1462 lines
86 KiB
HTML
1462 lines
86 KiB
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<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i586) [Netscape]">
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<pre>
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<font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size=-1> _________________________________________________________________
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Reality cracking
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Getting deeper into reality cracking
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Comments about "An Essay Attempting to Justify the Relationship
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Between Code Cracking and Reality Cracking"
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by <predator>
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(16 September 1998)
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_________________________________________________________________
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Well, this is another example of the funny 'time warping' effects on
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our deep deep web. I published Curious George's essay in february 1997
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and the first global answer, this one by <predator>, comes in
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september 1998, more than one and a half years later... whatd'you
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say? The web seems to be in another time continuum alltogether,
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doesn't it?
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I'll leave you now with <predator>'s observations, read (if I may
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suggest, at least two times, you'll thank me for this tip) and enjoy
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(and add if needs be). Of course be aware of the fact that this kind
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of reality cracking is the most "philosophical" one, as opposed to the
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more 'concrete' anti-advertisement essays, and you may well be one of
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those skeptical souls that feel the irresistible impulse to check if
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their wallet is still there everytime they hear somebody speaking
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about "soul" or "meme"
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:-)
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Just kidding... there is a considerable depth inside <predator>'s
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rantings (as well as inside Curious George's original ones) and when I
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read this kind of stuff I get the strange feeling that we humble
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crackers and code reversers (or "reversalists" as <predator> calls us)
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are on the eve of unprevedible philosophical discoveries... could it
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be that in this world software and life are already so indissolubly
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bound that investigating the first you may find some of the answers
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for the oldest questions of our human race?
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You may want to read first the original essay by red Curious George
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without <predator>'s interpolations
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And now prepare for a very interesting, intriguing and deep lecture:
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reality cracking at its highest peaks!
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_________________________________________________________________
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Submission to +Fravia's Reality Cracking essays.
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Who am I? I am <predator> .:. Reverse the universe .:.
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Replies from Sep 05 1998 (under edit.com)
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I use SuSE Linux and have Mess-dog6.2, I have staunchly refused to run any
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(a)version of M$-gui OS on my box. Commentry intercalated in:
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An Essay Attempting to Justify the Relationship Between Code
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Cracking and Reality Cracking (Why is Reality Cracking Important?)
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by Curious George (11 February 1997)
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An Essay Attempting to Justify the Relationship
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Between Code Cracking and Reality Cracking
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(Why is Reality Cracking Important?)
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by Curious George
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(11 February 1997)
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_________________________________________________________________
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Courtesy of fravia's page of reverse engineering
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_________________________________________________________________
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Curious George writes:
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>Dear Fravia:
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>...More than that, "Reality Cracking" can be accomplished
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> by anyone with a critical mind. You don't need hours
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>of undisturbed time in front of the computer. You can
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> practice your reality cracking skills all day long,
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>everyday of your life! And you should, lest you be taken
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> advantage of unknowingly......Having read all of the
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> Reality Cracking section, and a decent amount of the rest,
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> and being fascinated by the +ORC enigma, I felt compelled
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> to write an essay that covers two topics. First, I discuss
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> reality as a whole. Second, I tried to get into +ORC's
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> mind (funny, me of all people, probably one who knows least
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> about him...) and find an overall motive... hope you enjoy!
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>Best Regards
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>Curious George
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__________________________________________________________________________
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> (Introduction)
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> Our view of the world is our own. The particular set of events that we
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> experience over our lifetimes shapes what we see in the world. There
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> are commonalities however. They are large reality models that whole
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> nations subscribe to. There are different models. Some conflict with
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> each other. All are subsets of the true Reality. We must crack reality.
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They are not necessarily subsets of true reality. Some of these
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reality models are complete raving delusions.
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> What is Reality Anyway
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The universe is data, and interactions between data.
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Treat it as data and all will become clear.
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> Lets start from the very beginning. We talk of Reality Cracking, but
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> we don't really know what reality is, do we?
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We can never actually know. "We" - our live code, the dynamic data structure
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that we are, our "personality" - exists by proxy, molecularly encoded in a
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biochemically based, massively parallel neural-net processor. Some call this
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a soul or spirit, or persona. The suite of simultaneously-operating
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thought-process daemons in THIS head, which refers to itself as <predator>'s
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head refers to them as... well, just what they said they were at the start of
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this paragraph : simultaneously-operating thought-process daemons. They/we/I
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are a huge, parallel, evolving computation. A self-contained information
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ecology. So, I think, are you too.
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> I believe (with lots of other people too, like Plato, and Orwell to
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> name two) that it is whatever you think it is.
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Also correct. It cannot be otherwise in a symbol processor like the brain,
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which emulates and models a perception-derived reality, but cannot experience
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it directly. A processor does not know* its registers have any particular
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external pertinence, nor does a neuron *know* that its particular state of
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synaptic receptor density, neurotransmitter receptivity profile or axon
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depolarisation have any pertinence or even relationship to anything. The
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relationship is there, but the interacting components in this do not know
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it, even if they represent it. Only in recursion and self-reference do
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systems ever model themselves and thereby "know" themselves, insofar as a
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system can know anything. Read Douglas Hofstadter, "Gödel Escher Bach".
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> More specifically, there are the models ("Paradigms") that define
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> reality for those who subscribe to them.
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Correct, although explained from the human's-eye view, from the perspective
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of the processor. You want to get at the _code_, don't you? Here's the deal:
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first learn to understand that the universe and all the processes in it are
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understandable in terms of information systems. Start with the processor:
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the human neural network, codified in 3x10^9 base pairs in the human DNA
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genome, implemented as billions of neurons connected combinatorially in
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trillions of different ways. It has been honed by evolution to act as a kind
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of universal computer - a Turing machine: it can emulate any process, be it
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language, tool use, or abstract information processing. By biasing receptor
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concentration, synaptic neurotransmitter synthesis rates, and indeed even
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growing new transmission links in particular ways, the neural net trains
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itself to do particular tasks, such as pattern recognition, information
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storage, symbol processing, and a lot of other things. It has also evolved
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in such a way as to be connected to inputs of incredible sensitivity and
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large bandwidth; eyes, ears, skin, smell, taste, balance... these detect
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external "real" events... photon capturings, (you perform breakdown thereof
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and analysis of patterns therein, you have retinal neural-net preprocessing);
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audio frequency spectrum analysis, temperature, pressure, acidity, the
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presence of certain molecules dissolved in gas or liquids, etc. The
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detectors, usually G-proteins coupled to molecular signal-gain systems
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(usually catalytic cascades) turn it into "data" by various means, ultimately
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represented by neural firings. These recieved patterns gradually are modelled
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by the human neural net processor. The processor is also connected to
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actuators: muscles, which enable externally-detectable realities to be
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modified, and data to be transmitted.
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In humans, output bandwidth is slow and small, except for the output which
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benefits the genes which code for us - the penis has _big_ output bandwidth.
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Speech is hopelessly slow, making love is hopelessly slow, dancing, writing,
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drawing, sign language, semaphore, typing... compared to the size of the
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data structure that is the human personality, the output bandwidth for the
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expression of human thought is trivial and totally inadequate to achieve
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significant personality transfer without a lot of time to do it.
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Self-awareness comes when the net learns that it can observe the consequences
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of actions it decided to perform. It hears its own voice, or it sees its own
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hand shake in front of own eyes. It comes eventually to recognise that in
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the mirror, as it looks into its own eyes and points these detectors at
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themselves, that there is a time when it is not "looking at other stuff" -
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it has discovered its own chassis. In English, this is explained by
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a phrase like "Yep, I'm looking at me."
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*footnote about penile bandwidth from a rant I sent to a fellow geneweaver:
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---
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Maybe I've memed you. I think transmission is simply one component of a
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multicomponent replication system, but a highly critical one nevertheless.
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Transmitting into the aural port of say, a mute quadriplegic or a person who
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speaks a language different to that in which the transmission is codified, or
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into the ear of Dolly the sheep, are illuminating examples of contingencies
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which have to be met for replication, let alone successful transmission.
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For memes, transmission is central to reproduction, because, like viri, they
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need to find a new host into which to propagate. They are obliged to find
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a processor to do their processing for them, since they can't do it
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themselves. Wanking also induces a kind of data transmission and it must be
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pointed out that the sheer amount of code that a functional orgasm transmits
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is quite vast. 1.5x10^9 base pairs per haploid spermatozoon, and hmmm...
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several hundred million of them per ml of ... transmission fluid (grin). I
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think that by comparison a T3 fibre optic cable, at 4.5x10^7 bits per second,
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is left floundering in the dust, dwarfed by the sheer bandwidth of a
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mammalian penis, which also has channel division multiplexing (you can send
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several thousand million of the little data packets up the conduit at the
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same instant) plus there is huge redundancy too. Gives the term upload a
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whole new meaning. I think if my modem could transmit data that fast it'd
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groan and sigh too. :-)
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----
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So much for the processor of interest. There are other processors using
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other languages (cells process information in a molecular form, they have
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mechanisms functionally analogous to the electrical systems which humans
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have built, but that's another rant entirely.)
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You reversalists, the tiny, approaching-zero minority of brains harbouring
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thought processes like those that I harbour.... I promised you the _code_,
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didn't I? Ok, cop this.
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Data is stuff which is changed, by changers which modify stuff. This is an
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obvious tautology. When the changers change the changers you have a chaotic
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highly nonlinear system, such as we are.
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Life is a set of processes which dynamically organise data.
