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

Wed Apr 16 16:06:29 EDT 2025

On 4/16/25 1:20 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> The image in my head is someone attaching building scaffolding to a 
> Cyber Truck and driving away in Beast Mode.
>
With Mr. Beast himself driving the WankPanzer and the DOGE team hanging 
onto the scaffold for dear life?   Heading for a huge pile of cash 
shaped like the Manosphere.  Just to go yet-more toxic-pop-culture?
>
> *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
> >
> > 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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