Pretty good article
A pretty good article on meritocracy by Clifton Mark.

Main point:

This is surprising because impartiality is the core of meritocracy’s moral appeal. The ‘even playing field’ is intended to avoid unfair inequalities based on gender, race and the like. Yet Castilla and Benard found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate. They suggest that this ‘paradox of meritocracy’ occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides. Satisfied that they are just, they become less inclined to examine their own behaviour for signs of prejudice.

It's not a paradox. Meritocracy was INVENTED by aristocrats to defend their own position in the Luddite conflict around 1700. Locke was a 'personal physician' in the household of various aristocrats, basically a 'life coach' in modern terms. His philosophy followed his paycheck. The official enshrinement of meritocracy by the 1776ers served the same purpose. Their job was to keep NYC finance and northern sweatshop slavery in power, and to eliminate all other economic and political forces.

The older Natural Law view was best expressed in Sharia. Quoting again:

The Almighty has created this world as a trial and test for man; every person has therefore been made to depend on others for his living. No one in this world can live independently as regards his needs and requirements. A person of the highest rank turns to the most ordinary to fulfill them. In other words, every single person has an important role to play, without which this world cannot continue.

This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources, which vary from person to person. In fact, it is because of this variation that a society comes into being. Consequently, laborers and workers, artisans and craftsmen, tillers and peasants are as indispensable as scholars and thinkers, savants and sages, leaders and rulers. Every individual is an integral component of the society and contributes to its formation according to his abilities.

By creating various classes of people, the Almighty is testing whether the big and the small, the high and the low create a society based on co-operation and respect or create disorder in the world by disregarding the role each person has been ordained to play.

Focus on: This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources,

All of these are predetermined. Abilities, intelligence and inclinations are genetically predetermined; means and resources, what we call 'luck', are externally predetermined.

Let's look at GW Carver. Genes gave him a rare combination of talent and passion and mental stamina. But without the 'luck' of being born in 1865 in the household of Moses and Sarah Carver, his genetic endowments would have been totally meaningless.

Shortly after George was born, thieves kidnaped his mother. Moses ransomed the mother and child, but the thieves didn't return the mother. So Moses and Sarah raised George as their own child, even though he no longer had any economic value. They recognized that he was physically small and intellectually big. Instead of putting him to work in the fields, they taught him to read and placed him in charge of the kitchen garden, where he immediately started improving the plant breeds by hybridizing and crossing. His unique talent met a uniquely perfect situation.

Moses and Sarah passed the Almighty's test, and deserve special credit.

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

  ¶ 1:26 AM

  Balanced pair
Two articles showed up in my usual website wanderings today. The two form a nice balance or bridge. Both are written by careful thinkers, not blind partisans. Both are on the same basic topic.

Meritocracy.

One defends the standard Shared Lie, the other is proposing realism.

= = = = =

From the allegedly independent leftists at Persuasion, a stout defense of Meritocracy:

Meritocracy was a real creation that took time, and that took a certain self-denying ordinance—we were pushing against some of the most obvious things about human nature. So, meritocracy has a relatively brief history, in the sense that it’s the creation of the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and of what I call the the “English Revolution,” the Gladstonian revolution of the 19th century—all of which were taking the old social order and tearing it up, saying, “Let’s reconstitute the social order on the basis of a set of new principles, open competition, testing people’s promise and ability, getting rid of nepotism, getting rid of feudal restrictions.”

Pushing against human nature and reconstituting the social order: true. Psychopaths always reconstruct humans to suit their purposes.

Testing people's promise and ability: False.

We still have a completely inherited hierarchy WITHIN THE RULING CLASS, and we have eliminated the hierarchy of SKILL in the working class. Before Locke and Marat, farmers and blacksmiths and printers trained their sons to take over the business. This also happened within the employed class in feudal systems, where family continuity was important. Serfs could be bought and sold, but mostly they continued to work on the same farm, training their children. The employer had a lifelong OBLIGATION to the workers, and he gained more by maintaining an INTERGENERATIONAL loyalty. Grandparents were supported because they were helping to bring up the kids into effective workers.

Persuasion tries to answer this:

Absolutely. I think if you’re going to take people seriously as human beings, you have to take their talents seriously. You have to take into account the fact that there are people who have potential, who can develop that potential, and who are at their most fulfilled when they are expressing that. I think a good society is a society [with] the development of talent at [its] very heart. You have to be willing to test your talent. There’s a lot of criticism by the anti-meritocratic people about the terrible examination system, [with] everybody spending a life doing examinations. Most of us don’t like doing examinations. But doing examinations is also a way of developing our talents.

Spending a life doing exams? Exams seem to be dominant in Britain and the Orient, but not in America. So maybe I'm missing the point. In any case, feudal systems had room for the RARE genetic variations that led to out-of-family talents. We shouldn't lose the transfer of the MAJORITY of skills solely to encourage this RARE situation, which was already encouraged.

