so not because I fail to appreciate the importance of maintaining the United States' current advantage in conventional war fighting but rather because conventional and strategic force modernization programs are already strongly supported in the services, in Congress, and by the defense industry. The base budget for fiscal year 2009, for example, contains more than $180 billion for procurement, research, and development, the overwhelming preponderance of which is for conventional systems.

I have learned many things in my 42 years of service in the national security arena. Two of the most important are an appreciation of limits and a sense of humility. The United States is the strongest and greatest nation on earth, but there are still limits on what it can do. The power and global reach of its military have been an indispensable contributor to world peace and must remain so. But not every outrage, every act of aggression, or every crisis can or should elicit a U.S. military response.

War is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain, and it is important to be skeptical of systems analyses, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise. We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable principles and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock, or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block. As General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

Nov 30, 2008

Ocean currents can power the world.

A revolutionary device that can obtain energy from slow moving waves in the ocean has been developed and could potentially be used to power the entire world. Bucky would be proud. Link

Oct 21, 2008

World Peace for Hookers and Players. The Natural Dialectic of Win Win

Surely the intention to win plays a role in nature. We see two male bulls fight for dominance, we see both males and females compete for mating choices. Every point of view in nature wants and needs to win in the game of life. We can all agree and see that we all want to win, and no matter the ideology which inflicts anyone, no matter how sophisticated or crude, the individual's desire to win and attain is mutually shared amongst all of us from entrepreneur to gangster, to banker to political crook. Yes, even us bloggers want to win a higher Google ranking.

There appears to be three basic winning 'scripts' that encompass the perception and strategy in full.

1.)I want to win - you will lose. The Emperor Complex.

2.)I will lose so that you can win. The Messiah Complex.

3.)We can both win/attain this together. The rational alternative.

'Winning' can be understood as an historically functioning desire and uber design in human nature/society, as Princeton Scholar, Science and Philosophy Journalist and bloggingheads.tv founder Robert Wright points out in his book; Non Zero, the Logic of Human Destiny. link.

Natural selection, evolutionary psychology and intelligent strategy can be potentially understood as two polarized and coupled distinctions of 'winning' that we seem to seek/desire as players in the game of life. A dialectic if you will.

Both are grounded in our direct experience as human beings engaged in the human hiSTORY.

One can be chosen by chance or fate to win, as if one can win the lottery, or born beautiful into a wealthy and famous lifestyle like Paris Hilton.

The other can be determined by ourselves as individuals. Michael Phelps is now the biggest Olympic winner in history. He did that, he made that happen through self determination.

Both Paris Hilton and Michael Phelps, in a material/superficial but easy to understand sense, can both be said to be 'winning' yet the road to their win is completely distinguished by what I refer to as the ‘Chosen One’ and the ‘Victorious One’ strategy, or the two distinctions of the dialectic of winning.

Obviously, The ‘Chosen One’ winning experience is the type of satisfaction that we have when we are deemed appropriate for a certain game, function, prize, or task. Fate or chance chooses/picks us! We love being the chosen. We want to be chosen. Many are called but few are chosen. We all hear about the ‘elite’ and certainly want to get in at those parties.

The next distinction, ‘The Victorious One’, is clearly the type of winning we seek when we have obstacles to over come on our road to success. We win only when we overcome those obstacles and achieve our ideals. Intention. The victorious WILL. Attainment. Accomplishment. The realization of ideals worked and fought for. No one chose this path for us, we created it for ourselves. Friggin' Rocky Balboa.

Consider; Human fighting may be the game of winning to be the victorious one, and mating may be the game of winning the chosen one. Notice the dialectic here? The complete opposition in points of view? These distinctive qualities of this dialectical game and strategy may quietly organize, and most certainly influence, all of human civilization.

The Secret Chief of human society may be nothing more than The Mating Game.

Getting back to the most foundational basics for survival. We literally viral market our DNA into the future via the mating game. As we can see, no mating would equal no people, therefore, this strategy is clearly the most effective of all, there always seems to be more and more of us. The sexual and mating game of life divides, adds, and multiplies the herd and then organizes, distinguishes between male and female, and all the possible roles and adaptions form from there.

Consider that this successful strategy utilized by nature is an organizing principle that has exalted into an ‘all sides win’ synergy that has evolved into perfect and precise application and function in human being's social order as Romantic Games between intelligent and humorous adults seeking thrill, survival, and adaptation in the game of life.

Step one in the game; two partners have ‘chosen’ each other.

This process may be different for distinct cultures, but the main process I am referring to here has existed in every culture. A man and a women desire each other and then mate, sometimes like rabbits.

We don’t have to be aware that nature is using this very 'administrative' process to move the species forward for a woman to get pregnant when she mates with a man. Indeed, according to our anthropologists, there was a time in human history when man and woman did not know that sex equaled baby. Some of us still may not quite get that.

Just because our genes want to make little duplications does not mean we experience a laboratory reality when we kiss on the first encounter or spoon up for an early morning snog. What we experience is quit different and more direct to our individual and cellular needs.

To wit; Human Being wants to mate for the winning experience it brings, not necessarily the little package that comes with it. One could immediately argue that this is the first observable win win non zero sum game between our 'genes' and our sentience or experience in being.

