The latter misunderstanding is probably my fault in part — too much Confederacy, not enough Carlyle. Stump-orators can say whatever they want, and don’t have to personally eat the consequences; a regime that does what gives them good feels when they talk about it is fundamentally detached from reality, especially on a large enough scale that they don’t get stuck with the results. New York City is a good example: barring the current communist aberration — and there’s a good reason to bar it, given the financial clusterfuck looming in the City’s future — they voted for Ameri-Putin for themselves, and some Ayersite gray-man embarrassment for everyone else.

We’re all cyberneticists here, ja? The machine needs to have the right input mechanisms. GIGO, and stump-oration is garbage.

I’m brought back to a place but its XTree and I’m not *sure* I’d call this bliss but…

I mean, cyan is cool.

(Searches the system folder for MOUSE.COM)

Where is NRx? Off the chart I guess? We can’t be separate though, we are a reaction. I have been playing with a metaphor: we are the Protestant Reformation arguing against the symbolic cannibalism and bizarre superstitions of the late Medieval Catholics (see “Holy Bones, Holy Dust” by Charles Freeman for interesting late Medieval Catholic practices like huffing saint corpse dust to cure asthma). Instead of Luther or Calvin we say: “Dear Secular Humanists (capitalized like a religion), your “reality” doesn’t account for a lot of our experiences. The systems you have developed are based on a flawed viewpoint, and are, in the course of mens’ lives, dystopic. We are concerned that you are pushing us into a never ending hell vortex nightmare scenario. We, your enemies, are concerned, and have been developing a more accurate teleological model. Needless to say, our teleology is filled to the brim with heresies.” Fighting should ensue. However, we aren’t strong enough to fight them fairly. Therefore, we need to either convince them we are right, or fight an intellectual insurgency.

I have a fantasy that some MIT student will develop a new biotech that creates such a gap between before the invention and after the invention that they gain total power. We start the calendar over at zero, like for Jesus or Mohammed. No law can contain the obvious excess of power the invention generates, and the current power structure doesn’t appeal to the genius… Someone like Grigori Perelman, but more tied into reality, from the outside though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman

http://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/is-this-truly-how-the-world-works/comment-page-1/#comment-1291

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Contest

The funny thing is, when you read about this stuff in Western accounts of China, they’re just aghast. They can’t see how any of it has any basis in reality and they assume the reader won’t either. There’s a strange, unquestioned partition in political science where, if you deal with the West you can question the West, but if you deal with any other country, your views on the West have to be naive and conventional to a fault. Presumably academics who don’t maintain this partition “go native”, never to be heard of again.

Also, surely the CSB IS the Cathedral: it’s just that the AMSS is it’s brain, no?

I’m clearly gonna need to go back and re-read MM because this seems to limit the Cathedral and the Polygon in a way which doesn’t quite mesh with my own mental image.

Loving the graphic though!