[FRIAM] where are the "patriot hackers"?

[Steve Smith]

uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ -

I'm not clear what the intended connection between these two topic you
raise is, but I share your curiosity/fascination with both:
> So, I'm once again down in a rabbit hole over whether Dave's (cautiously backed by Kim) idea of a "science of the mind" is reasonable, wherein subjective/reflective techniques like psychedelic drugs or meditation can say "true" things about the world, particularly that may be beyond the reach of science. And there I am reading about Falun Gong <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong> and its "outlets" like The Epoch Times, which spew constant nonsense, feeding the delusional QAnon narratives:
>
> https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-newest-trump-boosted-viral-maga-star-has-ties-to-the-epoch-times

I have my own "pet theories" (a plethora of them I am sure) on many
topics, and some I hold more dear than others.   Many are mere
"placeholders" or heuristics of sort...  a sort of knee-jerk go-to which
I may have had planted in me by my family/culture-of-origin or adopted
later in life from a subsequent subculture I installed myself in. 
Access to books, libraries, and ultimately the internet has both
ameliorated and aggravated that problem.   I've been able to sand off
more of the rough edges  of (or fill in the gaps between) those
pet-theories with the received experience/knowledge/?wisdom? of other
more efficiently than if I were to try to sort all of that by myself.   
But one aphorism goes "the problem with having an open mind is that
other people with pour just about anything int

While I do have a minimal meditation practice and find various glimmers
of (fleeting) enlightenment through mild alcohol poisoning, sleep
deprivation, and fasting (all quite minimal), I don't have nearly as
strong of a fascination with seeking fundamental "truths" that way.   I
believe that my genotype and therefore phenotype is embued with the
"training" of hundreds of thousands of years of hominid, tens of
millions of years of primate and hundreds of millions as
mammal/vertebrate and that "listening" to that "wisdom" seems like a
worthwhile practice... so to get better at such listening, things which
distract or quiet the mind seem like a good help.  Alternatively,
engaging my senses, my awareness with the "natural world" also seems to
be a good way to explore the resonances within me to recognize these
"inner truths".   I'm a bit more aligned with the neo-pagan animists (if
that is the right term) or the anarcho-primitivists for these purposes
than I am with the various human-centric spiritual paths that involve
everything from angry old white men with flowing beards to angry brown
women with eight arms (and swords).  When I am tempted to
anthropomorphise my god(desse)s I much prefer a whole pantheon.  Not so
much for the choices a buffet gives as the opportunity to think in
(Jungianesque) Archetypes.

I suspect there is some serious neurochemistry involved in
conspiracy-theory folks... I know that *I* can get pretty hopped up on
one of my pet-theories if approached in just the right (wrong) way.   So
Chemtrailing, AntiVaxxing, JFK-assasinationg, Lizard-peopling,
Illuminati-izing, Masoning, Q-Anoning, Hillary-hating, Falun-Gonging,
Nationalizing, etc.   all seem to share some strange cocktail of
adrenals as the "reward" for belief.  

I also think there is a higher-level complex going on which involves
herd/pack/tribe mentality... the need/drive to "follow a leader" or at
least the "centroid".   Strange how those who throw the term "sheeple"
around freely seem to be following a "shepherd" or at least some swarm
centroid of delusion.

> And I'm wondering, where are the "patriot hackers" and Anonymous?
>
> What happened to all that rigmarole about protecting the world and the internet from insidious sh¡t like The Epoch Times? Is it that ostensibly white hat members are combating shallow techniques like DDoS so well that the script kiddies who used to claim to be Anonymous are outmatched? Maybe Assange siding with Trump fractured the group? And what about the Jester <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jester_(hacktivist)>, who was arguably more capable than the large majority of hacktivists? Was he hired by the NSA and now works alone in a steel cage? Or has his mind been infected by the attractive conspiracy theories and persecution complexes we dorks are so susceptible to?

I also wonder about this.   Is it merely a "delusion" of mine (ours?)
that some singular (or small group of) individual can come to town and
clean up the rabble?  Too many Westerns or modern
military-action-revenge movies?   I do believe that systems are only
robust within the embedding space they emerged within or were designed
for.   This is the stuff of punctuated criticality...    Elements within
a dynamical system remain in their comfortable/familiar orbits, their
basins of attraction for long periods of time (relative) until they
excurd (is that a word?) outside those (dynamic) equilibria regions and
then (from the perspective of the rules-of-thumb characterizing those
regions) all hell breaks loose.

What does this have to do with Hacktivists/ism?  If humans are loci of
consciousness with one or more qualities than the myriad other loci such
as animals, plants, other life, and perhaps seemingly less complex (or
more slowly evolving) systems such the geo/cryo/atmo/biosphere as a
whole, then perhaps this ability/propensity to build models of Life, the
Universe and Everything and attempt to play God(dess) with it, to muck
around with it, to engage in hypothesis testing and generation, to
attempt to control it, leads us to the inevitability to (try to) do so.

Whether Black/White/Grey or Green hatted, Hacktivists would seem to be
none other than aspiring alchemists, magi, shamans, warlocks who attempt
to transcend the mundane and bring actions which are disruptive
(disruptive of *what* seems to define the color of their hats?).

Is there a complex-adaptive-system formulation of the battle of good and
evil, the (illusory/delusory?) distinction between the light and the
dark?   If not to explain or side with one "side" or another, to
recognize how this symmetry arises, or is fundamental and how they play
off of one another.   We shall know our chirality?

> I feel confident that some of you have some insight! Please share.

Done,

 - Steve

?? what is the difference between an opinion and insight ??