What happens that we can observe at the moment of conception? A beautiful and natural dialectic.

The sperm's strategy is ALL FOR ONE. The egg's strategy is ONE FOR ALL.

At the moment of male ejaculation, the entire gaming principles of nature begins orchestration in perfect and beautiful concert, the millions of sperm cells joyously released into the womb of the wanting female.

Talk about mission impossible. The sperm cells must take on the most perilous of journeys, they must fight upstream, bend through twists and turns, avoiding chemical attacks, killer cells, dodge the ‘fighting’ sperm cells that band in packs and vicious gangs. If anyone has ever seen any footage of this process, they can see that it is a wonder how any woman could get pregnant at all.

The small collection of ‘victorious sperm’, out of the 4 million, have won the journey to the inner secret chamber. Our little Indiana Joneses have just barely made it through the Temple of Doom.

They finally collect around the beautiful and luscious egg invoking relative to us as the most incredible desire imaginable beholden on a single object. Talk about the search for the Holy Grail, the egg is something indeed that many where called for but few were chosen.

The luscious vibrating egg collects her victorious ones around her. All the fighting, conflict and struggle of sperm VS sperm on the road to her riches, all the fighting to deliver to the female the best set of genes, the *best idea* for the future species, are rendered irrelevant at the whims of the egg.

The egg tends to choose one single solitary sperm out of the frantic crowd that surrounds her luscious walls like the outside line at Studio 54 in 1976.

It is the female egg’s 'wisdom' that chooses in this process. Women’s natural right of choice. Feminine 'wisdom' choosing the best course of evolution, the best idea for future species. And she gets to choose from a refined selection of the best ideas that the male collects and fights to bring to her.

We can see in nature how males fight to deliver to the female the best, most effective functioning genetic idea for future species.

King against King, two ideas 'fighting' to refine the truth, the individual and the society is a foundation of nature that she seduces us all into playing, before we were even born we were playing it.

Conflict and winning keeps the species moving forward. Nature may have designed human being to want to win, and want to win big.

Humanity has now discovered nature's principles of synergy, the non zero sum win win road of evolutionary success, and our individual intention and experience of winning has everything to do with it.

We all want to win or attain something, right? Michael Phelps may want to win and win big - even the solitary, humble, and non ego event driven monk wants to attain peace and transcendence. We can define win however we want but we all have intention and a will to attain that intention.

Let's embrace the win win game to survival and success as a rational strategy.

In society or the societal conflict of idea, we expect to have our idea about winning challenged by our opponents so our idea of winning is the most expansive and rational, honest one for any and all, individually and collectively.

Winning is nature’s seduction, and win/win is humanity’s rational and logical complement, the only successful way we can administer ourselves effectively and efficiently.

Win/win is nature’s synergy, and she want us to play - she may be leaving clues for us everywhere.

Win/win is the only effective way that we can survive as a species, create opportunity, solve problems, and mate and partner up.

It is easy to see that the game performed between the sexes is based on win/win experience of sexual and sensual pleasure, and all sexuality is best expressed when both partners are giving and receiving the coveted and desired shared experience of mysterious erotic experience that administers all life.

Win/win is the funniest, sexiest, most effective, rational, inspired, holiest, strongest, most opportune way to live life.

Human Being's success as a reproductive species is our proof!

Can humanity discover this natural administrative synergy on non zero sum and zero sum and apply it to create Win Win Foreign Policy instead of the failing and misery producing 'War on Terrorism'?

The war on terrorism will consistently increase terrorist acts around the world like mating will consistently increase babies. The world body is engaged in a simple conflict of idea with political forces, and instead of focusing on the ideas in conflict, they are increasing the problem, spreading the false and misleading win/lose meme of physical warfare as a solution to the complexity of human being social administration.

Due to online communication, our natural dialectic has changed, and potentially we can structure the conflict of idea into a win win game of mutual learning and success. We can do this because we don't have to know each other or even face each other to exchange radically different points of view. We can work out our differences in a more rational environment for discussion, which is what the Internet provides us. Wikipedia gives us a preview of this process as Jewcy.com pointed out a few years ago with their article on Wiki Wars.

It turns out that geeky Palestinian and Israeli wiki editors were able to come to build shared narratives of emotionally charged historical events and were able to come to agreement for the sake of a simple wiki entry. Both Israeli's and Palestinians were able to WIN those discussions.

Win Win renders the old world Machiavellian win lose strategies harmless and ineffective. There is nothing stronger than win/win. All sides contribute strength, all sides receive the collective strength in return.

In the game of life, the female always wants the best idea, and the male fights to give it to her.

Win. World. Peace. Globe.Win.

(Multiply this idea)

Oct 17, 2008

Say it ain't so, Joe. An example of a deceptive society and it's repercussions.

How much does deception rule and mis-organize society? And by deception, I mean all forms of lying, from the little white lies that we tell to avoid the hurt feelings of a boy/girlfriend to the misconceptions we present on job applications, to just huge deceptive and manipulative whoppers such as the story of Stephan Glass, former reporter for the New Republic that was fired for fabricating stories. Who can forget the lies told leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003?

