More about Soviet profit
From Computers and Automation, an article by a scientist at JPL, written in late 1959, two years after Sputnik.

He's asking if there really is a Space Race. He begins by defining a race, and then:

If the ingredients of a reward, a significant achievement, an interested audience, and at least one participant are taken as the criteria for a race, then there most certainly is a space race, since we have at least one highly demonstrative participant, the Russians, and we have ample evidence of the achievements, rewards, and interest to the audience.

Let us then consider the race from the point of view of the Communist government and society of the USSR. The Russian Communists have certain over-all objectives. They want a strong Russian Communist society. They want to expand their sphere of influence. And they want an increasingly favorable economic situation for Russia; i.e., they wish a higher standard of living, greater productivity, and a favorable world market, which will permit them, in capitalistic terms, to make a profit.

On the dot. As I've noted before, a few Americans understood the Soviet system correctly at that time. It was based on profit. The government profited when companies created value, so the government was motivated to help industries create real value.

Since 1980 our system HATES profit and tries to OBLITERATE every aspect of profit. No creation or increase of real value is allowed.

What prizes did Russia win by getting there first with Sputnik?

Some of the prizes can be valued in cold cash. The Russians probably spent on the order of 500 million dollars in order to launch the first several Sputniks. As a direct result of these launchings, Russian technical prestige took a large discrete jump upwards in the world market.

Making a highly conservative guess of the cash value of this jump, based upon the size of the world market and the size of various governmental expenditures, the first several Sputniks meant a return on the world market on the order of five billion dollars. Therefore, by spending five hundred million dollars the Russians got back about ten times that amount.

How does tech prestige translate into profit?

Suppose that you were a civil servant in South America or Asia and you were responsible for choosing a contractor to build a bridge. Because your own country has no bridge-building contractors, you must look to other countries of the world. Before Sputnik you would probably consider obtaining your bridge from the United States, the United Kingdom, or perhaps, West Germany. It is unlikely that you would consider a Russian contractor too seriously. After Sputnik, the countries that come to mind are now Russia and the United States.

Now, of course, the countries that come to mind are China and Russia. USA no longer builds things. We only destroy and obliterate.

Internal prestige is also a prize, and our Deepstate recognized the prize:

Such an achievement is an enormous boost to nationalism and patriotism, and the Russian Communists have succeeded in adding this asset of patriotism to support for Russian Communism. The Russian Communist government is now in far better standing with the Russian people: this is evidenced by at least two facts. The first fact is that the absolute dictator of Russia could afford to be out of his country for a period of three months.

Secondly, we no longer hear the assertion that "if we could only reach the Russian people directly, they would overthrow the regime." Such talk no longer seems realistic.

Scientific prestige? Not so important.

The real surprise is that the expected prize of all this space activity was supposed to be science and discovery and yet this prize seems to come last on the list. Until very recently, the Russians had not made any astonishing scientific discoveries and it almost appeared as if the United States held the monopoly. Unfortunately, that U.S. monopoly no longer exists and the Russians have made important scientific discoveries which are recognized as such throughout the world. The Russians have told us that the moon has no magnetic field nor does it have any Van Allen belt. It is unlikely that anyone will question this discovery. The Russians have taken a picture of the other side of the moon and have named the various topological features.

Finally he hits us with HARDASS reality.

Based on this kind of evidence, I think it is fair to conclude that we are in a race. What we may not have realized is that the Russians are in it whether we are in it or not. In a sense, we are so far behind that the Russian competition does not even look back to find out where we are.

Constant:

None of these considerations surfaced in our media, then or now. We "woke up". We switched our math and science teaching from horrible to totally useless, and that "solved" the problem.

Variable:

Our experts in 1959 were grounded in reality, and discussed reality openly. Now our experts know the reality and tell us the exact opposite.

Labels: Constants and Variables, defensible times, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 10:35 AM

  Tech arrogance isn't new
Following on Zillow's stupid trust in the computer, here's a view of the problem from 1954, in Computers and Automation as usual.

Fletcher Pratt was a well-known popularizer of science and tech. I read his book on cryptography in 1959 and picked up a tremendous amount of insight into language and thinking.

In this case Pratt sounds just like Bezos or Zuckerberg.

The problem is likely to grow more acute with the advance of automation into new fields. Does it mean some kind of reorganization of industrial structure? It would be almost idle to predict, for the problem has not yet been submitted to enough study. It is possible that the situation will require going back to the level of the secondary schools and altering education. As now organized these schools tend to turn out specialists or at least people who will specialize at the next educative stage. Yet the demand of both automatic computers and an economy based on automation is for an immensely increased adaptability on the part of the individual. He must he willing not merely to accept periodic reeducation, but to regard it as a normal part of existence.

Sound familiar? Submit or die! Re-education every year! Miners must become coders!

It doesn't work. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT and PEOPLE NEED STABILITY. If you want people to learn, you need to maintain a civilization that lets them learn naturally and gradually. You need a bond of two-way loyalty, assuring the workers that they will continue to be useful and PAID after they risk their time and energy on adaptation. The promise of re-education was fake, just a scam to enable total destruction of work and industry.

After reviewing the story of the Luddites, Pratt predicts:

Modern counterparts of the machine-smashers can expect to achieve little more in the long run. The really important impact of the new methods will be felt when the use of computers is extended to take in the totality of a business or industrial operation instead of only some of its parts.

It is important to realize that computers today are as it were grafted onto industry and business, rather than built in as an integral part. There is no business in the United States today whose total structure has been set up with the use of computers as an essential part of the operation. Partly, no doubt, this is because the machines are so new; there has not been time for the growth of industries in which they perform a fully integrated function. Nor has programming progressed to the point where it is possible to instruct a computer on all the elements in a given industrial operation and expect an answer that will make managerial decisions almost unnecessary.

67 years later it's STILL not possible to "make managerial decisions unnecessary". QED Zillow.