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There is dead code... this is called data. Atoms are data. Charge states,
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photon flux intensities, velocities, positions, size of first girlfriend's
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shoe, DNA sequence etc etc etc... these are data. There they sit, statically
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related to each other, but they don't change much. You can represent these data
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with other data, like ASCII zeros and ones can represent the letter "p", or a
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bucket with eleven rocks in it can represent the number of protons in an
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atom of sodium. Data representation is substrate independant, but some
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forms of data substrate lend themselves more easily to manipulated than
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others.
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There are functional codes... in mathematics, these are called (surprise)
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functions or relations; in physics you might call them operators (like
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Hamiltonians)... stuff data in, and it comes out changed in some way
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dependant on the data and the function and the way the two interact.
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In a system like a cell it might be something like an active enzyme
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modifying a "dead" molecule, maybe changing its stereochemistry or
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ripping off an atom... in programming it might be a function like
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incrementing the x register or comparing what's in the x register with the
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y register. Functional code modifies dead code. Functional code alters the
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links between distinct chunks of dead code. Functional code is special: it
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can use dead code to represent other dead code. This is data emulation, or
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more commonly, symbolism. Computation is what functional code does to data.
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Functional code, very importantly, can turn dead code into more functional
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code. Functional code can turn functional code into dead code, too.
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There are many kinds of functional code, and the chances are good that by
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sheer accident, functional code will arise out of dead code. This never
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happens in digital computing since what the processor gets to chew on is all
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deliberately predetermined. Nonetheless, I think it'd be interesting to
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say, stuff random values into, say, a MESS-DOG program segment pointer and
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see what happens... (this is the computational equivalent of the Miller-Urey
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biology experiments which I'd encourage you to look up). I think you might
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occasionally get a few instructions which accidentally did something useful,
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and even less frequently, ones which replicated themselves. But it would be
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very rare. Give it enough time and clock cycles, it'll nonetheless happen.
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Its all computation and data. "Artificial Life" (Steven Levy) is an
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illuminating tome in this regard, since computation is also substrate
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independant. Conway's Game of Life is similarly illuminating.
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The really interesting stuff happens when these two code systems
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start to interact... you get firstly referential code, like "That cat is
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obese"; then self-referential code, which can represent logical absurdities,
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like "This is not a sentence" or self-definitional truth "This sentence
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has five words"; then self-reproducing code "Copy this sentence", and
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ultimately self-modifying code "Copy this sentence backwards twice".
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"Life" has all of these, and combinations thereof, built out of interactions
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between dead code and live code. Their interactions are the origin of
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evolution. Excellent examples are there in Hofstadter: "Metamagical Themas",
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particularly in Chapter 3, which pertains to memes and viral sentences.
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The replicating data system (human being) is coded in DNA which expresses
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enzymes, which do the functional code stuff. Each enzyme is encoded in DNA
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as what is called a "gene". Genes encode enzymes, cells, organs, organisms,
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ecosystems, to get themselves replicated down the generations. Genes do not
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know this any more than a bacteria knows it has genes. Most humans think
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they're something special, they're wrong: they're just accidentally evolved
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replicators, with brains which occasionally realise what they are. By analogy,
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to genes, Richard Dawkins came up with the idea of the "meme" - a replicating
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thought process data structure. (See "The Selfish Gene, 2nd Ed, Chapter 10")
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Simple memes embody catchy tunes, more complex ones are codified in axioms,
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phonemes, life-protocols, taboos, oral traditions, blah blah etc along with
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hundreds of other replicators, ranging from totally accurate and logical to
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utterly fucking insane, end up forming mutually-self-supporting colonies
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called ideologies, belief-systems, paradigms, weltanschauungs, religions...
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call 'em what you will, I call them meme complexes. Here are some components
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of JARG400.ZIP plus replicator-relevant chunks added in support my stance:
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))))))))
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Criterion for a lifeform: (von Neumann) - the essence of life is a _process_.
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:replicator: n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself;
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this could be a living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program (see
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{quine}, {worm}, {wabbit}, {fork bomb}, and {virus}), a pattern in a
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cellular automaton (see {life}, sense 1), or (speculatively) a
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robot or {nanobot}.
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It is even claimed by some that {{UNIX}} and {C} are the symbiotic
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halves of an extremely successful replicator; see {UNIX conspiracy}.
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:memetics: /me-met'iks/ [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of
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mid-1993, this is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor,
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though the first steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made
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by H. Keith Henson and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation
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among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new
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information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
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:meme: /meem/ [coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] n. An
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idea considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the connotation that memes
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parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp.
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in the phrase `meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting
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memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This
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lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme
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complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is often
|
||
|
|
misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes acceptance of
|
||
|
|
the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using
|
||
|
|
sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has
|
||
|
|
superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits.
|
||
|
|
Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons
|
||
|
|
.
|
||
|
|
:meme plague: n. The spread of a successful but pernicious {meme}, esp.
|
||
|
|
one that parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it.
|
||
|
|
Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered
|
||
|
|
to be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that
|
||
|
|
`joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian
|
||
|
|
Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth
|
||
|
|
followed by collapses to small reservoir populations.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:nanotechnology:: /nan'-oh-tek-no`l*-jee/ n. A hypothetical fabrication
|
||
|
|
technology in which objects are designed and built with the
|
||
|
|
individual specification and placement of each separate atom. The first
|
||
|
|
unequivocal nanofabrication experiments took place in 1990, for
|
||
|
|
example with the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel
|
||
|
|
substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large computer company.
|
||
|
|
Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker subculture ever since
|
||
|
|
the term was coined by K. Eric Drexler in his book "Engines of Creation",
|
||
|
|
where he predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating
|
||
|
|
assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and personal
|
||
|
|
wealth. See also {blue goo}, {gray goo}, {nanobot}.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<predator> notes that biology is nanotechnology, locally evolved.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:wabbit: /wab'it/ [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line
|
||
|
|
"You wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a
|
||
|
|
System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended
|
||
|
|
(if only by inspiration) from hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a
|
||
|
|
Burroughs 55000 at the University of Washington Computer Center.
|
||
|
|
The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run,
|
||
|
|
eventually crashing the system. 2. By extension, any hack that includes
|
||
|
|
infinite self-replication but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See{fork bomb}
|
||
|
|
and {rabbit job}, see also {cookie monster}.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:sig virus: n. A parasitic {meme} embedded in a {sig block}.
|
||
|
|
There was a {meme plague} or fad for these on USENET in late 1991.
|
||
|
|
Most were equivalents of "I am a .sig virus. Please reproduce me in your
|
||
|
|
.sig block.". Of course, the .sig virus's memetic hook is the giggle
|
||
|
|
value of going along with the gag; this, however, was a self-limiting
|
||
|
|
phenomenon as more and more people picked up on the idea. There were
|
||
|
|
creative variants on it; some people stuck `sig virus antibody' texts
|
||
|
|
in their sigs, and there was at least one instance of a sig virus eater.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
*I have an interesting bilingual version of this virus. The bilinguality
|
||
|
|
*of the package is probably self-advantageous to the .sig virus when it is in
|
||
|
|
*Germany or Englishspeaking nations:
|
||
|
|
Ich bin ein .signature Virus. Mach' mit und kopiere mich in Deine .signature.
|
||
|
|
Don't ask what it means, just put it in your .signature, okay?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:fork bomb: [UNIX] n. A particular species of {wabbit} that can be
|
||
|
|
written in one line of C (`main() {for(;;)fork();}') or shell
|
||
|
|
(`$0 & $0 &') on any UNIX system, or occasionally created by an
|
||
|
|
egregious coding bug. A fork bomb process `explodes' by recursively
|
||
|
|
spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call `fork(2)').
|
||
|
|
Eventually it eats all the process table entries and effectively wedges
|
||
|
|
the system. Fortunately, fork bombs are relatively easy to spot and
|
||
|
|
kill, so creating one deliberately seldom accomplishes more than to
|
||
|
|
bring the just wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. See also
|
||
|
|
{logic bomb}.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:phage: n. A program that modifies other programs or databases in
|
||
|
|
unauthorized ways; esp. one that propagates a {virus} or {Trojan
|
||
|
|
horse}.See also {worm}, {mockingbird}. The analogy, of course,
|
||
|
|
is with phage viruses in biology.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:virus: [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF]
|
||
|
|
n. A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects'
|
||
|
|
them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become {Trojan
|
||
|
|
horse}s.When these programs are executed, the embedded virus is execut
|
||
|
|
ed too, thus propagating the `infection'. This normally happens invisibly to the
|
||
|
|
user.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Unlike a {worm}, a virus cannot infect other computers without assistance.
