Tag: Asked and unanswered
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Bad design
Why are we designed to make life so damn easy for the dividers and conquerors? It takes hard mental work and long experience to avoid both teams. Ockham and Machiavelli warned us in specific ways. Jesus and his disciples warned their flock. Out of curiosity I checked the book of Proverbs, which I hadn’t read…
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I shouldn’t even try
Discussions of Sammy’s rise and fall repeatedly hit a point that I can’t grasp. Supposedly Sammy was a hypnotic figure. Supposedly he had a magnetic appeal to everyone he met. I don’t get it. I can sort of see the appeal of Elizabeth Holmes. She’s pretty and lively and radiates a sense of mission and…
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Why do we ignore life?
Life is negative feedback. Negative feedback is life. Our bodies are running an infinite number of feedback loops inside each cell and inside each organ and between the organs and between people and between communities all the time. Nearly all of these loops are unconscious, but we certainly comprehend feedback in conscious and verbal ways.…
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Timeline
I’ve written most of these points before, but never tried to pull them together into a single timeline. How long has China been engineering our destruction? 1946: We wasted money on Chiang which helped Mao win. 1950s: We wasted money and lives in Korea which helped Kim win. 1960s: We wasted money and lives in…
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“Elections” starting to matter?
Is the political class finally realizing that their free ride is ending? Is Manweller’s Rule starting to break down? Or do we just have a more sophisticated level of fakery? In Chicago the zombie entity called Lori Lightfoot lost massively against two “hard on crime” opponents. Media are calling the zombie “soft on crime”, but…
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Naive or clever?
Listening to discussion of last year’s NYTimes brouhaha over publishing an op-ed by HORRIBLE REPOOFLICAN Tom Cotton. First thought: I wonder what Oliver Holmes would think? He wrote the “legal” test for boundaries on freedom of the press. Inciting a riot is outside the bounds. This little dispute was about the Holmes test. The Repooflican…
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Was Nixon fooled?
Nixon surrendered our economy to China after losing Vietnam to China. It was an unconditional surrender like Versailles in 1919. Before Nixon, our approach to China was uniformly stupid and innocent. Starting around 1890, we viewed China as a land of customers. All of our policies were aimed at befriending their government so they would…
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Where are they going?
I’m still wondering where Substack is going. Some of their hidden purpose is starting to show up with a focus on becoming the new mass media, led by Bari Weiss. This will inevitably lead right back to censorship. The same thing already happened with Bari Weiss’s other push, the “free university”. They’re still waiting for…
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Curling
I’m back to animations of embryonic development, after a brief break for Steinheil’s ground. Today I’m setting up a cochlea model and trying to match the shape changes with the actual timepoints. We’ve got rain today, fortunately warm rain instead of snow or ice. Nice relief after a month of solid ice and cabin fever.…
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Science and sausage
As usual I was reading some article by some “independent” who naively assumes that science actually proceeds by questioning. First thought: As usual I was thinking about the peculiar disconnect between the public myth of science and the reality of science. Anyone who has worked in research for a while realizes that self-censorship is automatic…
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Where are the goddamn philosophers?
A young congresscritter named Himes was discussing Sam’s arrest and yesterday’s “hearing”. He said that Sam had spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill in the last two years, “educating” Congress about how bitcoin works. Himes thinks he “knows” how it works thanks to Sam, so he will help to craft the regulations that…
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Still itchy
Robert Marks talks with lawyer Richard Stevens about the puzzling Thaler project. Marks asks the same question I’ve been asking, in the same emotional tone of itchy frustration. What is Thaler trying to GAIN? What’s the business advantage of relinquishing the human possession of a patent to the AI software? Lawyer Stevens doesn’t have a…
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Unanswered question
An observation that deserves explanation. I don’t have a good explanation yet. Bankman-Fried and his cohorts are dramatically different from the usual pro-coin influencers in two ways, and I think the two are related. (1) SBF is influencing the elite. He donates to D candidates and says all the things the elite say, with added…
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Where’s the advertising?
I’m genuinely puzzled about this mismatch of advertising and reality. Not disingenuous or sardonic. Some writers claim to see an incipient shift in establishment Repooflican politics, moving toward real FDR-style populism. Industrial policy, limiting immigration, encouraging one-income families. Supposedly some of the existing figures like Rubio and Hawley are moving in this direction. If this…
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Is this also related?
The shutoff of the QE faucet has an obvious and mechanical effect on stock crime and bitcoin crime. All frivolous nonsense is collapsing, which means the ENTIRE bitcoin nonsense is imploding. I wonder if a more subtle collapse is also related. When money is free to the Correct People, the Correct People are free to…
Polistra's Mill 