Clearly this level of control seemed inevitable in 1954, and it still seems inevitable to the aristocrats. Or more accurately, the aristocrats want us to think it's inevitable.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE HOAX.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Soviet law, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 10:37 AM

  Happy birthday Sputnik ... with a special salute.
Browsing through more of the ACM magazine. From Nov 1957, a remarkably sane and objective response to Sputnik. The anniversary is RIGHT NOW, so this is appropriate.

Author Edmund Berkeley gets everything right, with perfect objectivity about all aspects of the achievement.

On Friday October 4, scientists of the USSR opened a new era in the history of the world. Close to midnight, from a rocket launcher north of the Caspian Sea, they fired a three-stage rocket which ejected an instrumented globe named Sputnik into space above the earth's atmosphere. It weighed 184 pounds, was 23 inches in diameter, and had four extendible radio transmitting antennas, through which signals have been coming continually.

This of course is a magnificent, epoch-making achievement. The Soviet people and all human beings everywhere can take great pride in it. Certainly it is on a par with the Italian sailor Columbus's discovery of America.

I'm not entirely surprised by this approach; as a shortwave listener and reader of electronics mags, I knew at the time that the world of science was more united and less warlike than the world of politics.

Berkeley knows the difference between systems from personal experience:

The scientists who launched the rocket had enough resources to make very certain that it would be launched in exactly the way they desired. They oriented the whole third stage rocket to the position, direction, and velocity that they desired, and then separated the parts of it. There was evidently no stinting in the supply of all that was needed - and this time for a basically scientific achievement and not a military one.

I am reminded of something I was told on a short visit in Russia in 1934, about planning in a socialist society: a man might need a great ship to accomplish something worth while, but he would never need 50 pairs of shoes or a house with 50 rooms.

On the fucking dot.

It seems apparent from various accounts that the rocket energy, productive capacity, and skills at the command of the Russians are almost certainly greater than what is at the command of Americans. In the first place, the space satellite planned to be launched by the United States is only about 10 inches in diameter and is to weigh about 30 pounds. Compare this with the 23-inch diameter Sputnik weighing 184 pounds.

In addition, the Russians have stated that they have successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. At least some American authorities say they believe this statement. The Russians have added that they can place such a missile on any spot on the earth.

Almost all of us in the United States have no access to information which enables us to judge whether this statement is likely to be true or not. In comparison, however, the Americans have only partially tested an intermediate range ballistic missile, and there have been a number of tests that failed.

These facts imply however that the Russians have essentially escaped from the confinement of the ring of American bases surrounding the Soviet Union.

Sound familiar? In this case the FACTS are familiar, but our propaganda, then and now, was the exact opposite of the FACTS. Berkeley stated the FACTS correctly. We were ready to attack Russia from all angles, and Russia broke our ring. Putin did the same thing two years ago with his hypersonic missiles. We are always trying to invade and destroy Russia, and Russia is always trying to break out of our ring and survive.

Why has a Russian moon happened? There are several reasons of great importance, which do not require the elaborate reasoning of automatic computers and data processing to demonstrate them.

First, the Soviet Union has been putting forth a massive effort in good, sound education, especially education in science and technical fields. It is currently graduating something like twice as many scientists and technicians as the United States. And there is good evidence that they are educated much better.

ON THE FUCKING DOT A TRILLION TIMES. As I've hammered a hundred times, we responded to this FACT by making our education even worse than before.

Fourth, professors, scientists, and intellectually able people are highly regarded in the Soviet Union as they are in most of Europe. In the Soviet Union they are well rewarded for good work, with a very high standard of living. They are not ridiculed in a stereotyped way as highbrows, eggheads, queers, and eccentrics. It is not considered that their careers should be secondary to those of good mixers, star football players, and organization men.

It is no doubt true that they may be looked on with suspicion and investigated as likely to be subversive, in the Soviet Union as well as in the United States. Exceedingly few Soviet scientists are permitted to travel outside of the Soviet Union into the Western world; we are sure that they have less freedom than Western scientists. But this fact does not seem to affect very much the quality and quantity of scientific work being done.

Note the remarkably even-handed objectivity about "freedom". Freedom to work means having the resources and training to do good work. Russia valued freedom to work in all fields, not just science. SKILL was valued and cultivated and appreciated in every possible way.

At the end of the article Berkeley converges to standard Cold War alarmism, probably in an attempt to keep his credentials. The facts are easier to digest when coated by normal branding.

= = = = =

Here's a repeat of my usual Sputnik anniversary scene, this time placed in Brahe's Star Castle.

Labels: Alternate universe, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:29 PM

  AI missing a BIIIIIIIIIIIG point.
In MindMatters as usual, Stephen Berger explores the ethical problems of 'Creative Destruction'.

Berger has solid empathy for the drivers and assembly workers who are displaced by DESTRUCTIVE DESTRUCTION (correct name) but he doesn't remember the world before Share Value.

Applying the Golden Rule to AI-driven innovation means being mindful about how AI is introduced and what jobs it replaces, especially initially. If the impact of AI is to take old junkers off the road, that is probably a societal benefit unless you are the owner of the old junker, now on the shoulder of the road, and it is the only way you have for getting around.

The problem is that AI is developed using that other Golden Rule, “He who has the gold rules,” and it is developed in a competitive environment with other AI developers. The most appealing business cases are the ones that will get funded. These business cases are seldom a secret. Other innovators see the opportunity and develop competitive solutions. The first company to bring a solution to the market will enjoy a very significant advantage. Who has the time or energy to worry about social impacts? If you don’t develop the system others will and you will be out of business. The focus is drawn to competitors and winning with little room left for contemplating the impacts of innovative AI technology.

This situation is relatively new, beginning around 1980. Before globalization and Share Value, the invisible hand WORKED. An industry that eliminated its workers, or moved its plants to China, would quickly feel the impact of the lost wages IN ITS OWN CITY. The feedback loop was CLOSED.

Industrialists didn't need to be nice or altruistic. Their own PROFIT forced them to maintain and increase employment, and to maintain loyalty by decent salaries and decent treatment.