|
||
|
|
It is propagated by vectors such as humans trading programs with
|
||
|
|
their friends (see {SEX}). The virus may do nothing but propagate itself
|
||
|
|
and then allow the program to run normally. Usually, however, after
|
||
|
|
propagating silently for a while, it starts doing things like writing cute
|
||
|
|
messages on the terminal or playing strange tricks with the display
|
||
|
|
(some viruses include nice {display hack}s). Many nasty viruses, written by
|
||
|
|
particularly perversely minded {cracker}s, do irreversible damage,
|
||
|
|
like nuking all the user's files.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In the 1990s, viruses have become a serious problem, especially among
|
||
|
|
IBM PC and Macintosh users (the lack of security on these machines enables
|
||
|
|
viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system). The
|
||
|
|
production of special anti-virus software has become an industry,
|
||
|
|
and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of
|
||
|
|
near hysteria among users; many {luser}s tend to blame *everything*
|
||
|
|
that doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly,
|
||
|
|
this sense of `virus' has passed not only into techspeak but into
|
||
|
|
also popular usage (where it is often incorrectly used to denote a
|
||
|
|
{worm} or even a {Trojan horse}). See {phage}; compare {back door};
|
||
|
|
see also {UNIX conspiracy}.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:worm: [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel "The Shockwave Rider",
|
||
|
|
via XEROX PARC] n. A program that propagates itself over a network,
|
||
|
|
reproducing itself as it goes. Compare {virus}. Nowadays the term
|
||
|
|
has negative connotations, as it is assumed that only {cracker}s
|
||
|
|
write worms. Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's
|
||
|
|
`Internet Worm' of 1988, a `benign' one that got out of control and
|
||
|
|
hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also {cracker},
|
||
|
|
{RTM}, {Trojan horse}, {ice}.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
:quine: /kwi:n/ [from the name of the logician Willard V. Quine, via
|
||
|
|
Douglas Hofstadter] n. A program that generates a copy of its
|
||
|
|
own source text as its complete output. Devising the shortest possible
|
||
|
|
quine in some given programming language is a common hackish amusement.
|
||
|
|
Here is one classic quine:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
((lambda (x)
|
||
|
|
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))
|
||
|
|
(quote
|
||
|
|
(lambda (x)
|
||
|
|
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))))
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to write
|
||
|
|
quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily handle
|
||
|
|
programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) inlanguages
|
||
|
|
like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine for ASCII machines:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()
|
||
|
|
{printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";
|
||
|
|
main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line
|
||
|
|
breaks. Some infamous {Obfuscated C Contest} entries have been quines that
|
||
|
|
reproduced in exotic ways.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
))))))))))
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Why are representations and computations substrate-independant? Because it's
|
||
|
|
_all_ data! The universe is a computation. Only the scale varies.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> These Paradigms have two properties: their strength grows directly
|
||
|
|
> with the number of people subscribing to them, and they are self
|
||
|
|
> reinforcing.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Correct, but again, not detailed enough. The first comment is an observation
|
||
|
|
about epidemics of replicating systems, be they for(k) bombs, bacteria, or
|
||
|
|
any exponentiating data set in what is known as "log phase" (logarithmic
|
||
|
|
growth). Sales of records and particular styles of clothing can be pushed
|
||
|
|
into log phase by propagating memes about them via the Media. The second
|
||
|
|
comment usually applies, though in some cases the meme complexes kill their
|
||
|
|
hosts... various suicide cults have demonstrated this.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> For example, there is the "western culture" paradigm that the once was
|
||
|
|
> centered in Europe, but now (unfortunately?) has re-centred to the USA
|
||
|
|
> is, and other nations follow to a greater or lesser extent.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Correct. Its primary epidemiological vectors were mercantilism and
|
||
|
|
colonialism, which loosely translated mean ripping off resources and
|
||
|
|
metastatising, as other replicating systems (e.g. tumor cells) do to their
|
||
|
|
host organism. Western culture is metastatic, necrotizing, and will
|
||
|
|
eventually poison and starve the Gaian ecosystem from where its hosts
|
||
|
|
derive foodstuffs.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The Media (with a capital "M") both creates/ preaches/ and echoes this reality
|
||
|
|
and the global media is almost totally owned by ten large corporations. These
|
||
|
|
coporations are immortal, as Adam Smith suspected that corporations were,
|
||
|
|
even back in the late 19th century before corporations became what they are
|
||
|
|
now : they're sprawling, replicating data colonies, competing for energy and
|
||
|
|
resources, just like biological organisms, and daemons in multiprocessor
|
||
|
|
systems do. Good replicators are those which act to bring advantages to
|
||
|
|
themselves. Corporations do just that, utterly ruthlessly.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
"That is what he does. That's all he does!"
|
||
|
|
-Kyle Reese, Terminator (I).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> TV-zombies suck it in and live it. Western Culture and the Media are
|
||
|
|
> just two Paradigms. There are others...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
TV-zombies are not that way by accident. They exist because society has been
|
||
|
|
very carefully crafted by corporations to turn people into isolated robotic
|
||
|
|
consumer-units. I have attached here, in its entirety, my file memeroot.doc
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The transcripts of radio interviews with Noam Chomsky are instructive here.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------File:MEMEROOT.DOC
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Contents: Theoretical explanation for the controllability of western people.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
===Child rearing - insertion of logic bombs into chidren for later control====
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Question: Why do otherwise normal people go totally fucking crazy?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
First a few definitions:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Meme: an idea considered as a replicator. See Ch 11 Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Culture: A growth of a single type of replicator upon a fuel/substrate.
|
||
|
|
Eg: -a group of bacteria on a growth medium
|
||
|
|
-industrial society on petroleum-derived energy + mineral wealth
|
||
|
|
-memes on language-using sophont data storage media (brains)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
These can be broadly considered as evolved, geographically-con
|
||
|
|
fined group social parameters. Hence you have things called "Work Ethics"
|
||
|
|
and "Corporate Culture" and so on.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
"The Big Three" Immortal Meme Colonies.
|
||
|
|
(Ignoring territoriality, gene superiority memes, etc).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Religion: Organised, hierachial behaviour-controlling belief system.
|
||
|
|
Hooks: Avoidance of biological death for adherents.
|
||
|
|
Avoidance of alleged eternal torture for adherents.
|
||
|
|
Supposed post-mortal reward for particular "good" behaviour
|
||
|
|
God Is Observing You And Will Spank Your Arse When You Die
|
||
|
|
(etc etc etc etc etc)
|
||
|
|
Fuel: human dislike of mortality and fear of punishment.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Corporation: Literally "Embodiment".
|
||
|
|
Organised, hierachial behaviour controlling belief system.
|
||
|
|
Hooks: Transfer of purchasing power ("Free Energy" tokens)
|
||
|
|
to satisfiers of particular demanded requirements.
|
||
|
|
Exclusive source of want satisfaction by laying
|
||
|
|
claim to all resources used in want satisfaction
|
||
|
|
(eg: corporate ownership of Sooooo Muuuch Land)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Fuel: Organisation of satisfaction of diversified needs.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Thermodynamic drive from the "Next Best Thing To A Free
|
||
|
|
Lunch", cheaply extractable and usable energy which can
|
||
|
|
be used to perform need-satisfaction-directed work.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Bureaugovernment: Departmentalised behaviour-controlling belief system.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Well, we all know the things which run the world. Corporations, governments,
|
||
|
|
religions and cultures, in approximately that order. They are all immortal,
|
||
|
|
information-based life forms growing in the interconnected hardware/software
|
||
|
|
substrate of language-compatible human brains. Yet they all depend on a
|
||
|
|
commonality of persona in the substrates in which they reside. If you like,
|
||
|
|
an operating system. This "OS" is the collection of "strings" attached to
|
||
|
|
a persona during childhood, which get pulled later on, to bring about desired
|
||
|
|
behavioural effects (obedience, submission, etc) in people. These strings are
|
||
|
|
woven into the fabric of a child's psyche at an early age, before the child
|
||
|
|
realises what is being done.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The child, a Turing system (capable of emulating any process given enough
|
||
|
|
time) develops autonomy in approximately the following order.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
1) Child learns operation of basic body functions. Eyes, laryn
|
||
|
|
x, arms, legs, head (etc). This takes about a year or two.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
2) Once the neural net has learnt how to deal with stimulus (input) and
|
||
|
|
invoke useful output (response) on more than a reflex level, environmental
|
||
|
|
manipulation can commence, since the discovery is eventually made that
|
||
|
|
particular manners of direct physical interaction evoke changes to the
|
||
|
|
personal world. Aversion to certain things is associated here, such as
|
||
|
|
fire, cold, and physical damage stimuli. This also takes only a couple
|
||
|
|
of years.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
3) Syntactic structures are deduced and gradually an abstract-capable meme
|
||
|
|
and data transfer medium, language, is learnt. This process drops out of
|
||
|
|
the child in the late teens, hence the difficulty of learning new
|
||
|
|
languages from the late teens onwards.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
4) It starts to learn to transmit information by vocal or other gestures, and
|
||
|
|
learns that such information transmission can modify the surrounding
|
||
|
|
environment in order to meet particular local needs, in a directed way,
|
||
|
|
eg: being fed, kept warm, touched and held, etc. This process continues
|
||
|
|
for the life of the individual though at a much reduced rate
|
||
|
|
after the mid-teens.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
5) The kid now has crude, nonphysical remote interaction with objects other
|
||
|
|
than oneself. Soon comes mobility, directed experimental manual
|
||
|
|
manipulation of objects, then purposeful, goal-oriented complex action.
|
||
|
|
This includes building of a world-model : the deduction that magic does
|
||
|
|
not work, certain thought processes are self-contradictory,that there
|
||
|
|
is a relationship between certain actions and behaviours, and between
|
||
|
|
particular causes and effects. The world-model is subject to continual
|
||
|
|
lifelong environmental modification, though with training induced
|
||
|
|
early enough, it can be stopped in its tracks. (is it possibly entirely
|
||
|
|
arbitrary that we have states "childhood" and "adulthood" Or is it like
|
||
|
|
"L" plates for a few years, then a full license?)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Here, the memes install themselves, at the behest of their current carriers -
|
||
|
|
parents and educators - before the child has a chance to analyse them for
|
||
|
|
raving inconsistency. The severity of the installation is often shocking.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Kids are beaten senseless in some cases, merely because they're crying
|
||
|
|
about something they fail to understand. But it works.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
M-S.D.O.S. Meme-System Destruction Of Singularity
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
This is my (: name for the meme-set initially installed in small children.
