30 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2023
    1. Can this section be removed without effecting the structure of the whole piece?

      no

    2. At the beginning of the 20th centary we had three stories humanity told itself, the fascist story, the communist story, and the liberal story. The Second World War knocked out the fascist story, and from the late 1940s to the late 1980s the world became a battleground between just two stories: communism and liberalism. Then the communist story collapsed, and the liberal story remained the dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world—or so it seemed to the global elite. However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom of the press, and portray any opposition as treason. Strongmen in countries such as Turkey and Russia experiment with new types of illiberal democracies and outright dictatorships. Today, few would confidently declare that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history.

      I'm not completely sure where I stand on this. It lack nuance and has holes, but it gets the point across.

    3. us

      use

    4. What are we to do with our lives?

      dead link, not sure if it matters in this case

  2. May 2023
    1. So things are looking up in Mutopia! And they’ll keep getting better—for a while…

      Lost me with the built in assumptions.

    2. Because it is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies leak power. It’s like asking why a two-stroke engine burns oil—or at least why a diesel engine puffs out soot.

      I agree with most of what I've read so far, but hate these weird and needless intermissions. The way it's formatted: question -> "because it does" -> what seems to be a criticism of the question (although that's not inherently true), makes me feel pretty sus about why it's included especially when its utility in the context of the article isn't immediately apparent. There's definitely a possibility that it's not intended to psyop. Either way, I just want the facts and I can take it from there about what to conclude.

    3. Whenever the government relies on university research for a strategy or policy decision,

      I can see the other three, but this one doesnt inherently make sense. Maybe using too limited a pool of research, but making research-informed strategies especially if a combination of research from various sources of funding are taken into consideration seems like an important outsourcing.

    4. The cathedral can’t be repaired for two reasons. The first is that it can’t be repaired—just look at it.

      I really hate it when articles do this bologna. "It is because it is" - why include it? Statements of "it's obvious" have a goal just like every other statement.

    1. You, dear reader, are smarter than that. You know that Leviathan — this Global Techno-Industrial Civilization, this Managerial State — is in fact the gravest threat imaginable.

      Barf. This is so manipulative. "Smart people agree with my argument. You're a smart person" ..

    2. Globalism

      I mean, globalism is how it is. It is sort of a necessity at this point to have a global-scale government at this point isn't it? Even though that's frightening, I think that has to be a goal - to get earth-people on the same page.

    3. Liberalism. Its goal is the global amelioration of oppression and inequity thru hedonism and cosmopolitanism, with the fusion of State and Economy, and by way of Imperial Presidents.

      I mean.. I do think that's what's happening. I think this wording is inaccurate and manipulative though. It's happening under liberalism, but I dont by any means see how it is the goal of Liberalism. Maybe there's a conflation of terms though. If I'm not mistaken, "liberalism" as the original ideology calls for the opposite of everything listed in this article and places an emphasis on law as a necessary tool for equality. There are sub-ideologies that have formed like "Social Liberalism" which caused the welfare state and is now usually called "liberalism" in the US. Maybe this is talking about the latter?

    4. Bourgeois ceded local control to national Bureaucrats, who not only replaced a reliance on The Law with reliance on Procedure and Administration; they also used every problem (amplified by Mass Media) to justify the expansion of their influence, per their Ideology.

      I still dont know what this means though. I want practicalities, examples.

    5. “The Law” itself changed in this revolution. America stopped using laws as a code of conduct and custom, and instead started using them as devices to satisfy the preferences of managerial elite. Traditional formulas (rule of law, just & uniform relationships among citizens) undermined the power of the new elite, which is why they showed no regard for them, and in fact degraded them. “Law is concerned with rights.  Administration is concerned with results.”

      I'm curious about what specifically they're referring to and where that quote comes from. If it's from the book, it has no real meaning. If it's a reference to a quote from a person in a position of "the elite" then that's at least potentially a different story but the meaning would still need to be evidenced. Otherwise, it take a giant leap of assumption for the reader to go from one contextless quote to a conclusion.

    6. Mass Organizations always seek and find reasons to become more Massive. Black holes of social and political power. This benefits the Manager, as social capital (status and rank) eclipsed physical capital as political currency.

