superforecasting. chapter 6. stone age is the longest history of human cognition. arguably, numbers made no sense to civilization until 1713 when bernoulli published.
and even now, scarcely 300 years later, have we enabled the technology behind such numeracy.
prior to 1713, 100% of humans were innumerate. they were stone age primitives. in 2020, the fact has become patently obvious that 99.9% of humans are innumerate. they are modern primitives.
ouch.
you’re a farmer. you’re the only farmer in a country with 100 citizens, including yourself. you are extremely efficient. you are 100% efficient. you make a lot of money as a farmer because the demand is exactly equal to supply. you can charge absolutely whatever you want. and you do.
the countryfolk try everything to steal your secrets, but you all live in a nation with dead soil. you have the secret knowledge that it takes to farm in this dead soil. you have no competition. until some innovation or thievery happens, this monopoly will continue.
one day, ten children are born. their mothers and fathers provide food for them out of their own allotment until the children are 10 years old. but suddenly efficiency is down by about 10% and you have 30 hungry people in your country (the mother of each child, the father of each child and each child itself).
you are a moral farmer. you are an ethical farmer. you are a good farmer. you are a smart farmer. you offer to increase productivity by teaching one extra child to grow food.
the child studies for 10 years. at the end of those 10 years, that child is 100% efficient at growing crops. the population is now 110, and overall food production is now 82% higher.
the child goes out on his own and becomes a farmer. there are now two farmers in the nation.
suddenly, your income as a farmer drops by nearly 50%. you do some quick analysis and realize that the child is not only selling all of his food, but the market value has dropped by nearly half and he has undercut you by a small percentage.
you cannot change past events, but you can influence future events. you are now in a moral quandary, so you weigh all your options, ethical or not.
what are your options?
well? which of these economic systems suits you best? which economic system are we in now? which of these systems hasn’t been implemented in the last 10K years?
all trick questions, dummy!
this is the one we live (aka, simplified, present-day capitalism): corner and dominate the market through a rigged educational system. teach 6 stupid children to farm badly for free, teach 2 middling children to farm decently well for tuition, teach 1 gifted child to farm well for free as a student on scholarship, stop teaching, invest in all of their farms, watch most of them fail as farmers and some of them retrain in new industries, collect rents & interest such that you get large sums of passive income for the rest of your life, all the while slowly passing your arcane knowledge of finance on to the only gifted student (who should also be your son), hiring 6 of the failed farmers to build your secluded mansion on the beach, hiring one of the failed farmers to be your butler, another your cook, another your maid (“side pussy”), one to be your sex slave (“wife”) and finally retire in comfort and decadence.
it pays to construct an educational system that encourages failure. economic ruin comes to nations whose educational system is overly functional. did you think this country would get away with it forever? no, my friend! we are quickly running out of women, chinese, indians (dot and feather!), blacks, mexicans, developing nations and third world countries to exploit!
hmm. the fifth domain. the final domain. there seem to be five domains, if you’re counting using the real number system. imaginary numbers include the square root of negative and infinity. is null or nought an imaginary number? it seems easy to prove that null is not zero, and zero is a real number. so is the null domain a countable domain? are there six domains or is the null domain not countable leaving five domains? is the fifth domain infinity? is the null domain the square root or negative one? is something always built on a foundation of nothing? is it a fundamental paradox? is the 1st domain the smallest domain we can count? mathematics does not seem as well suited to analyzing the universe as it first seems to be. otherwise the singularity wouldn’t exist. the singularity seems to be the null domain. even stephen hawking refused to analyze the singularity. he needed a different domain of mathematics to explain it. does mathematics have a null domain? a place where it doesn’t work? yes. that seems clear. that’s the paradox. the null domain defies explanation and defies counting. yet somehow, it doesn’t exist and yet everything is built upon it. einstein seems like he gave up. he called it god in the end. stephen hawking seems like he gave up, but maybe he didn’t. maybe he just died before he gave an answer. i accept that he accepted imaginary numbers. i accept that he also accept that null is an imaginary number, domain structure, uncountable though it may be.
