Tomorrow Land - The Governor Nix Speech.

Let's imagine. If you glimpsed the future and you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You'd go to, who? Politicians? Captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck. The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it... to scare people straight. What reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they have ever known and loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse. And how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair. They didn't fear their demise, they repackaged it! It can be enjoyed as video games... as TV shows... as books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted toward it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation - explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear.. the glaciers melt... algae blooms... all around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you WON'T TAKE THE HINT! In every moment there is the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it - and because you won't believe it, you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this so terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason: because that future doesn't ask anything of you today.

Noam Chomsky - Hume's Paradox

Interesting links

1. David Hume
2. Huge Human Inequality Study Hints Revolution Is In Store For U.S.
3. Who, What, Why: What is the Gini coefficient?

Rationality, Religion, Evolution - Jordan Peterson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht9O7dNfULQ

---

Jordan Peterson
People like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins they assume that the natural person is the civilized creature that you see before you in a discussion like this, but I don't believe that. I think that people are far crazier and far more destructive and - and far greater as well, than the typical rationalist approach.

00:25
Rationality is a surface facade - that's all - and the idea that people will eventually be rational? It's much more likely that they will be irrational than rational. You could say for example that Catholicism, let's say, for all its irrationality, was as rational as people can get. If you remove that level of irrationality, that structure, say, then everything falls apart and people get so irrational you can't believe it - not more rational.

00:57
Harris and his crowd think that we were superstitious for thousands of years kind of savage and and and superstitious and then all of a sudden the Enlightenment came along - the scientific revolution - and "poof" we got rational, and since then things have been good. That's not how it looks to me at all. I don't buy that. I think that our rationality, as I said already, our rationality, even our science, is nested inside this larger metaphysical structure. This is also something that Carl Jung would be an advocate of - that there's an irrational, pragmatic, I would say evolutionarily-determined ethic underneath this rationality, and when it goes then all that rationality goes to.

01:47
So yes, you can be a non-believer but the funny thing about that is, too, you can't be a non-believer in your action, you see, because Harris's metaphysics is fundamentally Christian. He acts out a Christian metaphysics but he says "well I don't believe it". It's like "Well, yeah you do because you're acting it out. You just say you don't believe it".

2:09
Host
What do you mean? What do you mean he's acting? Acting it out like what for example?

02:13
Jordan
Well he doesn't rob banks, doesn't kill people, doesn't rape, doesn't murder; you know I mean look in crime and punishment for example...

Host
So you think, I mean, when you don't do those things, basically the underpinning of it - even though I think, I certainly I can't speak for Sam, and you guys have had, by the way, regardless of where we get with this, you guys have had, I think, two great conversations; one where you didn't quite get there, but one where you've come together, and I suspect you both really relish in that, right? I mean at the end of the day this is someone that you respect whether you...

Jordan
Oh, yeah. Oh, no no no, look, I mean, yeah.

Host
I just think I need to preface, because you guys are so "at each other's throats" all the time, that when I saw two people that I respect just disagreeing on things but really trying to get there, I thought "this is good". And there's a certain amount of people that, you know, that want you guys do tear each other apart...

Jordan
Well there's a good case to be made for atheism. I mean, let's make no bones about it. I actually think it's an easier case to make than the alternative because you could say in some sense there's been 300, 400 years of brilliant scientists who've been doing nothing but laying the foundation for an objective, empirical atheism. So it's an unbelievably powerful argument, but it's not going to lead to the to the rule of rationality. I don't believe that because...

03:34 Host
Do you think anything could get you there? Do you think somebody could lay out a case that could eventually turn you on this the same way you would want someone like Sam to come around to what you're saying? Do you think that that's even in the realm of possibility?

Jordan
I don't. I can't see how because it's it's not like I haven't thought these things through. I mean, I am a scientist, you know? I understand the scientific worldview. In fact everything that I am saying and thinking about religion is nested inside an evolutionary viewpoint; an evolutionarily biology viewpoint and an evolutionary psychology viewpoint. I do believe there's a fundamentalcontrast between a Darwinian worldview and a Newtonian worldview, which is the worldview that i think sam harris and his crowd basically have. he didn't agree with that but... and it's complicated but... see I guess in some sense I'm more romantic in temperament than Sam, and I think then his followers too - and because of that I can see the irrational and malevolent side of human beings - I believe much more clearly than they can, and I also think I have far more experience with that sort of thing.

04:43 Host
So let's say Earth is crumbling. We have two ships we're gonna send the people that believe what you are saying here - basically that we need this sort of religious underpinning - and then the the Dawkins/Sam people, they're going to take their hundred people, you're going to take your hundred people, were going to go to two different planets and set things up "the way they should be", you know, blank slate for each. I guess the part that I would struggle with here is to understand how that... how their ship lands, they're rooted in science and in in basic liberalism and and acceptance of others and all that... how that society would not flourish from them from the base level if we could just reset. Now I think you could make a great argument that we can't do it here because there's just so much history here and all that stuff; but if we were just resetting on another place why could we not do it that way and have it work?

Jordan
First of all, you know, there's an assumption that science and the scientific worldview in some sense has won - and because it's so self-evident, let's say, because of what it can produce, that people just will accept it and move forward with it. I'm not sure about that either. I mean, I think there's a strong anti-science movement afloat now. I don't think there's any reason to assume that a scientific attitude of that sort would be stable.

I mean, it it's only 300 years old... 400... People don't like it when I say that because - okay, fine you can chase it back to some degree to the ancient Greeks, you know, barely - but really it was Newton and bacon and and Descartes, and and that's not very long ago. We take it for granted, but there's anti-science movements popping up... well look the whole debate over biology, to some degree is profoundly an anti-science movement, and not unconsciously so, consciously so!

06:41
Host
Yeah.

Jordan
I don't think that there's any reason to assume something like that would be stable; there's no evidence that it's stable, let's say; whereas there is evidence for the stability of cultures that were non-scientific for thousands of years - millions of years, for that matter - at least hundreds of thousands of years.

Host
There was a lot of war and death involved in those cultures, too, but I guess that would be your argument: That this is just the nature of this battle between these two worlds that we live in.

07:10
Jordan
Yeah, well you know, the other thing that often happens with with with Dawkins and Harrison and and their crew is that they attribute war and conflict to religious motivations. You know, I find that quite interesting because, first of all, chimpanzees go to war. So, you know, we could just lay that right on the table and say "well, so much for the religious theory; they're territorial, we're territorial."

You could consider religious sentiment as an aspect of territoriality, but the fundamental motivation for the battle is territorial - and that's grounded; like you can see that in animals always. That was only discovered, you know, the chimps went to war and in about mid-70s. Goodall suppressed it for quite a while because she thought maybe she had warped the chimpanzees by provisioning them - and so that they were manifesting abnormal behavior - but they were studied for quite a while and they do do raiding. They'll wipe out another colony, no problem, and brutally. They seem to have absolutely no inhibitions on their aggression whatsoever; they'll tear them into pieces. Chimpanzees are about six times as strong as an adult male. They're super strong, and so when they let loose they're vicious with no control.

8:23
And so, unless you're willing to attribute religious sentiment to the chimpanzees (which I think you could to some degree, by the way).

Host
How do we make that jump for a chimpanzee?

Jordan
Well, because the precursors to religious belief are in place so for example animals organize themselves into a hierarchy you could call it a dominance hierarchy, but it's not exactly the right way to conceptualize it because dominant sounds like power, right?

That's sort of the social justice warrior postmodernist claim - that all hierarchies are based on power.

08:55
Frans de Waal, a dutch anthropologist who studied chimps for a long time, has noted that the brutal chimp dictatorship tends to be unstable and end in a very violent manner.

If you're a brutal chimp leader and you're always tormenting everyone and you don't do any reciprocal grooming and you don't have any friends, and then one day two chimps who are nicely bonded together, three-quarters your size, wait and ambush you and tear you into pieces... and so one of the things do all has noted is that the stable chimpanzee troops tend to have a leader that's quite pro-social, lot of friends a lot of social bonds, a lot of mutual grooming; and so you could see even there...

Imagine that there are sets of hierarchies among chimpanzees and there is different principles of leadership at the top; then you could imagine a competition across time; which principle of leadership is going to produce the most stable and functional chimpanzee hierarchy?

