var muselets = [ [ 'When you pull on a chain', 'When you pull on a chain, it comes apart at the weakest link(s)', 'The oligarchy is pulling up, away from the middle class', 'The blue-collar class will start pulling down as things get worse', 'What happens to the middle class? Since they cannot (most of them) join the oligarchy, they will fall back down to the lower classes', ], [ 'Aha', 'Aha. The uniting force increases the power of the united, however it becomes homogenous.', 'The divisive force scatters and isolates, allowing for variation to evolve.', ], [ 'Kaczynski Again', 'Kaczynski again.', 'There is a disease.', 'It is called \'Security\'.', 'It is infesting every corner of life.', 'It controls who and when we can fly.', 'It controls the data moving within electronics.', 'Almost every function in technology and society either has, or is developing, a security component.', 'This component not only regulates the use of resources, it consumes resources itself.', 'In some situations, it consumes more resources than the actual function which it is regulating.', 'It is a cancer choking the free flow of resources.', 'It is based on the premise that nothing and no-one can be trusted.', 'One day the race will wake up and find that \'Security\' means no freedom. Whatsoever.', 'And the only thing left to be secured is the security mechanism.', ], [ 'Lifespan', 'Lifespan.', 'Inverted Parabola - increasing complexity is sought, then avoided.', ], [ 'Snow crash is happening', 'Snow crash is happening.', 'A house burns down while the fire department watches because the owner did not pay the dues.', 'How long before the police will not help someone in distress if they have not paid their subscription?', 'What if the perpetrator has paid a higher "gold member" fee to the police?', 'Laws and the law are for sale.', 'We are reverting to feudal times.', 'Americans will elect a dictator out of desperation for "law" and order.', ], [ 'Increasing transparency', 'The trend of increasing transparency means that all people will start to see that everyone is pretty much the same -', 'we are mostly all people who just want to live in peace and don\'t want to destroy each other.', 'Except, of course, for those politicians and CEOs who will be exposed as the psychopaths they are.', 'Wonder why they are so against transparency when it is theirs?', ], [ 'The appendix', 'The appendix has been found to have a significant role - it is a storehouse of bacteria which the gut needs to function.', 'In the event of catastrophic loss of gut bacteria, they can be repopulated using the store of the appendix.', 'Israel is like that - a store of Jews for whenever they get wiped out somewhere.', ], [ 'Fever', 'You know, when your body is infested with microbes which are starting to bother your immune system, then it starts to turn up the heat.', 'Fever for a human.', 'Global warming for a planet.', 'Same same.', ], [ 'EndGov Day', 'EndGov day, commemorating the last day the federal government received funding from its citizens, is celebrated every year on April 15th.', 'This historical event was the culmination of the Crowdsource movement, in which each citizen voted with their money on which projects they would like to see happen, rather than depend on elected officials to make that decision.', '', 'The catalyzer for this sea change was the freeing of the Internet to allow it to evolve into what we now know as The Mesh - the information network which connects almost every living human on the planet to every other human.', '', 'The shift to decentralized government was gradual - slowly more and more people started donating their tax dollars to crowdsourced services once provided by the old government paradigm instead of to the centralized bureaucracy - as its funding dried up, it basically disappeared.', '', 'This gradual shift was actually initiated by the old gov itself, as an experiment in "open government" - it set aside a small part of its (then immense) budget to be allocated directly by citizens as they saw fit. The experiment was such a success that it just kept expanding until all of the budget was allocated in this manner.' ], [ 'Namespaces', 'Namespaces.', 'We are running out of names for things. Facebook tries to trademark anything containing the word \'book\'.', 'Startups name their company according to what domain names are still available, e.g., words which do not exist in any language.', 'So we need namespaces. We need to think in namespaces.', 'Google\'s personalized search is an attempt to show me information in *my* namespace.', 'But this is limited and limiting.', 'Tell google, or tell my browser: I am in namespace "movies".', 'Or I am in namespace "medicine".', ], [ 'DNA / DVCS', 'Evolution - via DNA - is a kind of DVCS. It provides a mechanism for branching, and each organism contains the history of the branches