Globalization broke the feedback loop with employees. A company that sells everywhere has no motive to maintain employees in one location or plant.

Share value broke the feedback loop with customers. Investors want to see ZERO PRODUCTION AND ZERO CUSTOMERS AND ZERO EMPLOYEES. Investors want to see pure math, pure stock manipulation, with no physical limitations.

So the only real solution is to constrain both globalism and share value.

Return to the laws and regulations of 1939. Delete all laws and agencies formed since then, restore all laws and agencies of the New Deal.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 4:48 PM

  Wolf as usual
As usual, Wolf points out that MOST of the economic shit comes from long-lasting corporate treason and crimes. SOME of it comes from the 2020 holocaust. The pattern is consistent, 70% old crimes, 30% new crimes.

As usual, Wolf shows it with facts and the best graphs in the world.

Today he features a whiny complaint from a railroad baron:

“Nor did we anticipate that a lot of the people were going to decide they didn’t want to work anymore. So attrition was much higher in the first half of the year than what we had expected,” he said.

Before the railroads blame the 33% cut in the workforce on the pandemic, let’s point out that by February 2020, just before the pandemic, their headcount had already been cut by 46,000 workers, or by 26%, to 128,000. Only 12,000 workers were cut during the pandemic.

The resulting deterioration in service triggered numerous complaints from shippers. But one of the big benefits was that the workforce could be slashed, which fattened the profit margins at the railroads. Wall Street analysts loved it, and it was good for railroad stocks.

GOOD FOR STOCKS.

SHARE VALUE IS THE UNIVERSE. NOTHING ELSE EXISTS.

Also as usual, Wolf's commenters know what they're talking about:

Yup, railroads have been cutting jobs for decades in Canada. And now with the latest wildfires they will have to rehire brakemen as a freight train most likely started the Lytton disaster fire. They will now have to slow down and also monitor. They substituted instrumentation for brakemen…and as a result there have been some absolutely dreadful accidents the last 10 years.

The basic permanent fact is that people DO want to work. People desperately want a two-way contract with employers, where both sides have obligations and both sides must PAY FOR VALUE. People are terminally tired of giving 110% and then being tossed like toilet paper to add .000000001 micropenny to ALMIGHTY SHARE VALUE.

Labels: Equipoise, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 10:26 PM

  Random skill-estate thought
I'm studying the old science of astro-meteorology in my usual way, by trying to animate a machine that performed the function. There are several clear books about the various systems, differing in details and agreeing in broad outline.

As I start to understand the systems and their experimental basis, I'm starting to imagine the analog computer that would have implemented them.

It turns out that I 'built' a similar machine a few months ago as a branch of the bridges and balances theme, but didn't use it in those blogposts. It didn't quite fit the theme.

Lesson, which isn't surprising by now: Never discard a more or less finished idea or product. Keep it around, and keep enough documentation so you can return to it with some understanding.

This is the skill-estate version of STORAGE.

The modern psychopaths, the Innovative Disruptors, consider 'sunk cost' to be absolute anathema. They tell us to pull away from every experimentally proven skill or workflow or thought or device or invention. Amortization is a mortal sin.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate, storage

  ¶ 11:44 PM

  More rambling on copyright
Spinoff from previous item about copyright. This is just rambling, not a basic point.

The alleged American Dream has always been based on permanent private property. Libertarian and sovereign individual types bitch about property tax because they claim all property should be absolute, and property tax means you're just renting from the county.

Well, they're correct about the facts of property tax, but incorrect about the necessity of absolute permanent property.

In fact there's no such thing, and permanent holding is a bad idea.

The original copyright law was NOT permanent. It recognized that intellectual property should be temporary, and required you to officially REGISTER and RENT the material if you wanted to use it for profit. When you stopped paying the rental, the material became public domain. There was no ambiguity, no room for an arbitrary claim by an unrelated thief.

The Disney law creates a permanent "right" without any registration or rental. This means that Disney and a few other giant corporations can claim anything they want and prevent its use for as long as they want, because they have the armies of lawyers.

The old system made it possible for anyone to pay a reasonable fee and create a temporary claim which the GOVERNMENT would help you to defend, because you had PAID THE GOVERNMENT for the service of defending you. Feedback loop, pay for value.

This is closely parallel to the notion of retail vs wholesale "corruption". When petty bureaucrats are for rent, anyone with a reasonable amount of money can get service by paying. A tight feedback loop couples the payer with the servant, insuring accountability both ways.

When petty bureaucrats are supposed to be "pure", only Disney and Amazon get service, because they can exert massive economic and blackmail power over all bureaucrats in the world simultaneously.

Labels: Equipoise, From rights to duties, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 5:58 AM

  Best comment of the year
I read Wolfstreet daily because Wolf Richter explains economic matters clearly, without a vested bias, and his graphs are the best in the world.

He also has regular commenters with true expertise, especially in real estate. Landlords and realtors in various places KNOW what's happening. The rest of us can only guess from partial observations.

Here's a terse all-encompassing summation of the last 20 years:

I’m old enough to remember when people expected capitalism to make things cheaper and markets were supposed to work for society. Now taxpayers are supporting the stock market with trillions of dollars in QE, while scrambling to find affordable shelter.

Says it all.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, SES

  ¶ 8:59 PM

  Decline-ometer
I placed the Declinometer at the end of the weather set, and noted that it was measuring the impending flip of the earth's magnetic field.

The name turns out to be accurate. Declinometer = Declinometer. As magnetism weakens, civilization declines.



The earth's field is a BASELINE for several huge parts of life that we depend on. Bacteria use it, bees use it, birds use it. Bacteria control clouds and feed everything else. Bees and birds pollinate plants.

We also use it, though we arrogantly assume that our "free will" and "theories" are in control, and we assume that our magnificent thoughts are based on our splendid Innovative Disruptive capabilities.

In fact our brains function by resonant waves passing through the cerebrum and cerebellum. When the baseline for this resonance is distorted, the resonance itself is distorted... but because we aren't noticing the baseline, we don't know what's happening.