One of my own personal and shocking awakenings that arose from realizing how much BS rules society occurred a few years back. I had my own Stephan Glass in my life 5 or 6 years ago, and it was a very difficult and painful thing to unravel the many layers of deceit and deception that came from someone so close to me. I looked around me at the time in a house of collapsed cards and saw an honest truth - humanity is always lying, and so was I.

Deception in all forms is simply a quite common strategy we use in communication to avoid unpleasantness or curry favor from rivals or superiors. We do it so often, I would wager a year's salary that we are completely unconscious of it the majority of the time.

Consider, however, that we tend to be very very trusting regardless. We actually accept the truth values of polls, politicians, job applicants, and pillow talk and often accept it at face value. What this may actually suggest is alarming, for our entire paradigms and world views may be comprised of information that is bullshit.

Consider the most recent case of Joe the Plumber. Whoppers all. His real name isn't Joe, he isn't a licensed plumber, he isn't an everyman, he is a Republican whose own father in law is the son of Charles Keating. Yet in one interview that he gave with Barack Obama, the entire country immediately accepted his story and implemented it into the heart of it's world view. Joe the Plumber became proof that the economic policies of each candidate were favorable, yet Joe might as well have been an actor playing a part in a movie. His 'truth' values were then recommunicated at the national level to millions when both Barack Obama and John McCain repeated his 'story' during the debate. These two candidates were then also lying by default.

Our individual and collective worldviews, our paradigms, might overwhelmingly be comprised of complete and utter bullshit. Is it a wonder that society cannot properly organize itself effeciently? How can we understand what the hell is going on when all of us, at a very small level, are constantly telling ourselves and others that false information, or mysterious information, is actually true?

I predict that this may go pretty far down the rabbit hole, much further than we are aware of and if we saw the actuality of it, it would shock us. Consider that each of us is a point of view, and society is a collection of points of view that contains a few over-arching paradigms that is simply the collection of the most agreeable 'truths' being communicated amongst each point. If each point is sharing a certain degree of false information believed to be true, then logic tells us that the paradigm itself will reflect this.

Humanity may be living in a bubble comprised of our own delusion, and we seem shocked that reality isn't turning out how we had hoped. Consider, in 2004- 2006, as the non evidence of WMD in Iraq became painfully clear, and as the current collapse of Wall Street becomes evident, everyone is shocked that as a whole, nobody was predicting that such things would occur or happen.

Gee, I wonder why?


Oct 16, 2008

Journ the Human Union

Worldwide Human Union;
seeking for off-sets and accounting
errs in past-politicos bedroom closets

Everyone can journ the Human Union, digital
0/1 internet chirps and surprise the old
ca-hoons and dino-gangsters with high-dias
and infinite soluables.

Human Union unites Mr. and Missus, and
looks after all street kidz wanting homeful.

Human Union releases holy convicts and
sends them to college, three strikes and you're in.

www.dontwearneckties, they cut your
circulation, no bras for boobs, and hard-shoes
squeek the feet
[human union article three]

Human Union plots peaceful ambush, hide in
the hills and wait for the psionic boom.

Human Union supports all that is moonful,
reveals noon-secrets and resets the codes.

Journ the Human Union, developed by kQQl
kids worldwide and supported by Nay-cha
her-soolf.

*Read below in small print:

*[if ur interested in joining the Human Union,
you've come to the right place]


©Rome Viharo 2008

Oct 12, 2008

Is there optimism on Wall Street right now? YES

From the New York Times


In 1999, technology companies with no earnings or sales were valued at billions of dollars. But this time was different, investors told themselves. The Internet could not be missed at any price.

They were wrong. In 2000 and 2001 technology stocks plunged, erasing trillions of dollars in wealth.

Now investors have again convinced themselves that this time is different, that the credit crisis will push economies worldwide into the deepest recession since the Depression. Fear runs even deeper today than greed did a decade ago.

But in their panic, investors are ignoring 60 years of history. Since the Depression, governments have become far more aggressive about intervening when credit markets seize up or economies struggle. And those interventions have generally succeeded. The recessions since World War II, while hardly easy, have been far less painful than the Depression.

Link

Is the world economic crisis a prelude to using the WORLD GAME? Hopefully.

The World Game was an idea proposed by Buckminster Fuller. The idea was to "make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone."

When Buckminster Fuller introduced the 'WORLD GAME' in the 70's, it was looked at as Utopian, naive, and a bit far fetched. For example, one of the things that Bucky felt was needed to really implement the World Game at a effective level was everyone having access to 'interactive television sets' that could relay information around the world. Of course now, we just call that the Internet and most of us can't live without it.

As we leap into these times of extreme uncertainty, it's good to point out a few optimistic yet realistic ideas that we can use to navigate through the building chaos. Although we have never faced an worldwide economic crisis like this before, we also have never had the Internet before and the ability to collective problem solve and network.

Many of the world's leaders are now meeting to work together to solve this crisis. Link. Now, I know, many of us are skeptical about such meetings, however, I think this potentially could be a ray of hope.

