[FRIAM] by any means necessary

Mon Feb 14 14:47:28 EST 2022

Glen writes:

"The only reason we hear so much about our belongings being stolen is because we're predisposed to cranking. It FEELS good to be cranked."

The net result in my case is that I sometimes look at the subject lines but always clear the notifications.    There's some value in being aware of the mood in some community and a broad outline of what is going on.  It is true not just of NextDoor.    What the internet made possible was participation, like a video game.  

I would think it would eventually become like TV advertising where people just tune out when they get engagement bait like "Musk cult tortures monkeys", "Child sex ring at the Comet Ping Pong".   How many millions of dollars has AbbVie spent on advertising for Skirizi?  The annoying melody just makes me think about anything else.   If it sounds charged, it is probably mostly false and so why pay attention.   Can we reach outrage saturation, like drug addicts hitting rock bottom?

Marcus

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 11:12 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] by any means necessary

Well, cranks are traditionally focused at least to some extent. The guy who always boils every issue down to one thing like monism, path integrals, consciousness, phase transitions, or category theory >8^D might be a crank. But if your outrage Twitch is a scatterbrained Tourette's victim, you're not, technically, a crank. We can pigeonhole such people at will. But they're not cranks. I suppose we can push the metaphor to its limit. A crank only does any work if it's at least quasi periodic ... or regular in some way. Even if the handle you use to crank something is irregular, the thing being cranked must be crankable. The only reason we hear so much about our belongings being stolen is because we're predisposed to cranking. It FEELS good to be cranked. Oooh! Aaaahhhh! That's the spot. Open X (science, data, source, hardware, etc.) is nearly antithetic to cranking. As long as you do what you do in the open air, it might be a bit shocking to the Puritans. But it'll at least be improvable, differentiable. You don't need to give away your belongings. You just need to allow an above the threshold number of your neighbors into your shed to gawk at your tools and gossip about it later.

On 2/14/22 10:47, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Nah, I tend to agree with this.   Judging by the messages I see on Nextdoor, one might would think that all of my belongings would have been stolen several times over.
> 
> https://www.gawker.com/culture/the-crankification-engine
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 10:40 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] by any means necessary
> 
> Sure. But open data, source, methods, etc. <https://mobilizecbk.med.umich.edu/about/manifesto> is one of the most effective ways to fight corruption. And one of the ways we manage to burst some boils is increased scrutiny into the bloviating obsolete titular icons associated with those boils. Compromises like the FDA's agreements and methods for evaluating for-profit thingamajigs are great. But so are activists whose Chicken Little shrillness acts like the well-placed lance.
> 
> On 2/14/22 10:27, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> There are competitors that already have approved clinical trials.
>>
>> https://synchron.com/
>> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-28/elon-musk-neuralin
>> k-competitor-announces-fda-trial-for-brain-device
>>
>> A passive approach might be better for a start-up, if for no other reason than to avoid all the possible litigation.
>>
>> https://www.soneramagnetics.com/
>> https://www.kernel.com
>>
>> It's not hard to see why a company like Neuralink would hold their cards close.  Of course, there will be bad outcomes during development.  And there may be no real way to put it in perspective.   Like Fauci and the beagles.
>>
>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/11/19/fauci-beagle
>> -white-coat-waste/
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 10:10 AM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] by any means necessary
>>
>> Oh, they're definitely activists. The question is one of how easy a target is Neuralink? One of the reasons actual medical research facilities aren't successfully targeted by influence campaigns is because they do the actual work to treat animals as well as they can be given their role as means to an end. If Neuralink is just a shitty place doing shitty research, then they put us all at risk. Those of us who do believe in their supposed mission need to forcefully correct their stupidity as soon as possible regardless of the activist motivations behind the canary in the coal mine.
>>
>>
>> On 2/14/22 09:59, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> It's also possible that the PCRM is being activist:  The idea of it is horrible to them, and that's the smoke.  Where there's smoke there must be fire.
>>> Imagine how the anti-vaxxers will react when talk of robots stitching threads into their brain starts.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 9:03 AM
>>> To: friam at redfish.com
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] by any means necessary
>>>
>>> Animal-rights group says monkeys used in experiments for Elon Musk's Neuralink were subjected to 'extreme suffering'
>>> https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-neuralink-experiments-monk
>>> eys-extreme-suffering-animal-rights-group-2022-2
>>>
>>> Elon Musk’s Neuralink allegedly subjected monkeys to ‘extreme suffering’
>>> https://nypost.com/2022/02/10/elon-musks-neuralink-allegedly-subject
>>> ed-monkeys-to-extreme-suffering/
>>>
>>> I've never quite settled out to a strong opinion on animal research. Since I'm mostly consequentialist, the *actual* ends [⛧] tend to rule out in my mind. But cause doesn't come in pure chains. It's a mesh, at best, an unquantifiable fractal at worst. So the means to the end are never merely means, they're always ends, in themselves. Utilitarians tend to abstract out seeming "no-ops" or "don't-cares", as if there were, in actuality, epiphenomena. But there are no such things. If that makes me a Vico-ist, that's fine. How you treat the animals is not merely a social side interest. It's a core part of good science and good engineering ... like keeping a good notebook.
>>>
>>> Musk is (now) a huckster, exploiting the good will and childish optimism of dorks everywhere.
>>>
>>>
>>> [⛧] By "actual", I don't mean whatever ends the actors have in mind when they launch the action mesh, but the outcome over time. Of course, that's fraught and requires some scholarship and ability to track the mesh as it unfolds. But one does the best they can. Whatever brainfarts some moron like Musk has in his mind prior to launch is largely irrelevant. We're all fans of scifi. The trick is being able to distinguish fact from fantasy.
>>>
>>
> 

--
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

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