Sanity starts with recognizing the baseline. We can't do much for the bacteria and birds and bees, but we might be able to compensate for their poor navigation by better agriculture and better storage. In limited areas we might be able to create a prosthetic field to stabilize the bees. We could also stop CONFUSING the field with billions of wi-fi transmitters occupying every cubic angstrom of space. NONE of these wi-fi transmitters are needed or helpful. ALL of them are serving Satan.

Weather is influenced in a more basic way by the movement of the magma that also changes the magnetic field. Again we can't do anything about the magma, but we could be spending money on more dams and flood control and hail cannons, instead of wasting trillions on Gaian religious liturgy, which is a holocaust.

Each unnecessary murder by offshoring and lockdowns and muzzles deprives us of skills and abilities and strength that could have been USED PRODUCTIVELY to improve our cultivation and culture.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Grand Blueprint, Metrology, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 12:02 AM

  Timely reprint on Symmetrical Scapegoating
Thinking this morning about Orlov's magnificent 2008 prophecy, showing how the collapse of the US empire would be worse than the Soviet collapse.

One aspect that Orlov missed is Symmetrical Scapegoating, a US invention originally based on the British parliament. Symmetrical Scapegoating breaks the feedback loop between the demons and the humans, so all rebellion against the demons is misdirected against the Horrible Other Team within the humans. The demons are totally out of the loop.

The Soviet system didn't bother with the stageplay of "parties" and "elections", so it was more responsive to real problems than our system.

Rehashing from 2018:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

For many years I've been noting examples of Symmetrical Scapegoating. It's a clever technique. Old-fashioned unilateral scapegoating always fails because a scapegoat BY FUCKING DEFINITION is not the cause of a problem. Ruling tribes are the cause of problems. A ruling tribe will never blame itself for the problem, because that would lead people to remove the ruling tribe.

The defect in unilateral scapegoating is that you have to exterminate the scapegoat group, or at least imprison and disempower the scapegoat group. After the scapegoat is dead, or removed from power which it never had in the first place, the problem remains. People may see the truth.

Symmetrical scapegoating avoids the disappearance defect by dividing the country into two roughly equal groups, each blaming the other for the problem. The ruling tribe is still out of the loop, and the groups will mutually exterminate without any effort by the ruling tribe. Wonderfully efficient.

SS works even better when the groups are blaming each other for PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST, because a PROBLEM THAT DOESN'T EXIST is automatically unsolvable. It remains active and useful until the ruling tribe gets bored and invents a new mythical problem.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

I've omitted the cartoons in the 2018 item; they were focused on 2018 issues that have faded from sight. Demons switch issues FAST to keep the scapegoating strong and fresh. When an issue starts to get stale, the peasants have a chance to stop and think, which might allow them to detect the real source of evil. Can't allow that.

My overall emphasis on PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST is still emphatically valid. See "global warming" and "virus".

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 6:29 AM

  Reading the original
I'm tired of the constant and intentional lies about the Soviet system. The biggest lie is the misquoting of From Each. A classic Shared Lie. The R side says it's bad, the D side wants to implement it.

The first 1917 Soviet constitution said only: If you don't work, you won't eat.

The 1977 Soviet constitution states:

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his WORK.

WORK, not NEEDS.

The Soviet system was always about REQUIRING and ENABLING everyone to use their unique talents and abilities. Everyone can be useful and everyone must be useful.

But I didn't know if Marx had said the 'needs' crap or not. So just for fun I read the original Communist Manifesto. The saying doesn't appear at all. The closest approximation seems to be this:

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Stalin tried industrial armies for agriculture and quickly abandoned it. Later Mao tried it for a longer period, and caused far more harm than good.

The Soviet system was an experiment, first trying out the original theory, then using negative feedback to modify it.

Marx also wanted to abolish families. Lenin tried it briefly and abandoned it. Mao tried it in 1968 and abandoned it. Western Deepstate has been trying it since 1946, and hasn't yet abandoned it.

'Equal liability for labor' is a good idea, still active in Belarus and a couple other Soviet remnants. Industrial armies and abolishing the family are bad ideas, which were abandoned by the Soviets.

In short, Marx was a mix of good and bad ideas. Equal liability for labor is one of the good ideas.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Shared Lie

  ¶ 12:41 AM

  Random thought about feedback loops
As I get older I can tell that my negative feedback systems are getting weaker. More sensitivity to temperature, more difficulty with balance, less regular sleep, etc. All of these functions were automatically held constant when I was young. Now I have to apply more conscious thought and caution.

Parallel: The same thing happens to countries and empires as they age. Before 1946 we had a somewhat functional feedback system. Bad decisions led to economic consequences that forced governments to revise the bad decisions. Error signals were carried by taxation.

Starting in '46 and accelerating after 1970, the economic loops were weakened and deleted. Now the feds don't need taxes at all. They function solely on counterfeit numbers. Without the dependence on tax, the feds don't need industry or production or work or people. They've already killed most of the industry. Since 2008 they've been openly killing the people.

Negative feedback is life. No feedback is tyranny. Positive feedback is instant death.

= = = = =

Later: The parallel fails because nobody is applying conscious thought and caution. Instead, the elderly country is chained and muzzled in the attic while competing fake "heirs" gamble and drink up the remnants of the estate and sue each other over the provisions of the will. Our politicians are Anna Nicole Smith vs Erin Fleming.

Labels: coot-proofing, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 9:54 AM

  Surprised myself
Listening to a Mozart sonata, still thinking about Italian and programming...

The Gender Polizei should ban Mozart and Bach and other baroque composers. Baroque music is like the male approach to a task, including sex.

1 START.

2 DO.

3 END.

Baroque is COBOL. Imperative verbs.

Romantic music (Wagner, Debussy) is non-programmatic.

Stories and movies for women are the same. Lots of slow foreplay, passive and subjunctive syntax, never really decisively starting or ending. Long establishing shots, lots of inconclusive gabbing, a little implied action, more gabbing, fadeout.

