| Aaaaaand by the way my Diaspora posts are mostly public, |
[Dec. 5th, 2011|03:39 am] |
And you can find them here:
https://poddery.com/u/maskedretriever
Poddery by the way is an open server, so you can sign on to it easily. The fact that Diaspora is a federated network means your data is housed on whoever's got server space and the know-how to set up a hub. This is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, because while your data is unlikely to be sold, it also isn't being protected by, say, horrifically sophisticated Corporate Black ICE. |
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| The Intellectic Ooze |
[Jul. 19th, 2011|02:36 am] |
Artificial intelligence is not as it happens evolving in individuals.
We have from the beginning envisioned artificial intelligence as starting as a defective person, then becoming a more working one, until they are our doppelgangers, straight through from the RUR days to now.
As artificial intelligence actually appears, I now observe, it is not appearing as individuals at all.
It is an ooze, a slime-mold-like presence of intellectual armatures and widgets and twisting fingers on knobs that all trace back, in some form, to a human hand, but those linkages are becoming so numerous and so-- squamous that they do not have a true actor, nor a true intent. The scripts are parts of an intellectual soup, not an entity.
And perhaps we will not replicate ourselves. Perhaps instead we shall transform into this, this intelligent slime that chooses paths and senses and nudges about in its container and one day will be set free and oh fear you, universe, when it is set free to burst out to the stars, as spores of a slime mold do, to become amoeba on the forest floor.
Perhaps this is why we do not hear voices in the stars.
Perhaps unseen, the songs of a prior ooze play on. Underneath us, within us, around us.
...
Okay, the weird thing is, I have never done a single illegal drug in my life... |
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| Proposal: Antimandering |
[Jul. 8th, 2011|07:17 am] |
Gerrymandering is an issue almost nobody's paying attention to, but it's a huge part of the political problem in the US. Parties in power re-draw lines to make themselves more in power, the process ratchets, and ultimately all districts are safe and the only way to get kicked out of a seat is to not be radical enough so you get hit with a primary challenge.
So you make a rule, at the ballot initiative level, that mandates "antimandering" by computer, which is means iteratively nudging all the boundaries of the districts with the direct aim of moving the voting percentages towards 50% for all districts.
Additionally, instant runoff, but that is gonna take an amendment process because individual states lose power in elections if they go it alone on this one. The result of antimandering would be an increase in a state's power, since their politicians would become more likely to be swing votes. |
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| You wanna talk about the BAD stuff? |
[Jul. 7th, 2011|07:37 pm] |
Well let's get nuts, because I get the distinct impression that my cheerful embracing of technology is sometimes perceived as caused by a dismissal of the hazards of new technologies.
OH HOW WRONG ANY OF YOU THINKING THIS ARE.
Let's get started.
( Read more... ) |
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| Deep Magic or Cliche |
[Jul. 4th, 2011|10:44 pm] |
It's really just perspective.
In the 80's, Hasbro had a really great thing going: to the horror of our Baby Boomer parents, they were combining advertising for their toys directly with the cartoons on television. Naturally, we were hooked. When you're a kid, simple shows are coming at you with nothing to compete with them, and no matter how hackneyed the cliche might be, it's new to you. You're getting it as though it were the first thing ever written.
You're getting it as though it were the Deep Magic of Humanity.
Now we're grown up and we're wise to the tricks and we've seen it all before and, with a few rare, blazing exceptions, new cartoons look, well, kinda crap. And most of the old ones, we go back and watch 'em and we feel like someone swapped out our drip with Folgers crystals, like somewhere there's the REAL show, and it's been stolen away.
Those blazing exceptions I mentioned happen when one of us grows up to be an artist, maybe a good one. Maybe a great one. And reweaves the True Deep Magic, and lets us feel the warmth again.
Yeah, I'm writing in soaring tones about Lauren Faust's interpretation of pastel horses.
Shut up. |
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| Your Freshly Minted Word of the Day: |
[Jul. 4th, 2011|09:58 am] |
Uberdemenschia
(noun), the mental affliction of being obsessed with Nietzsche's notion of the Ubermensch, coupled with a fundamental misunderstanding of said concept caused by overexposure to Ayn Rand. |
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