      Not only does it increase reputation and agency in the world, but one element that I've always wondered about is the impact of existing in the awareness of others (even if it's through something we've created, which it seems like we tend to identify with as an extension of ourselves). It seems like it would make us feel like we occupy a larger body because functionally, that's at least somewhat true. But not only that, the more eyes we have looking at us the more it seems like it would increase our feeling of being the center of the universe because there would be enough concrete evidences of the world around us is orienting itself toward us specifically that it would be easy to neglect all counter information.

    7. Problems arise (eg poverty), Managers in federal government offer solutions (eg welfare), and the solutions themselves create new problems (eg welfare traps), which leads Managers to offer new solutions, ad infinitum. There is never a shortage of problems or solutions, and so, conveniently for the Managers, the need for Managers only ever expands.

      This is the problem I was talking about with Gnosticism - it creates a hero complex that falls into this trap, the trap of non-profits. A paperclip maximizer of the self at the cost of goals that were at least somewhat a guise through which to self-perpetuate.

  3. Apr 2023
    1. We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks.

      How do you plan to make collective decisions?

    2. the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

      how do you ensure youre on the same page?

  4. Nov 2022
  5. Dec 2021
    1. Similar considerations apply to comparison, which may also be modeled as a special type of communication event.

      pin - what does this mean

    2. Subjectivity is defined in terms of non-comparable feelings. Objectivity and subjectivity are degrees/metrics, not states of being or condition.

      pin for review - not sure if I agree

  6. Nov 2021
    1. The mass oh humanity exist to keep the memes of prime movers alive. The mass of humanity acts as a mediocre hard drive preserving the work of the prime movers.

      ... it's like you're intentionally dangling carrots

    2. Within this sea of cells and memes where is the I? Where does the I differentiate from the rest of human society. I is an individual's memeplex paired with their body and brain.

      you say this with so little disclaiming or unpacking it drives me crazy. Like, I want to understand what sort of thought went into this and the nuances of it so people can poke holes in it if it's critically flawed in some way, which it could definitely be. There has to be (hopefully at least) a bunch of information housed in these 3 compact sentences.

    3. I believe consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of parasitic meme's interacting within a human host. Carl Jung's organizing principal is just an emergent phenomenon from the sea of these parasitic memes.

      akhdh. That just linked so many things together in my brain.

    1. I have been playing with the principal that anything that impedes information flow is evil.

      I want to hear more about this - what do you mean fully? Like.. there are a lot of nuanced situations in which an information asymmetry seems advantageous for both parties. One example being shit testing, if it's done in good will. It collects information even the other person might not know and that I wonder if the daemon itself would be able to pick up on. It's possible. Maybe that becomes irrelevant. I think it takes away from connection though, if everything is known. I don't know what the implications of that would be.

    2. Need a reminder what what that guy who lives across the street is interested, ask your daemon with natural language.

      I think this is a good example of how this tool can actually make us weaker, if not done properly. If we don't care enough to have this information naturally store, we shouldn't spend resources on it. If we do care enough to spend our resources on it, we should engage with genuinely enough that it naturally stores. Just something to keep in mind. I can see how something like this example could simultaneously incentivize a lack of responsibility for being present, aware, connective (asking the person if you forget - an onboarding into the current state of having forgotten which is an important data point for the other party) and also falsehood in what we care about - almost black mirror social credit style - the scene in the elevator where they just pick up the person's profile and start small talk for social reinforcement.

      If it tracks how often certain tools are relied upon, I'm assuming it would, maybe there can be an app to help counteract that sort of reliance and encourage the exercising of that muscle. Like a self-reliance app or something. That's super counterintuitive.. But it seems like it would be easy enough to have it track its own usage and have a function to counteract even that.

    1. Those who are intelligent don't reject Nazism in 1930's Germany they become a Nazi faster.

      You're going to get yourself in trouble with this if you don't elaborate further

    2. Let's go back to the bible and get a better understanding of God. When Eve ate from the tree of knowledge she noticed she was naked and decided to clothe herself. Eve had become self aware and became the first human to experience shame. This shame broke her covenant with god because she now had to act two faced to the creator himself. Before eating of the tree of knowledge everyone spoke what they thought but after eating from the tree of knowledge people could not say one thing and mean something else. With the ability to double speak and or life privacy was necessary. In the eyes of God nothing is private but in the eyes of the devil privacy is something very real. Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden of eden because they discovered the need for privacy. The need for privacy is a gift handed to us not from God but from the devil himself.

      100