If the Polizei wanted to get serious, they'd also ban all digital programming and require a return to analog computers.

Surprising myself:

And on that front they'd be RIGHT.

= = = = =

Unfortunately they're not going to force that change, because the Gender Polizei don't know history and can't allow anyone to appreciate the REAL differences between men and women. The Gender SS only know superstars. Two women have become arbitrarily famous in digital software, none at all in analog computers. (Hopper richly deserves the fame, Lovelace doesn't. Lovelace was just writing a description of Babbage's device, not inventing anything.)

Analog computers, especially fluidic, are much closer to the things that women actually do better. Smooth processes with multi-layered continuous feedback. Note the only available picture of Lukyanov's computer in action:



The Soviets did a better job of employing everyone appropriately.

Why the mismatch? For one thing, analog computers never became famous at all, so their programmers, whether male or female, are forever anonymous. Analog machines were used extensively in military applications and in the more prosaic side of engineering. They weren't used in places familiar to TV and movie producers. Digital computers were visible in newspaper offices and TV studios, so new developments on that side of computing seemed familiar to media types.

Labels: Equipoise, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 8:08 AM

  Rare productive piece
A rare piece of PRODUCTIVE writing about economics.

Most discussions of regression to the mean treat it as an unbreakable "mathematical" law, without noticing WHY it happens so often. When you're stuck in meritocracy you can't afford to notice reality.

Gary Smith breaks out of meritocracy by acknowledging the power of LUCK.

Regression happens whenever we make comparisons that involve an element of luck. The most highly rated generally have had more good luck than bad and are not as far above-average as they seem. Nor are the lowest rated as far below-average as they seem. Our lives and the world around us are not slogging to a depressing mediocrity with all companies equally profitable and all people equally tall, intelligent, healthy, and athletic.

Our lives are much more interesting than that. We are constantly buffeted by temporary bursts of good luck or misfortune. Our challenge is to recognize the important role of luck in our lives and not overreact. Life is a bumpy highway, but we should enjoy the ride.

Focusing on the power of luck immediately creates one blazing clarification.

Why does the stock market always lead to maximum evil and criminality?

Because it's a system based solely on betting. And not just simple betting; infinitely piled layers of side-side-side-side-side-bets on increasingly trivial aspects of the previous layer.

In a truly unbiased luck system, an ideal unrigged roulette wheel or dice throw, each player will come out even after a while. The only way to win consistently is CHEATING. Basing the entire economy on a bet system guarantees that the worst and most evil cheaters will rule the economy. Normal humans doing normal jobs will be dead.

The correct solution, as described by God and Mohammed and Marx, is to base the economy on SKILL. Labor is value, and more specifically the skills and styles of labor are value. Every single piece of every single living thing is designed to be USEFUL. Humans desperately need to be USEFUL, need to SERVE A PURPOSE. When the economic system favors gradual steady improvement of SKILL and USEFULNESS, everyone wins.

The Soviet system was the best approximation of a skill-improving economy. America was moving in this direction, with ups and downs, from 1920 to 1970. Since 1970 we've been breaking away from labor and skill, first slowly, then accelerating, then all at once in 2020.

= = = = =

Later thought also produced by Smith's productive insight: Luck is mainly permanent, only partly temporary. Luck has different time factors for individuals and organizations. For each person, luck is permanent and innate. If you're attractive or impressive or likable or aggressive, you will win far more often than the permanent opposites of those qualities. No way around it.

For a business or a small government, luck is much more fleeting and external. A business or farm can win or lose regardless of its innate tendencies, if weather or national governments turn the wrong way.

A city can win if railroads decide to run a track here, or governments decide to run a new highway here. Before Bloomberg turned all cities into holocaust gas chambers, city governments competed and CHEATED to gain those railroads or highways or courthouses or colleges.

There is only one semi-guarantee of permanent luck for a business or government: Save MONEY and SKILL. When you have lots of MONEY savings, you can survive bad weather or consumer fads or highway decisions. You can pause production and use your intelligence and SKILL to find new products or new ways to bring in money. When you preserve your SKILL capital, you'll have the intelligence to use those pauses productively. If you always live in debt and always repel your most experienced workers, you can't even survive normal conditions. You may be fooled by a temporary period of good external luck, but your permanent tendency to go the wrong way will use the good times to incur even more debt and fire even more experienced workers.

Functional civilizations smooth out the extremes in both spatial and temporal directions. They try to smooth out the extremes of permanent human luck. They make room for unpopular people, and constrain the evil tendencies of aggressive demons. Functional civilizations make it easy to save money and hard to get in debt. They pay high interest on savings and charge higher interest on loans. They strictly forbid casinos of all types, especially the NYC type.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Not AI point-missing, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:05 AM

  Helped by the record
I've been keeping this blog for 16 years, about 1/5 of my life. The near-daily record tends to keep me honest. I can't claim to have been "always right" or "always wrong" about any specific issue. There are a few exceptions, a few big things that I understood clearly almost from birth. Language and grammar, experiential education, constants and variables.

But most opinions have changed during these 16 years, and the record shows it.

This morning I decided to use the record to see when I clearly caught onto the Deepstate "both sides" game. The recognition feels fairly recent. Was it?

Answer: It was gradual. In 2005 I already knew the two-teams trick:

This has been obvious in any Internet forum for many years. Whether the subject is Mac vs PC, Windows vs Linux, Jesus vs Darwin, Universal Health Care vs Free Choice ... you name it, you'll find exactly two teams, and each team has a standard playbook of permitted opinions. As long as you stick to the playbook, you'll get cheers from your side and jeers from the other. But if you ask a deeper question, or (worst of all) favor side A for the wrong reasons, you'll be thrown out with remarkable alacrity and consonance.