Consider; Bucky's World Game was based entirely on 'synergy'. We can understand 'synergy' as 'all sides contribute, all sides receiving the collective output of all contributing', or even more simpler as win - win foreign policy. Bucky felt that if world leaders could play a game where the goal was to help solve each other's problems, that such a strategy could out compete 'War Games' for effectiveness.

So imagine if France had to worry about resolving the financial problems of the UK, and the UK had to worry about the financial problems of Russia, ad infinitum. What would such a strategy accomplish? Well, for one thing it would create an objective outside observer and problem solver for a countries' problems where solutions are often hampered down by internal politics. Now all of these leaders are meeting somewhere and trying to work together to solve the problem, which is a good start.

Naturally, however, we can do better. So why are we waiting for the global leaders to do this, and why are they doing this offline? Why not open the entire world wide economic problem up online so the collective contributions of intelligent and aware global citizens can participate in solving, and resolving, each other's problems?

Think about it, how archaic is the current approach considering our new digital millennium? Why would the G7 or G20 leaders need to travel to Switzerland to resolve the crisis over a series of formal dinners and speeches? Why not just have an online discussion forum and everyone can stay put, save time, and increase problem solving effectiveness? Why not open up each and every idea presented to solve the crisis to a collective that can deconstruct each idea, research and game it's effectiveness for rationality?

So, here is a ray of hope. This may be the first global crisis that could really get countries working together and exploring new options for problem solving. In the desperate attempt to find reasonable solutions that must produce win win economic outcomes, at some point someone will consider the option of allowing social networking collective intelligence into the equation, and booyah - we could potentially resolve these problems in a very short amount of time.

Although I gloss over quickly such solutions and problems in this essay, I don't think that such a scenario is too far fetched or outlandish to suggest. And this idea, like all ideas, can spread and take root in our Internet society, planting the seeds online that will eventually reach the appropriate leaders who would consider such options.

As dire as it may sound, the very ray of hope is that for the first time, the entire world is in an mutually undeniable crisis together, and the solutions lay inside the problem. Personally, I think this may be be best opportunity we have ever had to suggest and implement Bucky's World Game. And we can all immediately begin playing the World Game by talking about the World Game online in our blogs, emails, social networks, and discussion forums and insist we all begin to use it. Immediately. As in now and why the hell not?

US Climate fix could HELP solve financial crisis.

From New Scientist

If the US focused on curbing climate change as soon as a new president took office – or sooner – it could help pull the world from the financial brink, according to environmental policy experts.

"Skyrocketing energy prices and the financial crisis have been a wake-up call that something's got to change," says Cathy Zoi, chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which is chaired by former US vice president Al Gore.

"My very strong belief is that we need to reorient our investments toward this transition to a clean energy economy, and it will be the engine of growth for getting us out of the doldrums that we've gotten in right now," says Zoi.

The reorientation must include limits on emissions of climate-warming carbon in the US, she said: "Unless we take action at home, we're not going to be able to have much influence in the international arena about what gets done." Link.




Oct 8, 2008

If you think some Americans talk nuts, wait to you read what the Russians are saying.

The Global Dialectic and the internet. One of the great things about Youtube is finding what other people in the world are paying attention to. I found this video at the top of the Russian Youtube Video charts. It's called "Russian War Machines; Strength, Glory, and Pride!". Make sure you read the comments to the video which will give you a much clearer idea to the quality of idea floating around in Russia these days.


Oct 1, 2008

From uncertainty into certainty. Embracing the mystery of these extraordinary times.

In my personal life, I awake every day this month very unsure if my business will exist in just a few short weeks. Being a father to a three year old child and having to provide financial security for another human being, that certainly creates plenty of uncertainty and at times anxiety.

In addition, I turn on CNN or surf through Digg, Reddit, and the Huffington Post, searching out articles, opinions, and blogs on our current state of affairs with the election, economy, and the war. There are wars, and rumors of more wars, end of the world scenarios, talks of the second great depression, and all sorts of apocalyptic end of the world ideas that are being fed to us virally via online news sources.


It is very slowly dawning on civilization at this time that mystery, or uncertainty, unknown, or what ever you wish to call this third truth value, is a very real yet very uncomfortable notion to be comfortable with.


Recently I took a stroll over to Reality Sandwich blog, and found a blog posting regarding the now infamous Oct.14th, 2008 UFO landing meme. In case, dear reader, you are unfamiliar, a massive internet meme is flying around that on the fourteenth of Oct, which is just about 12 days away from this writing, a massive UFO will appear somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, and remain for three days. This dates stands out in my mind mainly because it happens to be my birthday.

This information is purported to come from The Galactic Federation of Light, who oversee earth's evolution, according to the 'channelers' who publish this information.

Naturally I think open minded people, like myself, need to treat such information with a very high degree of skepticism. So I voiced mine and playfully entered some skeptical information in the comment section on the blog, almost to spite the author a bit. Another community member there, however, left the most appropriate comment...
"Terence McKenna suggested that cognitive uncertainty is the closest the mind can get to an open state of being. In this light, I welcome reports like Blossom Goodchild's re: 10-14-08 as benign possibilities that I cannot pretend to know one way or another as to whether it will occur, or, if it does, how to interpret the precise nature of. ".
How could I forget that! It was the exact 'meme' that I needed to hear in that moment, reflecting a higher attitude not just with the Oct 14th prediction, but with the whole lot of fearful ideas floating around the internet these days regarding our economic future. My truer agnostic nature awakened again.