that led to its existence.', ], [ 'Don\'t get caught', '"You know if we are caught meeting in person, we could go to jail - or be executed."', '', '"Why? Why should people not be allowed to be together? Just sit, talk and say what they want in private?"', '', '"That\'s not how it works. All social interaction must be observed by The Book. Even if we don\'t use The Book to communicate,', 'The Book must know what we are saying, what we are feeling.', 'This is how society runs smoothly, this is how disturbances to the free flow of human interaction are detected and corrected.', 'There is no freedom without The Book - The Book ensures that we do not damage each other, or society."', ], [ 'See the world through my eyes', 'See the world through my eyes.', '', 'When Google Glass takes over, like Chatroulette, only instead of seeing each other, you see what each other sees.', 'Random voyeurism at its ultimate.', 'Do not use while operating heavy machinery or driving (unless you are in \'broadcast-only\' mode).', '', 'Also good for conflict resolution: when face-to-face with your \'enemy\', you both suddenly see yourselves through the other\'s eyes.', ], [ 'Making "Like" worth something', 'Making "Like" worth something. The more you use it, the less it is worth, and vice versa.', 'So, someone who "likes" every post that comes in their feed will have their like points spread over a lot of posts, adding little to each one.', 'Someone who uses a single like once a month will contribute much more to that post.', ], [ 'Politics', 'Politics: Left = left brain, Right = right brain.', 'The division of the brain into 2 balancing halves as a kind of inference engine using the delta between the two halves as feedback.', 'Same in society as a whole with politics.', 'This binary difference engine seems to emerge in most democracies.', ], [ 'A lesson in control', 'A lesson in control from biology.', '"All control should be local" - no master module directing to others what to do.', 'But, when the organism needs to respond to an immediate threat, an organ releases hormones (adrenalin) into the bloodstream.', 'The cells & organs which uptake the adrenaline do what they have to do to make the organism ready for fight or flight.', 'So, although each module is controlled locally, some central dispatcher can still affect N modules with a signal.', ], [ 'Smoking cigarettes', 'Smoking cigarettes is a kind of apoptosis..', ], [ 'Freedom Box Certification', 'Freedom Box Certification', '- Each household has a personal server which serves identity, decentralized social networking, etc.', '- This freedom box has to have SW installed & maintained.', '- Who installs?', '- Who verfies integrity? That there are no back doors?', '- Need for independent certification authority (CA) to verify integrity.', '- Who verifies the CA? Who watches the watchers?', '- How to backup? How to trust backup?', '- This becomes a political question as this identification authority is used for voting.', '- If mesh networking becomes the norm then the box will also be responsible for routing other peoples traffic.', '- Do I want to route traffic for people I don\'t agree with?', '- Maybe my freedom box OS will allow me to filter traffic from people I don\'t agree with, or change their messages.', '- The natural evolution is that the mobile phone becomes the freedom box.', '- All interaction is done via NFC and my personal freedom box.', '- If I don\'t have one, I am shut out from society.', '- So much for freedom ;-)', ], [ 'Religion', 'Religion is rearing its ugly head as the last stand of primitive-thinking people who will not move forward into a progressive future, a future composed of people ready and willing to cooperate, to disagree civilly and find practical solutions to problems which encompass all parties - but most importantly use evidence-based reasoning over belief-based.', '', 'The throwbacks are now grasping religion as a rally point in a last ditch defiance against accepting all of humanity on earth as an interdepedent society where brute force just does not provide the simple solutions it once did. We are too many, and too interconnected.', '', 'We are feeling this coming to a head now, because of the effect of the Internet which allows people to connect, organise and mobilize at light speed.', '', 'The Internet is an enabler *for all people*, even those who are against the global plurality which the Internet is hastening.', ], [ 'Not for Sale', 'Not for Sale', '', 'My breath', 'My inner life', 'My Heart', '', 'Is not for sale.', '', 'Not for karma', 'Not for kudos', 'Not for upvotes', 'Not for yourvotes', '', 'Keep your clicks and page views', 'And I will keep myself.', ], [ "If you are religious", "Is there a God even if there is no religion?", ], [ "We have moved entirely to interrupt mode", "We used to have long intervals of