Well, that is exactly what does happen and so there's some shape that the top of the hierarchy starts to take, and you could think about that as the beginnings of an ideal. It's even more complicated than that because... let's say you get a stable hierarchy set up and then - this is what happens in human beings it doesn't happen in chimps, or it does but only to a limited degree - you get a stable hierarchy set up and then there's some pattern of behavior that emerges that reliably moves men to the top of that. They leave more offspring, so what happens is that the male dominance arc, the male hierarchy, forget about dominance... the male hierarchy becomes a selection mechanism. It promotes men to the upper ranks and Then the women peel off the top because - we know that human females do that; chimpanzee females don't - they're promiscuous mater's; the dominant males are more likely to mate with the females, but that's because they chase the subordinates away - it's not because the females are choosy.

10:54
Jordan
So the reason I'm telling you this: It's really important because imagine that there's a reliable pattern of behavior that will move you up a male hierarchy across time. What that means is that men over time have become biologically adapted to that pattern. The hierarchy is there; it's stable; it exists across millions of years, and so it acts as a selection mechanism by promoting men. And so, the men who have the genes that are most likely to get them promoted put those genes forward, and so we get more like the group ideal as we progress through time, both biologically and culturally; and we then also start to articulate that group ideal, and that's partly what a religion does when it when it's coming up with the idea of an ideal.

There's a distinction made between [countries that rule by the ruler, who's God] and [countries that are ruled by God, who's not the ruler]. Okay, so, strip it for a minute of its religious language and imagine this instead: Imagine that what we consider God is the abstraction of the ideal by which people have to orient themselves to produce a functional society. It's an abstraction right?

Host
So it's just sort of the the basic underlying truth of how we are able to function as a group of people.

12:10
Jordan
Yes, properly; and you can't identify it with any one person because when you identify it with the person then the system gets corrupted because the person gets inflated, let's say.

Host
This would be like the Pharaoh.

Jordan
Yes, exactly like, precisely like that; that's the canonical story in the Old Testament. The Pharaoh is the earthly ruler who demands everything that you should provide to God. What's God? Well, we can speak about it from an evolutionary psychology perspective: God is the idea of the abstract ideal, and you separate it out from the actual ruler just like in in in in our society. The idea of sovereignty is abstracted from the president, right? The president comes and goes; the sovereignty of the president remains. The sovereignty of the president is a very abstract idea because it's disembodied, right? Its disembodied.

Jordan
13:10 We were chimps, for God's sake! How long do you think it took us to figure out how to disembody the idea of sovereignty from the individual? Man! it was like, well, maybe it took us until 150,000 years ago to start formulating that - you know, in some articulated way, in some abstract way.

I think we could recognize it before then, and the way you recognize it is through admiration. Alright if you meet someone that you admire, there's someone you want to imitate.

Imagine this pattern that will move you up the hierarchy; and then you see people who manifest different elements of it; and you see someone who manifests an element that you don't have and something in your response to that with admiration. It's unconscious, right? because it pulls you towards them. It's not voluntary. You see [that] really with kids a lot when they hero worship someone and start to imitate them. The same thing happens throughout culture.

Dictator States Documentary Series

Inside North Korea's bubble in Japan

Art and Politics: This is what democracy looks like

In a quest to make sense of the political environment in the United States in 2017, lawyer and ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero turned to a surprising place — a 14th-century fresco by Italian Renaissance master Ambrogio Lorenzetti. What could a 700-year-old painting possibly teach us about life today? Turns out, a lot. Romero explains all in a talk that's as striking as the painting itself.

Transcript

Capitalism, Manipulation, and Overprotected Children

Today I read an article called The Fragile Generation.

It's well-worth the read - but the idea presented in passing early in the text that economic problems may be blamed in part on [the results of overprotection of children] needs discussion. Yes it is a factor, but only as a symptom that contributes to the continuation of the illness.

When we raise kids unaccustomed to facing anything on their own, including risk, failure, and hurt feelings, our society and even our economy are threatened.

This thought sparked my imagination, and led me to ponder how economic problems and the problem of overprotection both stem from a common root. Clearly, the lack of regulation of capitalism occludes any other perceived contributor to economic problems. What's not so clear is how overprotection also stems from unregulated capitalism.

Capitalism and Economic Problems

All other factors in the precariousness of our economic situation are occluded by the problem of [lack of regulation of capitalism]. Though not its perceived purpose, the main effect of capitalism in its current form is to advance the flow of wealth upward. This is made evident by the increasing disparity of wealth distribution among the nation's (an, in fact, the world's) population.

In a functioning democracy regulation could be used to enforce both sustainability and social justice in the broadest sense of the terms, but despite surface appearances, the United States is not a functioning democracy. It is, rather, a plutocratic oligarchy in which politics has been made subordinate to the set of ideas, institutions, and entities that we refer to as "capitalism".

According to a Princeton study, public opinion has little or no influence on American politicians. If this is so, then the sole apparent influence over government regulation seems to be the lobbyists, who provide money to individual politicians' campaigns. The politicans who receive this money are well-aware that there will be no more of it if they fail to support the interests specified by the lobbyists.

The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

This state of affairs renders the United States unable to implement laws that would protect against future misuse of the system by the powerful in their pursuits of great profit, despite the risk of additional economic crashes (not to mention a plethora of other undesirable events and conditions).

Overprotection of Children

Overprotection is an engineered trend (one of many) that has been instigated purposefully to bolster the phenomenon Jung called "the mass man". It's part of making people compliant, incapable of critical thinking (and so rebellion), and therefore dependent on "The State".

If Carl Gustav Jung could be said to have "believed in" a sacred principle, that principle would probably be the importance of the individual. Not only was individuation - his formula for wholeness - predicated upon the same etymological root, but in his later writings his strong emphasis on culture and society was inextricably bound to the concept of the individual. Jung's training as a physician and as a psychiatrist is reflected in his observations upon both the individual and society.

Concerned as he was about the psychological ramifications of "mass man in a mass society," Jung never lost sight of the fact that both the causal and curative agents of all social ills lay in the individual.

~ William Wilson Quinn

The history of capitalist manipulation of public thought is long and sordid. Edward Bernays used Sigmund Freud's psychology to profoundly change capitalism, which led to his huge wealth. The lesson hasn't been lost on those that followed; psychological manipulation is the backbone of the current power structure. I wish the Let Grow Foundation great success in their efforts to "see kids outside again", but I fear The State won't allow them much.

Conclusion

Capitalism as an institution understands that "both the causal and curative agents of all social ills lay in the individual", and has strong motive to prevent the individuation that would restrain it. A glance at the Forbes list of billionaires should convince anyone that money (and therefore power) is in the hands of capitalists who control the direction of society. This power (wealth) provides the opportunity and the means for manipulation of public perception and for control of government by the horribly unethical but perfectly legal method of "throwing money at it".

In many cases, the effect of "psychological manipulation" may be validly argued to be coincidental. For example, prolific publication of stories (both real and fictional) involving harm to children can make for gripping fiction or relevant news, as the case may be, and so constitutes a profitable niche for publication in various forms. Such pieces may be, regardless of manipulative consequences, argued to fall under First Ammendment protection along with Campaign Finance, the unregulated use of AI to target ads, and a variety of other potentually manipulative communication techniques currently in use.

In support of a functioning human society, we must consider the valid limits of Freedom of Speech and the consequences of exceeding those limits. The effects of some manipulators (regardless of intention) surely belong under the category of "Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater", and the general welfare requires they be regulated in appropriate ways. This may be a legal path to curtailing such manipulation of individuals and government processes for the benefit of humanity.

References

• The Fragile Generation
• Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater
• Carl Jung
• Edward Bernays
• Sigmund Freud
• The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines"
• The long Jung quote.
• William Wilson Quinn
• Forbes Billionaire List
• Princeton Study
• Tufekci, AI
• HyperNormalism BBC Documentary

Wealth Distribution References

• https://www.thenation.com/article/20-people-now-own-as-much-wealth-as-half-of-all-americans/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
• https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/18/rich-people-own-much-money-half-world-report-says/y6az3Wtasd5TIf9Q6k3I4K/story.html
• https://www.thebalance.com/american-net-worth-by-state-metropolitan-4135839
• http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-inequality-when-a-fair-shake-isnt/

Postscript

Given the above, we might take a second meaning from the following term, taken from the article:

Today many kids are raised like veal.

We're Building a Dystopia Just to Make People Click on Ads

We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us - and what we can do in response.

