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

Wed Apr 16 15:20:05 EDT 2025

The image in my head is someone attaching building scaffolding to a Cyber Truck and driving away in Beast Mode. 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at 12:14 PM
To: friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] competent kidnapping (was Re: money is a delusion) 

yes to the recursive scaffolding of low/high/low/high surprisal...

Latent affordances get realized unto normalcy (e.g. non-unique) which 
creates a fresh and fertile layer for the unique to discover/recognize 
new affordances upon?

On 4/16/25 10:24 AM, glen wrote:
> 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 <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/ <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 <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 <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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