dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja: 10/29/13

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

the new left review has stricter user controls than any other major publication that i've ever seen.

sorry guys, but my concept of a new left doesn't uphold intellectual property rights through the use of force. nor does it enforce distributive networks that have no logical end outside of vanguard politics.

they're going to be pathetically saluting stalin all alone into perpetuity if they don't open up to general access.

...because you can't stand yourself

i kind of shudder at articles like this. but i do see their value in a general sense.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/10/21/the-need-for-belonging-in-math-and-science/?WT.mc_id=SA_facebook

personally, i probably would have rejected math if the program was organized more like an arts program.

see, ironically, i probably should have been studying art rather than math, and would have if the program was less focused on building social relationships.

as it is, i wasted a lot of time with something i wasn't interested in because it was the only program i could find that accommodated my lack of social skills.

as it turns out, i'm not the greatest mathematician in the world. however, i think a lack of social skills is something i share with mathematicians much more insightful than i am. moving to make the field more social is likely to have the effect of pushing them out to something else, where they can explore things by themselves.

...because it's the quiet, contemplative, intellectual isolation that has drawn them into math in the first place.

so, they need to be careful with this. it has the potential to create a lot of harm and havoc.

it's sort of enraging, even. this is one of the very few paths that an introvert can follow in this society on the way to some kind of comfortable existence. can you goddamned extroverts just fuck off and leave them alone? why do you have to constantly be meddling in everything?

rather than bring in all of these horrific social programs that are going to make the introverts miserable, why not focus on ensuring that follower-types of extroverted people that rely on external validation to define themselves go into, say, accounting, instead?

it seems to me like the failure here was in pushing catherine good into the wrong field of study.

...and the headline should say "sociable, needy people do not belong in math or science".

i think this sort of backlash was predictable. so long as it can be resisted, it's likely to reach an apex and then fizzle out. it's kind of scary to consider what the apex might be, but at least there's some hope on the other side of it. it would help if the dominant culture would be less pro-war (and that's what it's about. creating soldiers.) in the way that it promotes ridiculous concepts of masculinity.

and if it can't be resisted? well, read the handmaid's tale.

http://prospect.org/article/good-mens-rights-movement-hard-find

yes. a source of hydrocarbons. the price of the space program redeems itself.

there are some mild transport problems with that idea. not to mention the reality that we're going to terraform the earth into venus if we keep ejecting these greenhouse gasses.

we are, however, ruled by the insane. they'll try it.

http://phy.so/301815542

it's so typical of american thinking.

- "you know, if you kill all these terrorists, it's going to create more terrorists that need to avenge the death of the newly dead ones."
- i see. so, what do we do?
- "to really end terrorism, we have to break the cycle of violence."
- break the cycle of violence?
- "yeah."
- ok. we'll see what steps we can take to do that.

result:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/Drone-Attacks-at-Funerals-of-People-Killed-in-Drone-Strikes/280821/

i think this is an interesting area to explore, but that what is being discussed in this article is largely specious. if there's anything to draw from it, it's that the tribe in question enforces more rationality while our "weird" society enforces irrationality through advertising, television logic, etc

the issue of anything being innate, one way or the other, does not follow, one way or the other.

i've always realized that it's clear that what kahneman really hit on was the effect of mass brainwashing and the whole experiment in advertising and population control that began after the great depression.

but i've also always assumed that these effects are exaggerating something more innate, and that this kind of brainwashing couldn't work otherwise.

the study doesn't really examine these questions, it just presents a case for tabula rasa (without realizing it).

http://phy.so/301643668

ok, umm, what?

- it's well known that oxygen levels rose dramatically around 2 billion years ago as a result of life producing it as a waste product. the free oxygen in the atmosphere was mostly produced through this process.
- in fact, the oxygen levels became so high that they poisoned the existing life, causing a mass extinction.
- that clearly demonstrates that oxygen is not "required for life". what is a plant's reaction to oxygen?
- oxygen-metabolizing life forms then evolved from oxygen-emitting life forms as a response to all the poisonous oxygen in the atmosphere.

after reading this a few times, my best guess is that the scientist who did the study is specialized to the cambrian and was simply never taught about the oxygenation event.

http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5758/oxygen-not-the-cause-of-the-cambrian-explosion

most working scientists are nothing approaching a polymath. they know what they're taught, which is very narrow.

spare time is spent watching dumb sitcoms like every other idiot.

listening to lee ranaldo's last night on earth...

this may be a little out of fashion right now, but maybe that's exactly why it's so refreshing to hear.