I can think of two obvious examples. Carver's owners recognized his unique skill and helped him develop it to benefit their farm. Astronomer James Ferguson was born poor and spent his early life in involuntary apprenticeships. Some of the masters recognized his unique talent and gave him time and room to develop it.

= = = = =

James Hankins writing in Public Discourse is more realistic and more original. He grasps the current situation accurately:

Suppose you were living at a time when all around you, it seemed, civilization was breaking down. Political institutions were so little respected that the only way they could compel obedience was by increasing surveillance, multiplying laws, and tightening enforcement. People did not trust their leaders and suspected that elites were only interested in themselves. Many leaders were tyrannous, ignoring constitutional norms. Religious leaders engaged in scandalous behavior, and religious faith was losing its hold over the educated classes. Standards of personal behavior had collapsed, and it seemed that most people had forgotten what even ordinary decency was. Examples of upright character were hard to find, heroism almost unknown. The young went to universities only to learn how to earn money and achieve status. Even the military had grown corrupt. A great pandemic had taken many lives and filled people with fear. No one believed any more that medical science was honest about its ability to cope with the disease.

Welcome to the fourteenth century.

On the fucking dot.

Hankins tells how Petrarch created a system to clean up the ELITES:

The scholastic approach to ethics is precisely the opposite of what Petrarch wanted to do with the studia humanitatis. He and his followers invented a new form of education whose principal purpose was to develop good moral character and practical wisdom. In their view, the souls of all human beings contained both good and bad, but a well-designed curriculum could help cultivate the good and make students ashamed to do the bad. It could impart “true nobility” to human nature—not the kind of nobility inherited from forebears or acquired from titles handed out by dishonorable authorities, but the kind of nobility that came from true, personal distinction, a distinction gained through study, effort, and admiration earned honestly from one’s peers. Petrarch’s view and that of his followers was that persons with true nobility could and should provide the leadership to reform Christendom. So you could say that Petrarch and his followers invented a new kind of meritocracy.

In other words, Petrarch created exams that flunked psychopaths. Priests and courtiers had to show an ability to think and work FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY.

The concept of institutio (paideia in Greek; inadequately translated as “education”) for the humanists meant not only learning to read old books in school. It meant absorbing the moral and intellectual formation human beings needed to live successfully in civilized societies. It included manners (mores) learned informally in the family and the school. It included the customs of the community, practices like those associated with marriage, with taking meals together, with showing reverence for elders, with other rituals associated with festivals and funerals, and with military service.

Hankins proposes a concrete modern version of the Petrarch project, in considerable detail:

First, we have to recognize that this is a long-term project. It may well take more than one or two generations to revive sound education. It may have to start in private homes and small colleges, but we cannot give up on the public square and the universities.

We need to find ways to acquire cultural prestige. We need to build alliances, form networks, and find patrons who share our vision.

I think also we need to emphasize more strongly the role of the humanities in strengthening skills of communication and persuasion. The precise use of language is an indispensable tool of civilization. We need to hold up an ideal of human excellence and challenge students to attain it.

Amen to the precise use of language. Room 101 is all about ruining the TOOL of language.

In other words, Hankins proposes using exams to limit the ruling class, while Persuasion favors using exams to limit the working class.

Labels: 2000=1000, Equipoise, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:09 PM

  Starting to grasp reality?
It's slightly encouraging when establishment Repooflicans show a glimmer of common sense, a vague grasp of reality.

The Federalist is solid establishment. ZERO TAX is the only thing that matters. Their ZERO TAX crusade gave us Bezos and Zuckerberg. They constantly focus on "laws" and "constitutions" and "civics" and "meritocracy", the myths that open the door for demons.

Two points have been clear for a while, and came into SHARP relief in 2020. (1) Personality matters infinitely more than "laws" and "elections" and ideologies. (2) When you have faith in nonsensical theories, you are poisoned by hope.

In this article they show a vague incipient awareness of the two points.

Unfortunately, anyone who dares take on the broken and corrupt political and media complex is teed up for absolute destruction. As lesser men cower in the face of the risk, the cost of standing up to the system becomes steeper and steeper. While you will not be locked up for saying the truth, yet, you will be demonized, stigmatized, deplatformed. You may lose your job.
...
We must also guard against mindless hopefulness. Hope is a virtue, but it can be a bit of a vice if it’s an unwarranted faith that everything will work out in this world or for this country.

They're starting to grasp Medieval Mode. GUTS is the only thing that counts, but GUTS must be applied sneakily and cautiously. Don't waste time on the fake solutions provided by the fake system.

Survival comes first. Protest accomplishes exactly nothing. Martyrdom accomplishes exactly nothing. Your imprisonment and death will be ignored. You'll just be dead.

Reprint from a few months ago:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Meritocracy is part of the underlying structure that made the current tyranny possible. Cultures based on fate and luck have been less susceptible to the Share Value tech tyranny, and now less susceptible to the "medical" version.

When you believe that success depends entirely on what you do, tyrants can make you guilty for not "doing as you're told". When you understand that success is mostly due to permanent caste, and when you understand that health is mostly due to the permanent qualities of your immune system, this type of guilt doesn't work.