One of the things I have learned very much over the years in developing and understanding OS 0 1 2, which is a discussion framework for higher awareness and understanding, is the relationships between the false idea and the mysterious idea, or the very human reaction to encountering mystery and producing false ideas about it in it's presence.

When we encounter mystery, our mind has no option but to create a false idea about it. Since there is no certainty to the truth value laying behind the mystery, there is no other certain truth value that we can lay upon the mystery other than falseness or simply our own ideas about it. If done well, this should take the form of very high art, or even religious or holy texts.

If we think in terms of bivalency, which is this or that duality, right or wrong type thinking, we can only consider the Mystery in terms of true or false, thus not including 1/3 of all information in our environment.

I play off of this when I had a 6 month long discussion with the James Randi crowd a few years back on his bbs. I pointed out that they were making very critical errors in their 'critical thinking', for they were encountering and dealing with unknown information and treating it logically as if it were false, as opposed to the believers who were encountering unknown information and treating it as if it were true, either way was irrational. This was easily summarized in the discussion as...

Believer's argument: The Mystery = TRUE. (0=1)
Denier's argument: The Mystery = FALSE. (0=2)
The agnostic or third value argument: The Mystery = Mystery. (0=0)

Mystery is just mystery, it's unknown, we don't know for certain what it is, it is logically and rationally impossible. And when we wish to be a critical thinking rational, and inspired human being, we need to use language that reflects this certainty so we can stay consistent and not freak out in the face of the unknown.

If we freak out in the face of the unknown, then we miss the inspiration that mystery naturally delivers to the open and rational/honest mind, which is the exact 'juice' the mind needs to find the truth and opportunity that all mysteries bring.


Regardless of what anyone out there says, what will happen to the US economy, who will win the election, and what will happen on Oct 14th, all of these ideas share one very important thing in common, mystery. Now that is what we can be certain about. We can be absolute certain that there is uncertainty regarding our immediate future as a civilization in fall of 08, and if we use any other language to express our experience that does not include the third value of both true and false at once, or unknown, then we can be certain that we are producing false ideas in the face of the mystery.

We can be both certain and uncertain at once. We are that sort of transcending paradox of being. Socrates with his "I know that I do not know". It is a quality of knowing when we do know as opposed to when we don't. Do we delude ourselves with our false ideas about knowing? How can I be certain that the economy will be collapse or not? Perhaps the UFO on the 14th of Oct will turn out to be nothing more than the full moon or the Reptillians, but how would I know that? I can have certainty with the knowing that that the word at the end of this statement is the word this. Yet that is because it confirms both my existence and it's existence in one elegant swoop, yet we do not have the luxury with the future, and must be humble in it's presence.

I write this entry mainly as a reminder for myself, to be present enough in the face of the unknown to find the opportunity that lay in front of our eyes as the mystery and the false ideas about it swirl around us.
As a species, humanity's lesson at this place and time may be nothing more than learning how to deal with mystery. The Oct 14th meme of a great UFO landing may be nothing more than our own unconscious need to find collective truth with uncertainty. After all, the only thing we can say about a UFO truthfully is that it is a mysterious object that we all can agree is mystery.

Sep 25, 2008

Does ideology trump facts?

On the ars technica blog an article by Jonathan M Gitlin suggests that it does.
- in 2003 a study found that viewers of Fox News were significantly more misinformed about the Iraq war, with far greater percentages of viewers erroneously believing that Iraq possessed WMDs or that there was a credible link between the 9/11 attack and Saddam Hussein than those who got their news from other outlets like NPR and PBS. This has led to the rise of websites like FactCheck and SourceWatch.
I suggest that what is organizing all of this is the deep rooted conflict of idea, or paradigm, which we all hold close and dear to us at a metaprogramming level in the unconscious mind. The irrational mind cannot see a truth value in it's objective state. If you present a fact to the irrational mind, it will not look like a fact, it will look like a falsehood and be clouded with the personal emotional charges that govern that particular individual.

Sep 23, 2008

The MYSTERIOUS third value raises it's head in this discussion regarding the economic crisis.

I toggled over to bloggingheads.tv today to see what the intellectual class was discussing. I was quite pleased to watch Mark Schmitt, blogger/writer for The American Prospect, and Byron York, writer for The National Review actually discussing the third value of unknown/mystery in relationship to this economic bailout of Wall Street.

If only these fellows would have thought about that third value in, say, 2002 or 2003.



Sep 22, 2008

The Genetic Conflict of Idea?

According to Don Sapatkin, science blogger for Philly.com (ahem Don, you failed to include links in your entry to the actual study), our political choices can be directly related to a gene and how we respond to threat.

Forget about a candidate's issues and character. You may be biologically driven to lean toward John McCain or Barack Obama, a new study says, depending on your involuntary response to threat.


I find this interesting of course because of the remarkable similarity to the conceptual conflict of idea and the genetic 'conflict' to produce more effective offspring, found in fighting males in many a mammalian species.

