Thursday, November 13, 2003
Stuff that could go here later:
A second tier of blogs, the ones that aren't my daily reads, but that I check out now and then. The Clerk, Atrios, Eric S Raymond, Jay Manifold, that sort of thing.
Indiana blogs. Marcia Oddi, Aude Sempere, etc.
Blogs by women. Right now I'm reading blogs mostly by males, which means I'm missing half the story, so I want to act affirmatively to seek out perspectives I might be missing. Blogging is a male behavior because we are like chimpanzees. While baboons compete for social status by being bigger meaner and uglier, chimps compete by being funnier, smarter, more clever, friendlier. Chimps are attention whores.
Some humans compete for social status by emulating baboons. Bush, for example, may look like a chimp, but acts like a baboon.
Other humans emulate Orangutans, solipcistic shy woodland creatures, barely able to deal with others long enough to procreate.
Each of these is a survival strategy, an ethic. Different species employ different strategies, seeking a niche in the ecosystem, and out of that an ecology emerges. I tend to talk a lot about evolution and memetics.
One of the main memes I'm interested in promoting is that ecosystems
and markets are the same thing, two facets of an irregularly shaped object rather than two sides of a coin.
When liberals say markets fail and should be replaced by state action, that's like saying jungles fail and should be replaced by monocrop agriculture. Is it like saying chimps fail and should be replaced by baboons?
I first developed a hunch that markets and ecosystems are the same as an undergrad, but Karl Hess Jr.'s book brought it all together.
I didn't learn till later that Darwin's Origin of Species was inspired by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
Evolution is a characteristic of complex systems,which are studied by systems analysts. Stars evolve, generating planets. Life evolves on the planets, generating ecosystems. Ecosystems reward intelligence, as in the chimps. Intellegent life generates language and culture and markets.
Markets and culture generate technology and machines. Machine evolution generates computers and software. Given markets and culture and computers and software, machine intellegence evolves,
as do human/machine interfaces. The rate of change speeds up, approaching the singularity, which may happen in my lifetime. The post-singularity generates a more self-aware universe, and maybe leads to the ability to create new universes, in which stars evolve. See beginning of paragraph.
We live in interesting times, eh?
I did not know, as I began the paragraph, that an explanation of why males blog, would lead to a full on rant about cosmic evolution.
But that's where I'm coming from. Around 1980 I did a tab of acid and had a vision about evolution, so I'm a sort of visionary dreamer madman type.
I believe in democracy and the marketplace of ideas and the idea of marketplaces.
I want people to start acting less like baboons and more like chimps.
So I fight against censorship of election speech, for fair ballot access, for constitutional rights, against the baboons like Schumer and McCain and Bin Laden. I understand each of them is fighting for their own conception of the good,
and we are just having minor squabbles over tactics.
In the day to day battles in the trenches of this fight, I tend to lose focus on the bigger picture. I'm glad I wrote this. On the other hand, I need, now and then, to turn off the computer, and remember to attend to other stuff. I blogged all night, slept late, and got up too late to do my chore for today, which was to go downtown and pay my attorney dues. I've also forgotten, for example, to get a job, get married, have kids, that sort of thing. All for now. -30-
A second tier of blogs, the ones that aren't my daily reads, but that I check out now and then. The Clerk, Atrios, Eric S Raymond, Jay Manifold, that sort of thing.
Indiana blogs. Marcia Oddi, Aude Sempere, etc.
Blogs by women. Right now I'm reading blogs mostly by males, which means I'm missing half the story, so I want to act affirmatively to seek out perspectives I might be missing. Blogging is a male behavior because we are like chimpanzees. While baboons compete for social status by being bigger meaner and uglier, chimps compete by being funnier, smarter, more clever, friendlier. Chimps are attention whores.
Some humans compete for social status by emulating baboons. Bush, for example, may look like a chimp, but acts like a baboon.
Other humans emulate Orangutans, solipcistic shy woodland creatures, barely able to deal with others long enough to procreate.
Each of these is a survival strategy, an ethic. Different species employ different strategies, seeking a niche in the ecosystem, and out of that an ecology emerges. I tend to talk a lot about evolution and memetics.
One of the main memes I'm interested in promoting is that ecosystems
and markets are the same thing, two facets of an irregularly shaped object rather than two sides of a coin.
When liberals say markets fail and should be replaced by state action, that's like saying jungles fail and should be replaced by monocrop agriculture. Is it like saying chimps fail and should be replaced by baboons?
I first developed a hunch that markets and ecosystems are the same as an undergrad, but Karl Hess Jr.'s book brought it all together.
I didn't learn till later that Darwin's Origin of Species was inspired by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
Evolution is a characteristic of complex systems,which are studied by systems analysts. Stars evolve, generating planets. Life evolves on the planets, generating ecosystems. Ecosystems reward intelligence, as in the chimps. Intellegent life generates language and culture and markets.
Markets and culture generate technology and machines. Machine evolution generates computers and software. Given markets and culture and computers and software, machine intellegence evolves,
as do human/machine interfaces. The rate of change speeds up, approaching the singularity, which may happen in my lifetime. The post-singularity generates a more self-aware universe, and maybe leads to the ability to create new universes, in which stars evolve. See beginning of paragraph.
We live in interesting times, eh?
I did not know, as I began the paragraph, that an explanation of why males blog, would lead to a full on rant about cosmic evolution.
But that's where I'm coming from. Around 1980 I did a tab of acid and had a vision about evolution, so I'm a sort of visionary dreamer madman type.
I believe in democracy and the marketplace of ideas and the idea of marketplaces.
I want people to start acting less like baboons and more like chimps.
So I fight against censorship of election speech, for fair ballot access, for constitutional rights, against the baboons like Schumer and McCain and Bin Laden. I understand each of them is fighting for their own conception of the good,
and we are just having minor squabbles over tactics.
In the day to day battles in the trenches of this fight, I tend to lose focus on the bigger picture. I'm glad I wrote this. On the other hand, I need, now and then, to turn off the computer, and remember to attend to other stuff. I blogged all night, slept late, and got up too late to do my chore for today, which was to go downtown and pay my attorney dues. I've also forgotten, for example, to get a job, get married, have kids, that sort of thing. All for now. -30-
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