Outline:

1. Terminator AIs are a distant threat and 1984 is not the correct dystopia for the 21st century.
2. The present threat is not in what AI will do to us on its own, but in how it will be used by [the people who control AI] to manipulate us in extremely negative ways.
3. AI is a jump in category - it's "a whole different world". It's not just 'the next thing'. 
4. With prodigious potential come prodigious risks.
5. We "roll our eyes" at online ads, but "persuasion architecture" works. Huge collections of data allow AIs to very accurately guess who will respond to what kinds of persuasion.
6. The data is far to complex for humans to understand. Tufekci says "It's giant matrices with... maybe millions of rows and columns". (I'd expect significantly more than 2 dimensions).
7. "It's like we're not programming anymore, we're growing intelligence that we don't truly understand."
8. This only works with immense amounts of data. Deep surveillance on all of us is encouraged.
9. Ethics in targeting is an issue. "What if the system targets people who are bipolar and about to enter the manic phase?" Such people are prone to overspending and compulsive gambling. There's no way to determine whether this is the result of AI targeting.
10. A lot of this stuff is "off the shelf".
11. YouTube auto-play follows increasing order of extremism. "It's like you're never hard-core enough for YouTube.
12. With nobody minding the ethics of the store, these sites can profile people to find people susceptible to more extremism. It's cheap and easy to target any category.
13. Trump's campaign used Facebook to demobilize people, strictly targeted. "Dark Posts", privacy guaranteed.
14. Facebook - multiple election manipulation experiments proved workable; what if they decided to support a candidate?
15. "Little by little, public debate is becoming impossible," because the most-used systems for public debate only let you see what you already believe.

Conclusions:

1. We're building this structure of surveillance authoritarianism merely to get people to click on ads, but what if it gets worse? If authoritarianism is using overt fear to terrorize, we'll be scared, but we'll know it. We'll hate it, we'll resist it.
2. If the powers that be are quietly watching, judging and nudging, predicting and identifying "troublemakers", using personal individual weaknesses/vulnerabilities...
   ... if they're doing it at scale through our private screens so we don't know what others are seeing...
   ...That authoritarianism will envelope us like a spider's web, and we may not even know that we're in it.
3. The structure of the architecture is the same whether you're selling shoes or politics. The algorithms don't know the difference. 
4. Social media is great in many ways. It's not that people are maliciously and deliberately trying to wreck the world, but the structures and business models are still very dangerous. There's no simple solution.
5. Restructuring is needed. We have to face lack of transparency, the structural challenge of machine-learning capacity. These structures are organizing how we plan and function; are controlling what we can and can't do.
6. We have to mobilize our tech, creativity, and politics so we can build AI that supports human goals but is constrained by human values. 
7. We need a digital economy where our data and our attention is not for sale to the highest bidding authoritarian or demagogue!

We do want the prodigious potential of artificial intelligence and digital technology to blossom, but for that we must face this prodigious menace open eyed, and now.

For a more holistic view of this topic, see the Hypernormalization BBC Documentary.
Here are my notes/outline on that.

Hypernormalization BBC Documentary

There's always a balance, isn't there?
Here's a link to the YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aLQPNPlK5M

My notes/outline appear below.

Opening Remarks

Extraordinary events continue to undermine the stability of our world. Nobody has a vision for a better/different future.

Those in control can't seem to deal with our problems: Over the past 40 years politicians, financiers, and tech utopians rather than face up to the real complexities of the world retreated... constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power.

People went along with this because the simplicity was reassuring?

System attackers (radicals, artists, counter-culture) failed; they became part of the trickery - they, too, had retreated into the make-believe world; their opposition has no effect; nothing changes.

Outside, forces are growing and beginning to pierce our fake world.

1975 - New York and Damascus

Two ideas were emerging about how to run the world without politics

1. New York city was on the verge of collapse.
2. Damascus, Syria - Henry Kissinger vs. Hafez al-Assad

New York

1. New York on the verge of collapse
2. 30 years of increasing debt (borrowed from banks to finance welfare and services)
3. Then the middle class fled the city
4. Banks continued lending; debt grew; banks stopped lending.
5. Banks took control of the city; President Ford refused to help.
6. 8/9 members of the committee to manage NYC Finances were bankers.
7. Financial Institutions took power from politicans and started to run society themselves. Enforced austerity. Fired teachers, police, and firemen.
8. Nobody opposed the bankers
9. The revolutionaries had retreated and shacked up in abandoned buildings doing fry-brained art.
10. Individualism. They didn't try to change it, they just experienced it. Everything was going to shit and they just watched.
11. Their art/music/self-expression tried to change what was in peoples' heads, but I guess they were too stoned or something.
12. By detatching themselves, they began to lose touch with the reality of power. "It was the mood of the era. The revolution was deferred indefinitely and, while we were dozing, the money crept in".
13. Trump. Saw a scheme to scam $$ from the state. Started buying up derelict buildings. Negotiated 160M tax breaks. Banks sprang with loans. Trump transformed NY into a city for the rich; made fortune off the situation; paid practically nothing.

Damascus, Syria

1. Damascus, Syria - Henry Kissinger vs. Hafez al-Assad
2. Using politics to change the world vs Run the world as a stable system.
3. Assad was ruthless. Killed/Imprisoned; had a vision to unite arab nations
4. Kissinger felt it was a threat. He was a creep; inconsiderate, tempermental; saw himself as a "hard realist"; thought history was a struggle for power. Saw the world as an interconnected system. Wanted to maintain a balance to prevent chaos - really, he helped cause the chaos we now live in
5. Kissenger thought strengthening the arab world would destabilize his balance of power; he betrayed Assad; broke the arab alliances. Egypt + Israel. Palastinians were ignored.
6. Kissenger's first thoughts on structural (global balance of power) Kind of ignored humanity.
7. Assad raged (controlled fury) about treachery; demons from below; retreated. Lost hope in his transformation of arab world; became brutal, vengeful.

1980s

1. Soviet dream had failed. No food. No "belief". No vision of future.
2. Technocrats pretended everything was OK. Everyone knew - could see - that their world had fallen apart; they pretended all was OK because what else could they do?
3. The "fakeness" was "Hypernormal".
4. SyFi - stalkers; the zone; Nothing is what it seems; reality changes minute-by-minute; hidden forces change the way you think and feel. Reality had become shifting and unstable. (Roadside picnic)

Reagan

1. Wanted to make the world moral. Fight evil. make the world a better place. "Into the hands of America, God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind." *BLARGHHHH*
2. ...but Reagan had to deal with Kissinger's mess... and didn't.
3. Instead, he used Ghadafi as a scapegoat.
4. Massacres. Christian/Lebanese slaughtered Palastinians. Israel let it happen.
5. Reagan sent Marines as neutral "peacekeeping force". Assad didn't believe a bit of it; ended up using suicide bombers.

Ayatollah Khomeini

1. Taught people that suicide was OK if you took enemies with you.
2. Took 10s of thousands of young boys from school to walk through mine fields so the army could pass through unharmed.
3. Assad took the lesson.
4. Oct 1993 - Marines killed by suicide bombers. 241 dead.
5. Regan mourned "the loss of those splendid young men," promised to respond, but instead turned and left. Assad thought he was hot for forcing the Americans to leave the middle-east.
6. Syria and Iran thought they could control it.

Mid-80s

1. Banks had risen. Banks were taking control of the nation, but in a hidden way.
2. Gibson: book about powerful information networks; Raw brutal corporate power.
3. Hippies tried to make a hippieish cyber space; an alternative reality; Acid-heads.
4. by 2000, computers were really making cyber-space worlds. ( This bit seems a bit fluffy to me; not sure these guys weren't still dropping acid )
5. Hackers thought so, too. Hacked the hippies and published stuff.
6. Hacked TRW, too (military computers, then big business); stole and publiched hippies' (barlow's) credit history.
7. Showed the emergence of "a new and growing power that was way beyond politics".

Reagan Again

1. He became desperate to show America struggled against evil.
2. Framed up Ghadafi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafi
3. He became a fake criminal mastermind; he liked it for the fame.
4. Ghadafi thought he was a revolutionary, fated to take on the west.
5. Third Universal Theory - Green Book - Nobody read it. He was crazy. Had no power/global influence.
6. Dec 1985 - Syria started suicide bombing in Europe.
7. Reagan blamed Ghadafi and Ghadafi took credit, despite that the Europeans knew it was really the Syrians. America insisted it was Ghadafi and pressed it. Ghadafi loved it - insisted it was him. Shot his mouth off all over the place.
8. Ghadafi pretended to be pretending NOT to be getting into missile development, WMDs. Journalists pushed the idea. Ghadafi became a "global supervillian" at the head of "a rogue state".
9. More terrorism in Europe; Reagan wanted to bomb Libya; analysts were being pressed to come up with evidence against Ghadafi. The Americans and Ghadafi were generating a false narrative; phony evidence.
10. Europe insisted it was Syria, but America was to scared to face Assad. Less support (arab, soviet) for Ghadafi. America attacked Libya - killed a bunch of men, women, children. Ghadafi basked in the supposed sympathy. American bombing was hugely inaccurate.
11. IT WAS ALL BULLSHIT.