But in 2005 I definitely DIDN'T SEE THE TRICK in the political realm. Just one illustration of hundreds:

The Red Cross is putting out some strange PSA ads. A dry-voiced feminist recites "I don't talk like you, I don't dress like you, I don't go to your church, .... but I will help you." Who is this appeal aimed at? Other feminists? Academic multiculturalists? It ertainly isn't aimed at traditional-minded Americans, or males of any stripe. I lost all faith in the Red Cross two days after 9/11 anyway. On 9/12 I gave a substantial contribution, then the next day the local chapter REFUSED a contribution from a local rifle range (gun club), because the club had put a picture of Osama on its paper targets. It was too late to stop my check, but I'll never give another penny to this pro-terrorist organization.

When did I start to see the "terrorism" fraud as just another two-sided stageplay? Hard to spot by keywords, but the first doubts showed in 2007. The 'Dubai port' thing helped me to see that Bush wasn't really fighting Saudi, but I still didn't see that fighting Saudi was a fraud. Using terrorist as a keyword, this 2009 item shows similar incipient doubts.

The strange 'buzzing' of New York by the substitute Air Force One may have been a really, really dumb mistake, but I don't buy it. In the first place, as everyone has noted, you don't need real planes to "update your photos". Anyone familiar with graphics could create this picture digitally in a few minutes, if you wanted this picture.

And that's the first question: Why in the hell would the gov't want this picture? How in the hell would a 9/11-style picture be part of your media publicity packet? What would the caption be? "Lookie here! We're still vulnerable! You can get away with another 9/11 easily!"

The second question: If it was just a photo-op, why was the fighter jet apparently trying to intercept the airliner? From what I've seen, the fighter looked fairly serious. I can't imagine the Air Force risking its aircraft and pilots on a just-for-fun gag shot.

This was either a real practice run (war game) or a real incident. Perhaps a pilot gone insane, rather than a real terrorist?

I wasn't able to stand back and see both teams on this question until I threw away the TV in 2010.

The point of inflection is shown clearly by a series of basic questions in 2011. From the first of the series:

Isn't it odd?

The whole point of the Enlightenment in religion and science was to trust your own logic and senses, and distrust the flat statements of the priesthood.

And who's Enlightened?

The Muslim world and the Soviet world are Enlightened. They understand from long experience that government lies 100% of the time. They want to see evidence that they can trust.

America's experience with 100% transparently false government is shorter, basically beginning in 1964 with the Warren Report. So the population of Enlightenment thinkers here is large but far from universal.

The American media, and the blind followers of the Parties, are pre-Enlightenment thinkers. Party members implicitly trust whatever My Party says and distrust what The Other Party says. Since the two Goldman Sachs "parties" create "fair and balanced debate" on only a few trivial and numerical points, the Party people end up trusting government on nearly all important questions, no matter how obviously absurd.

To the priesthood of media and government, Enlightenment thinkers are "conspiracists" or "paranoids" or "deniers" or "skeptics" or "truthers" or "birthers", who can be safely tossed overboard without a proper religious burial ceremony.

In those questions I finally stood back and saw the fraud.

= = = = =

And I'm still unable to see both teams on 'color revolutions' like Brexit. I'm totally bamboozled until the revolution (and the country) is finished. I was fully on Boris's side until Brexit was fully consummated. He immediately started to follow Greta's Gaian genocide, then smoothly switched to the "virus" holocaust. That's when I saw that Brexit was meant to free Boris from EU constraints, not to free Britain from EU constraints.

= = = = =

Why does this learning feel recent? The Skripal stageplay, though not especially important in itself, gave me a HUGE burst of learning in 2018. "Both" "sides" were starting from the assumption that a poison EXISTED. They were arguing over timelines and point of origin. Was the poison from Russia, or from the bioterrorism lab in the same city? Ockham orders us to eliminate all UNNECESSARY entities. The poison was an unnecessary entity. When you start from the assumption that no substance existed, the whole picture is perfectly clear and consistent. The only NECESSARY assumption is the FACT that the Skripals were employees of UK Deepstate. They were willing actors, not unwilling victims. Thus the entire thing was a stage production.

This Ockham learning helps to understand the current holocaust. There's no reason to assume that an actual microbe is involved. The entire picture makes vastly more sense from the viewpoint of branding and labeling. The deaths attributed to the "virus" are deaths that would have happened around now anyway, so the label doesn't change any facts and can't be logically traced by police procedures. Relabeling those deaths doesn't save or kill anyone. The "necessary" "measures" "to" "beat" "the" "virus" are doing all the killing. In order to prevent those inevitable deaths from being relabeled, we're killing everyone else. But we're NOT relabeling the inevitable deaths back to non-"virus", so we're not doing anything at all for those dead people, even symbolically. The deaths caused by lockdowns and loss of medical services and unemployment and despair and starvation and loss of immunity are NOT inevitable. These are actual new deaths.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 7:53 AM

  Sportwave reprint
I linked this 2014 piece in previous item. After reading it, I think it deserves a reprint. Partly for the obvious relevance to communication methods, more importantly for the entertainment aspect. The content of shortwave was passively entertaining, and the work needed to send and receive SW was actively entertaining.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Shortwave is unique among all means of communication. It has a certain sporting aspect. When you send out a signal in the range of 3 to 30 mc, the atmosphere may decide to bounce it around the world, allowing you to reach great distances with fairly low power. With higher power, a serious antenna, and lots of experiment and calculation, you can be reasonably sure of reaching a desired destination most of the time. But you're never entirely sure. Sunspots and thunderstorms and temperature inversions and all sorts of other crap may block you. Ham operators enjoy this sporting aspect. Like fishermen they collect wall trophies (QSLs) and run contests and expeditions for bragging rights. Professional broadcasters may not enjoy it but have learned how to exploit it.

Doing a review of a 1983 Soviet shortwave radio got me thinking (again) about the meaning of SW. This radio, clearly for domestic use, proves that the Soviet system was confident about its success in those years. Not so in Stalin's time, when owning a SW was a criminal act, and radio was basically a closed-circuit intercom system.

Within the US, popularity and availability of SW radios inscribed a different curve. SW broadcasting came of age around 1935, basically enabled by the superhet receiver. Earlier receivers weren't able to maintain a consistent sharpness of tuning across a wide range of freqs.