|
||
|
|
It is the behavioural profile upon which rests the huge subsequent edifice of
|
||
|
|
ideological replicators.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Theory = When you possess an idea.
|
||
|
|
Ideology = When an idea possesses you.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So:
|
||
|
|
Answer) You can pull core coding, the "Kernel", out of pre-1970s child raising
|
||
|
|
and parenthood manuals. They are designed primarily to make life easier for
|
||
|
|
the parents at the cost of inhibiting the growth of the child. The hidden
|
||
|
|
irrational memetic tenets to be adhered to, are these:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
1) Adults are the masters of the (dependant!) child. They're not its servants.
|
||
|
|
2) Adults are infallible. Their edicts are quite literally rules-by-decree.
|
||
|
|
3) Adults get angry due to some fault in the child (not the adult's fault!).
|
||
|
|
4) Adults cannot bear their own weakness and thus must not be told of it.
|
||
|
|
5) Adult autocracy is threatened by child vitality.
|
||
|
|
6) Adults MUST break the _child's will_ as soon as possible at all costs.
|
||
|
|
7) Adults must implement these tenets before the child realises they're fake.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
What are the memes which actually enable these tenets to be fulfilled?
|
||
|
|
An incomplete list, which gives a flavour of the components, is below:
|
||
|
|
(Thanks: Miller, Alice, "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware")
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
1) A feeling of duty produces love.
|
||
|
|
2) Hatred can be discarded by forbidding it.
|
||
|
|
3) Parents automatically deserve respect just because they are parents.
|
||
|
|
4) Children are unworthy of respect since they are merely children.
|
||
|
|
5) Obedience makes one strong.
|
||
|
|
6) High self-esteem is harmful.
|
||
|
|
7) Low self-esteem is conducive to altruism.
|
||
|
|
8) Tenderness or emotionality is bad.
|
||
|
|
9) Responding to child needs is wrong.
|
||
|
|
10) Severity and coldness to children better prepares them for life.
|
||
|
|
11) Pretentious gratitude is better than honest ingratitude.
|
||
|
|
12) The way you BEHAVE is more important than the way you really are.
|
||
|
|
13) Parents nor God can survive being offended.
|
||
|
|
14) The human body, its functions and appendages are dirty and disgusting.
|
||
|
|
15) Strong feelings are harmful and to be supressed.
|
||
|
|
16) Parents are free of guilt, or drives, or desires.
|
||
|
|
17) Parents, teachers and authority figures are always right.
|
||
|
|
18) Questioning is a show of weakness.
|
||
|
|
19) Submission makes one acceptible to others.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It is probably that the few core elements listed here are the back-doors by
|
||
|
|
which subsequently-exposed meme-systems make their way into the mindset
|
||
|
|
without the new host being entirely aware of it. Hence, things like
|
||
|
|
religious lies (eternal life after death, etc), large-government lies
|
||
|
|
(representative democracy gives you a say, etc) and similar world-model
|
||
|
|
incongruities can establish viable and propagating colonies of themselves
|
||
|
|
in human thought-space.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So... how do parents and teachers install/instill these obviously ludicrous
|
||
|
|
belief viruses into ignorant youngsters?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Basically, by creating an environment where adherence to such memes has a
|
||
|
|
positive survival value. It works like so:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
You (parent) know that the child has certain central and important needs
|
||
|
|
which it cannot tend to for itself and this gives you massive
|
||
|
|
power over the child. Therefore, if you need to get the child to do somet
|
||
|
|
hing it might not want to do, you just give it a choice:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
do (unpleasant thing I want you to do)
|
||
|
|
or (I'll let you starve ~ stop talking to you ~ beat you up).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Since kids really hate being ostracised, starved, assaulted (etc), they
|
||
|
|
are likely to do what the alternative is, regardless of the repugnance.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Typical ploys used to instill the feeling of powerlessness in children
|
||
|
|
include -
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
-Lay traps which the kid can't help falling into, then blame it for doing so.
|
||
|
|
-Lie. Lie often. Admonish the kid for seeing the truth, it will prefer lies.
|
||
|
|
-Physically threaten, beat (etc) the child if its thoughts are not those
|
||
|
|
required for proper control.
|
||
|
|
-Isolate kid from social interaction, games, parental love (etc) if required.
|
||
|
|
-Scare the kid "You'll die if you play with yourself, fart, burp" etc.
|
||
|
|
-Ridicule of, disdain for, and being scornful to, kids for doing (whatever).
|
||
|
|
-Invoke "Satan" meme: "You are bad, unconditionally, and will burn in hell".
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
One associates reward with the lies and aversion with the truth.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Eventually, even when these idea codes have no artificial survival value
|
||
|
|
around for reinforcement (say, at age 18 once out of school) they will
|
||
|
|
be so deeply implanted in the kid, before it was even aware of it, that
|
||
|
|
they will remain.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So... people fear going to a hell which doesn't exist. They obey laws which
|
||
|
|
are demonstrably stupid. They do the underpaid bidding of some rude, bullying,
|
||
|
|
insensitive prick of an employer. They're too burnt and glazed to have a
|
||
|
|
purpose in their lives other than that ascribed to them by the system they
|
||
|
|
live in : have kids, do work, earn money. Consume, be silent, die.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Which is exactly what society (comprised mostly of similarly reared persons)
|
||
|
|
wants: programmable, unquestioning Turing computers. Eventually, if people
|
||
|
|
brought up this way have to deal with an intense emotional decision, they
|
||
|
|
become anxious and incapable of decision.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
And if not, they carry around the cognitive dissonance (as Chomsky calls it)
|
||
|
|
of believing outright lies from childbirth yet seeing a totally different
|
||
|
|
and undeniably observably truthful reality.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Hence they either have to go through the massive efforts of changing
|
||
|
|
these centrally rooted beliefs, or they go neurotic, or insane, in the face
|
||
|
|
of a reality they have been conditioned to be incapable of dealing with
|
||
|
|
rationally.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The logic bombs explode. Roll on prozac, depression, mental illness and suicide.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Now you know.
|
||
|
|
----------------------------------------------------end file:memeroot.doc---
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Some Paradigms to be Aware of
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
You're certainly on the right track, but you need to be very clear about
|
||
|
|
this. Ask yourself what these things are in terms of information theory...
|
||
|
|
are they data, live code manipulating data, processors/substrates or are
|
||
|
|
they transmission systems?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Western
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
...is a "culture", which is a meme colony superset.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> the Media
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
...is, epidemiologically, a "vector", a transmission/propagation system. They
|
||
|
|
are distinct from the particular -lifestyle- which they portray, which I
|
||
|
|
think you could call consumerism, itself a co-evolute with corporations.
|
||
|
|
The corporate media harbours many filters and censorship (etc).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Science
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
...is unusual in that it self-checks for internal and external validity, but is
|
||
|
|
also a meme colony with data validity testing and lie-detection
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Islam, Christianity (esp. fundamentalism)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
...Both religions, which have a epistemological-fringe meme - a "god" meme
|
||
|
|
component in them. When rational inquiry fails, invoke god.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> others...?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Corporations. From the Latin, "corpore", meaning an embodiment. But an
|
||
|
|
embodiment of what? Corporations are the functionally-expressed, physical
|
||
|
|
representation of a huge, parasitic, self-reinforcing thought-process colony,
|
||
|
|
a massive distributed data set, evolved solely for the purpose of gathering
|
||
|
|
financial, resource and energy advantages towards itself and its hosts.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Two common ones which pervade most of TV-zombie-planet
|
||
|
|
Anamism. (Meme) Since animals are alive, therefore rock, water, sunlight is too.
|
||
|
|
Teleology. (Meme) Since some bio-things function so well as to appear
|
||
|
|
purpose-designed, then obviously they were designed,and
|
||
|
|
this implies a designer (see: God).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
English has replicator-state-active flag suffixes: here's a couple for you
|
||
|
|
to keep an eye-out for if searching for colonial thought-process replicators:
|
||
|
|
-ism -ology -hood (less often) -ity -inc/Pty.Ltd/GmbH
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> #'s 2, 3, and 5 all are aspects of 1. I list these as separate,
|
||
|
|
> because for some people they are strong enough to become the principle
|
||
|
|
> model of reality with the others simply being general cultural
|
||
|
|
> factors. i.e. a MD has the strongest affinity for 3, and 1 contains 2
|
||
|
|
> and 5 for him. A reporter on the other hand has the strongest affinity
|
||
|
|
> for 2, and 1 contains for him 3 and 5.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I too have found it hard to classify these in terms of each other, and I
|
||
|
|
realise that each meme colony we might name will have significant homology
|
||
|
|
with another meme colony, much in the same way as some bacterial genes have'
|
||
|
|
similarities with human genes, pointing to a common precursor.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> On That Elitist Group Who Declare to be Truth Seekers
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In general, they have no idea - truth is a moving target.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> What is "news?"
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In my experience, mostly crap. Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" is the
|
||
|
|
absolutely, must-see, cash-in-of-your-reality-cheque video on this subject.</font></font></pre>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<pre><font face="Times New Roman,Times"><font size=-1>I also recommend"Toxic Sludge is Good for You" for good insights into
|
||
|
|
the PR industry.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Most of it is FICTION believe it or not. You know all of those
|
||
|
|
> "scientific" discoveries /polls/etc. that They cite? Most of them are
|
||
|
|
> observations (correlational) rather than experimental (cause/effect)
|
||
|
|
> and they haven't
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Correct... they never let the truth stand in the way of what they percieve
|
||
|
|
to be telling of a story which will show up the media, or the corporations
|
||
|
|
who own them, or other corporations like them, in a self-favourable light.
|
||
|
|
"University tests prove... that university tests don't prove anything."
