Saturday, January 29, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Hook
The hook I crafted required an answer by the logic of courtesy. I knew close up the kind of accident that gets forgotten. The relentless push for productivity drives us without mercy. That is what the Gini Coefficient struggles mightily to convey. The usual charge; that math and logic together with compassion and experience produces a false artifact. That is to narrow and I wish to broaden it.
I went crazy to gather some information about what the bottom looks like from the bottom. What I found was boundless compassion for my fellows. Because they were pressed to the grindstone by relentless, suffering, burdensome and irksome toil at a rate of two and three jobs at a time. Nobody should be without a job in this country. But what about a country that took another route. The French are well educated to a baby in his crib. They work hard. They live in a land that came from much hard work and it suits them.
The citizens of PRC are rational materialists. Not all of them of course but enough to make the engine run hotter and faster than our machine. Our vast machine currently surpasses theirs but this will not last and I know it from close examination.
When I look at my feet I see another countries shoes and I count on knowing something about that country in my nostrils, my bare feet and my gut. Not allowing for this produces in me a poverty of experience.
I went crazy to gather some information about what the bottom looks like from the bottom. What I found was boundless compassion for my fellows. Because they were pressed to the grindstone by relentless, suffering, burdensome and irksome toil at a rate of two and three jobs at a time. Nobody should be without a job in this country. But what about a country that took another route. The French are well educated to a baby in his crib. They work hard. They live in a land that came from much hard work and it suits them.
The citizens of PRC are rational materialists. Not all of them of course but enough to make the engine run hotter and faster than our machine. Our vast machine currently surpasses theirs but this will not last and I know it from close examination.
When I look at my feet I see another countries shoes and I count on knowing something about that country in my nostrils, my bare feet and my gut. Not allowing for this produces in me a poverty of experience.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Happiness - Know Limits
The Meets and Bounds of the happy life.Moderation, the hallmark of the happy life, follows the dictates of reason. Aristotle's maxim that virtue leads to the happy life demands moderation and restraint along with caring and sharing.
The hanged man expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe. Nirvana; the mind like fire unbound.
His expression demonstrates the release of the self to a higher power. Of the three types of happiness, ecstasy must come by moderation in all things to prepare a path to altered states of consciousness.
The Happiness Myth - Jennifer Michael Hecht
Happiness - Carp Diem
Reach for this day, tomorrow is out of reach. Take what is yours, play the part, become the role and the role will take you.
My guidepost here is
BB - 10th, 11th and 12 steps
The Four Noble Truths - the metaphysical dimension of right action
The Eightfold Path - wisdom, ethics and study
Peanuts - Chas. Schultz speaks through Linus's compassion
Pack more into the stream of life. Experience is everything.
Happiness - Know Death
One must face death often for happiness in this life. Whether seen as an end or a change, I prepare for this certainty often. Our communality depends on more than superficial understanding of our ends.Historically all people watched their loved ones die in bed -this is how death happened. Death was not a cause for celebration per se but the communality of relations and friends gathered together to memorialize the death of a kin offered a venue for catching up with relatives regarding their accomplishments and defeats.
My great grand John Holden died in the predictable circumstances - at home in bed. My maternal grandmother died in her bed at home of colon cancer under the care of a hospice nurse and her daughter Laura, an RN. My father died at home in his sleep with my brother there to watch over him.
I never held a death vigil - I should have helped my father pass but I did not. I missed my greatest experience and I have this regret still.
Monday, January 17, 2011
PRC v USA Gini
According to 'The Spirit Level' and my reading of Marx, when the proles know that they are proles they are much more likely to keep the 80/20 rule and the Gini Coefficient well below the current US 85/20 anxiety factory. I believe but cannot prove that when 80% of the people share 15% of the wealth the proles brew tea.
Having said that, I was told that the acres of shiny new condos in Xing Dao that I saw in 2006 were being built by tens of thousands of men with shovels for the hundreds of goverment officials from Bejing. But having said 'having said that' I take it all back if I need to and make this point.
Having said that, I was told that the acres of shiny new condos in Xing Dao that I saw in 2006 were being built by tens of thousands of men with shovels for the hundreds of goverment officials from Bejing. But having said 'having said that' I take it all back if I need to and make this point.
Is it James F. or Thomas Barnett in the Bear Suit?
Violating Hume's problem of induction, invoking Popper's falsification of conjecture and invoking Trey and Matt gets me to this.
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After reading 'When China Rules the World' I ponder the next forty years as a continuation of past trends. On that, it seems that by the end of the present decade the PRC will match the US GDP but spread it out over three times the headcount. By 2050 (induction alert) the US GDP will lag by 1/2 the PRC GDP from various estimates on the internet which I carefully chose to align with my confirmation bias.