American radios for home entertainment began to feature SW bands as soon as broadcasters began to provide content. SW reached a peak in WW2, when listening to the propaganda of both sides was considered part of an Informed Citizen's duties. Even some car radios had a SW band. Along the same lines, American newscasters frequently mentioned "our propaganda says .... and their propaganda says ....", trusting the American listener with the fact that both sides were stretching things.

After WW2, home radios dropped SW abruptly and picked up FM instead. This coincided with the government's sharp crackdown on 'disloyalty'. Suddenly the duty of an Informed Citizen was limited to line-of-sight propagation. Then TV finished the job, making the viewing experience line-of-sight as well. Propagandists finally fulfilled their perpetual dream: a closed pipe injecting one stream of messages from source directly to brain, with no leakage or tributary streams allowed. No skip, no bounce, no imagination. Best part: the injectees didn't even realize it was a pipe. They only knew that they couldn't stand to be disconnected from the pipe.

This state of affairs continued, with constantly tightening media monopolies and narrowing of permissible viewpoints, until the Internet came along in the mid-80s and broke the monopolies but didn't stop the censorship. The Web is, after all, a closed-circuit intercom system. Everything we see and hear passes through NSA's ears and eyes before it reaches ours.

SW isn't illegal; you can still buy SW radios designed for ham use, but they aren't meant for home entertainment. They don't look good in the living room. This limits their use to a small number of Oddballs who can be watched easily.

Why did US government and culture encourage SW in the '30s and discourage it from the '50s until the present? I think it was a question of confidence. FDR was confident that his efforts to improve America would stand comparison against the alternatives in Russia and Germany. Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, et al were not nearly so confident.

It's especially noteworthy that Russia was building and selling SW radios domestically in the '80s and we were not. Reagan crashed the Soviet Empire at a moment when our own empire truly would not stand comparison. As Gorby was loosening and reforming, we were eliminating industrial jobs, freezing out all possible reforms, and continually narrowing the range of permissible discourse.

Our trend has continued, with disastrous results. We don't know how the Soviet trend would have developed because it was interrupted.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Everything in the item is still valid except the date of 1935. In fact SW was intensely used by all sorts of operators in 1930, as clearly shown in this 1930 official list. Commercial broadcasters, dispatchers for police and airlines and shipping, simulcasts of US local stations, TV and fax experiments, and above all the commercial wire services.

Labels: Entertainment, meta-entertainment, Natural law = Soviet law, Patient things

  ¶ 12:10 PM

  Lukyanov's water computer
The Russians made the most interesting analog computers. They stuck with analog cybernetics long after Westerners had switched to digital.

In 1936 Lukyanov developed a water-based computer to solve complicated functions for engineering and construction. He was working primarily with concrete and soil under freezing conditions, trying to help design dams and pavement in cold places. His machine, and later variants, served many purposes into the 1970s.

I've drawn the 'museum version' of Lukyanov's hydrointegrator. This may have been only the control panel; it diverges from his descriptions of the functional machine. The real machine was modular, with several large blocks of pipes and tubes behind the control panel.

This picture seems to show the real machine in use:


And this diagram is similar, with the plots showing up more clearly:


The cylinders holding graphic plots would normally be plotted outputs, but in this machine they're inputs. The real machine had four optional input variables, along with an implicit time variable.

A typical use was modeling heat transfer through a structure (dam or pavement) treated as a series of layers. Each water column represented a layer, and each column could be programmed to let in water at a specific rate. In other words, each column was like an RC filter in a sequential filter setup, with the visible height (or voltage in the electronic version) representing the temperature in that layer of the dam.



These diagrams clearly show the primary advantage of analog systems, whether mechanical or fluid or electronic, over digital software. In real life each layer or module or neuron or organism is always continuously influencing all other layers, with influence and feedback in all directions at once. Interconnected water columns do it naturally. You can't do it at all with interconnected functions in software. You can pass differences from subroutine A to subroutine B, and pass results back, but there's no way to make the influences simultaneous and continuous.

Electronic version:



The operator used the big lever to follow the curve already drawn on the wrapped graph. As the lever moved up and down, it moved a tank up and down, raising and lowering the 'potential voltage' input to the system. This diagram shows two input variables B1 and B2.



Programs were entered on the three rows of valves in the center of the control panel. The description doesn't clarify the specific purpose of each row, and the upper crank is also unclear. I suspect it was a manual turner or winder for the plot cylinder, which was apparently driven by clockwork.



Here Polistra is moving the big lever to follow the dam plot on the left cylinder, and the tubes are responding with a (purely imagined) output pattern. Another observer would record the heights at different times, or perhaps use a mounted movie camera to make a direct record.

The RC-like effect of the flow would also enable a single transient response to be modeled. After setting the valves for the appropriate pattern of Rs and Cs, just yank the lever upward and watch the columns move for a minute or two.

= = = = =

Footnote: The best descriptions in English are here at Archive.org.

= = = = =

Sidenote after thinking about "devices" and Pied Pipers: another advantage of mechanical and fluidic computers is independence. They can't be hacked or detected from a distance. Only a live spy in the same room can control or read them. Even electronic analogs are harder to penetrate than digital, because they don't emit a readable stream of patterned codes. An RC computer responds when you turn the knobs, then settles gradually into a new condition. No predictable and redundant patterns. Russia understood this point deeply after repeated invasions and penetrations by Krauts and Yanks.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Patient things

  ¶ 10:01 AM

  A new Parkinson-style law
Put several basic facts together, and you get a Law of Organizations on the same level as Parkinson's Laws. This is one that old Northcote didn't catch.

Parkinson observed that bureaucracies and NGOs grow by creating problems.

Real businesses** solve real problems for profit. Most of the problems are essential and natural. Humans need food, clothing, housing and work. (Work is the MOST important. People need to serve, need to be useful.) Business links those needs by a network of money, serving a good and crucial purpose. Business also creates artificial needs by advertising, but those subneeds are usually built on the basic needs. They don't last long otherwise.