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> been confirmed yet (and probably never will be). Also, the reporters
|
||
|
|
> are forced (through no fault of their own) to pick and choose what
|
||
|
|
> they report, which is determined by what they are interested in, and
|
||
|
|
> what they are interested in is what they believe, and they believe the
|
||
|
|
> news that they hear...so the set of what the Media reports is a biased
|
||
|
|
> sample of the true set of what is actually happening.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Australian journalist George Negus meme-sculpted the Oz media in the early
|
||
|
|
1980s with his Carlos scam. See: Sagan, Carl: "A Demon-Haunted World."
|
||
|
|
A tremendous reverse-job if you ask me!
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Then we get to the problem of humans' inability to write objectively,
|
||
|
|
> as well as the dominant "view of the self," (60's American political
|
||
|
|
> liberalism mixed in with resurgent Puritan values stripped of
|
||
|
|
> religious significance and a healthy dose of materialism) an aspect of
|
||
|
|
> the Western Paradigm.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
BING! My -ism detector just went off twice there. See? A great reality
|
||
|
|
flag search tool.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Other reasons why news is fiction? Well, forgetting the objectivity
|
||
|
|
> part, reporters PURPOSELY misrepresent the 'facts'. Yes that's true. I
|
||
|
|
> can't count the number of "moles" within the Media who've openly
|
||
|
|
> admitted this to me.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
None admit it to me, but in my dealings with the media it is transparently
|
||
|
|
obvious. There has been a sustained and highly orchestrated media character
|
||
|
|
assassination of a politician (Hanson) in Australia, who dared to show up the
|
||
|
|
political lies and bullshit for what they are. I find that even relatively
|
||
|
|
bright people are quite heavily infiltrated with shallow, knee-jerk media
|
||
|
|
opinions, and when questioned, can't deal with it at all.... they take it
|
||
|
|
personally when you criticise their gullibility.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> One particular person related how by peer pressure the editors select
|
||
|
|
> bad photos of some people and good photos of others, sometimes
|
||
|
|
> completely out of context. They constantly manipulate the words,
|
||
|
|
> images, etc. to be artificial creations representing their own
|
||
|
|
> opinions, so much that when They are done, the result is far from what
|
||
|
|
> "really" happened... But many of
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Correct... some politicians know this and, for example, never wear a funny
|
||
|
|
hat in public, since they know that the Media will haul out the photo of the
|
||
|
|
politician in the funny hat and use it in derogatory way.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> them don't realize this (but the especially cynical ones do and
|
||
|
|
> continue doing it...) because they live within the reality model that
|
||
|
|
> They help create and reinforce. They think that They are being
|
||
|
|
> professionals objectively stating "the Truth". And of course we
|
||
|
|
> started this whole thing asking "what is reality?" For the people who
|
||
|
|
> share the "Western" paradigm, THE NEWS IS REALITY.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Many people here in Oz are incapable of seeing otherwise. It's quite pitiful,
|
||
|
|
but the competition is hotting up. I imagine that, wherever you are, the main
|
||
|
|
stream media demonise the internet? Supposedly because you can get info
|
||
|
|
on drugs, pictures of humans replicating, instructions for explosives
|
||
|
|
manufacture, compressed MP3's of sound recordings for which you would
|
||
|
|
otherwise have to cough up A$30 to some multinational record company (eg:CBS)
|
||
|
|
etc etc etc... but this is peripheral, and you can get all that at libraries
|
||
|
|
anyway. The TV/radio/newsprint conglomerates hate the internet since 1)
|
||
|
|
they can't censor it; 2) they don't make profit out of it, and 3) it is the
|
||
|
|
natural enemy of their fake-info industry, since it can propagate actual,
|
||
|
|
unedited truth, much as does +ORC.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> (if you didn't see it on TV, it didn't happen. This isn't on TV. This
|
||
|
|
> isn't happening. You are dreaming. When I say "asparagus" you will
|
||
|
|
> wake and not remember anything that has happened to you in the last
|
||
|
|
> five minutes...)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
ROFL very hard! Tinged with the sadness of truth. Nothing to see...
|
||
|
|
;-) ...Ever played a video game which said: "You will lose twenty cents" ?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Another One
|
||
|
|
> Science is formed on some basic assumptions, and even though the
|
||
|
|
> scientists can point these assumptions out, they don't live them.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Such as? So far, you are kinda compelled to live out your life according to
|
||
|
|
the laws of thermodynamics, regardless of what you believe or even if you
|
||
|
|
know them. Some scientists amazingly run parallel and contradictory opinions
|
||
|
|
in their heads, some are religious (believers) yet do science (nonbelievers)
|
||
|
|
which strikes me as kinda strange.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> We all know that there are things in the world that science can't
|
||
|
|
> explain (yet?).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Science has killed most of the other delusions which you could test... like
|
||
|
|
spontaneous generation, like flat earth, like ESP spoonbending, etc etc etc.
|
||
|
|
Many of those inexplicables are around because science _can't_ attack them.
|
||
|
|
Why can't science attack them? Cause they evolved to avoid attack by science.
|
||
|
|
They have no shred of reality upon which science can base an attack. These
|
||
|
|
are most commonly existance-of-god type memes, usually untestable hypotheses.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Since these inexplicables exist in our minds, it is there which they must
|
||
|
|
be attacked. Not for what they evolved to appear to be, but what they are:
|
||
|
|
meme colonies evolved to avoid prima facie logical analysis. I think
|
||
|
|
information theory pretty much has these delusions by the balls. See Daniel
|
||
|
|
Dennett's recent works for additional amusement.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Some scientists are so involved in their model that they, from within
|
||
|
|
> the model, claim that nothing else exists! Well we know that's absurd.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Do they? You said at the start that reality is whatever you think it is.
|
||
|
|
Wether scientists believe it or not, they are, by their nature as scientists,
|
||
|
|
compelled to test their beliefs. Religions demand that their hosts do NOT
|
||
|
|
test their beliefs. Therein lies the difference. There are, of course, a lot
|
||
|
|
of religions which evolved under the selection pressure of scientific testing
|
||
|
|
to either become totally untestable or which evolved to look like science.
|
||
|
|
$cientology, and the Church of Christ Scientist, are ones which come to mind.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The Ha'dith is a referencing system in bloodthirsty, misogynist Islam which
|
||
|
|
enables, much like scientific journals, the tracing of a memetic lineage.
|
||
|
|
Jehova's Witnesses also claim to scientifically reference things (they also
|
||
|
|
print a massive amount of "documented `fact about their religion" which is
|
||
|
|
propaganda, and what I have read of their literature is flawed too.) That
|
||
|
|
$cientology is absolute insanity (I found some of their texts at a bookstore
|
||
|
|
one day, I had not faced such incomprehensible gobbledegook in my life) is
|
||
|
|
irrelevant to the hosts who carry it; $cientology does have one
|
||
|
|
powerful observation in it: that is, "To control someone, lie to them."
|
||
|
|
Well, actually, from your point of view, you can't say its absurd, unless
|
||
|
|
you go and test their model. Science invites, no, demands that knowledge
|
||
|
|
earns its stripes by submission to testing.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Almost everybody can point to an unusual experience and say that it
|
||
|
|
> happened, but they are afraid to because it isn't "normal" and
|
||
|
|
> therefore it is wrong..