But I just read some great long form journalism about coal and it prompts this conjecture. The US is a thermodynamic system that produces more entropy per person and more entropy overall today by rolling fleets of Prius coal burning passenger cars. Okay, to be fair 30-40% of them are fueled by natural gas but they do not run on clean electricity. What will bring the PRC to parity is my reluctance to do the math along with their rational materialist approach. They aced the Thermodynamics final and might keep the lid on riotous exuberance at the big bonfire. Not overall but according to headcount. But again they are not getting stronger while we weaken - they are getting stronger faster than we are getting stronger. It's the entropy.
In other words no country spends more and gets less than the one I drive around in with my big body V-8 Ford.
Thermodynamics: it's not just a good idea; it's the law. And notice how I didn't talk about 380 ppm of Coca Cola fizz. When I talk to my brother-in-law the Petroleum Engineer we stick to thermodynamics to calm the tension over initial conditions in nonlinear systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Like going from 350 to 380 ppm over the Christmas Holidays.
-------------------------------------
After reading 'When China Rules the World' I ponder the next forty years as a continuation of past trends. On that, it seems that by the end of the present decade the PRC will match the US GDP but spread it out over three times the headcount. By 2050 (induction alert) the US GDP will lag by 1/2 the PRC GDP from various estimates on the internet which I carefully chose to align with my confirmation bias.
But I just read some great long form journalism about coal and it prompts this conjecture. The US is a thermodynamic system that produces more entropy per person and more entropy overall today by rolling fleets of Prius coal burning passenger cars. Okay, to be fair 30-40% of them are fueled by natural gas but they do not run on clean electricity. What will bring the PRC to parity is my reluctance to do the math along with their rational materialist approach. They aced the Thermodynamics final and might keep the lid on riotous exuberance at the big bonfire. Not overall but according to headcount. But again they are not getting stronger while we weaken - they are getting stronger faster than we are getting stronger. It's the entropy.
In other words no country spends more and gets less than the one I drive around in with my big body V-8 Ford.
Thermodynamics: it's not just a good idea; it's the law. And notice how I didn't talk about 380 ppm of Coca Cola fizz. When I talk to my brother-in-law the Petroleum Engineer we stick to thermodynamics to calm the tension over initial conditions in nonlinear systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Like going from 350 to 380 ppm over the Christmas Holidays.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Consciousness
Right Consciousness dissolves self to star stuff. Her memetic holiness, Susan Blackmore has provisional freewill and so do I.The seat of the self, these virtual heterophenomilogical engines support the SELF. Impernament and emerging from the ego; my existensial identity and constant or free life [cit. thermoregulation of constant life]. I will postpone exaggeration.
Thereafter comes the archetype of 'the SELF. It marks the last station on the way to individuation, which Jung calls self-realization' For Jung, 'the self...embraces ego-consciousness, shadow, anima, and collective unconscious in indeterminable extension. As a totality, the self is a coincidentia oppositorum; it is therefore bright and dark and yet neither'. Alternatively, he stated that 'the self is the total, timeless man...who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious. [cit. Wiki Self in Jungian Psyc.]
This is for the people in the cheap seats. Star stuff from the deck of the Enterprise.
He looks marvelous.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Concentration
Right Concentration reveals the holistic mind. His holiness Dr. Dennett explains the cog wheels of cognition.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Effort
Right Effort minimizes entropy while maximizing exotropy. His holiness Dr. Ludwig Boltzmann and his twin Dr. Ilya Prigogine are the twins.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Livelihood
Right livelihood prepares my hearth and home for my communal life. His holiness Mahatma Gandhi is the avatar of livelihood. He spun at home while GB fumed and left the Raj.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Speech
Right Speech changes my circumstances by tossing out the idle words, the angry words, the egotistical words and the obsessive thoughts turned to words.
Papa Legba stands at a spiritual crossroads and gives (or denies) permission to speak with the spirits and avatars. Legba is the great elocution, the voice of God, as it were. Legba facilitates communication, speech and understanding.
His holiness Papa Legba is the navigator.
For Jung, Papa Legba is the Animus. He takes on the role of guide, or mediator, to the world within and to the Self...a mediator between the ego and the Self.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Action
Right Action is incremental; the last state must lead to the right next step to stay on the eightfold path.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - Intent
Right intent prepares me with best guesses about what happens next. I program response.
Jennifer Michael Hecht is earth mother. The bringer of happiness.
I intend to float like a butterfly. Not so much stinging like bees though. My goal, the happy life unfolds in three parts:
1. happy day
2. ecstasy
3. happy life
Jung sometimes referred to such archetypal figures as "Mana" personalities, supraordinate personalities, and treated them as equivalents to the Self: 'the mother ("Primordial Mother" and "Earth Mother") as a supraordinate personality...the supraordinate personality as the "self"'.
At other times, he saw them as representatives of the collective unconscious - as bridging-posts to the totality.