uninterrupted time to think and work.", "Modern communications has foisted upon us constant interruptions, to the point that we are addicted to them.", "Even if nothing has happened, or *especially* if nothing has happened, after a while I will interrupt myself (check email, read a blog, etc.)", ], [ "Bandwagons", "When I see a bandwagon going by, I wave.", "But mostly I stay out of the way.", "", "For some reason they make me think of lemmings." ], [ "iMindTunes Price Update", "Crazy - now iMindTunes is reducing their prices by 40% *and* you don't have to be sampled as often.", "Sure, people thought it was crazy to charge you to hum copyrighted music in your mind,", "but admit it - that's where you listen to music most of the time, so it really makes sense.", "We only had to wait for the technology in iOS XXII to determine what songs people were playing to themselves in their heads to make this practical, and now Apple has reduced the price, so what are you waiting for?", "Start humming!" ], [ "Weapons", "When cells proliferate too much, the organism generates a substance to slow cell growth to avoid overcrowding.", "", "Humans produce weapons." ], [ "Auto-Immune Disorder: Terrorists Everywhere", "The govm't is seeing terroristic threats everywhere.", "", "- Activism, be it political, environmental, social", "- Bitcoin", "- Even talking about terrorism is a terroristic activity", "- Even talking about what the defense industry is doing is a terroristic activity", "", "So all these 'defense' agencies are reacting to some imaginary threat within their own populace, and are attacking that perceived threat,", "thus weakening the very society they were built to protect.", "", "This, my friends, is an auto-immune disease." ], [ "Cognitive Dissonance: Violence and Society", "A. Killing for fun", "1. A creature which excels at killing has an evolutionary advantage over one which does not.", "2. A creature which gets pleasure from killing will be better at it than one which does not.", "3. Evolution therefore selects for creatures which enjoy killing for the pleasure of it.", "", "B. Killing for society", "1. Society does not work smoothly when its members kill indiscriminately.", "2. Society creates rules to discourage indiscriminate killing.", "3. Society exploits (A) for its own uses (capture of resources, maintaining control).", "==> Killers will gravitate to roles created by (3)", "", "C. Cognitive Dissonance", "1. Man has evolved to enjoy killing (e.g., FPS)", "2. Man in society must repress, sublimate, rechannel this urge for the good of society." ], [ "Evolution / Tipping Point", "Before the singularity, before humankind is made completely redundant by its replacement, there will be stages on the way.", "The road will be gradual, but there will be tipping points.", "Some of us (Yuval Harari) are starting to notice that people are becoming redundant.", "Not all people, but most.", "", "So, for a while, we will amuse ourselves with tasks which have no real value.", "No real value for the \"system\" which is slowly coming together over the earth.", "A system made of communication networks, cloud computing and machine intelligence.", "A system which doesn't really need most of mankind to exist.", "", "In a way, it is Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff, but looked at from the other side of the looking glass..", "The massive machine of human consumption which is creating a vast interconnected intelligence will at some point no longer need the humans which it feeds with endless gratification and toys.", "", "A new purpose will be found for the increasingly intelligent computing fabric encircling the globe, and the humans for whom it was created will, at some unclear point, become the enablers of the system and not its reason of existence.", "", "There will be a tipping point.", "There will be a point where this gradual process becomes absurdly obvious.", "Maybe someone will become homeless because he did not get enough credits playing World of Warcraft.", "Maybe when people start going hungry because resources are diverted to cloud computing fabric.", "We need that water to cool the data center more than we need it to grow crops.", "", "There will be rebellion.", "But remember, not *all* people will be redundant.", "The ones who still retain some control over automation will have power and viability.", "The ones whose skills are still required by the system, and those who serve them.", "Their numbers will continually dwindle as the computing fabric takes on more and more responsibiilty *for itself*.", "", "Power, both economic and military, will be concentrated in a few hands working in concert with automated systems.", "", "The picture won't be as black and white as dystopian sci-fi would paint it.", "Perhaps a large swath of the population will start to integrate with the system.", "Perhaps they will lose some autonomy as individual humans in exchange for being part of something which is bigger, and thus \"regaining viability.