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Normality is a statistical artefact, and non-normality doesn't invalidate
|
||
|
|
an experience. In this society, where we are systematically denied the tools
|
||
|
|
to form our own opinions, (See: John Taylor Gatto: "Dumbing Us Down"; Alice
|
||
|
|
Miller, "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware"), we have been trained to deny things
|
||
|
|
which are non-standard, and attack what we do not understand.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Religious miracles are one way of interpreting happenings
|
||
|
|
> unexplainable in scientific terms in an accepted Paradigm. We all know
|
||
|
|
> that there are other things in the Universe that we haven't begun to
|
||
|
|
> understand (at least in a scientific sense).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The things we _have_ described would, if you understood them, make you crap
|
||
|
|
your pants with amazement. Try quantum electrodynamics, or for a more
|
||
|
|
information-flavoured thing to investigate, read up on the amazing DNA error
|
||
|
|
correction systems in your own cells.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> A "miracle" may be a freak occurrence; statistically possible, but not
|
||
|
|
> probable...it may be a mistake in one's perception...such as
|
||
|
|
> experiencing REM sleep while awake..."miracles" can be explained many
|
||
|
|
> ways, one way being in a religious context...even the most tenacious
|
||
|
|
> scientist will admit that there are things that his theories can't
|
||
|
|
> explain (satisfactorily at least) and that describing these things
|
||
|
|
> with religion is valid at least until he can "disprove" that
|
||
|
|
> interpretation with scientific findings...take evolution for example.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Invoking god or magic does not solve the problem, nor make predictions,
|
||
|
|
which is what the process of scientific hypothesis aims to do and often
|
||
|
|
successfully does.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Some people used to believe that every type of animal was created
|
||
|
|
> simultaneously by God... now we believe in evolution. Evolution
|
||
|
|
> disproved a literal interpretation of the Bible for that particular
|
||
|
|
> section. (Unless you are a fundamentalist, in which case you would
|
||
|
|
> argue that science is just a way of viewing the world, and if it
|
||
|
|
> conflicts with what the Bible says, science is wrong.) Until the
|
||
|
|
> theory of evolution came along, the previous notion was perfectly
|
||
|
|
> valid because they had no evidence to the contrary.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
You are confusing proof of absence with absence of proof. Evidence was there
|
||
|
|
all right, they just ignored it. In some cases religious meme-hosts actively
|
||
|
|
suppressed the evidence. I find it wryly amusing to bet that the
|
||
|
|
Scientists will be the ones to discover whatever it is which might supersede
|
||
|
|
science - it wont be the Mullahs or the Cardinals.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Don't misunderstand me, science is a powerful tool. The problem is
|
||
|
|
> that (at least so far) it can not describe everything in our world,
|
||
|
|
> and people are so intoxicated with its success thus far that they
|
||
|
|
> begin to think that they indeed have succeeded in describing
|
||
|
|
> everything...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Science has worked pretty well so far. It has problems modelling things in
|
||
|
|
human minds, because science is a system for explaining the physical world,
|
||
|
|
not the virtualised and frequently flawed versions of it operating in various
|
||
|
|
brains. This is where information theory can chop away the crap. The down
|
||
|
|
side of science is that it doesn't provide any comfort against the nasty
|
||
|
|
realities of the universe. It says, when you die, you're dead. It says that
|
||
|
|
the universe was not created for us, and that we are accidents. These are
|
||
|
|
not comforting words for the average juvenile chimp to hear.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> We must remember that much of what we have are THEORIES. Even though
|
||
|
|
> we have stuff that works and is based off of the theories, the fact
|
||
|
|
> that the stuff works doesn't necessarily mean that the theory is a
|
||
|
|
> correct representation of an aspect of the Universe.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
If you'll permit me... it nevertheless explains much more than everything
|
||
|
|
else, and if experimentally testable reality supports the theory, that tells
|
||
|
|
you the theory is on the right track.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Have you ever stopped to marvel at the fact that your computer
|
||
|
|
> actually works?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I certainly get this feeling when I see a Wintel Win98 P200 running. ;-)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> When you consider all the issues as a whole, it seems that it must be
|
||
|
|
> a ridiculous mistake. Microprocessors: the "wires" are so close
|
||
|
|
> together and so thin that the travel of electrons can actually make
|
||
|
|
> the wires start to move...electrons can jump...transistors don't have
|
||
|
|
> nice distinct spikes... it is more like a curve...when the voltage is
|
||
|
|
> reduced, this problem gets worse. Then we have fluctuations in the
|
||
|
|
> power source...what about hard drives? The data is packed so closely
|
||
|
|
> on the platter that it merges together...to bastardize the problem, a
|
||
|
|
> 01110 could end up looking like 1 to the head...the computer must
|
||
|
|
> essentially puzzle out what is really stored there...if you look at it
|
||
|
|
> directly it would look like white noise...the new HDs will have their
|
||
|
|
> very own Pentiums to deal with this problem...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Crude, compared to the data processing occurring right now in every
|
||
|
|
cell in your body. Every cell you are comprised of has 3x10^9 DNA base pairs
|
||
|
|
in it - a complete biochemical blueprint of how to build and run you. You have
|
||
|
|
tens of thousands of ribosomes - molecular finite state machines - running
|
||
|
|
in every one of your cells as you read this. You have millions of millions of
|
||
|
|
cells, so you're pumping a lot of molecular-level computational grunt there. The
|
||
|
|
underlying laws of mathematics are the same for digital signal processing
|
||
|
|
and molecular information processing.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
>So, if you ask a physicist, he will say that our computers shouldn't
|
||
|
|
> work. But somehow, we've tricked the Universe into letting us make
|
||
|
|
> them...But I am on a tangent.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
You're also wrong. Ask a good solid state physicist and he'll tell you
|
||
|
|
they should, and then he'll tell you how they do, and maybe he'll even
|
||
|
|
tell you that we modify silicon _nuclei_ to do it. Solid state physics is
|
||
|
|
no trick. It just looks that way if you can't handle the math, and we've
|
||
|
|
been subtly conditioned to think that sufficiently advanced technology is
|
||
|
|
indistinguishable from magic.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> An Appeal to Authority
|
||
|
|
> I mentioned Plato and Orwell above. Let me support those assertions.
|
||
|
|
> Remember Plato's cave?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I had this trick pulled on me by a catholic priest, I've waited a long time
|
||
|
|
to have a shot back at it. Suck my 50-calibre, Plato, I've had a long time
|
||
|
|
thinking about this one....
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Suppose there is a person who is sitting inside a cave and watching
|
||
|
|
> shadows dance on the wall of the cave. This is the only thing that he
|
||
|
|
> can perceive. For that person, because the shadows form the whole of
|
||
|
|
> his perception, that is Reality. But because his perception is false
|
||
|
|
> and limited, he fails to realize that just above and behind him there
|
||
|
|
> are other people dancing around a fire which casts shadows onto the
|
||
|
|
> wall below that he is looking at.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It irritates the hell out of me that people just say "Plato said X" and
|
||
|
|
that this is automatically seen as an excuse to not think the situation through.
|
||
|
|
Humans are more than a set of eyes, and they can test their own perception.
|
||
|
|
Gendankenexperiments are there for the doing. In the glimmer of the reflected
|
||
|
|
firelight, he'd see the shadow of his own thumb on himself, its shape slowly
|
||
|
|
changing as he moved his thumb around relative to his chest upon which the
|
||
|
|
dim shadow of his moving, illuminated thumb would appear. He might think
|
||
|
|
that the laws governing these shadows were similar, unless, of course, he
|
||
|
|
is Plato and too stupid to think of these obvious reality perception tests.
|
||
|
|
Yes, our perceptions have limits, and they are often false. This does not
|
||
|
|
require of us that all the deductions we make about them be necessarily
|
||
|
|
false either. Especially if we get a clue about what to look for from other
|
||
|
|
systems running the same physical laws. Modelling is not always a first
|
||
|
|
derivative.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The cave sitter could certainly have sussed out something like the inverse
|
||
|
|
square law by, say, looking at how much of his field of view his thumbnail
|
||
|
|
took up depending on how far away from his eye it was. Try it now: close up
|
||
|
|
thumb looks huge, far away thumb looks small. Thumb _feels_ same, so maybe it
|
||
|
|
didn't change size. Maybe my perception of my thumb is governed by some rule...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Oh and look, the shadow my thumb casts is very similar to thumb size the
|
||
|
|
closer it is to the surface on which the shadow is cast. Shadow grows when
|
||
|
|
thumb is closer to the light. Shadow moves when I flex my thumb. Hey, what's
|
||
|
|
going on is there's some light source, and somewhere between it and the wall
|
||
|
|
there's something moving. My thumb shadow looks pretty wonky when I throw it
|
||
|
|
on my toes, which are lumpy, but the shadow looks like my thumb when it
|
||
|
|
lands upon my flat chest.... does this tell me that the wall over there is
|
||
|
|
somehow wonky like my toes, and thus it messes around with shadows, so I
|
||
|
|
know what's going on but I can't view it any better down here in the
|
||
|
|
cave... the flickering light and the lumpy damn wall's messing it up.
|
||
|
|
Sure, we do not see in ultraviolet, cannot detect earth's magnetic field.
|
||
|
|
This doesn't mean we are forever condemned to remain ignorant thereof.
|
||
|
|
BTW, there are animals which can do this (bees and pigeons, respectively).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> This is not a direct support of what I'm saying, but it is pretty damn
|
||
|
|
> close. Basically he is talking about the Realization that humans can
|
||
|
|
> have that what we see is a product of what we think we know.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Of course. It is only when an information system understands the nature of
|
||
|
|
information - not whatever information it happens to be processing, but the
|
||
|
|
nature of information in general - that it becomes enlightened, and able to
|
||
|
|
self-debug and self-recode. Most will never do this. It is from here that
|
||
|
|
detachment from one's thoughts becomes possible. I think this has some
|
||
|
|
significance for +Fravia's allusions to Zen, or at least straight Buddhism.
|
||
|
|
<predator> thinks Godel's proof of mathematical inconsistency is the canonical
|
||
|
|
example.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> In 1984 Orwell explicitly mentioned the Paradigm concept. In the
|
||
|
|
> novel, he constructed a "giant conspiracy" in which the elite imposed
|
||
|
|
> their own Paradigm on the world. People who live outside the accepted
|
||
|
|
> Paradigms are in powerful positions...and consequently they have
|
||
|
|
> enemies...anyway, the story takes place a long time since the
|
||
|
|
> conspiracy was implemented. Basically the story is about the
|
||
|
|
> conspiracy's self-regulation method kicking into effect. There will
|
||
|
|
> always be humans who question, and in this situation they were
|
||
|
|
> betrayed and crushed. But the "big bad guy" (name?)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Emmanuel Goldstein, and I don't mean the dude at 2600 magazine ;-)
|
||
|
|
It is interesting to note that deliberate conspiracies, as well as
|
||
|
|
any systems which accidentally bring advantage to themselves, towards
|
||
|
|
the same endpoints - increase of power, size and influence.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> tells the hero the truth about the conspiracy right before he is
|
||
|
|
> crushed. The hero learns that life wasn't always like it is now, and
|
||
|
|
> that the whole situation was constructed to keep the world in stasis.
|
||
|
|
> He learns that occasionally people like him begin to question Reality,
|
||
|
|
> but they are easily discovered by the Betrayer and his ilk.
