[FRIAM] Political tangents

[Marcus Daniels]

 "[..] our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand.".  

It is a plausible claim and he helped evidence it by supporting Trump.  But if the body politic does nothing informed or intelligent, then I would guess their economic activity is also unmotivated and without merit.   Why is slogging around in blood (money) better than slogging around in muck (power)?   Just different kinds of social activity and all of them without much intellectual merit.  He's rich, he can easily delegate this tiresome interfacing to his lawyers.   What does he really want?

Marcus
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2017 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Political tangents


Well, the cow<->Thielian boundary is ephemeral.  2 cows can reproduce to make a Thielian.  Thielian production is chaotic and polyphenic.  And that's likely to continue despite any widespread but non-catastrophic problem with the cattle population.  The Thielian epistocracy will need some threshold number of cattle in order to maintain a healthy rate of cow->Thielian production.  Likewise, they only need to educate a small subset of the cattle to maintain that cow->Thielian production.  We've got that infrastructure in place with high prestige, high competition, high cost schools like Stanford and the ivy leagues.  If we can make vouchers and charter schools ubiquitous, then we can hone the cow->Thielian production mechanism even further.

The ideology is packaged for the cattle as maximizing freedom (both positive -- free to make a sandwich -- and negative -- won't be punched in the face today).  But it's actually a crypto-epistocracy ... or perhaps crypto-oligarchy if you include the entire sensori-motor complex (not just the mind) in the predicate for inclusion.  The ideology is basically to raise the bar very high so that only the best cows can become Thielians.  And shape the bar so that only Thielian-shaped cows can breach it.

Once you're categorized as a Thielian, then you are free.  Until then, your fate is fragile.

The interesting questions for the vampire metaphor involve the caste system for the cattle.  Horror and sci-fi have thouroughly explored the Renfield and Igor tropes, as well as the characters who ingraciate themselves (by letting them feed) in the hopes a charitable Thielian will make them immortal one day.  And, of course, there's the classic Eloi-Morlock conception, wherein the Thielians are "born on 3rd base and think they hit a triple".  cf. Thiel's comment <https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian>: "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — ... — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."


On 01/03/2017 10:25 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I was following you with the blood, but if they need fresh minds and, due to their sabotage of the health care act, they get widespread microcephaly (say) from their pool of baby makers, then that's a problem, no?  Likewise if the time and resources aren't given for education.    It seems like these agents will be more on the smart cow side than the smart human side.  Maybe they can pull a plow.  I still don't get what this ideology is other than a predilection for megalomania and tribalism.  Why are these short lifespan small-cranium folks the cool kids?   It's much more inspiring to me to hear Jerry Brown say, "We'll launch our own damned climate satellites." or hear a ridiculous performance of the free software song. 

--
☣ glen

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