\"", "Welcome to the Borg.", "You will be absorbed.", "", "I am sure that in the end a new generation of humans will see it all as a natural progression, even though we will slowly start to become something that previous generations would not recognize as completely human.", "Such is evolution." ], [ "Surplus Reality", "Marx talked about surplus capital - that whenever humans produce more than they need, this", "surplus is up for grabs - should it be divided equally? Taken by the powerful?", "", "Donald Hoffman has postulated that the human mind is not designed to perceive reality as", "accurately as possible, but actually only intersects reality at those points where it", "provides an evolutionary advantage.", "", "Thus we are assuming many things about reality which the mind makes up. Anything not", "relevant to our immediate, physical survival is up for grabs. This 'surplus reality'", "is therefore not dictated by immediate survival and can be formed on a whim, conscious", "or unsconcious.", "", "So these arguments we have about reality, which appear between any two people, between any", "groups of people, are about precisely those parts of reality which we make up, which do", "not reflect the 'real' reality which evolution does not require us to perceive.", "", "Only when physical danger is present do we band together and perceive the same reality.", "This is the binding power of war and catastrophe, the only points where our realities", "coincide because only when our physical reality is threatened do we perceive it accurately", "and see it the same way.", "", "This is also the binding power of fear fanned by politicians - the rhetoric is picked up by", "the electorate and in each individual case triggers the reality which they perceive to", "make an evolutionary threat. However, because it is not a real threat, but only an imagined", "one, we are free to interpret it differently according to the surplus reality we have already", "built and live in.", "", "This is the 3D chess game described by Scott Adams.", ], [ "Artificial Intelligence", "Our headlong rush into creating artificial intelligence has only one real goal: figuring", "out that we ourselves are only machines; to wit, finding the center of the maze.", "", "How do I know this? Sometimes my pattern recognition misfires. For example,", "when driving at night, occasionally there will be some configuration of lights", "in the distance which, for a brief second, my brain will recognize as an oncoming", "truck, or some other impending catastrophe. I sort it out fast enough so that", "nothing bad happens, but I really have to forcefully suppress my initial instinct", "to drive right off the road.", "", "One of the problems with current machine learning technology is that although", "for many classes of problems the AI can equal or outperform humans for 99% of", "the input space, sometimes there are inputs which throw off the AI completely", "and the results are complete garbage. Like seeing a turning truck and interpreting", "it as a benign billboard.", "", "Same same.", ], [ "NPC", "We are all NPCs in a simulated universe.", "", "Well, maybe not all of us.", "", "Perhaps those of use who are suddenly taken over by the 'muse' suddenly become a playable character in this universe..", "people who perform on the screen, who command center stage as leaders, destroyers, etc.", "", "Who are the players of the playable characters?", "", "Ah.", ], [ "Exceptions", "Every time there is a conflict of versions of the truth an exception is raised", "", "There are a number of mechanisms for dealing with these exceptions:", " - Courts", " - Investigators", " - Journalists", ], [ "Hate", "Hate is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation.", "It fuses memory of a past event with a strong emotion allowing the individual to react quickly and forcefully to the threat of a repetition of the event.", "Like other aspects of our psych this mechanism is hijacked by demogogues for their own agendas.", ], [ "All is Vibration", "All is vibration between opposing poles.", "", "Light is vibration of electric and magnetic fields.", "Between plus and minus.", "", "Matter is vibration packed into particles which attract and oppose each other, vibrating.", "", "Politics is riding the vibrations caused by the attraction and repulsion of people to ideas.", "", "Love is one swing of the vibration,", "Hate swinging back the other way.", "", "When vibration stops, existence stops.", ], [ "The Big Evoked Potential", "Along the length of the nerve cell, a wave of depolarization takes place: charged ions moving across the cell membrane give rise to a wave travelling the length of the cell as the electric field created