Linking experience/response to a gene is very interesting, and highlight some core ideas I write about regarding the dialectic, especially in the article World Peace for Hookers. There is a relationship, a win win relationship, between our direct experience and our genetic strategies for survival and replication. The action of the gene is not identical the experience of the reaction.

From the article...
"People experience the world differently," says lead author John R. Hibbing, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, "and this probably affects their political beliefs."
Link.

Sep 20, 2008

The BLAME GAME non solution to problem solving. Bill Mahr's REAL TIME.

Using the Blame Game as a problem solving device in discussion.



Last night I was watching Bill Mahr's REAL TIME on HBO, and naturally, the recent economic disaster was the main topic.

His three guests on his panel were Andrew Sullivan, blogger for the Daily Dish, Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, and Will.I.AM, music producer for the 'Yes We Can' Barack Obama campaign viral. He interviewed previously to the panel Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics for Princeton University.

What was interesting about the discussion was that the Blame Game for the collapsing economy became the topic.

The show started off with Bill Mahr begging Paul Krugman to let him blame George Bush for the problem.

Paul Krugman blames the government.

Andrew Sullivan blames the American Consumer.

Naomi Klien blames the Wall Street Fat cats and corporate CEO's.

I could not help but notice the intention of all three guests to find a particular side to blame, and each side they choose to blame reflected their individual ideology at a personal level. It's as if the side that they choose to blame as the problem is a necessary truth that exists in their individual paradigms about the economy, government, and the people.

Let's look at these arguments, albeit a bit superficially, through the point of view of OS 0 1 2.

The Government plays a role in the economy because the Government sets the algorithm in place for the economy by regulating it. Therefore, the government has the power to alter how we trade and distribute wealth through law. This is true.

The financial institutions play a role in the economy because they set limits on how much wealth is available at what percentage and to whom. They control the flow of credit. This appears to be true.

The people play a role because we are the consumers and value creators/producers, and none of these institutions would exist without us. They exist to give us something we want or we need. This also appears to be true, but this is important to consider, because there is no separation between government, corporation, and people when it comes to economy. The People make up all of it. All politicians, CEO's and day traders are all people too.

Therefore, this situation is supported by all of us in some sense. All of us combined are an integral a tapestry we call economy. Economy is the grand synergy of human society and it's allegiance is to the chaos of our combined nature. Adam Smith called this 'The Invisible Hand'.

I suggest therefore that the problem is not the governments, nor the CEO's, nor the people, but all combined, and each with equal importance.

I suggest the REAL problem is the framework with which we try to model problems in the economy. To say that the economy is the fault of the Bush Administration is like saying that Hurricane IKE is responsible for all weather patterns beginning January 1st and ending Dec 31, 2008. It's tautological, argumentative truths that contain logic in their forms but no relationship to objective reality.

CEO's and Governments are irresponsible, selfish, and irrational because human beings are. CEO's and Governments lie because human beings lie.

We are all human beings, and each of us reading this blog entry will also tell lies to cover our asses, feed our families, or support our career. A noble lie is a lie like any other, it's false information and delusion.

The People is an imaginary victim that is perpetuated by politicians and leaders. Politicians and leaders can be any of us whom are seeking attention to gain power and status.

The people
always seem to be innocent when one set of politicians look to take power away from another set.

The people
always seem to be the ones that need protection from the institution that is blamed by one side over the other.

We have these problems because We the People use false and non-existing bivalent frameworks, deception, and win/lose strategies to solve problems and create opportunity for one side at the expense of the other. We divide ourselves against ourselves and project onto the other side in the division the very core strategy we inherently accept and use ourselves.

When we have a society based on win lose troubleshooting that depends upon deception to gain favor or power, then we will have a society with a false and non functioning map of what's happening and everyone will naturally blame everyone else because there is no clear pointer to the actual truth in the haze of the political scramble.

Win win economic models are indeed possible because of the internet and our collective intelligence. We can have all sides win. We can all have access to billionaire wealth properly organized.

Human society now has enough novelty and complexity to utilize win win governance. The solutions are already here.

We just need to change our ideas and the environments in which we discuss them.



Sep 18, 2008

Ideas based on fear are immediatly accepted as true - the gov knows this

I found this up on Reality Sandwich today. In 2006, the US Government warned hospitals that they could be overwhelmed in a terrorist attack by people believing themselves to be suffering from an illness that is entirely psychosomatic. Apparently, no one has realized that is how we have also been operating our foreign policy. Link

Human progress, continued. Cure for blindness.

In five years, blindness will be a thing of the past, according to Professor James Wolffsohn, at the Aston University. He is working on flexible bionic lens that could restore vision to long and short sighted people. Link.

Sep 16, 2008

Despite dire economic news, human progress keeps moving forward

I though with all the bad news regarding the economy going on in the world today, it would be nice to augment that with a bit of good news. Cancer cures.

According to a report by UPI, Wayne State University announced that they have tested a breast cancer vaccine that has successfully eliminated tumors in mice, without any toxicity.


The study, published in the journal Cancer Research, suggests the vaccine could treat women with HER2-positive, treatment-resistant cancer or help prevent cancer recurrence. The researchers also say it might potentially be used in cancer-free women to prevent initial development of these tumors.
Link

Sep 13, 2008

Sep 12, 2008

Win Win economics slowly forming between Palestine/Israel

From the International Herald Tribune.

