Artificial Intelligence Propaganda

Faceberg

PR firms, the MSM, and public business figures like Musk, Billy Gates, and Faceberg all push the idea that automation and "artificial intelligence" are going to completely disenfranchise workers. They proffer the solution of "universal basic income", which is communism, of course.

AI hype is propaganda. Clearly those guys are part of the same club. Their club pushed the same idea in 1933. The "technocrats" magazine was offering the same fixes for the "sky is falling" robot apocolypse of 19 fucking 33. Billions more people are employed now than in 1933, of course.

1933 Robot Takeover

Our economy is totally idiotic. The financial system--which Gates, 'berg, Musk--are all beneficiaries of is entirely parasitic. The goals it sets are foolish and wasteful, but replacing the current shit system with communism is fucktarded. Universal Basic Income is basic slavery. It has no merits to debate.

The enlightenment hit its sell by date a long time ago. Crappy old Marxism/Communism is the only ideology tottering around in the public mind. Every ideology is a mind prison, and the commie one is particularly retarded. It doesn't even ~work~ in the most basic pragmatic ways.

The Two Yous

If you're leading a relatively comfortable life, chances are you've got a nice routine that you follow day to day and week to week. Every now and then something will happen--serious injury, a major illness, of yourself or a loved one, and priorities completely change and you live moment to moment and day to day. The universe shines a spotlight on you and every decision you make weighs heavily.

In those times, there's actually two of you present. The current you and the future you. The future you will remember what you did. If you did wrong the future you will receive a wound. The truly amazing thing is you'll know you're doing wrong because your guts will tell you so.

If you're thoughtful and cautious about the choices you make in those times and do the best you can you're being kind to your future self. Not only will you be happier but almost everything and everyone around you improve as well.

Celebrated Historical Figures Were Murderers, Rapists, and Thieves

Every day we see media people, historians, and other professional ass kissers glorify the serial killers of today and yesterday. The most celebrated political "leaders" are mostly a gang of murderers and thieves.

The Falsehood of the Symbol

I've been elaborating a concept over the past several posts that's pretty slippery. It's quite possible that human symbolic language arises from a shared internal model of the world that's built into our minds. The model's the dictionary for a form of lossy compression, so we're able to convey a lot of information with a  very low data rate stream of symbols.

That internal model, though, isn't entirely amenable to symbolic translation, and often that internal model is quite low fidelity compared to our sensory experience of the world. All the words written on dandelions, for example, are a feeble replacement for sitting on the ground and looking at one, or eating one.

Writing or drawing, or statuary are not only a low fidelity version of reality, they're also a falsehood. They include a concept that's arguably alien, or an alien presence on earth. They bring about the notion of permanence. In a world of change and cycles, a symbol scrawled on a rock can endure. An idea can seem to separate from the man who thought it.

The man can become subservient to the idea and the word. The mind and waking experience can become subservient to the symbol and this distortion can become the primary experience.

Elf Tech: Low Complexity and Low Energy

Fukuoka Seed Ball

People are blind to the sophistication of "low technology". Low technology generally means non-electronic, which means there's not a computer involved in the operation of a device. Even the most rudimentary kitchen appliances and power tools today incorporate microcontrollers and digital sensors. You're very hard pressed to find a coffee maker, for example, that doesn't include a microcontroller. Power tools that seem as simple as dirt, like a table saw, often have a motor controller computer and sensors that spin up and maintain blade speed by changing the power that's delivered to windings as the load changes.

We also tend to equate "high technology" with the myth of progress and linear history. There's an obsessive compulsive, religious belief in the need to advance computerized technology. (The computer needs to be sophisticated enough to house their god.) Millions of people are essentially digitized already. They barely exist in the real world at all.

High tech appears to me, more and more, like the Orc Technology. It's an attempt to realize the feeble inner symbol-dominated world of man in physical form. Man at war with nature is the Orc.

Giant Sloth Skeleton

If nature's really good already, then what can we add? What does the Elf tech even look like? It seems like an oxymoron to begin with. A natural farmer is really only able to expend his energy so the landscape grows more plants that humans can use. However, in so doing, he takes his local environment out of its native state, which might have supported more life, and maybe even more people, overall; without man in the ice age, nature supported diverse mammals including megafauna like the giant sloth.

The Fukuoka seed ball approximates the elf tech. It's not complex, but it embodies a sophisticated strategy and understanding.

The Curious Case of the Chipmunk Gardener

Chipmunk Planted Sunflowers Sprouting

Chipmunks live in burrows. They seem to build them in places where the underground chambers will be protected by a water impermeable surface like a porch or a concrete sidewalk.

They store seeds and nuts in their burrow, but they also bury them in hiding spots close to the surface of the ground. The seeds will frequently sprout in the spring. Chipmunks will also eat plant roots and bulbs--thwarting many gardeners' plans. Do the chipmunks plant seeds to eat the roots later?

Squirrels have similar patterns of behavior. They carry seeds and nuts to caches in trees or other dry places, but they also bury them, either to collect later, or possibly so the plants will grow and they'll have more nuts and seeds to consume in the late summer or fall.

The gardening behavior of these animals is probably more improvisational than planned. It provides a pretty good model, though, and parallels what Masanobu Fukuoka did when he packed seeds into dirt-balls and threw them around his gardens.

Nature is a better gardener than any human. This is apparent during the spring when wildflowers are blooming all over the woods. The flowers grow in clusters all over the forest floor and bloom in succession throughout the growing season. Fukuoka's method sort of mimics nature or the chipmunk's way. It creates conditions for growth, but is ultimately opportunistic: the plants that grow are the ones that will do the best in the environment they were chucked into.

Compare that approach to the gardener or farmer that attempts to realize his simplistic symbol based plan--clear the land, stick particular seeds in a particular place at a particular time--and attempt to husband them through until the harvest. That approach is fraught with peril and prone to failure and requires significant expenditure of energy and worry.

Elf World

In an old post I touched on Tolkien's Elves and Orcs as a metaphor for the world of nature and the world of man.

The world of man is a paradoxical world. A man tills the soil so he might have a reliable source of food, but he steadily and inexorably reduces the ability of the world to supply his own needs and simultaneously kills other species. Rather than make more, he's actually made less and stolen from others. He ruined his home.

It seems almost impossible to believe, but there's possibly greater security and leisure in the hunter gatherer, or pastoralist lifestyle. When man lives as an animal it's very possible the capacity of the Earth to support life is much higher. Living as a man does in a city, with roads, large buildings, infrastructure and agriculture might severely impair its ability to do so. Our systemic thinking might be the real culprit.

Cro magnon (ice age) man had a skull capacity that was approximately 20% larger than modern humans. What if symbolic reasoning, agriculture, language, laws and the city ate our brains? Maybe that's what turned us into the 'borg.

There's no systemic thinking that gets me to the Elf World.

Every Blade of Grass has its Place

In the Epic of Gilgamesh Enkidu (old post on sunman/moonman) is a wild man who lives free in the forest. He's at peace with the animals. He shares their watering holes and they know and trust him until he has sex with a prostitute and is then drawn into the life of the city and loses his connection with the natural world. The city is the world of man, and the world of man is the world of lies.

The biggest lie of the city is that men are gods and that the world is theirs and is for them alone. Every blade of grass, every worm has his place and his own glory. The man who would assume a crown as king of all, as king of the worms is worse off than a worm. He is a man who has no place. He is a man who has no home.

The man made world is the lost world. It's the sunken city.