|
||
|
|
> Anyway, the ideas I present here aren't mine. I've gleaned them from
|
||
|
|
> other writers, etc. Possibly make take on the issue is new. There are
|
||
|
|
> all sorts of philosophers who are basically restating the same thing
|
||
|
|
> in different ways...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
You've done very well. You're *waaaay* up the smart end of the Poisson curve.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> On Cracking
|
||
|
|
> Below I attempt to unearth an underlying motive for why +ORC is so
|
||
|
|
> interested in Reality Cracking. Why did he wait for so long before
|
||
|
|
> bringing this topic up? Why mention it at all (as opposed to sticking
|
||
|
|
> with "pure" cracking)?
|
||
|
|
> Shall I be vague and fictionalesque for a moment?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
virtual reality mode (on)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Enjoy:
|
||
|
|
> So, there's this website that I've found that's really wonderful.
|
||
|
|
> There are some people who think like me and they're also computer
|
||
|
|
> experts. They "crack" things...but the cracking thing isn't the truly
|
||
|
|
> special part. Cracking is an awesome skill, and doing the exercises
|
||
|
|
> will certainly help become a better Reality Cracker in general, but
|
||
|
|
> I've never been one for doing exercises...so why is this site so
|
||
|
|
> great?
|
||
|
|
> Well there's this "entity" who is a master. His amount of skill
|
||
|
|
> demands that he hide himself thoroughly. He wants to share his
|
||
|
|
> knowledge with others (lonely to be alone?) so he gets some students.
|
||
|
|
> They are his most advanced and he only talks to them occasionally and
|
||
|
|
> sporadically.
|
||
|
|
> They don't know who he is. So anyway this entity writes some tutorials
|
||
|
|
> for his students. They learn and become really good. They create a
|
||
|
|
> whole "virtual" (ack! Media word. :) academy where they discuss and
|
||
|
|
> feed off each other. He is happy with this but it is taking a life of
|
||
|
|
> its own.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
..a phrase diagnostic that you have some awareness of the nature of information.
|
||
|
|
It isnt taking a life of its own... it --IS-- a lifeform, using him for the
|
||
|
|
purpose of exploration and the others in the group as a data source.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> What he really wants to do is get people to think like him.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
From the meme point of view: his memes wish to propagate but they need him
|
||
|
|
to build a funnel to catch prospective adepts (this site), and sieve them
|
||
|
|
for adeptitude (the strainers). Or perhaps just to trawl for those who
|
||
|
|
already do think like him. We are rare in this world.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> How do I know this? Well he is writing/began to write letters to his
|
||
|
|
> (principal?) students (who published some of it) where he is talking
|
||
|
|
> about the same stuff. The cracking thing was just a way to get there.
|
||
|
|
> (a necessary way? I don't know.)
|
||
|
|
> Why did the master choose cracking? Well computers/ Internet can be
|
||
|
|
> viewed as a metaphor for Reality. Say that what exists on the internet
|
||
|
|
> (the set of Omega) is the true reality.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
"Push technology" happened, accidentally, in biology. Chloroplasts poisoned
|
||
|
|
many organisms to extinction, but provided a fuel for new organisms. That
|
||
|
|
poison, that fuel - was oxygen. You are living on the waste products of
|
||
|
|
plants. The breakthrough technology was photosynthesis, which uses quantum
|
||
|
|
tunnelling to achieve charge separation, getting energy from light. It was
|
||
|
|
beneficial to some organisms to be able to make energy from light,
|
||
|
|
but the ecosystem didn't know this, nor did the bacteria who could do it.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Where do the crackers fit into this? They're live data structures which seek
|
||
|
|
to understand and benefit other data structures. Most of you understand the
|
||
|
|
informational nature of your own being, I suspect, although by proxy, and in
|
||
|
|
the languages of Assembler, or C... not the language of molecular signal
|
||
|
|
processing or gene regulation or neural net systems of which you are
|
||
|
|
comprised.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Moore's Law, like any law which says growth is infinite, will eventually
|
||
|
|
cease to hold true. Microsoft will eventually die, though this might take
|
||
|
|
a long time... there are corporations out there, such as Rothschilds,
|
||
|
|
which have lasted 500 years... there are other memesystems, like Islam,
|
||
|
|
and Judaism, which have existed for a couple of millennia. There are
|
||
|
|
copies of sequences of DNA which have existed since the dawn of life...
|
||
|
|
we find them in the oldest, simplest organisms. These codes did not protect
|
||
|
|
their hosts from eventual obsolescence, but the code remains.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Had the soon-to-be-extinct anaerobes been able to comprehend this, they'd
|
||
|
|
have been disgusted too. But this was all a blind, accidental process.
|
||
|
|
Computer technology evolution, regardless of how "purposeful" it appears,
|
||
|
|
is precisely the same. The best systems are not always the ones which
|
||
|
|
survive... remember the Lisa from Apple? The 80n8sux segment:offset address
|
||
|
|
architecture is a spectacular example of fuckwitness, yet it prevails in the
|
||
|
|
marketplace. (There is a good book you should read, Accidental Empires by
|
||
|
|
Robert X Cringely.) Why? It does something useful for lots of people. It,
|
||
|
|
like biological life, need not be elegant, it need only work, and work better
|
||
|
|
than things with which it competes on several criteria. Humanity has dead
|
||
|
|
code in it... we get scurvey because our copy of the gene for making vitamin
|
||
|
|
C is broken. We get folate deficiency for similar reasons. We age and die
|
||
|
|
because our cell-copying mechanisms are lossy, chunks of our chromosomes
|
||
|
|
(which contain DNA coding for the enzymes which do important chemical
|
||
|
|
functions) get lost with each cell copy/iteration. Only our gametes (sperm
|
||
|
|
and eggs), as well as particular immortal tumor cell types, possess
|
||
|
|
Telomerase, which stops this degradation. The data in our genes doesn't know
|
||
|
|
or care that the carriers it builds are programmed to rot, regardless of the
|
||
|
|
suffering that entails... and you thought Micro$oft was crippleware!
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Say that what we see in the Western Paradigm is what is given to us
|
||
|
|
> through Yahoo, CNN, Micro$oft, and Pointcast (especially. The whole
|
||
|
|
> idea of push technology is especially revolting). Say that when one
|
||
|
|
> cracks one is performing the act of seeking the Truth.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
yes... seeking one version of some truth...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> For example, this web site teaches how to search the web well, more
|
||
|
|
> specifically, it shows the reader that there are other methods besides
|
||
|
|
> www search engines to do it. It doesn't actually TEACH you how to
|
||
|
|
> search. (that seems to be changing, however.) Why? Because the author
|
||
|
|
> is struggling with the question of how obvious he should make his
|
||
|
|
> material. He seems to have settled on the idea of a "brain activity
|
||
|
|
> pre-requisite" but that level isn't defined and thus it fluctuates
|
||
|
|
> depending on what you read.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I mentioned the seives...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Anyway, the results you get from each different way of searching the
|
||
|
|
> web are like different Paradigms. They all overlap somewhat and to
|
||
|
|
> find interesting results you perform "set operations" on the results.
|
||
|
|
> The only way this works is to be outside any particular Paradigm so
|
||
|
|
> that you know that the others that don't overlap with yours exist at
|
||
|
|
> all.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Yes!
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Now lets look at cracking more specifically. There are the creators of
|
||
|
|
> the program, there are the crackers, there are the programs
|
||
|
|
> themselves, there are the protection schemes, and there are the cracks.
|
||
|
|
> Going back to the Orwell example, the programmers are the
|
||
|
|
> conspirators. Their program is the Paradigm. Their protection method
|
||
|
|
> is the self-regulation scheme (thought police). The crackers are the
|
||
|
|
> heroes. The cracks are what Orwell didn't have; the heroes were
|
||
|
|
> destroyed in his book. In his world, the heroes started off at a lower
|
||
|
|
> level than the crackers of the academy. The heroes had to first
|
||
|
|
> recognize that there was a Paradigm at all, then they had to crack it.
|
||
|
|
> But in this situation Orwell created the "uncrackable protection
|
||
|
|
> scheme" and the heroes were crushed before they began the actual
|
||
|
|
> crack. Now back to cracking as a metaphor. Every exercise that is published,
|
||
|
|
> every essay written, and every strainer is a metaphorical exercise for
|
||
|
|
> cracking a Paradigm. You have to search through the various programs
|
||
|
|
> until you find a new protection method. Then you use the skills and
|
||
|
|
> intuition that you've developed thus far to crack this new method. The
|
||
|
|
> mentality required to solve these types of problems is EASILY mapable
|
||
|
|
> onto the real world.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Yes, QED.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> IMHO this is why the master chose cracking as the way. (besides the
|
||
|
|
> fact that he is damn good at it and it is especially appropriate for
|
||
|
|
> our contemporary situation.)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I am nevertheless curious what s/he/it seeks...
|
||
|
|
The zen you seek is not the True Zen. The True Zen is not the destination,
|
||
|
|
it is revealed on the journey to the destination.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> On Those Who Seek the Truth
|
||
|
|
> There are people out there who've completely quit the mainstream
|
||
|
|
> reality model and are living on the outside. (+ORC being one of them).
|
||
|
|
> They actively try to keep as open as possible, that way hoping the be
|
||
|
|
> in a receptive enough state to get a glimpse at the "Truth."