UFO Craze

1. UFO theory vs Secret military technology theory.
2. Fueled wide-spread belief that governments would lie.

Perception Management

1. A bluring of fact and fiction.
2. 1980s Perception Management became a central part of the American government.
3. Tell dramatic stories that grabbed the imagination - middle-east, central america, etc... Distraction from intractable complexities of the real world.
4. How to manipulate people; reality is not important - just something that you "handle".

Soviet Empire Imploded

1. Nobody (politicians, think tank, journalists, academics) saw it coming.
2. Can't do anything about the world - it's too complicated.

Managed Outcomes

1. "The System" became [management of a post-political world]
2. Runaway world; Impossible to predict outcomes; Try to predict dangers and avoid risks.
3. Extra-political systems forming to predict and manage the world.
4. 1992 - Aladin; prediction tool, monitoring world, comparing to events in past; moves investments from dangerous areas;
5. Incredibly successful. Controls 15T assets (7% of world)
6. Prozac, Eliza; REPEAT BACK TO PEOPLE WHATEVER THEY'RE SAYING.
7. "Everybody is kind of brainwashing each other into being happy."

In an age of individualism, what made people feel secure was having themselves reflected back on them, just like in a mirror.

AI Changed Direction

1. We started creating systems that "reflected people", but on a gigantic scale; Intelligent agents;
2. Intelligent agents work by monitoring individuals, gathering vast ammounts of data about their past behavior, looking for patterns of correlation from which they could predict what they would want in the future.
3. It's a system that orders the world around "you"; Reassuring in an age of Anxious individualism, frightened of the future, like Eliza. Puts people in a "safe bubble", protected from complexities of the world.
4. Profitable applications;

A New System

1. A New System promised to keep world safe
2. Finance controls unpredictability of free market
3. IAs online predicted what people would want; how they would behave
4. Politics became part of a wider system that's managing the world.
5. Voice of the weak against the powerful was eroding; cracks forming around the edges of society.
6. Dangerous Flaw: In the real world, not everything can be predicted by reading data from the past.
7. ...boring story of trumps losses in las vegas...

Back to Assad - Dec. 1988

1. Pan Am plane bombed over Scotland; Evidence pointed to Syria.
2. Then there was a change and it was said to be Libya because America and Britain needed Asad as an ally in Gulf War.
3. Gadaffi became the scapegoat again.
4. Assad's terrorist power had betrayed him; Hamas caught on, and took it to civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
5. Everyone went nuts, and the peace process was over; more and more violence.

In America, Focus on Future Dangers

1. Pessimism spread; from technocrat world and across the country.
2. Dark Forboding, spread through violent, horrific disaster movies. ("Dream Baby Dream" sequence)
3. 9/11
4. Bush and Blair blah-blahing about WMDs that didn't exist; They made yet another show about Ghadafi
5. "...and the line between reality and fiction became ever-more blurred."
6. Sept 2002: WMDs stolen from the 1996 movie "The Rock"; which, for technical reasons, no real nerve gas would be packaged like.
7. IT WAS ALL BULLSHIT.

2000 - Assad Died; Son took over.

1. He tried to bring back his dad's old tricks; It quickly got out of his control, of course.
2. Al-Qaeda formed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
3. This made Bush and Blair look bad, so they made a show of turning Ghadafi "turn over a new leaf" and be a good guy.
4. Engineers of a Fake World; a huge group of people and professions. In reality, Ghadafi had no WMDs.
5. MORE! Libya was caused to confess to the Scotland plane bombing.
6. New lies being constructed on top of old lies.
7. Ghadafi's son: "It was their (USA) game, not our game."
8. Reframe the narrative: Ghadafi is now a "modern world figure". They brought other "modern world figures" and tv people to meet with Ghadafi (who was still the same buffoon he always had been).

A World Without Power

1. People began to turn from politics; People felt they'd been lied to and that whatever they did or said had no effect.
2. People went into cyberspace.
3. Bayes Networks; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network Behavior prediction with incomplete information.
4. Rational agents; mimiced human behavior; based on economics. Only a vague representation; "It will never be clear who they are working for - you or someone else."
5. The web began to look like the real world, but in fact, no matter what you're doing, it's just the same thing - it's reflecting you back at yourself.
6. "They only heard and saw what they liked, and the newsfeeds increasingly excluded things that might challenge peoples' preexisting beliefs."

It's reflecting me back at myself.

1. Behind the superficial freedoms of the web were a few giant corporations with opaque systems that controlled what people saw, and shaped what they thought.
2. More mysterious is how they made their decisions about what you should like, and what should be hidden from you.

2008 - Financial Crash

1. Politicans saved the banks but did nothing about massive corruption. Public anger burst out; Occupy movement took over Wallstreet, and the Senate in Washington.
2. Arab Spring began.
3. Internet played key organization role.
4. People everywhere were rising up; When there was an uprising in Libya, America and Britian proclaimed Ghadafi to be the bad guy again. Libya soon descended into chaos.
5. The uprisings (occupy, arab spring) ended unsatisfactorily because nobody had come up with a way forward.
6. Muslim Brotherhood took over arab springs; Spring 2013, Military took over.
7. Occupiers went home.

2008 - Financial Crash

1. After the Revolutions (Occupy, Arab Spring, etc...)
2. Nobody had any idea how to change the world
3. Politicians had given most of its power away to finance and managerial bureaucracy, that they'd become managers themselves.
4. Abroad, all their adventures had failed; their simplistic views of the world had been exposed as dangerous and destructive.

Political Technologists - Key figures behind Putin

1. In russia, some had seen how the situation (dark uncertainty about the future) could work to their advantage
2. Politics had been turned into a strange theater, where nobody knew what was true and what was fake;
3. Some of these Politica Technologists had been fans of the science fiction (stalkers/roadside picnic); After communism they took control of the media; used it to manipulate electorate "on a vast scale". Reality was just something to be manipulated - shaped into whatever you wanted it to be.
4. Surkov Ideas from theater -> heart of politics; Not just manipulation, but undermining of peoples' perception of the world so that they're never sure what's really happening.
5. Directs Kremlin money to a wide range of groups (the full range... neonazis to liberal human rights groups who then attack government... even whole political parties that were opposed to Putin... Everyone!) AND - He let it be known that he was doing this. Nobody could know what was real in Russia.
6. "It's a strategy of power that keeps any opposition constantly confused; a ceasless shape-shifter that is unstopable because it is indefinable"
7. The real power was "hidden behind the stage, excercised without anyone seeing."

Then the same thing seemed to start happening in the west.

1. It was evermore clear that the system had deep flaws:
2. Every month brought new revelations - of banks involvement in global corruption; of massive tax avoidance by all the major corporations; of secret surveilance of everyone's emails by the NSA - yet noone was prosecuted except at the lowest levels;
3. The massive inequality kept on growing; The structure of power remained the same.

Then the shape-shifting began.

1. Trump's shape-shifting; "when they call, I give; when I call them..."
2. He pushes peoples' fears into the open.
3. He lied a lot, but his supporters rarely (if ever) cared.
4. Defeated journalists, who are to expose lies.
5. "Angry people click more."
6. Liberals were outraged, but they expressed their anger in cyberspace, so it had no effect; "the algorithms" made sure they only spoke to people who already agreed with them.
7. Their waves of angry messages and tweets benefited the large corporations who ran the social media platforms.
8. The fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world; it was becoming a fuel to feed the new systems of power.
9. Liberals never believed Trump could win, but...
10. The version of reality that politics presents is no longer believable; The stories politicans tell the people about the world have stopped making sense.
11. In the face of this, you can "play" with reality; constantly shifting and changing; further undermine old forms of power.

Syria and Destabilized Perception

1. Civil war in Syria. Suicide Bombing came back around to bite them; tearing the arab world apart - the opposite of what Assad wanted.
2. AmeriBritain bombed Isis to help Assad *eyeroll*
3. Russians started making freaky unexplainable moves; the idea is Nonlinear Warfare: Use conflict to create a constant state of destabilized perception. in order to manage and control.
4. March 2016, the russians announced they were leaving Syria; They didn't. They're still there - nobody knows why.