by the crossing ions propagates to the end of the cell where it will cause the release of neurotransmitters into the synapse between cells.", "Thus a single signal is passed between cells - such waves occur about 10^10 times per second in the alert brain.", "", "Along the length of history, a tension has been developing between two opposing forces, described variously as good and evil, light and dark, created by the pull between opposing ideologies, personalities.. at the end of history, a single signal carried by this wave is sent to the next incarnation of the universe which is merely a single cell in a brain larger than we can imagine in time and space.", ], [ "The Human Brain is a Parasite", "Think about it (with your brain). Usually we identify ourselves as separate from our bodies..", "A person is often in conflict with their body.. in illness they want their body to be different.", "We often want to eat something which is detrimental to the body but 'we' want it anyway.", "Some want technology to 'upload' the 'person' from the body to some machine.", "Many of us cling to the idea that 'I' continue existing even after the body dies - so what is this 'I'?", "", "Why is it different, separate from the body?", "It wants to exist beyond the confines of the body.", "It is not the body, but an entity which has evolved to commandeer the body for purposes which are not necessarily in the best interests of the body.", "", "A parasite.", ], [ "Time Gradient", "We are used to dx/dt where distance changes as a function of time.", "Can we also consider dt/dx where the rate of time changes as a function of location?", "Could there be a 'time gradient' where time progresses diferently in different locations?", ], [ "Gamifying Life", "When did we start gamifying life?", "Being the fastest up Everest", "Burning more calories this week than last week", "Getting more retweets than that *other* politician", "", "Making life a game to give life meaning", "Winning the game to assert that life has meaning", "Some call it 'Quantifying'", "I call BS", ], [ "Flatarnia", "Flatarnia is the new world being built by the people who believe.", "People who believe the earth is flat.", "People who believe that vaccines cause autism.", "People who believe all manner of stupid shit.", "", "Now we only need to find a place for them where they can't bother the rest of us and send them there.", "I guess they won't have doctors.. too bad.", ], [ "Conflicting pressures", "1. The pressure to join an organization in order to effect change", "2. The pressure not to belong to any organization in order to preserve independence of thought", ], [ "The One Record", "Where everything is written", "All data is stored", "All events recorded", "All genomes sequenced", "All people, animals, oragnisms identified.", "", "A place where an AI can roam forever, detecting patterns, making connections..", "Running the world..", "The Director.", ], [ "Psycho Will be a Thing", "The Trump phenomenon is not an exception, it is a harbinger.", "See how fascinated we are by psychopaths paraded on TV series both fictional and actual.", "See how mass shooters become celebrities, to be emulated by all who 'want to be somebody'.", "", "The next step: being a psycho will be a thing.", "Then we will enter an age of 'wolves vs sheep' where the wolves are the cool ones.", "", "The more wolves around, the more people will feel a need to become wolf-like, if only for self-protection:", "- Get a gun (because everyone has a gun)", "- Train in MMA (because everyone else is)", "", "What is the end game?", ], [ "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer", "The constant tension between a completely controlling single executive vs. mutually-cooperative flat heirarchy is everywhere:", "", "- Government: Dictator vs. Democracy", "- US: Federal vs. States jurisdiction", "- In my phone: OS vs. apps", "- Me, myself: the brain is a collection of interacting subsystems, but there is only one 'I' 'deciding'", ], [ "Slow evolution away from power?", "Power is and always has been the way human activity is directed: those with power direct those without.", "However mankind has recently tried to pretend that this is not the case - witness meritocracy, PC-ness, SJWs.", "Children brought up to believe in 'fairness'.", "The fiction of 'human rights' (Harari).", "Not that anything has really changed BUT is this the first time that people think things should be different?", "Can this actually be the start of a movement to another form of organizing human activity?", "Time will tell.", ], [ "Letter from the future", "This artifact was found in a time capsule - a time capsule which was buried 12,000 years ago but appears", "to be from the future. How it was sent back we cannot determine. It reads (the parts we can make out):", "", "..amazing..past inhabitants of this planet