Civilians are planning economic cooperation — an industrial zone to provide thousands of jobs, mostly to Palestinians, and another involving organic produce grown by Palestinians and marketed in Europe by Israelis. Ministers from both governments have been visiting regularly, often joined by top international officials. Israeli Arabs are playing a key role.

The aim is to stand conventional wisdom on its head. Instead of a shaky negotiated peace treaty imposing coexistence from the top down, a bottom-up set of relationships that lock the two societies together should, proponents argue, lead to a real two-state solution.

Link.


'Bottom Up' set of relationships being used to create 'synergies' between two conflicting sides? Letting citizens using economics and independent negotiation to resolve the problems politicians are not?

With the internet, we can have citizens in all nations doing this right now. Everyday, more and more of us are realizing that politicians and government is the least effective methodology for problem solving.

Government is not to be overthrown, it is to be ignored as irrelevant.

An Anthology of Paradoxes.

http://www.paradoxes.co.uk/

Thinking and programming in ternary, a discussion about elegance.

This morning, a random Google search on 'ternary' produced the following link to a message board.

A discussion online between a few programmers regarding analog to digital conversions which quickly turns into a discussion regarding the benefits of
binary vs. ternary thinking and logic.

It's a pretty brief discussion and it's always interesting to read or listen to people discussing 'ternary' systems, or systems that come in 3's, which are always very elegant and refined.

At the end of the brief discussion, Jared writes
Suffice it to say: there's something really amazing about
ternary logic which is not yet fully understood, and which
changes everything it touches, for the better.

Sigh. :-)

I intentionally wrote 'binary versus ternary thinking' as a very subtle inside joke amongst ternary thinkers and linguistically, we utilize this sort of operation inside of a negotiation.

If you are thinking in binary, yes, it will most likely look like a struggle between binary and ternary logic, which the user is forced to choose one form of logic over another.


In ternary you naturally choose both binary and ternary logic, since ternary is metalogical and metarational and binary is really just a subset of ternary.

In ternary thinking, we can have BOTH. In binary thinking, you must choose ONE over the other.

Bivalent thinkers cannot understand ternary thinkers. Bivalent paradigms cannot model ternary paradigms effectively.

If you have upgraded to ternary thinking, this post will amuse you.

If you are still operating under binary, this post will frustrate you.


A Galactic Internet?

Professor John Learned, a physicist at the University of Hawaii, has proposed that a 'Galactic Internet' may already be in place by an advanced civilization. Such a network could potentially use Cepheids, relatively rare variable stars, by making unnatural alterations in their dimming and brightening.

To send messages using a Cepheid, Learned and his colleagues suggest that extraterrestrials might change the star's cycle. A Cepheid becomes dimmer as ionized helium builds up in its atmosphere. Eventually, the atmosphere expands and deionizes, restarting the cycle.

Firing a high-energy neutrino beam into a Cepheid could heat its core and brighten the star early - "just as an electric pulse to the heart can make it skip a beat," Learned says.

Link

Something interesting to consider. One thing that we must have in common with any advanced intelligence is True, False, and Mystery. 0, 1, and 2. Any advanced civilizations must have developed some sort of win win governance, otherwise Game Theory predicts self destruction.

The Tony Blair and Joe Lieberman Awakening

It appears that light may indeed be beginning to sift through the dark cracks of reactionary politics. Recently, on a panel at the Republican National Convention, Joe Lieberman noted that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister to Britain, is seeking to create an international educational fund to influence the Islamic World through less 'invasive' means. Link

Imagine if we thought of that say 3o or 40 years ago? How about even six years ago? We constantly hear in the West how crazy and irrational the Arabs/Muslims are, and how the only thing they understand and respect is violence. Doesn't anyone consider the extreme poverty and lack of education that grips the entire region? How can you expect rationality when the majority of the population still has basic struggles for food, water, and shelter? How clear is your thinking when your child just lost his arm, you haven't had a warm bath in weeks, you've been eating flat bread for months, and your summers peak around 120? I often think how installing air conditioning alone would vastly improve mid east relations.

From the point of view of OS 0 1 2, when the basic problems of survival are not satisfied, you will find a host of irrational politicians coming in and creating a heap of false problems to gain power. This is more difficult to do when you have an educated populace and naturally we see a middle east that is highly saturated with irrational politicians whose main inspiration is the quest for individual greatness, respect, and who knows what else.

Instead of attacking the Muslim world with bombs, we need to attack them with accusations in a dialectic. How is it that you cannot feed and educate your own people, Osama bin Laden? How is it, Mahmoud Ahmdinejad, that you can talk tough on the West but the majority of your rich country still lives in poverty and low education?

When can we value the effectiveness of our political systems and their leaders by the quality of life experienced by the least of us?

Politicians cannot solve problems effectively because the political system is based on manipulation and abuse of information. That is it's very foundation. The politicians who raise to the top are essentially the most effective at manipulative and distracting discussion. That's true everywhere, in the U.S. as well as Palestine. Irrationality is much easier to manipulate with emotionally charged language and rationality is virtually impossible to manipulate through such means.