NOTE: There was some stuff I didn't catch about "Al-Sury". It looked like they were implying some kind of connection between him and brexit and i don't know what all. I guess I need some help with that bit.

---

A parting thought...

How to Fix America's Corrupt Political System

This video begins by asserting that, due to lobbying and various other forms of legalized corruptions, most people feel that there's nothing that can be done to change things for the better.

Here are a few of the terms used to describe such "legalized corruption":

• Lobbyist Fundraisers
• Revolving Door
• Bundlers
• SuperPacs
• Antitransparency
• ..."literally dozens" of other ways...

The obvious solution is to "make corruption illegal". A proposed "Anti-Corruption Act" has been written and is available at https://anticorruptionact.org/. This site lists three main goals:

1. Stop political bribery so special interests can't use job offers and donations to influence politicians
2. End secret money so people know who's buying political power.
3. Fix our broken elections so the people, not the political establishment, are the ones in control.

To bypass the obvious conflict of interest, such laws might be passed (at state and local levels) by means of Ballot Initiatives, a process by which citizens can force proposed legislation to appear on local and state ballots by gathering enough signatures.

There are more then 22,000 cities in America where we can use the ballot initiative process to pass locally tailored anti-corruption acts.

Here's a link to What's in the Act.

Great non-partisan ideas on solving America's political problems

Some links:

• Charles Douglas discusses party building and radical empathy
• C

On Bipartisan Caring

I don't care much for this article titled "I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People". It's just another example of the kind division being pressed on us from every corner of the media. It's this division that keeps us descending into economic and environmental devastation while the psychopaths who run this world march on and on like the mechanical pink rabbit - soulless, mindless, unconscious of the devastation they're bringing, concerned only with the acquisition of more and more power.

Division is destroying the world and our ability to live in it, and nobody wants that. Unfortunately, the psychology behind this division - the division of left and right - is so powerful that it's taken on a life of its own. It's based in the psychological roots of humanity: The power of social cooperation and the basic individual will to survive and reproduce.

These roots may seem contradictory, and sometimes they are, but there are many ways in which they support each other. Without large-scale social cooperation, we'd still be living in clan groups, wandering the world in search of our next meal. In holistic terms this may be healthier way of living, but it would also be static. In nature everything changes - it must be so. Change is the eternal constant. Without it, time stops and nothing really exists.

Power mongers have always harnessed whatever tools were available to maintain and increase their control over the world. This is their nature - it's why they are powerful - but these tools have advanced such a degree that progress has been brought to a stop. We are regressing, and disaster threatens on many fronts. The dichotomy that has brought us so far has been turned against us. The two basic aspects of human evolution - individual self-interest and social cooperation - are now used to turn us against each other.

We must find a way to communicate, negotiate, and coexist harmoniously, so to the article in question I reply:

Stop trying to debate conservatives into "caring about what happens to their fellow human beings" and focus instead on their self-interest. There's great power in human collective, right? It's the reason humanity is so powerful in comparison to other life forms. Alone, we're relatively defenseless against nature; Guided by power-hungry leaders, we've nearly destroyed nature. 

The root of our political problems isn't so much about a lack of "caring for others"; the problem is in this cult of ideology that infects both side of the proverbial aisle. In my experience, most conservative people (humans, not politicians) actually do care about others, in order of family, friends/neighbors, community, nation, then world. For example, it seems to me the conservative mindset is generally based on starting at the center - the "me" - and working outward; kind of a "fix it for me and it will be fixed for others, too". In contrast, the liberal mindset is on starting with everyone - the whole - and working inward: "Fix it for everyone (and it will be fixed for me, too.)

We (humans, not politicians) basically want the same things but can't wrap our heads around negotiating the way to do it - and this is mostly because we can't get past the distraction of our own ideologies. We can't seem to learn to "speak each other's language" - to compromise and negotiate, or even to give due consideration to each others positions. We have to see through the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) influence of media that promotes this petulance both sides exhibit toward each other (not to mention promotion of ignorance of critical issues - and that's on both sides).

It's quickly coming to a question of [division, to promote power for predatory capitalists and their politicians] vs. [the ability of 'we the people' to learn negotiate and compromise despite our differences in ideology and reclaim our right to collectively guide our own destiny].

United we stand, divided we fall.

Reference:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_us_59519811e4b0f078efd98440

How Capitalism Controls American Government

Despite appearances, American politicians rarely if ever support the interests of their constituents. According to a Princeton study, public opinion has little or no influence on American politicians.

The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

It is, however, perfectly legal to buy political influence in America, and the richer you are, the more you can afford. The study described in this video makes it clear that only by lobbying can political control be exercised.

In recent decades the trend of purchasing political power has increased astronomically. Where once there may have been a small measure of balance, the US government is now controlled exclusively by those who can afford to control the pool from which politicians are selected.

By funding a select group of candidates well enough, they're placed high above the less desirable competition. Their visibility is pervasive across their regions, their campaign management is far above the rest, their speech writers are the most convincing. More TV, more social media, more intelligent persuasion consultants... more of everything that's shown itself to win elections.

Therefore, by financing only the candidates that prove willing to support their contributors' causes, it's virtually guaranteed that the result of any election that's important to you will be satisfying. There's no need to select the actual individual who wins. You pay for the campaign of all the competators and you can't lose. No matter who wins each race, the slots you need are yours before the first vote is cast.

If you're thinking the price of this is too high to make it a valid option, then consider the millions being provided by successful corporations and individuals. What are the odds those dollars are being contributed to candidates who won't support their wishes? How likely is it that these dollars represent a loss to the bottom line?

A year-long analysis by the Sunlight Foundation suggests that the $5.8 billion in federal lobbying and campaign contributions from America's most politically active corporations yeilded a return of $4.4 trillion in federal business and support.

There are, of course, more conservative estimates. A harvard study suggests that great bennefits rarely come of campaign finance and usually result in little more than a "breaking even" effect. However, this too is significant considering the twenty richest people control more wealth than half the nation's citizens.

See also: Wealth Distribution for the USA

It seems rational to believe that a breaking-even effect, particularly in combination with the possibility of potentially staggering profits, would encourage anyone above the mid-Texas line to contribute as much as seemed necessary - even if it were only to preserve the status quo!

Political Evolution

None of this is meant to imply the amount of campaign-finance money is the deciding factor in any given election. There are clearly many circumstantial factors that can match to individual candidate fitness - it's these that determine any political race. The issue here is that a certain cash threshold is necessary to make a candidate known to the public, and large-scale campaign-finance provides it to those of the candidates who will "play ball".

For elected officials, survival strategy starts with one simple rule: Get and maintain the support of those who provide the help you need to get into (and stay in) office. Those who won't promise to comply with the wishes of their benefactors are not provided the money and support required to get elected. Those who don't make good on those promises will, for lack of money and support, not be reelected. That's "survival of the fittest" in American politics.

When asked his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decsion, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter replied:

It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.

A contributing factor in Carter's win was the state of awareness during his campaign of the effects of money in politics. Since his time, the American people have been lulled into believing that a conflict of interest is OK; that correlation not only doesn't prove causation, but maybe even has nothing to do with it! There is no excuse for this except the old truism: If a lie is repeated enough times, people will begin to believe it.

Properly regulated capitalism can be a great boon to humanity, but campaign finance has led to its deregulation, which has turned it into a tool for oppression only.

Who do Politicians Represent?

As previously established, controlling which political candidates appear to the public (and how well they appear) does not mean actual selection of the individual who wins, but does provide a high degree of control over what laws will be made. Therefore, laws are ultimately in the hands of those who can, in effect, purchase their creation.

James Glattfelder's TED Talk describes a study based on the science of Complexity that shows a core of 737 shareholders - mostly financial institutions in the United States and UK - control 80% of the world's capital. Further, a subset of 146 has the potential to control 40% of it. [More on that.]

The basics of Universal Darwinism dictate that those at the top in an envoronment as competitive as ours are the most "fit" individuals. They and their organizations represent the apex of drive and ability. Beyond any doubt, they're very good at what they do: at using money to make more money.

It may be reasoned that their expertise in one field does not imply expertise in other important fields. To the contrary, it would seem an exceptional focus is likely required to maintained these vast capitalistic empires. It might be more than reasonable to guess that other important fields are neglected, resulting in a full range of real world costs - of which they may be ignorant - that come as a result of their activities.