Business for profit is a self-sustaining loop of survival and improvement.

Bureaucracies pretend to solve a problem but actually make it worse, in order to gain more budget and workforce to "solve" the problem by making it worse to gain more budget and workf....

Bureaucracies are a self-sustaining loop of death and destruction.

= = = = =

Now the Deepstate loop.

Fact 1: Blackmail is the best form of power. Raw violence works pretty well, but force needs 'booster shots' from time to time. Blackmail is forever.

Fact 2: Organizations that keep secrets will end up using blackmail to solidify their power. Blackmailers can't be prosecuted because they have blackmailed the would-be enforcers. Priests developed this technique, the secular Deepstate under Lady Edgar continued it in a more specialized way, and in recent decades the tech monsters returned to universal priestly power. Zuck hears everyone's confessions, including judges and regulators and politicians.

Fact 3, the crucial Parkinsonian fact. Organizations that operate by secrets and blackmail recruit new members by blackmail. Most people won't betray a nation or commit crimes for money, but most people WILL betray to avoid revelation of an unpleasant secret. The organization thus gathers people who are accustomed to keeping secrets. When you think about it rationally, it's no different from giving a math test to new accountants, or a physical strength test to new athletes.

Now we have a vast SELF-SUSTAINING AND SELF-GROWING network of infinitely wicked secret-keepers.

Deepstate gathered in the entire "medical" profession over the last 20 years, recruiting a million well-practiced secret-keepers all at once. HIPAA was the keystone of this recruiting effort. In 2020 the "medical" profession was flipped into a holocaust generator.

= = = =

** I say business instead of capitalism, and I emphasize profit instead of Share Value, because capitalism is just one way of controlling and funding business. The Soviet system ran business to gain profit. Soviet businesses got capital and loans from the state instead of Wall Street. Soviet businesses thus had a much stronger focus on the primary human need of WORK, less focus on the artificial but benign subneeds of status and display, and no regard at all for the insatiable demonic appetites of a Morgan or Bezos.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, Parkinson

  ¶ 6:53 AM

  Checking in with ACU
For a brief time the ACU folks in Germany seemed to be doing something meaningful. They promised to open the blackmail and reveal the cui bono of the holocaust. They quickly broke the promise, and then joined forces with RFK Jr, the main consigliere of the Carbon Genocide. This alliance is exactly like DeGaulle partnering with Goebbels in 1940.

I stopped watching their stuff. Just for entertainment I checked their latest morph. Now they're calling themselves World Freedom Alliance, as announced in this video.

Non-barking: I note that Youtube hasn't deleted the WFA videos and hasn't plastered the Urgent Emergency Disinformation Warning under their videos. This means Deepstate hasn't found any truth or real opposition in the videos.

Barking 1: In the area of science and medicine, WFA is calling for a 'better normal', not an 'old normal' or a 'new normal'. Sneaky and dangerous.

In science and medicine the pre-2020 norm was based on real experience, not theory. Pre-2020 public health was aimed at helping immunity, not destroying immunity.

When the situation departs from proper norms, proper feedback action tries to restore the proper norm. When you feel a car skidding, you turn the wheel opposite to the skid in an attempt to bring it back to STRAIGHT. You don't try to invent a new kind of straight in the middle of skidding.

First we need to get back to the OLD normal in science and medicine, before we can even think about a vague undefined 'better' normal. 'Better normal' leaves room to shift the baseline, which Deepstate will be happy to oblige.

Barking 2: On the legal front, WFA is focusing on "rights granted by the creator". This is the old normal, but it's NOT the baseline we need to restore. The focus on "rights" and "elections" and "democracy" is the skid. "Rights" are theory, not experience. In this area we've been spinning madly out of control for 300 years, and we do need to return to a MUCH OLDER baseline.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

Labels: From rights to duties, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 8:33 AM

  Missing the Rand point
Jeffrey Tucker at AIER is the champion truth-teller on the current holocaust, the only source of the ONE FACT that would start the Nuremberg Trials if any sanity remained.

Other writers at AIER are more standard "conservatives" and "libertarians", often missing the main point.

This article by David Hart correctly traces the genealogy of the "virus" holocaust from the "green" genocide, but misses the ideological point badly. Or more precisely, Hart adds an ideological point to a situation that has no connection to ideology. (All situations have no connection to ideology, which is a completely extraneous and meaningless variable.)

He considers these movements to be socialist. Nope.

The Green movement originated in CIA and "social" "science" types, who like to use Marxish terminology but are NOT Marxists. They're just evil.

Soon after the origin, "climate" was taken over by Libertarians, and the "virus" holocaust is ALL Libertarian.

Globalism IS libertarianism. Soros and Bezos are anti-Marxist, following Ayn Rand to the letter. Rand's utopia is a one-man utopia. Atlas ends up being the universe, and all other humans end up enslaved or dead. Soros and Bezos fully intend to be the universe.

The opposite of Rand isn't necessarily socialism, because the definition of socialism is meaningless.

The real variable is SKILLS, not "control of means of production". The SKILL variable does run partly along the same lines as capitalist vs socialist, but not entirely.

The correlation is clear when SKILL is the prime variable. The countries and states that have the earliest and harshest lockdowns are Randian, fully financialized, running solely on debt and free money for Atlas, closely tied to Soros and Bezos. In those places Bezos CAN kill everyone, so he does.

The countries and states with the mildest tyranny are dependent on REAL INDUSTRY AND FARMING, and dependent on TAXES for survival. Many of these places are socialist or Soviet, because Soviet systems always depend on real people doing real work and paying real taxes.

Hart seems to be catching onto the crossed-up variables at the end of the article, where he notes with some puzzlement that his Libertarian mentors were following Lenin's model to gain tyranny. Maybe his puzzlement will lead to a NOW I SEE moment. Learning tends to happen that way.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Jackboot stomping forever, Natural law = Soviet law, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 9:21 AM