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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Falling Man on 9/11

Link

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

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?

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.