Not Ready for Heterophenomenology Players - View
Right View - Virtuous Compassion
The Avatars:
Right View -->Tenzin Gyatso, his Holiness the Dali Lama
Right Intent --> Her holiness, Dr. Jennifer Michael Hecht
Right Action --> his holiness Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot
Right Speech --> his Holiness Papa Legba
Right Livelihood --> his Holiness Mahatma Gandhi
Right Effort --> his Holinesses Dr.s Ludwig Boltzmann and Ilya Prigogine
Right Concentration --> his Holiness Dr. Daniel Dennett
Right Consciousness --> her Holiness Susan Blackmore
Each locus of phenotypic effect virtualizes a vast cohort of subjective machines. Virtualization is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something in the area of computing, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. [citation: his holiness Jimmy Wales]
The information bandwidth, the information transmitted, the information processed and the resulting behavior or choices made from the experienced describe the massive computation produced by human minds continuously.
The Buddha suggests that by sharpening my mental axe I may constrict my choice of behaviors to the right ones. Every specious moment the thousands of robots comprising my soul run Bayesian algorithms that weigh countless inputs against memories of past experience and expected future outcomes.
From Jung, After the confrontation with the soul-image the appearance of the archetype of the OLD WISE MAN, the personification of the spiritual principle, can be distinguished as the next milestone of inner development.
Jung sometimes referred to such archetypal figures as "Mana" personalities, supraordinate personalities, and treated them as equivalents to the Self: 'the mother ("Primordial Mother" and "Earth Mother") as a supraordinate personality...the supraordinate personality as the "self"'.
At other times, he saw them as representatives of the collective unconscious - as bridging-posts to the totality. Jennifer Michael Hecht is earth mother. The bringer of happiness.
Evolution of Confidence
Response to a very fine post that was referenced in The Daily Dish
The nuance of evolutionary psychology is that my brain did not evolve "for" anything but past fitness test by way of my parents (and grandparents) genome's constant struggle for life. Beginning 70000 years ago the human fitness landscape was shaped in every generation on a population of phenotypes that were selected for
Symbolic ties between our verbal clues (proto-words) and the physical objects (nouns) and actions occurring between those physical object (verbs). The selection pressure was not 'for' anything. Certainly not investment banking and piloting jet aircraft.
But I designed computers for years that were not 'for' anything. Except running the code of the last generation of computers. Which were designed to optimize, in an environment of struggle for survival against Intel, National Semiconductor, Zylog and the like.
In 1980-1984 when I worked on the design of the 68881 Floating Point Co-processor for the 68020 we did not optimize either microprocessor 'for' the Macintosh because, even though the 128K Mac ran on the predecessor 68000, because we did not have access to Mac GUI since we started the designs before 1984. So how did we design something 'for' the lady with the hammer? The same way that my ancestors designed for yesterdays challenges by pressing mental machinery designed by evolution but not 'for' anything that was going to happen next.
Following the floating point code step by step, which is all I got paid for, resulted in Mandelbrot zooms and weather forecasting and (strange loop alert) engineering workstations used to build more advanced computers. Which were designed for last years problems.
So evolution design with past information and we frail humans imagine that we also must be designed 'for' something. And we are - we are designed to make our grandparents happy and successful. This is my rebuttal to the argument from teleology that often creeps into our intuition about evolution.
The nuance of evolutionary psychology is that my brain did not evolve "for" anything but past fitness test by way of my parents (and grandparents) genome's constant struggle for life. Beginning 70000 years ago the human fitness landscape was shaped in every generation on a population of phenotypes that were selected for
Symbolic ties between our verbal clues (proto-words) and the physical objects (nouns) and actions occurring between those physical object (verbs). The selection pressure was not 'for' anything. Certainly not investment banking and piloting jet aircraft.
But I designed computers for years that were not 'for' anything. Except running the code of the last generation of computers. Which were designed to optimize, in an environment of struggle for survival against Intel, National Semiconductor, Zylog and the like.
In 1980-1984 when I worked on the design of the 68881 Floating Point Co-processor for the 68020 we did not optimize either microprocessor 'for' the Macintosh because, even though the 128K Mac ran on the predecessor 68000, because we did not have access to Mac GUI since we started the designs before 1984. So how did we design something 'for' the lady with the hammer? The same way that my ancestors designed for yesterdays challenges by pressing mental machinery designed by evolution but not 'for' anything that was going to happen next.
Following the floating point code step by step, which is all I got paid for, resulted in Mandelbrot zooms and weather forecasting and (strange loop alert) engineering workstations used to build more advanced computers. Which were designed for last years problems.
So evolution design with past information and we frail humans imagine that we also must be designed 'for' something. And we are - we are designed to make our grandparents happy and successful. This is my rebuttal to the argument from teleology that often creeps into our intuition about evolution.
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