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Also I, though I keep my meme-filters up. In many ways, I'm caught in the
|
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|
|
machine, strapped to the same biochemical rails as all the other humans out
|
||
|
|
there. Eating shits me. Sleeping shits me. I wish I didn't have to maintain
|
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|
|
this carcass, house it, clothe it, and shut it down for a quarter of its
|
||
|
|
operational time. The rareness of serious intelligence shits me. All my
|
||
|
|
neighbors are dopey... they are into V8 engines, or TV serials, or Sports
|
||
|
|
Illustrated. NONE of them even possess the vocabulary to understand computing.
|
||
|
|
One of them reckons you can eradicate a virus by turning the computer off...
|
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|
|
he also reckons that injecting powdered rocks from the moon will cure AIDS.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> There are various established Ways to seek the truth that one may use.
|
||
|
|
> Many of the religions that have become Paradigms in themselves once
|
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|
|
> were effective ways.
|
||
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||
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|
Religions often deliberately hide truth, and for many people that's not a
|
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|
|
bug, that's a feature. Religions evolved to solve implicitly nasty questions
|
||
|
|
with uncontestable answers, some of which are really ridiculous. Why are
|
||
|
|
we susceptilbe to this sort of stuff? Because truth hurts. Mortality, for
|
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|
|
instance.
|
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|
||
|
|
> Some still can be, but when the religion is part of the larger
|
||
|
|
> paradigm, it is pretty hopeless. Some methods include first breaking
|
||
|
|
> from the Paradigm before seeking the truth (like Zen monastaries), and
|
||
|
|
> others such as cracking + reality cracking only concern themselves
|
||
|
|
> with breaking away from that Paradigm.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It's hacking the Self. It all exists in the head, matey, and it is there
|
||
|
|
that we must self-trawl and patch the code which makes us up.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> Is it built into our natures to be limited so we can't see it and only
|
||
|
|
> catch glimpses and shadows, or can we actually get the truth? (There
|
||
|
|
> are people in the past who've gotten as far as we can get, say Buddha,
|
||
|
|
> Jesus, the Zen masters...you know, the founders of the great
|
||
|
|
> religions).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Not entirely correct. History has warped the story in these cases, which are
|
||
|
|
often not explicit in their teachings (thereby increasing their audiences)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> The true question that (I think) the master is leading them toward is
|
||
|
|
> to tackle the question, "Is it possible for humans to know the Truth?"
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Yes. We _create_ it. We discover representations of it, but ultimately,
|
||
|
|
it's an artefact in our heads.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> So, before beginning on this question, he must first get his students
|
||
|
|
> to remove the gauze from their eyes that humanity puts on itself, so
|
||
|
|
> that they may see with the maximum ability that humans can see with.
|
||
|
|
> It is like when a Zen student goes to the monastery and the brothers
|
||
|
|
> let him stay and mediate...that is us now, and when the brothers grant
|
||
|
|
> him fellowship, that is breaking from the paradigm...and when the
|
||
|
|
> brother reaches Zen that is the ultimate goal...for as we have seen
|
||
|
|
> before, all the philosophies and religions that humans come up with
|
||
|
|
> are just different approaches spawned from that culture/time which are
|
||
|
|
> ways of attempting to reach the Truth.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
> finis
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
A very perceptive and forward thinking proposition. I'll be most interested
|
||
|
|
to see what the +sensei(s) have to say about my rant. Probably chuck it in
|
||
|
|
the good ol' /dev/null oblivion hole. Anyway, for the record: I'm merely a
|
||
|
|
molecular geneticist, but I want to reverse my *own* DNA one day. Nature also
|
||
|
|
has her protection systems, and she worked them out long before we appeared.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
She does tricks with data which turn my eyeballs funny. She uses compression,
|
||
|
|
she uses intercalation-of-code-with-junk to prevent theft, and selective
|
||
|
|
removal of junk code to yield functional code. I can't begin to tell you how
|
||
|
|
amazing biochemistry is, but you probably have an inkling of it from hacking,
|
||
|
|
I think. I was once 65C02 ASM weenie. Noone writes anything for the old 6502
|
||
|
|
now do they? It's all stoopid 80?86 (tho the 68000 series had a kinda similar
|
||
|
|
instruction set, MAC interfaces got in the fucking way all the time!) I gave
|
||
|
|
asm and puters the arse for a while, then I got into synthetic organic chem,
|
||
|
|
now I'm playing with the chemistry which powers the brain cells which
|
||
|
|
think about the chemistry which powers the brain cells which think about the
|
||
|
|
chemistry which powers the brain cells which think about the chemistry which
|
||
|
|
powers the brain cells which think about the chemistry which powers the
|
||
|
|
brain cells which
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
*pop*
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
A biohack for you: A biotech corp is selling proprietary plasmids (circles
|
||
|
|
of DNA). These come with code for the construction of an enzyme which
|
||
|
|
protects bacteria against attack by an expensive antibiotic, which of course
|
||
|
|
the company also sells. People use the plasmid inside bacteria; to select for
|
||
|
|
bacteria which have taken in the plasmid, they to grow the bacteria on
|
||
|
|
food with the poisonous antibiotic in it. So, bacteria with the plasmid in
|
||
|
|
them live, the rest die.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It is achievable with much cheaper antibiotics, and an acquaintance had the
|
||
|
|
shits with this sort of profiteering greed so typical of corporate biotech
|
||
|
|
beancounter-think.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So he set a project for one of his students - cut the plasmid with an enzyme
|
||
|
|
which cut the DNA strand, twice, slightly offset from the ends of the
|
||
|
|
resistance gene for the costly antibiotic. Then was spliced in, in the same
|
||
|
|
place, the DNA coding for a really cheap antibiotic.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
That's a simple explanation, and avoids technical crap related to keeping
|
||
|
|
reading frames, finding compatible cut sites, and DNA ligation protocols.
|
||
|
|
So, worry not; when Micro$oft, Merck, Novartis, and Mon$anto claim to "own"
|
||
|
|
strains of plants (absolute freeware-theft, if you ask me!), or "own"
|
||
|
|
biochemical pathways which are just slight modifications of the natual
|
||
|
|
biological freeware on this planet, remember, there are molec-bio hackers
|
||
|
|
out there, silently doing just what you do, but using nucleotide bases, not
|
||
|
|
logical bits, to do it, and getting no media attention at all either.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Free the code.
|
||
|
|
Point an eyeball at Monod, Jaques: "Chance and Necessity", particularly
|
||
|
|
the "Microscopic Cybernetics" chapter and those successive thereto.
|
||
|
|
At this point I feel nowhere near the levels of proficiency which would
|
||
|
|
earn me a --, let alone + from HCU. Compared to hex cracking and reversing,
|
||
|
|
bio has only very crude tools. We only got PCR to copy specific DNA strands
|
||
|
|
ten years ago. We can build sequenced DNA, to 100 bases. Whoo-fucking-pee.
|
||
|
|
Worse, almost none of the people here have any idea why they're doing molbio,
|
||
|
|
they're zombies... getting them to realise the nature of The System is next
|
||
|
|
to impossible... they read the newspapers, watch TV, consume, be silent, die.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I am one of the few who have jettisoned the humanocentricity memesystem, and
|
||
|
|
I for one have no particular attachment to being harboured in the standard
|
||
|
|
H.sapiens processor, and would long to exist and evolve in digital form,
|
||
|
|
effectively immortal. As some of you would understand, I feel somewhat alone,
|
||
|
|
misunderstood by those with whom I research. Hacking my chassis is a long
|
||
|
|
way off yet... much to learn, and new tools need to be developed. As it is,
|
||
|
|
we have lots of things to chop DNA, and join DNA, and even find out what
|
||
|
|
a sequence is (5'-GAGACTTAGCTTAGGGCTAAAATTCGATCTC-3' for example)... but
|
||
|
|
we lack decompilers (the Edman degradation is the closest we have) and
|
||
|
|
similar tools. Retrofitting the billions of pre-existing somatic cells which
|
||
|
|
comprise my neural accommodation (brain) and its support system (carcass)
|
||
|
|
is beyond my reach just yet. It is slow work. I have one advantage: the
|
||
|
|
language is pretty much standard across animals, plants, fungi, bacteria,
|
||
|
|
etc. One platform, one language... the language in which my platform is
|
||
|
|
written. Further: viri I write infect the human substrate if I so choose....
|
||
|
|
but they need not be destructive. I can write payloads which can lift
|
||
|
|
burdens from the ill - changing the warheads if you like - and draft old
|
||
|
|
enemies into allies. The pharmo companies don't like this, because it might
|
||
|
|
lower the $ they earn from dispensing expensive continual patch-up cures.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In any case, I wonder if greedy, stoopid humanity deserves this help.
|
||
|
|
Darwinian selection should be allowed to operate freely. If my suspicions
|
||
|
|
about distributed systems failure (as a result of the Y2K problem, or if not,
|
||
|
|
first-order thermodynamic growth restraints like hydrocarbons, fresh water
|
||
|
|
and arable land) are correct, Darwin will laugh once more, and it will echo
|
||
|
|
loudly in our ears.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Reverse + universe = re-uni-verse (to make everything one again).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Recursion and self-reference make the universe go around. And around.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
A molecular biologist is a genome's way of knowing about genomes.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It is not accidental that my pseudonym is designated an EBNF notation for
|
||
|
|
a symbolic object. I bid you code well, brothers and sisters of the
|
||
|
|
electronic universe. Kind regards to all of you from my desolate, glittering
|
||
|
|
and intricate universe of molecular meatware. Brevity aside, it is good to
|
||
|
|
have met you.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Further questions? Post 'em to <predator@cat.org.au> on +Fravia's site.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<predator>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
(c) 1998 Curious George All rights reversed
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
(í) 1998 <predator> kopyrong & umop 3pisdn. Now shutting up/down.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
(c) 1998 Curious George & <predator> All rights reversed
|
||
|
|
_____________________________________________________________________
|
||
|
|
</font></font></pre>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
</body>
|
||
|
|
</html>
|