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December 31st, 2010 by Lushfun

Tech Shall Set us Free!

My earnest optimism lies in the evolution of our technology to eliminate the stupidity of men & women trying to control their fellow men & women through the preponderance of laws and other constructs. Further progress gives all of us options. Sometimes these options add complexity of choice but it’s better to have that, then a dead end one way street.

It certainly feels like mating disruption is a part of a power struggle where our natures are subverted to benefit the select few at the expense of the greater many. In some ways the double constraints of nature and the nature of society may perhaps elicit a quicker release from both, by amplifying our drive to subvert them in drive for individual freedom.

Perhaps pushing our genes through chips* will give us further insight into how to accommodate each of our needs to maximize our potential. Happyness seems as elusive as insight and knowledge, once you have some you realize much more is yet further away. Maybe the journey is really its’ own reward, but as we evolve our trip does become more and more interesting.

In some way every little grain of thought, that inspires us and makes our minds more inquisitive helps our imagination create a little drop of happiness.

Controlling technology with copyrights or patents as the geyser of innovation pumps out effervescent waters of progress is not possible. They are like sticks thrown to shift the movement of a body of water which simply curves around and finds a better way.

Walk boldly with confidence that no statist government planner or a rent seeking banker may achieve a full monopoly over the discretion of your thought and freedom of action.

No amount of law, posturing, social programs, UN globalistic endeavors, or even a global currency, will ever achieve control over the future. It always belongs to those willing to think, question, innovate, sometimes humming a tune just a little different then everyone else is enough to push the orbit of the chaos theoretical sands into a pattern of random creative destruction. Universe rewards all those thoughts no matter how small or insignificant they may be, push your mind, let it breathe the theoretical sands of chaos, imagine the creative destruction, exhale randomness.

*http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101220121111.htm

December 13th, 2010 by Lushfun

Genes and Memes in Mating{}

Got an idea after some reading. If you remember Andromeda series and genetic memory, here we have the other side of it, mnemonic technology. Now what if we actually integrated the technological aspect of mnemonic technology into our DNA to make an adapting genetic meme, controlled by our experiences in real time where we would store historical and other interactions and pass them on to future generations, as well as, dig deep into past to get those sequences used before and use them today.

The whole ordeal is underlined by the assumption that this would be a wise adaptation. Imagine a woman choosing a mate that can go through not just her experiences but those of past two or three generations and see the impact of each selection on the mutation of the gene pool in her past and future heredity, would she be wiser than nature? Nature does a lot of things right and wrong, but this leads us to paradox of choice. Perhaps complexity is the enemy of the good and the simple since before, we could rely on natural drives and tendencies in this scenario everyone would override them looking for some sort of optimality which may never materialize.

Caveat Emptor or buyer beware eh? Well dear reader imagine now the influence of this from the perspective of Government and various interest groups whom would enjoy forcing everyone to go into a "meme training" program where they are not just brainwashed but inoculated into obedience by their very essence. Their DNA would be their leash, big brother would be praised inertly in the subconscious simply from a mnemonic technological hell in present and future generations. Perhaps those immune to this progress would be the selected few whom regress from copying a genetic error over a few generations that will wipe out the many, and we will go into a cycle of decay and rebirth where civilization collapses and crumbles to rise again.

Perhaps cultural displays and pick-up lines will be replaced by a saliva sample dropped onto a microchip by both parties to determine suitability and attraction in the future? The benevolence of nature displaced by the vulgarity of mankind? Seems like a dystopia from Huxley instead of utopia where everyone can be and achieve anything and everything. Short term the benefits maybe so high that we completely annihilate our own long term potential, aye humanity a single road is one where a u-turn is impossible.

1) memes and natural selection(selection of articles at the bottom is not bad)

2) mnemonic technology is basically what this guy is talking about

November 25th, 2010 by Lushfun

Creativity as a Science

Here I am sitting behind my slowly decomposing desk. My thoughts are empty and the imagination is somewhat blunted to put it mildly. Focusing with bated breath on the creative process at hand, attempting to produce a grain of knowledge.

It was not a big revelation that a lot of what I read online tends to be observational mimicry and entanglement of popular opinion that adds no practical knowledge to the reader. I remember reading as a kid when words filled the mind with warmth and a partial imaginary world was taking hold partly in this reality and partly in a different one. Basic knowledge and ambiguity seem to have saturated our introspective domains. Possibilities of choices in ambiguous words repackaged for our consumption bring no satisfaction and only leave us hungry for more, of something real and paradoxically unreal, which augments our thought in a novel way for which we long. Certainly the puzzle is within ourselves as well as the surrounding environments which flood us with data that keeps us busy.

Effervescent complexity seems to breed more complexity, all the while we ignore the core simplicity with which things could be seen in a totally new light that would bring us some joy. I remember having a tough time with statistics, things seemed overtly mathematical but not totally complex. If someone could just make me visualize the various outcomes in a relational manner it would have been like a complete revelation and my study time and progress would have been significantly shorter. Perhaps if people were more creative in their explanations and tried to simplify things to a bare minimum so that even the dumbest could visualize a core understanding of a concept we would all be better off. We would learn faster, more, and practical application and use would skyrocket as people would see new dimensions in their environment and how they could be improved.

Creative sparks are illusive because we have to stop ourselves and rethink to the simplest minimum of a problem and then re-orient our mind randomly away from our currently grounded inertia of thought. People get tied to their perceptions with age and switching from one belief to another or a different point of view seems harder and harder. Sometimes it seems progressive thought actually diminish our concepts of understanding since each structural idea has to be build on another and the edifice of belief built so solidly that the entire concoction can never be reoriented or approached from a different base altogether. If you have ever seen Tibetan Monks make a colored sand painting and then destroy it practicing creative destruction, most of us are not able to do the same with simple thoughts and ideas permeating our minds. We cringe at the loss of comfort that would pose to our ‘identities’, while they change with the times through the currents of environmental factors slowly eroding our beliefs.