One thing is certain: they're not willing to pay those costs. The state of capitalism is such that, absent a court order, they may not even consider it. Such is the value placed on "a good quarterly statement". They remain focused on their task, not only ignoring other problems - problems that range from painful to potentially apocolyptic - but even preventing the solution to such problems in the interest of gaining more profit.

References

• http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=E2DC51768E60EC3FD879B9740346BDA2?doi=10.1.1.668.8647&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• https://dv9jgklhamlge.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Explainer_prob2.jpg?5c7af7
• http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/
• https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2018&ind=F07
• https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig
• https://youtu.be/NgbqXsA62Qs
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
• https://www.psprint.com/resources/election-marketing-tips/
• https://sunlightfoundation.com/2014/11/17/fixed-fortunes-biggest-corporate-political-interests-spend-billions-get-trillions/
• https://audienti.com/roles/campaign-manager/
• http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1940161216674651
• https://scholar.harvard.edu/jsnyder/files/8._cf.return.regs__0.pdf

Universal Darwinism and Politics - Seventh Draft

Charles Darwin gave us insight into the nature of change in species that is arguably a powerful tool for gaining understanding into other other areas of study, as well. Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Darwin, so that they can apply to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains.

This document explores the use of Universal Darwinism to search for new ways of understanding politics. The goal is not to make use of genetic/biological discoveries of Darwinian evolution, but to develop a complement to the field of Psephology, a branch of political science which deals with the study and scientific analysis of elections.

Darwin's algorithm adorns a very basic truth of the universe with regard to competition for "slots" of survival. The world is a perpetually changing, finite environment in which a more general version of [the mechanisms described by Darwin] are enforced at many levels. If nothing else, a study of politics through this lens may shed light on traits that support the fitness of candidates to win elections.

In her TED Talk, "Memes and Temes", Susan Blackmore makes good use of a variation of Darwin's insight to describe how ideas evolve in human society.

Note: This video is presented here for reference. It's not necessary for an understanding of the following content, so long as you accept that the concepts behind Darwin's basic algorithm are useful in understanding much more than the evolution of species.

Darwin's Algorithm

Here's how Blackmore breaks down the basics of Darwinism:

If, said Darwin, you have creatures that vary, and most of them die, and the survivors pass on whatever it was that helped them survive to their offspring, then you must get evolution. ~Susan Blackmore

Here are the key ideas:

1.    [Creatures that vary]
2.  + [Most of them die].
3.  + [Survivors pass on traits]
4.  = [increase in fitness], or "evolution".

We accept as self-evident that creatures have various traits which help and hinder their survival to various degrees. Darwin recognized that those whose traits tend to promote their survival will live to pass those traits to their offspring, while those that don't will tend to fail to procreate and eventually they (and their less useful traits) will recede or disappear.

Generalization of Darwin's Algorithm

Darwin's algorithm, as presented, has proven helpful in understanding the evolution of species. If reduced to the most general terms, the algorithm may also be useful in describing other systems in which fitness determines success.

These variables represent generic substitute terms:

ENV	Environment. Any finite environment, real or theoretical. Environment provides positions for which entities (OBJ) compete, and enforces the conditions that determine the fitness value of any given entity's aptitude (APT) in such a way that the most fit entities tend to gain and keep positions (POS).
POS	Position. The position is a place in the environment. In natural (Darwinian) terms it's simply "the world", "nature", or some "niche". In more algorithmic terms, position can be seen as an array of zero or more slots to be filled by the most fit objects, entities, ideas, or whatever is represented by OBJ.
OBJ	Object. Any real or theoretical object (animal, man, algorithm, idea, etc...) that competes to find and/or keep a position (POS) in a specific environment (ENV). Any object will have a certain aptitude (APT) that determines its fitness to occupy a given position in a particular environment.
APT	Aptitude. Aptitude is a set of attributes and/or qualities of that affect the ability of an object (OBJ) to maintain a position (POS) in the relevant environment (ENV). Note that aptitude is one set of multiple qualities/attributes assigned to any given object for the purpose of determining how each affects fitness, alone or in combination with other qualities/attributes.
SRC	Source. The source of new instances of OBJ. In nature, SRC is supplied by the reproductive systems of creatures. In purely theoretical terms, this is not necessarily (and probably not usually) the case. The source of objects must be defined as dictated by the realities of the envrionment being studied.

In these terms, SRC provides individual instances of objects (OBJ), each of which possess unique sets/values of attributes/qualities (APT) that determine fitness for filling positions (POS) in the envrionment being studied (ENV).

When you have, in any theoretical environment (ENV)...

1. a finite set of [vacancies/slots/positions] (POS)
2. being filled by [objects/entities/ideas] (OJB)
3. with varying [traits/attributes] (APT)
4. provided by [a prolific suplier] (SRC)

...then those OBJ with the APT most fit for gaining/keeping POS in ENV will gain/keep POS. Further, when SRC creates OBJ with APT sets more fit for POS in ENV, such OBJ will will replace a less fit OBJ currently existing in POS within ENV.

Competition and Selection

Clearly, competition is a key feature of Darwin's algorithm and it's obvious that any generalization would be useless without some form of competition driving the selection process. The most obvious factor would be competition for POS in ENV based on the APT of OBJ, so any ENV must have a finite, positive range of POS instances.

Less clear is the mechanism of the passage of traits. While it's true that dynasties seem to occur frequently even in modern politics, the similarity to Darwin's passage of traits ends there. However, a huge variation of traits exists in the general gene pool, and perhaps much more significantly, within the "meme" pool as (for example) prevalent politically relevant ideologies and philosophies.

By this logic, traits for selection are provided largely by the gene and meme pools, rather than by direct ancestral inheritence of politicans. The appearance of dynastic political lines even in representative government only serves to support this reasoning.

A Simple Scenerio for Darwinian Politics

Imagine a hypothetical political example: a small democratic city-state. The government consists of a single leader elected from among the 5000 citizens. A survey has indicated that 1% of the citizens are apparently qualified and interested in running for office.

Here's a breakdown of the variables for this scenerio:

• ENV is the city-state, its rules regarding political representation, and any other (potentially external) factors that might affect the internal environment.
• SRC is a set of 50 citizens apparently qualified and interested in running for office.
• POS represents the single representative position available.
• OBJ is a single candidate; there are 50 OBJ instances, one for each candidate.
• APT is a set of traits, one set per OBJ, that determines the fitness of each OBJ to win office (POS).

Discounting any unknown or "apparently random" variables, the member of SRC that possesses the top configuration of APT will end up being selected. It's important to note that the set of APT consists of traits not related to successfully fulfilling the requirements of POS, but for successfully winning the position. Potentially, the best candidate for the job might actually be the worst-suited to win the office, while the worst-suited to rule may be the best-suited to win.

Now selection can be understood by two factors:

1. The traits that are most appropriate for winning. Broken down, this set of traits may include charisma, public perception of "honesty", proclaimed policy ideology, etc... but probably are more likely a result of some social mechanism based on voter perception of the candidates.
2. The rules of the election as they are enforced. As the 50 candidates were defined (for the purpose of this hypothetical situation) as apparently qualified, it may be that some or all of them are disqualified before the actual election. The mechanism by which qualification is investigated, assessed, and enforced plays a potentially huge role in who actually gets to run for office.

Selection may also be affected by pseudo-random unknowns. Note that the traits encompassed by aptitude (APT) are not limited to working within the rules. It's conceivable (and potentially likely) that the most aggressive of technically unqualified candidates may successfully hide any self-disqualifying factors while arranging for fully-qualified candidates to be perceived as unqualified or at least unfit.

In addition to willful subterfuge by candidates and/or their agents, there may also exist pseudo-randomness hidden in unknown attributes of any given candidate or the environmtent in general.

Election Prediction

There's a strong potential for pitfalls presented by hidden, incorrect, and undiscovered values in the environment and in aptitudes. Development of a prediction algorithm may require much time and effort, and will likely require constant refinement so as to be kept current with changing trends.

To use the Darwin Algorithm as a predictive tool, Environment (ENV) and Position (POS) might be thought of as algorithms to a function intended to represent "reality" (the rules of environment as we understand them) so as to return the best possible guess as to which OBJ (based on their individual APT) are most fit to fill the available POS within ENV.

Arguments to such a function might be given as an array of candidates (OBJ) in which each candidate object contains another array of value pairs [trait names = a value assignment]. If all relevant traits were specified correctly for each candidate (OBJ) and all algorithms for environment and position were correctly framed, the results would be perfect.