Yes, Tony Blair and Joe Lieberman, let's educate them. Let's educate the world. Let's take the amount of money we are spending daily on blowing up terrorists and build institutions that will increase the ability of the populations to think for themselves, become educated, and question the motivations of their leaders.

We spend billions, if not trillions, on the military industrial complex. This intellectual, technical and physical resource is soley dedicated to creating problems for the other side to solve.

An educated individual, both knowledgeable in the world and of her/himself, is very valuable in society. If we can pay soldiers to go to war - why don't we pay people to educate and improve themselves?

DISCUSSION BOMB: Click here to discuss this topic. You will need to sign in at Sean Hannity discussion forum. This discussion forum is not affiliated with OS 0 1 2 nor highintelligence.com

Sep 11, 2008

SYRIA: U.S. Policy post 911 has increased terrorism.

Reuters just came out with this report regarding a few statements made by the foriegn minister of Syria, Walid al-Moualem.
"As we said to President Bush shortly after the tragic events on September 11, the fight against terrorism must begin at the roots, at the cause of terrorism," al-Moualem told a news conference in Rome, where he was meeting Italy's foreign minister.
Naturally, from the point of view of the OS 0 1 2, this is just common sense. It's also an objective statement, capable of being verified. Terrorism is nothing more than a result of win lose foreign policy and it's predictable inside such strategy. Is it a matter of time before our politicians can see that the only way to resolve such chaos is via Win Win Foreign policy?

Sep 7, 2008

Bucky Fuller's WORLD GAME

I thought it appropriate to christian the blog's first entry with a post on 'The World Game'.

The World Game was developed by R. Buckminster Fuller for nations to use to troubleshoot the problems of resource without resorting to war or terrorism, and was the original inspiration for this project.

To me, the World Game, is an application of GAME THEORY yet applied to world affairs. The World Game offers the hope and solution of creating world stability, or as Bucky put it, a world that benefits all without disadvantaging any.

I think the concept of The World Game is best summarized by Medard Gabel, from the book 'Buckminster Fuller, Anthology for the New Millenium.

In the 1960's Buckminster Fuller proposed a “great logistics game” and “world peace game” (later shortened to simply, the “World Game”) that was intended to be a tool that would facilitate a comprehensive, anticipatory, design science approach to the problems of the world.

The use of “world” in the title obviously refers to Fuller's global perspective and his contention that we now need a systems approach that deals with the world as a whole, and not a piece meal approach that tackles our problems in what he called a “local focus hocus pocus” manner. The entire world is now the relevant unit of analysis, not the city, state or nation. We are, in Fuller's words, onboard Spaceship Earth, and the illogic of 200 nation state admirals all trying to steer the spaceship in different directions is made clear through the metaphor--as well in Fuller's more caustic assessment of nation states as “blood clots” in the world's global metabolism.

The logic for the use of the word “game” in the title is even more instructive. It says a lot about Fuller's approach to governance and social problem solving. Obviously intended as a very serious tool, Fuller choose to call his vision a “game” because he wanted it seen as something that was accessible to everyone, not just the elite few in the power structure who thought they were running the show.

In this sense, it was one of Fuller's more profoundly subversive visions. Fuller wanted a tool that would be accessible to everyone, whose findings would be widely disseminated to the masses through a free press, and which would, through this ground-swell of public vetting and acceptance of solutions to society's problems, ultimately force the political process to move in the direction that the values, imagination and problem solving skills of those playing the democratically open world game dictated. It was a view of the political process that some might think naive, if they only saw the world for what it was when Fuller was proposing his idea (the 1960s)--minus personal computers and the Internet. The playing field was not to be so much as leveled, or expanded, but the good 'ol boy political process was to subverted out of existence by a process that brings Thomas Jefferson into the twentieth century.

In order to have this kind of power, the game needed to have the kind of information and tools for manipulating that information that empowers. It needed a comprehensive database that would provide the players of the world game with better data than their politically elected or appointed counterparts. They needed an inventory of the world's vital statistics--where everything was and in what quantities and qualities, from minerals to manufactured goods and services, to humans and their unmet needs as well as capabilities. They also needed an information source that monitored the current state of the world, bringing vital news into the “game room” live.

None of this existed when Fuller began talking about a world game. And then something funny happened on the way to the twenty-first century: CNN, personal computers, CD ROMS, the Internet and worldwide web, supercomputer power on personal computers and reams of data about the world, its resources, problems and potential solutions started to bubble to the surface and transform the world and the way we communicate, do business, research and govern. The World Game that Fuller envisioned was to be a place where individuals or teams of people came and competed, or cooperated, to:

“Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”


Bucky noted that creating a system of global order that benefited all without disadvantaging any would take about 10 years to build, and he suggested this before there was an internet. I think perhaps we have already begun to create such a system, and such a system is the end result of the historical dialectical process.

OS 0 1 2 is dedicated to realizing this elegant administrative model into a reality and is the individual compliment to it's design. Myself and a few others believe that OS 0 1 2 is something individuals can use to troubleshoot the problems not of resource, but of ideology, which prevents distinct points of view from understanding each other.