[FRIAM] competent kidnapping (was Re: money is a delusion)

[glen]

I agree, completely. But it's a personal agreement, not a systemic one. For someone less broadly capable, the large hubs of homogeneity are necessary. Uniqueness can only thrive in the context of non-uniqueness ... rising tides, basic needs, shared values, yaddayadda. I think I can argue that the only way one can even relax enough to grok uniqueness as a concept is *when* they're swimming in a pool of homogeny. Otherwise, you have no cognitive power left with which to consider the lofty abstracts.

Here, I'm thinking concretely about some disabled people, Stephen Hawking even. Without the very businessy infrastructure, we would have lost his uniqueness long before we did. I can only imagine achieving things like this without businessy universities/labs/institutes: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01001-6

Yes, a scale-free infrastructure is compatible with what you wrote, but not explicitly expressed. So sorry for my me-too banality. 8^D

On 4/16/25 9:00 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I don't want the expectation of being integrated into any random culture or for them to adapt to me.   If universities or places like SFI create a cloud of ideas that are not connected to their communities or exclude me, that is not only fine with me, it is what I hope to see in the world.   What makes a culture valuable is that it does something unique.  But if it does nothing unique, and prevents other unique things from happening, then it can and should fail.   So, while I don't like difficult-to-navigate membranes just to maintain a club (or a political party), I can see they are sometimes necessary to maintain an outpost where ideas can develop.
> 
> As for NOAA, I saw a message on LinkedIn the other day that someone I had worked with on a project was just let go.   I believe he was very productive.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 7:53 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] competent kidnapping (was Re: money is a delusion)
> 
> I ran across 2 relevant stories this morning:
> 
> 1) https://www.404media.co/ice-just-paid-palantir-tens-of-millions-for-complete-target-analysis-of-known-populations/
> 2) https://www.cascadepbs.org/environment/2025/04/new-federal-policy-leaves-noaa-scientists-clean-mess
> 
> I may have to start sending money to 404, maybe cancel my Guardian sub. On the one hand, the kidnappings so far have been incompetent. Palantir (way more Evil than xAI or Twitter) will drastically improve ICE's competence. Sadly.
> 
> But re the primary point made, here, I've never believed in universities, per se. Any academics I managed to integrate into my world view came from application, not from lectures. Even last night, wracked by coughing, I kept thinking that I can't/don't really even collaborate on *problems* or arguments or algorithms or whatever abstract thing. I can only collaborate on things, objects, machines, etc. On the one hand, Gessen's idea (in light of scientists having to do IT and take out the trash) might foster this kind of concrete collaboration. It would look more like apprenticeship than oracles tongue-wagging mysterious revelations at you.
> 
> But on the other hand, it's difficult to do intense specialized work if you have to be a renaissance person in everything you do with little specialization. There's a conflict (not quite a contradiction) within Gessen's "act like universities, not like businesses." Is the janitor also a math student? And a book keeper? IDK. Maybe this Trump deconstruction is necessary to realize the lofty "school" Nick used to babble about.
> 
> 
> On 4/15/25 1:11 PM, Santafe wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 15, 2025, at 23:23, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, in the actual world:
>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fdailynous.com%2f2
>>> 025%2f04%2f15%2fphilosophy-major-snatched-by-ice-during-citizenship-i
>>> nterview%2f&c=E,1,L2ZI3y2CS5tyf6183uFV4tgrUv3__xDR-FHW6S-Wy1gbdeGn2Zk
>>> QcyFv_bTqvzhaOIQMRuwSBdHDtKoE0CvhMmJVBK2sCyoblTAr04YmIKWMLYvGVXxnN8I-
>>> 7alQ&typo=1
>>
>> I would like to see the media start to refer to these as kidnappings, or abductions, or some other at-least-properly-scoped term.  In every case where that is the correct one, which I think would be every case we have seen in the news so far.
>>
>> Turns out Masha Gessen wrote a kind of nice piece in the NYT a few days ago, which came to me on a different list.
>> 14gessen-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600-v2.jpg
>> Opinion | This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, if They
>> Dare
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/trump-higher-education.htm
>> l> nytimes.com
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/trump-higher-education.htm
>> l>
>>
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/trump-higher-education.htm
>> l>
>>
>> To the extent that it has been done, it’s proper to say it is a strategy.  I think the resulting education will end up being rather more restrictive than what I had hoped for from a full educational program, and probably focused heavily on civics.  Math could be possible, in the sense that that can be taught “behind the hedges”.  Medical research, not so much.  But, one does what one can do.
>>
>> It’s an interesting question what is the proper balance of criticism and understanding to give the businessmen who run universities, and who have Darwin-wise managed to eliminate almost any other model from the ecosystem.  It’s not total criticism, in the sense that there is sheer mechanics that they do contribute to solving, without which the broad set of functions I want don’t get done.  But the sense that they don’t take seriously what it means to live under a fascist regime where dissidence is the _only_ alternative to collaboration — there is no more neutrality — does seem to be a deserved criticism of their responses so far.
>>
>> Eric


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