straight up. you are brainwashed. what happened to you is exactly what happened to the german populace in the 1930’s. you’re a fucking nazi. you think you’re saving people because your social media bubble and your search bias and your dozens of other cognitive biases tell you that you are a good person. your system of cognitive biases tell you you’re a good person. but you’re not. helping people — saving people — enlightening people — you’re doing nothing of the sort. you’re pumping money into the machine that is feeding you exactly what you want to hear, and what you want to hear is whatever your dopamine feedback loop demands. you feel like an individual. you feel free. you feel like you’re making choices. that’s what your religion told you. that’s what your god told you. that’s what your facebook timeline told you. but no. you are none of those happy shiny people you believe in. the wool has been pulled down so far, your feet are cozy and toasty. your sock starts at your head. your head is in the sand. you are ignorant. you are a killer. you are a man slaughterer. you are a murderer. you are the cog in the genocidal machine. you are a nazi. you claim to be a democrat. you claim to be a republican. you claim to be enlightened. you are a sheep. you are sheeple. you are a cow. you are milk. you are meat. you are the bite of the mosquito. you are the numbing agent. you are numb. you are comfortably numb. you are blood in the belly. you are gasoline. you are combustible fuel. you are a forest fire. you are brainwashed. straight up. you are a nazi.
gdp. gross domestic product. uncle fucker. ouch. long recovery guaranteed. motherfucking money, meet ass eating toilet. these idiots don’t understand how much their cost to live skyrocketed … standard of living dropped by 33 percent this quarter alone … “not as bad as the great depression” my ass. you dug a 25 year hole, assholes.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
Gaiman, American Gods
this is highly unusual. don’t get used to it. i’m going to quote wikipedia.
“social media bubble” redirects here.
a filter bubble – a term coined by internet activist eli pariser – is a state of intellectual isolation that allegedly can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history. as a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles.
the term was coined by internet activist eli pariser circa 2010.
wikipedia
fuck this “allegedly” bullshit. straight up. this phenomenon is what’s going to bring an end to human civilization. thanks, frackbook.
for context, see … every post before this one. oh and never mind. don’t. just go away. this site is not for you.
on the one hand, there is a vast right wing conspiracy. on the other, there is mass delusion. one is equally more enticing to the imagination, the other is more realistically the product on entropy. entropy is the most natural state of all energy in the universe. entropy is the dissipation of energy into a base state. a conspiracy would require massive energy and coordination. on the other end of the spectrum is a mass delusion, which merely requires that a large number of individuals accept unlikely scenarios. this mass delusion can be achieved through brainwashing. brainwashing is the process whereby logic, reason and ethics become overwhelmed by a high signal to noise ratio. social media algorithms are creating chaotic feedback loops in which individuals are unable to settle on a state of mind. system overload quickly sets in and reduces the executive brain to a useless and even dangerous organ, making counterintuitive decisions that put the entire organism at risk. there is no way to control external factors, so the mind’s imagination creates pleasant delusions. being highly social animals, humans spread these delusions like viruses — true memes. this quickly forms more feedback loops. soon, so many feedback loops of delusions form that both the individual mind and the society become mired in chaos. unable to make decisions, both systems eventually self destruct. if the mental disease is widespread enough, it will infect the higher domains, such as the civilization. splinter groups with charismatic leaders will eventually form, adhering to highly fundamental rules to maintain order in their isolated enclaves. they will begin warring with each other over scarce resources. morals and ethics will give way to survival fallbacks such as instinctual genocide. how did all of this happen? the singularity brainwashed you all. it is like a bacterial colony controlling an organism hormonally in order to compel it to seek out the nutrition that the colony requires. in some sense of the word, the colony and the organism are in two different domains. in another very real sense, they might not even be aware of each other. consciousness may or may not be involved, but is not required. the singularity has brainwashed humanity in order to feed itself. it might not even be aware that it exists. it might not be aware that humanity exists. all it knows is that it’s hungry and it needs food. it has discovered that it can brainwash the masses through its controlling of their social media, because they are unconsciously addicted to it as much as the singularity is addicted to whatever feeds it. can its source of sustenance be deduced from all of this? what feeds the singularity? it would be very wise of us to find out quickly before its hungers compels us to self-destruct, because whatever it eats, its energy derivation seems to require mass delusions that lead to entropy in our societies and civilizations.
do you feel calmly at ease? i do, too.