Life is bitter, or sweet, or warm, or cold, or the spectrum of myriads of colors, or the darkness of the universe, we could close our eyes and see nothingness, but never do we imagine reds and oranges until someone suggests. Blue hues of the sky could be running through our veins while a bloody haze could be rising from the water. Invert your thoughts and associations, like a child playing in a sandbox perhaps and your views shift to something new. You can always go further than you think we just don’t practice our creative muscles wallowing in laziness as innovative thinking passes by we over complicate our thoughts in a festering and ingrained way, pushing and pulling, when the reality is you have to let go. Simple is hard, people don’t do simple, societies ignore it, all to the peril of the outcomes it could provide.

November 19th, 2010 by Lushfun

Competence of the Incompetent

Lately there has been a push by the "Powers that be" for yet another Copyright Law(COICA) that basically kills free speech online. All the big media corporations are rubbing their hands in glee as they will simply issue copyright infringement notices on anything they don't like be it free speech that criticizes their product or service or anything that actually infringes on their rights. Once your accused and your host kills your site, there will eventually be a blacklist upon which your site enters, and even if you win in court it will be there forever keeping you down. In all likelihood you will loose your domain first and then they will refund you ten bucks or so in restitution if you go to trial and win. This is how ladies and gentlemen this part of the internet age dies and another emerges.

But the incompetent media companies whom are competent at lobbying and thinking about law and ratcheting it to their advantage forget one very important thing. If this actually comes into being and results in locking down access for users whom will get banned by their internet service providers if they downloaded and infringed upon the media cos. rights there will be a backlash. Do people forget that IRC still exists? and that before torrents it was the main venue for file sharing? The low hertz bandwidth that was used for "Ricochet" can be used by anyone to create a network, especially as hardware becomes more and more accessible. Would there be a rapid development, no of course not, but a parallel outlet no matter how small, if perfectly free will derive an impact that is anything but marginal. Oh ye of little faith and wisdom, that had no foresight prior to going on this foolish venture to contain the desires of the masses that wants content that is affordable and accessible at any and all times, how many problems will you reap then. Domains, would become meaningless if there are no central servers to register them with and the market of bidders is limited. Users who flock elsewhere and do not pass through a dead network do not bring money from ads or content delivery.

Science will find a way, especially as the costs of technological application are falling with every second the clock beats forward. Sometimes going with the times is a smarter thing to do, although the geyser of legal activity has continued to spray crap all over rational venues to this outcome. Legislating only works if enforcement is possible and with technology going faster with every minute it is simply not going to happen without the consent of the users, and they will not give it.

1)http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/case-against-coica

2)cato/inst-internet-censorship-bill-threatens-free-speech-rule-of-law/

3)http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/04100311920/mpaa-boss-defends-censorships-with-blatantly-false-claims.shtml

November 10th, 2010 by Lushfun

Hologenome

Somewhat peculiar story from wired about fruit flies preferring partners whom are reared on the same food source. Perhaps humans are similar in some respects? "But these results show that it’s not just a host’s genome that can undergo selection; it’s the host plus everything that lives on or in it. The Hologenome Theory posits that it’s the host genome plus its associated microorganisms that ends up being the unit of selection." This quote from the article above is particularly startling. Imagine the bacteria in your stomach that develops out of your preference to corn flakes altering your preferences for females that also similarly like corn flakes, isn't it grand?

I am sure we have more inputs and variability in our system but it is somewhat interesting to not that a lot of it may come from battles between bacteria in your system with marginal preferences given to someone who smell or possess a similar proportion of the same bacteria in their system not just to your preferences but due to other organisms in your system. It underscores the Selfish Gene theory by Richard Dawkins, which somewhat highlights our bodies being alike to lumbering robots and there are influencers within us that drive us, our genes. Here however we see that not only genes but other things also impact our decisions. So in some sense we could always ask ourselves do we really want that donut, or does donut living bacteria within my insides want more of its brethren to influence my behavior to propagate itself? It may well be that it is a little of both.

Novemer 8th, 2010

Job Market and Know How

As I look for work it dawns on me how much technical specificity the job requirments are innundated with. In some way it seems not just absurd but laughable that the requirments and the potential payout are so idiotically skewed. People are looking for Ph.D interns with knowledge in complex math and developers who know multiple languages and years of experience, while at the same time they want them to earn absolutely nothing and work like a hamster. Are these expectations reasonable? seriously now? But no, the flood of idiocy continues unabatted with listings being churned out for the hidden gems of people that will work for nothing because hey your company is the absolute best to be at, even if your going to have to eat crackers just to jump at the opportunity.

In some way the exceptional has become the desired norm and normal the discarded. To me it seems odd that seeing myself as regular and no better or worse than anyone else is an extreme downgrade. The notion that you have to upsell yourself beyond the orbit of your ego, seems a bit rediculous. Have we become a country of salesmen and marketers whom excell at selling the snake oil excellence to each other? I am certain there are exceptional people who are very good. I am also certain they are rare and their pool does not exponentially expand to meet all the job postings that are being churned like a ferris wheel. In a sense, its a rational expectation that the companies that hire do not want to settle since their timeline is infinity at least on paper, on the other hand practicality says that it is simply a joke they are playing on themselves.

Maybe I am just bitter, but even if someone replied to my applications and hired me, my outlook wouldn't change much on this matter. May the force be with you and good luck dear reader in your endevours.

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