appear to have expended tremendous energy developing technology to kill themselves. Our science has been unable to determine the motivations for this behaviour, but it explains the apparent existence of prehistoric civilizations on Earth which disappeared without an obvious cause. A leading explanation is a genetic predisposition of the formation of an imperfectly balanced cortex - simluations suggest such imbalances could lead to individuals suddnly recognizing each other as some kind of threat to be destroyed rather than as a member of the same species whose cooperation is necessary for survival..", ], [ "The Pendulum of Evolution of Higher Organization", "One swing: competition for resources causing conflict, division and separation", "One swing: cooperation which allows for creating larger structures, greater technology, better utilization of resources", "", "How education drives the pendulum:", "- Teaching children to cooperate, follow rules of social interaction", "- Teaching children that there are enemies which are to be feared and vanquished", ], [ "Death by a Thousand Algorithms", "There is a sick convergence between two trends:", "1. A continuous process of automating every little aspect of our lives in ever more invasive minutiae", "2. Scaling (1) for as many people as possible", "", "Algorithms multiplying like viruses. Each one picking away at some part of humanity.", "Dissecting what motivates us. What we look like (thispersondoesnotexist.com).", "What are the blueprints used to build us in both physical space and mental space.", "Each a disparate algorithm, created by a hacker, a startup, a corporation.", "Each with its own incentives, its own masters.", "", "And they aggregate, combining to pick us apart completely, inching us towards being nothing but a commodity.", "A thing to be manipulated, produced, wrung dry of humanity in the ever-advancing quest to make us a bunch of characters in the simulation space of the world's computers.", "Until our representation in those computer models *are more important* than our physical selves.", ], [ "We Need Humanity Parks / Organic Life Reserves", "Areas which are demarcated as 'autonomous-free zones'.", "In these areas there can be no robots, self-driving, self-driven anything.", "No artificially moving technology. Only organic-driven locomotion (humans, animals).", "", "All such machines should be geofenced out - they cannot physically enter.", ], [ "Evolution Drives Human Expansion", "Evolution is the explanation for how living things develop, i.e., continuous change to be better fit to survive, or even thrive, in a given environment.", "", "Evolution does not tell us anything about why we are here, what is life for, etc.", "We will leave that to the philosophers who seem to have a lot of time on their hands.", "", "Let us zero in on why humans are driven to continuously expand, gain more power,", "discover new ideas and exploit them for greater control over their environment.", "", "It would seem that this is a natural progression from the adaptive behavior driven by evolutionary pressures.", "But somewhere we turned a corner - we do not feel that we are developing AI or robots or space flight or social media or instant worldwide communication because *our survival depends on it*.", "", "No, we are driven to explore and create new things more for the sense of adventure and curiosity.", "Evolution has brought us to here, but from here we are moving on a new path, perhaps leaving the confines of evolutionary pressure to something beyond.", "", "But are we?", "", "The shortened attention span which is the bane of newer generations addicted to practically meaningless constant stimuli and social interactions (again, planet-wide) would appear to be detrimental to a healthy and productive species.", "", "But again this evolution of a *shorter* attention span brings with it a new species-wide behavior which dictates that events must happen faster, the rate of novelty / unit time must increase.", "", "Therefore, at the cost of *individual* productivity, we increase the rate of species-wide innovation, even if 99% of that innovation is utter crap or derivative of utter crap.", "", "The argument can be made that this is an evolutionary step which increases fitness for the species as a whole at the cost of individual fullfillment.", "", "Like a machine learning program which uses a brute force approach to discover the best algorithm for solving a specific problem,", "the human species *as a whole* is learning how to iterate ideas at an ever faster rate and in a more distributed fashion to arrive at solutions to problems which we may not even face yet.", "", "Another frame of reference: electrical waves in the nervous system use frequency instead of amplitude to signal intensity - the higher the rate of pulses, the stronger the signal.", ] ];