The End of Code

All the coding languages are to me feel like extreme time gambles. Even in the mid term, and total dead ends in the long term barring a dystopia or extinction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages

I mean damn, how many times are we going to reinvent the wheel? As many times as coders can get away with selling it I guess.

Computers are still ‘fancy,’ and I think a large part of that is intentional. Eventually the user friendliness and intuitive function users, to a degree, demand from the front end will be applied to the back end. The only question is how and when. (Or by what?) Most likely it will be young coders looking to obviate old coders for the purpose of economic/systemic disruption which will (unintentionally) enable the masses.

Operating systems could be construed as a compromising of this clash between the demand for flexibility and the ability to sell code. Still though, they are all currently limited to serve as yet another layer of software between hardware and user. A nested set of dolls.

Using software (coding language) to make software (operating systems) to run software (applications) to instruct hardware is obviously inefficient. Software can take any shape allowed between user desire and the physical/logical limitations of the universe as expressed by the hardware.

To organize it as we have done, using one kind of software to spit out locked and crippled other kinds of software, is asinine from an organizational standpoint. It it perpetuated out of ignorance or corruption. It can only be forgiven as a temporary relic of the research process. (Or hated as a quasi conspiracy.)

There shouldn’t be programs or operating systems or coding languages. It should be a single operating system refined as demanded by human need and interest. And or forked as demanded by tradeoffs and mutual exclusion of functional specialization.

The coding language, compilers, OS, applications, etc should all be the same thing. My interface with it should be as intuitive as oven use. Eventually it will be, or we’ll all be dead. I just hope the delay doesn’t cause that death.

Coders for whatever reasons have spent their collective effort improving the quality of the discrete outputs, but not on improving the interface from a default human perspective. Why develop operating systems and programs and not focus on making a tool making tool?

The cultural history of 3d printing will be instructive here. As of now coders make/sell the objects and I’m saying software should be like the printers. As of now precious few people, and for obvious special interests, are working on the software making software.

Game making applications show that there are some at least somewhat interested in correcting the problem.

Perhaps it is this inherent disregard coders have for those outside their niche, that in part creates so much disgust in me for coders as a block. They seem to not care whether the average person can have access to the fruits of coding. By that I mean the ability to custom sculpt the behavior of a computer. Computers should be like English speaking pets. And they are to coders, proportional to their skill.

As a writer I am in many ways the opposite of what coders are. As a writer my purpose is to transform the inaccessible into something more intuitive. And I do it using the standard interface language (accident of birth not withstanding) expressly because I want my output to be readily usable by everyone.

The tragedy is that the only people capable of correcting this problem are the very ones best positioned to solve it.

Why should the priests dismantle the church when the tithes are so profitable? For the good of parishioners? Ha. What have I been smoking right?

Pinko commie wacky tobacky I’m sure some would speculate.

The root of intelligence.

“F=T∇Sτ” ~Alexander Wissner-Gross

Pretty sure that’s the most important discovery of the 21st century. Notice I didn’t say “so far.”

Yeah. I’m calling it this early.

“In the equation, F is a force that acts so to maximize future freedom of action, to keep options open with some strength, T with S, an amount of diversity to possible accessible futures, up to some future time horizon, Tau.”

Give me one example of an intelligent behavior that isn’t an attempt to maximize the number of future options. Sacrificing one’s self at the behest of one’s genes isn’t intelligent or is at best an indirect investment in something which the intelligence has come to identify with.

An intelligent agent acting in this way is deploying their intelligence not for their own good directly but for the good of the genes which provide the substrate for their existence. (Kin selection and altruism.)

But assuming a desert island, last being in creation sort of context, I can think of no intelligent action that falsifies the assertion. If you’re right it should be easy to falsify. But it isn’t.

The entropy mechanism just explains how intelligence can arise from a purely mechanistic and unintelligent setting.

It is not at all far fetched to me that a simple physical law should form the foundation of intellect.

“Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.” ~Edward Robert Harrison

The Downfall of the Psychopath

“Beware the fury of a patient man.” ~John Dryden

The trick to dealing with psychopaths is to allow them to expose and destroy themselves with their greed.

The problem with being obsessed as they are is that they can be reliably baited into any trap. You can even tell them it’s a trap, as I am doing now, and still they’ll stick their neck in.

For example, their pursuit of profits has caused many of their kind to invest in bitcoin despite the disruptive effect widespread adoption of bitcoin will have on the global banking monopoly.

If they weren’t obsessed, and powerless to resist what they see as an exploitative opportunity, however short term, they would have simply ignored, if not actively sought to destroy it.

But what did they do? Dumped in hundreds of thousands of dollars, both directly into bitcoin and into bitcoin based services. And suddenly it has undeniable legitimacy. Short of ww3 or the blockchain being hacked bitcoin is now a permanent part of humanity, and that means an ever more developed and viable alternative to the petrodollar system.