Unfortunately, this is an impractical expectation in the real world. To predict the winner of a political race would require a thorough understanding of the environment and of the traits that affect fitness for winning the election. These two factors, if perfectly and completely understood, would lead to a 100% success rate in prediction. As a 100% perfect understanding of reality is impossible, it must be accepted that only a partial success is possible. The level of success in such a prediction would depend on the honesty and thoroughness by which aptitude (APT) traits are selected and values assigned, as well as on the accuracy of the algorithms used to assess the fitness such traits suggest.

It may, however, be possible to run specify certain ranges for tests within the algorithms, along with certain ranges of value assessments, in such a way that intersections of correct matches to historical data may be encountered. Such an analysis might reveal changing trends over multiple elections, and such trends might reveal a connection to socioeconomic, capitalistic, moral, or other ideological trends. This may appear more to be more art than science, but this too can be useful and may even lead to a sort of political calculus that encompases real world conditions as variables that affect the liklihood that certain apparent traits (APT) are more or less fit than others.

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Notes and Document Status

This seventh draft brings what I feel to be a complete outline. Please give any feedback, kind or cruel. I'm looking for holes in both the ideas and their presentation. Even spelling/grammar corrections are greatly appreciated!

A couple of things I'm wrestling with at the moment are:

• How readable is this document? Is it easy to understand? Where are my points unclear? Where does the reasoning seem illogical?
• Who can give me some insight and ideas into the validity of my descriptions of algorithms in the last section?
• I'm wondering whether "Darwin's Algorithm" is the best description for this generalization of his idea. I'm not too sure whether this idea meets the criteria for being considered under Universal Darwinism.

Complexity, Economics, and Who Controls the World

James B. Glattfelder begins his TED Talk with a couple of quotes (related to the 2008 crash) from powerful representatives of capitalist ideology that seem to imply "we still don't understand the conditions for stable society, a functioning economy, or peace."

1. "When the crisis came, the serious limitations of existing economic and financial models immediately became apparent." ~Jean-Claude Trichet, from a speech he made when he was governor of the European Central Bank.

2. "There also a strong belief, which I share, that bad or over-simplistic and overconfident economics helped create the crisis." ~Jonathan Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell, from Socially useful and socially useless financial activities.

Glattfelder suggests (and uses) the Science of Complexity as a means to better understand economics. He uses it in his TED Talk to look for potential hazards and points of failure.

Glattfelder describes complex systems as being made up of many connected, interacting parts, such as bird swarms, ant colonies, and - more to the point - financial markets. Complex systems are hard to map into physics equations, but can be understood easily by studying interactions and by determining the rules of interactions. They are emergent, and show behavior that can't be understood by looking at the components - the whole is greater than sum of its parts.

What [equations] are for physics, [complex networks] are for the study of complex systems. This approach has been successfully applied to many complex systems in physics, biology, computer science, and social sciences. Nodes are system components, while links are the interactions.

Glattfelder applied the principles of Complexity to economic networks - specifically, in a first of it's kind study of the network of global corporate control. The study looked specifically at ownership networks in which companies, people, governments, and foundations represented nodes while the links represented shareholder relations (shareholder A's percent of shares in company B) factoring in value assigned to companies based on operating revenue.

1. who are the key players?
2. how are they organized? (isolated? interconnected?)
3. what is the overall distribution of control.

Concerned that a high degree of inter-connectivity can be bad for stability, the study was narrowed to the most relevant nodes. Of 13 million ownership relations, the focus was reduced to trans-national corporations (or TNCs) consisting of 600,000 nodes and more than a million links. The structure revealed consisted of a periphery, a center, and a dominant core (36% of the TNCs, making up 1300 nodes but a whopping 95% of the value).

Based on the idea that ownership gives voting rights dependent on relative distribution of shares and that control over TNC value leads to a degree of influence assigned to each shareholder, the study indicates that 737 top shareholders (0.123%, mostly financial institutions in the US and UK) have the collective potential to control 80% of the TNCs value. Further, within those, a 146-node minority holds the potential to control over 40% of Trans-national Corporation value.

In other words, this study gives a remarkable into the question of "who controls the world?"

Adam Smith

See also:

• Noam Chomsky on Adam Smith & Invisible Hand

Diametrically Opposed Tendencies in Human Evolution and Political Ideology

This document is intended not so much to inform, but rather to draw the reader's attention along a strand of related ideas that, hopefully, can be tied together in a meaningful and potentially useful way. The ideas are certainly not intended to exclusively explain all of human existence and society - they're selected to serve a specific purpose.

Diametrical Opposition and Balance

The universe is full of diametrically opposed ideals and influences that are necessary for existence as we know it. There must be matter, but matter is no good without space in which to exist. There is night and day, hot and cold, life and death - many examples of opposites that must be balanced within a certain range so things can be as they are.

There's a pair of influences that have evolved with humans over millions of years to make us as we are today. I'll label them "self-interest" and "social cooperation". Every functional human raised by other humans to an age of awareness and communication will almost certainly have incorporated a bit of both these influences.

Self-Interest

Self-interest is apparent, in its most basic form, as our ingrained need to survive and reproduce. We share this with all creatures to some degree, from the highest, most complex to the simplest single-cell organism. It's enforced by nature, by the fact that those without the will and the means simply do not survive. They die before having reproduced, are not replaced, and - gradually or abruptly - their species "goes extinct".

Lower life forms may not be aware of their craving to survive and reproduce. For less complex creatures it's probably autonomous - they simply do (by almost "mechanical" organic and chemical processes, with no volition on their part) survive and reproduce. On the other end of the spectrum, we humans certainly are generally very aware of our will to survive and reproduce. Further, we've developed a vast array of complex mechanisms to help insure our personal survival and that of our offspring.

Social Cooperation

Equally obvious is a "social cooperation" instinct that exists in many species. It's evident in those whose offspring would not survive without some form of parental and/or societal care. This is certainly most evident in the human species, whose members have evolved beyond the capacity to exist (even as adults) without social cooperation. We've lost our ability to stand individually against the forces of nature; we've come to depend on each other to fulfill a vast range of needs both basic and complex.

It's social cooperation that has allowed us to advance to the point where we have little choice but to make a distinction between our species and all others. We are "human", they are "animals". It goes without saying that the divide between human and animal is vast; the variety of our tools - from opposable thumbs, to symbolic and abstract thinking, to modern technology - makes this clear. Humanity has leaped past a certain barrier and become a new kind of creature. Though we retain the aspects of animal, we are much more.

Human/Animal Aspects

Humans are not distinct from our animal basis; we are both animal and human. The human aspect is built upon the animal base. We've developed in such a way that the survival of our animal basis must rely on our social framework. Both aspects are equally important to our existence - without the animal we could not live; without the human extension we'd be animals.

Socially, we carry ideas in our psyche through culture and interpersonal communication, but that's not the limit of it. We carry both animal and human aspects in our DNA, as well. Aptic structures cause us to "instinctively" eat from the moment of birth, to attempt to crawl and then walk soon after, to recognize faces, to imitate and learn speech, and much more. It's no stretch to assume that genetics carries a certain amount of predisposition toward self-interest and social cooperation.

While by nature we each must carry in our being (through some combination of nature and nurture) both "self-interest" and "social cooperation", it seems reasonable to assume that any given individual would - if such things were measurable - be found to hold more or less of either when compared to other humans.

Self-Interest, Social Cooperation, and the Political Compass

For those who can accept the ideas above, it might be beneficial to begin speculating on how tendencies in individuals toward "self-interest" vs "social cooperation" affect their leaning left vs right in the political spectrum.

Self-interest often seems to conflict with social cooperation. It serves the animal kingdom well, and it brought us to and supports us in our lofty position as humans. The price of this advancement, however, is social cooperation. Therefore, both aspects have their place in consideration of any human issue.

Contemplation and discussion of subjects in this light might lead to a better understanding between both sides of the political spectrum, and hopefully a better acceptance, of how others can reason as they do. It's possible such understanding and acceptance might lead to more productive debate and compromise, or even to new tools for discovering the best course of action when self-interest and social cooperation conflict.

You are not Forgotten

Global Wealth Inequality

Change the rules...

Why The Rich Like High Taxes

...and how they make it likable.

Anatomy of an Excellent Discussion - American Economic Class Perspectives

One of the most excellent, invigorating, enlightening things a person can participate in is a really great conversation. If you're like me, you may sometimes find the world confusing - full of facts, figures, concepts, data, and disciplines that no one person could ever hope to understand completely. Still, this confusion might be brought under control if you can chat about things with people who care enough to do it right.