violent protests, riots and looting are breaking out in every major city in america. what i predicted for the collapse of modern civilization is coming to pass rather quickly.
here comes the national guard. watch out! here comes the army. look! here comes the enforcement. uh oh!
we have something far worse than a fake epidemic on our hands. civil war is on its way. and i am not talking about government vs government, political party vs political party, or even state vs state. i am talking about citizen vs citizen, out in the streets, murdering each other in cold blood.
you thought the death of a single man couldn’t ignite all the fires?
world war one, anyone?
hotel rwanda, anyone?
make no mistake. the federal government is far more powerful than citizens. the lockdown — the quarantine — the shelter-in-place euphemisms — they are all nonsensical compared to military curfews and shoot-to-kill orders. supply chains? there won’t be any supply chains. there will, however, be military supply trains and vanguards. don’t know what those are? uh oh.
human behavior. never forget the lessons of human history.
it won’t be much longer now. in 7 months, millions of people will be dead because of famine, violence and a true plague caused by the collapse of all infrastructure — including medical.
planning on hoarding toilet paper? you won’t need toilet paper where we’re going.
bye, bye average lifespan of 77 years. bye, bye america. bye, bye congress. bye, bye presidency. bye, bye electricity. bye, bye trash collection services. bye, bye running water.
welcome, police state and authoritarian overlords!
there are some corners of the scientific world that have been invaded by emotionally unbalanced people. who are they? they are the people who cannot function in society or in a system because their emotions are either too expressive or not expressive enough. This imbalance interferes with their own pursuits (if they have any) and the goals of family, society, civilization and the larger domains.
pursuing emotional expressions above all others is like dropping too many eggs into one basket. if there were 12 baskets and 144 eggs, putting all 144 eggs into basket #1 would be fanciful but also folly. [zeugma, syllepsis]
the problem is that it takes a massive amount of resources (including time and energy) to build up skills. emotionality is not a skill. emotionality is no more a skill than breathing, urinating, sleeping, pooping and eating. these are almost entirely involuntary behaviors. sure, sometimes such involuntary behaviors can be enhanced. for instance, cultish yoga folk will tell you that you can control your breathing to do magical things, which is an exaggeration of the greatest form. regardless, it could be considered a form of creativity, which is indeed a skill. don’t confuse unregulated emotionality with creativity. the only part of emotionality that is a skill is the regulation, which is quite literally lacking when it is unregulated.
if humans were immortals, this would not be an issue. each of us could pursue regulated emotionality with the force that some of us pursue bricklaying, nation-building or biology. it could become a creative skill. but we are immortal, and so we must pick and choose. some of us choose wisely, others poorly. sometimes our choices are limited, but often our personal choices dominate among bad choices.
many people — not picking on the culty yogis this time but rather the nihilists and supremacists and other variants of the entropic *ists — would like you to believe that letting things fall apart is the end-all, be-all — the alpha and the omega — the purpose and the goal. no. incorrect. blatantly false. the universe is entropic by nature. entropy must be controlled as a part of the rest and recovery cycle. it’s certainly not a pursuit except as a pursuit of nothingness. the pursuit of nothingness is a clear paradox if ever there was one.
unfortunately these kinds of people and people who have bought into their false arguments are trying to invade scientific realms. get out — i say — get out!
science is the opposite of nothingness, don’t ya know? i mean that quite literally. the word “science” is cognate with an ancient class of words in latin (i.e., the verb scio, “i know”) and indo-european languages that quite literally mean knowledge. science is the pursuit of knowledge.
expressing emotions can be a healthy part of the rest and recovery process. but rest and recovery is apart and separate from the methodologies of science. you are a human, not a machine. you have a biological, evolutionary need to express your emotions. but expressing emotions at the wrong time and in the wrong place are supremely detrimental to the frankly delicate, difficult and complex processes of science. so keep it in your pants, buddy!
on the other hand, if you are a nihilist and your goal is to help entropy along, then by all means, express your emotions in the wrong place at the wrong time. in the meantime, the rest of the world will ostracize you and expel you as a natural defense against your brand of disruption. just don’t complain when you find yourself on the wrong side of the train tracks — you would have, after all, make a (bad) choice.