That’s just one example of a dozen other cases where their lust for short term profits and power are being exploited to expose and destroy them. They routinely fund the development and deployment of disruptive technologies that can be, and/or are being, readily democratized.

My favorite recent example is the implosion of the right wing here in America where mindless support for their 1% campaign financiers caused them to usher in the beginnings of true medical reform. (After the fact opposition to the ACA would not have been required had they been less eager to please their insurance and big pharma contributors to the point of near revolt.)

They have made it obvious that their interests are entirely fiscal. This is a massive strategic weakness. A dangerous and wise foe is capable of self discipline and walking away from bait, but being psychopaths, they are pathologically incapable of it.

It’s only a matter of time now.

Why does selfishness beat altruism within groups?

“Why” to me typically implies purpose but I suspect you’re asking a social science question which is actually a “how” question. If I were to answer “why” I’d say “because the universe sucks.”

But if you’re actually asking something like “How does selfishness confer advantage in groups?” My response is that a cooperative group is defined by denial or at least delay of fulfillment of individual need in favor of group needs.

A good example is planting seeds instead of eating them. If I’m given the town’s supply of grain to plant but instead I make bread for myself I thrive and everyone else starves.

It seems to be an intrinsic facet of the universe that exploitative behavior is inherently profitable in certain contexts.

(Which is why capitalism ultimately will need leg braces: http://underlore.com/one-possible-solution/ )

Think about 3 kids growing up alone in the woods. One kid is selfish, one kid is apathetic, one kid is generous.

As they grow the generous kid will give away more of his food, the selfish kid will steal/take, and the apathetic kid will have his food stolen but also get free food from the generous kid. The selfish kid being better fed will get bigger leading to superiority in those contexts while the other two would wither.

The selfish kid dominates within the group as advantage breeds further advantage.

Now imagine a another group of 3 and these kids act as a team. Economy of scale grants these kids an effective food supply (and everything else) of 4 or 5 kids so that each of them is larger than the average of the first group. They fight. The 3 coordinated kids beat the larger leader of the first group and absorb the other two kids.

The sharing culture beat the selfish culture, but only when the cultures had the opportunity to clash.

I’m sure I could have explained that better, but then again that’s what you get for asking me instead of Google 🙂

Because game theory:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/tdk
http://adamcurtisfilms.blogspot.com/

Because selfishness:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/evolving-robots-learn-lie-hide-resources-each-other

Dear Politicians

“If they succeed, millions of senior citizens, working families, disabled veterans and children will suffer.” ~Senator Bernie Sanders

Please stop doing that. I’m tired of being reminded that I’m a second class citizen because I’ve:

Not aged sufficiently
Been unable to find a job I can do
Not knocked a girl up
Not been injured while trying to kill brown people on behalf of the 1%’s profit margins
Survived my childhood

I’m tired of being punished for my age, gender, race, and frankly GOOD choices. No one cut me a check to go with my penis or handed me a white collar job to match my skin. So please quit acting like I’m a monocle wearing slave owner just because you want votes.

A “voluntaryist” society is a contradiction in terms.

(“voluntaryist” is the dumbest most redundant sounding word ever. Why can’t they just call it a voluntary society like they understand grammar and syntax? But at least I can honestly claim to have independently invented “Volitionism/Volitionist” 🙂 oh well, anyway…)

A “voluntaryist society”…

WTF

I find it amazing that people can engage in this level of doublethink. I say doublethink because ignorance alone simply can’t explain it when in fact the ignorance can be cured in a single logically obvious sentence.

The whole point of society is to exploit economies of scale, and you can’t, physically, logically, as in square-circle can’t, have a society of true individuals without some degree of hierarchical control over the individual by the society.

You must do one or the other or your society will be destroyed from within eventually:

1. Edit people in some way such that their desires/will do not induce society destroying actions.

2. Constrain people with such desires/will from doing harm.

The End!

All this claptrap about systems of dispute resolution makes the fatal assumption that there IS a resolution all parties can agree on. But reality is bound by no such edict.

It’s like a meta-myth, a belief that the concept of irreconcilable differences is a myth.

Can society be made more free? Yes, obviously.

Can it be improved by additional freedoms? Yes.

Can punishment itself be feasibly removed from society? Yes.

Can a society be constructed that gives maximum feasible respect to the sanctity of volition? You’re goddamn right it can.

HOWEVER!

Can everybody get what they want? > No. <

I’m so tired of this debate. It’s virtually identical to debating creationists.

Libertarians of this extreme are little more than right wingers who want to build a society around the excuses they need to allow their compassion to atrophy entirely, while having their ego stroked for being good people at the same time.

http://underlore.com/islanders/ (And its links, which are admittedly months of reading.)