I've been having trouble with some ideas on economic justice, so I went to my secret stash of genius chatters. These people don't screw around. OK, wait... they do screw around (a lot!) but when it comes to discussion they practice great principles: They're reasonable, rational, even-tempered, and they have a habit of documenting what they're saying with arguably solid sources. That's something I'm honestly trying to emulate, but the truth is I'm lazy and they're a lot smarter than me. Until I've improved my ways, it's probably better I just get them going and then sit back and learn.

...there aren't ten million rich people... 

Last night I was lucky enough to recognize and seize the opportunity to sway conversation and get the help I needed. Notice that they're already on a related subject - I think this really helps. By some miracle it occurred to me at just the right moment that this could be my chance.

<friida> if you have 10 million poor people who want healthcare, and 10 rich people who don't want healthcare, you should give the people healthcare
<coney> friida, that would be that whole general will thing
<ControlFreq> That's an invalid scenario. What we have is ten million poor people who have no insurance who want 10 million poor people to have health insurance v. ten million rich people with health insurance who don't want 10 million poor people to have health insurance.
<friida> there aren't ten million rich people

Rich people? Ooh! Now's my chance to attempt a shift away from healthcare and toward economic justice in general.

<nine> what is it? the richest 800 americans own like 60% of america's wealth?
<nine> something crazy like that
<ZShurp> hmmm, something like that nine, but let me see if I can find the figure.
<nine> i'd love to find documentation on that


...let me see if I can find the figure... 

These people are a powerhouse of interest and follow-through.  I suspect they'd started looking from the moment I'd posted the first question because the results were rolling in within seconds.

<coney> nine, are you thinking of this:  https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/18/rich-people-own-much-money-half-world-report-says/y6az3Wtasd5TIf9Q6k3I4K/story.html
<coney> nine, or this one:  https://www.thenation.com/article/20-people-now-own-as-much-wealth-as-half-of-all-americans/
<ZShurp> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States -- 5% own 62%
<ZShurp> so 5% of 300 M is 15M.
<ZShurp> The "Next Nine Percent" of Americans owns 38%
<ZShurp> The Top One Percent and the Next Nine Percent are about even. And then the bottom 90% have about as much as well
Look at how ZShurp has laid out a set of facts taken from a source he provided reference to. In contrast to the vague "something like" I'd proposed earlier, he gives credible evidence that most people would probably accept - and he has a plan for it, too. Watch him go straight from the facts and figures to the calculations.

<ZShurp> So there you go, that's a good definition of class society in America.  The bottom 90%, the next 9%, and the top 1%
<ZShurp> Let's see... 38% of 65T divided by 9% of 300M is how much per person to be Middle Class ?
<ZShurp> Ahhhh... OK, so the average middle class wealth is $900,000... per *person*.  A middle class family of 4 has $3.6M.
<ZShurp> An upper class family of 4, by contrast, has $33 M
<ZShurp> And a lower class family has $230K on average.

...without fuss, he begins to lay out his thinking...

At this point ZShurp hasn't really made his plan clear, so it's understandable that coney's a bit taken aback. Notice how she handles it, though: There's not even the hint of personal attack, but rather a strong expression of incredulous surprise followed immediately by the laying out of the facts she intends as arguments against his organizational claims.

<coney> ZShurp, what world do YOU live in?
<coney> The median wealth of those younger than 35 is just $6,676. The median wealth for those older than 75 is $155,714. Here's the complete breakout by age group:
<coney> ZShurp, at the peak worth age in the US, 65-69yo, median net worth is 194,226 which includes the worth of your home, your car and the cash value of your retirement accounts

Coney does relate some good facts, but ZShurp is on a different and unexpected track. Succinctly and without fuss he begins to lay out his thinking.

<ZShurp> coney, I live in the real world, where *class* is a political division in society, and "middle" means "between".
<ZShurp> The people who have $3.6M per household constitute a *class* whose political power is substantial and who stand between the rich and everyone else.
<ZShurp> coney, I'm talking about middle class, not median wealth
<coney> you are talking numbers that put both what you call the middle class and what you call the upper class into the top quintile
<coney> https://www.thebalance.com/american-net-worth-by-state-metropolitan-4135839


...she'd never expect someone to "just believe her"...

Not yet satisfied, coney has made an objection and again provides a link to reference material. Nobody has to ask for that. She'd never expect someone to "just believe her". She's ready with it! But ZShurp clears the matter up quickly. He's providing a different (and very useful) perspective:

<ZShurp> coney, top quintile?  I'm talking about much higher, the 90% to 99%.  They have as much wealth as the top 1%, as much power as the top 1%, and their political interests are not the same as the top 1%.
<ZShurp> 0-90, 90-99, and 99-100 are the class divisions in society by power block.
<nine> so you're calling 90-99 "middle class"?
<ZShurp> yes, nine.  Assuming by "class" we're talking about politics and power, rather than the fantasy that the common man actually has any say in his government.

Look how he goes right to the heart of the matter: Politics and Power.

...even more important is what coney does: She lets him!

ZShurp was never distracted by the standard class definitions because they don't help to illustrate his point (and in fact are deceptive). What he actually does - and this is important - he takes the time to answer coney's concerns while simultaneously sticking firmly to what helps clarify his thinking: how money equates to political power.

Perhaps even more important is what coney does: She lets him! She's paying enough attention to what he is saying to realize that he's on a different track; that he has a different kind of perspective to share...

And boy does he! Look at this comparison chart that shows the classes as ZShurp has reorganized them. The differences in separation are staggering, especially when broken down further in the image below.

Class	Percent	Range	Proportion	Avg$/Family
Top	Top 1%	99-100	1/3	$35M
Middle	2nd 9%	90-99	1/3	$900K
Low	Low 90%	0-90	1/3	$230K

...they haven't finished scooping up all the money...

Now the time had come to consider the implications of all this, and what could be better than a graphic to help illustrate the data?

<ZShurp> The bottom 60% are basically irrelevant.  The 60-90 constitutes the third power bloc.
<ZShurp> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#/media/File:If-us-land-mass-were-distributed-like-us-wealth.png

<friida> ZShurp, do you know what that means?
<friida> it means they haven't finished scooping up all the money, so they are still hard at work doing so
<ZShurp> friida, they're working at it, yes, but civilization will collapse.  They can't push it much farther
<friida> once they perfect the A.I. robotics, all the jobs will disappear, and soon so will all the people who they needed to work those jobs

They own -0.9% of the global wealth...

Finally, loot jumps in with yet another interesting (if disturbing) perspective in the form of a reference link and a summary of it's interesting points.

<loot> http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-inequality-when-a-fair-shake-isnt/

<loot> America today appears to illustrate this process in action. Though the wealthiest 20 percent earned nearly half of all wages in 2014, they have more than 80 percent of the wealth. The wealth of the poorest 20 percent, as measured by net worth, is actually negative. If they sell all they own, they’ll still be in debt.

<loot> Harvard divides it in 80/20
<loot> The Harvard study also shows the bottom 40% have negative money.
<loot> They are in debt.
<loot> That's how they survive.
<loot> They own -0.9% of the global wealth.
<ZShurp> Good point, a lot of the wealth of those on top is debt owed by those underneath...
<ZShurp> coney, it makes you wonder how the lower two quintiles get by
<coney> ZShurp, lots of people in the lowest quintile live with their parents and eat on food stamps, or are effectively homeless migrant workers
<loot> They just die.

On that cheery note, the conversation dies, too. Truly it is a dire situation, but it's a blessing to shed some light on it.

<ZShurp> well, it appears I've managed to flood the channel into silence.  Sorry about that
<nine> lol no
<nine> i'm actually taking and arranging notes
<nine> this is like goldmine night for nine

It's a goldmine for sure. The subject matter was only part of it. The real blessing is in being able to participate in a conversation with people who are willing to put in the work of finding resources, making calculations, presenting alternate points of view, and - most especially - to really listen and give consideration to each others' ideas. I belong to the lower class by both the ZShurp and coney scales, but when it comes to accessing great political discussion I feel quite rich.

References

• https://www.thenation.com/article/20-people-now-own-as-much-wealth-as-half-of-all-americans/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
• https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/18/rich-people-own-much-money-half-world-report-says/y6az3Wtasd5TIf9Q6k3I4K/story.html
• https://www.thebalance.com/american-net-worth-by-state-metropolitan-4135839
• http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-inequality-when-a-fair-shake-isnt/

More Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
• http://www.cesj.org/learn/definitions/defining-economic-justice-and-social-justice/
• https://www.ted.com/talks/james_b_glattfelder_who_controls_the_world