African and Oriental and Slavic countries are more fate-based. They understand the primacy of luck. They haven't taken part in the skill destruction of recent decades, and now are less harsh with lockdowns. Cultures with permanent stable castes and niches are HAPPY and CALM cultures.

Meritocracy plus Darwin makes eugenics possible. The super-rich are good. Poor people have chosen to be poor, so they deserve to be punished for their crime. Culled from the herd.

Meritocracy in the hands of Deepstate intentionally stirs up both sides. Rich and popular people are encouraged to believe that they got there entirely by effort, so their advantage is deserved. Unlucky people are encouraged to believe that they CAN become rich and popular, so they waste their lives in upward-striving failure instead of finding satisfaction in an appropriate niche.

The inevitable and INTENDED result of this failed striving is revolution, which is the quickest way to self-cull. Revenge can't possibly work when the state holds all the cards and all the communication channels. Revenge and justice in fictional form are cathartic. Leave it there.

Don't fall for the pressure. Get into medieval mode. Try to keep the monsters calm. Bored monsters eventually move on to something more interesting.

There's very little support for the medieval mode, and no empathy for the unlucky in modern media. So it's especially hard to stay in this mode, but it's the best way to preserve what little remains of civilization until the monsters get tired of burning us and start burning each other.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: 2000=1000, From rights to duties

  ¶ 10:56 PM

  Bucher T
American Radio Library is piling in lots of newly found magazines from Italy and other countries. Lots of goodies!

A little weekly newsletter about transistor developments had these two ads in 1962:





For the first time sold in Italy! Precision quality! Exceptional! One of the best Japanese receivers!

Japan was pushing its electronic products hard in all countries, just as Germany was pushing its Mercedes and cameras hard in all countries.

A German writer on Quora explained how this felt for Germans. After the war Germany was justifiably unpopular in the rest of the world. Germans understood that meritocracy is nonsense, understood that unpopularity can't be fixed on a personal basis. You have to find a way to make your products and services popular instead.

This is, of course, the Booker T way of life, a perfect opposition to meritocracy. It works for nations, races, and people.

Caste is innate and permanent.

You can't become popular by using a better deodorant or learning to dance. Those are pure wastes of money and effort. You have to make your PRODUCTS and SERVICES popular instead. Sooner or later the popularity of your OUTPUT will reflect back on your person, but only partly.

Above all you can't FORCE people to accept you as a person or a nation or a race. When you try to FORCE acceptance, you get more friction and dislike.

The latter, of course, is the PURPOSE of meritocracy and "civil rights" and "integration". Under the guise of creating acceptance, these vicious projects are INTENTIONALLY creating mutual hatred. Even worse, meritocracy steers people away from finding their proper SKILL-BASED niche in the economy and culture, and thus makes them even more dependent on the government that is using them as civilization-destroying weapons.

Labels: Carver, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:08 AM

  Don't fall for it
Normally my bedtime 'radio' is all '30s and '40s, all empathetic. Tonight I made the mistake of placing an unfamiliar episode from the meritocratic '50s at the start, and had trouble reaching sleep. Fortunately the dream-scripter tried to undo the damage.

There's an important lesson. Meritocracy is part of the underlying structure that made the current tyranny possible. Cultures based on fate and luck have been less susceptible to the Share Value tech tyranny, and now less susceptible to the "medical" version.

When you believe that success depends entirely on what you do, tyrants can make you guilty for not "doing as you're told". When you understand that success is mostly due to permanent caste, and when you understand that health is mostly due to the permanent qualities of your immune system, this type of guilt doesn't work.

African and Oriental and Slavic countries are more fate-based. They understand the primacy of luck. They haven't taken part in the skill destruction of recent decades, and now are less harsh with lockdowns. Cultures with permanent stable castes and niches are HAPPY and CALM cultures.

Meritocracy plus Darwin makes eugenics possible. The super-rich are good. Poor people have chosen to be poor, so they deserve to be punished for their crime. Culled from the herd.

Meritocracy in the hands of Deepstate intentionally stirs up both sides. Rich and popular people are encouraged to believe that they got there entirely by effort, so their advantage is deserved. Unlucky people are encouraged to believe that they CAN become rich and popular, so they waste their lives in upward-striving failure instead of finding satisfaction in an appropriate niche.

The inevitable and INTENDED result of this failed striving is revolution, which is the quickest way to self-cull. Revenge can't possibly work when the state holds all the cards and all the communication channels. Revenge and justice in fictional form are cathartic. Leave it there.

Don't fall for the pressure. Get into medieval mode. Try to keep the monsters calm. Bored monsters eventually move on to something more interesting.

There's very little support for the medieval mode, and no empathy for the unlucky in modern media. So it's especially hard to stay in this mode, but it's the best way to preserve what little remains of civilization until the monsters get tired of burning us and start burning each other.

Labels: From rights to duties, Jail mode

  ¶ 3:51 AM

  We had a chance
Just figured something out while listening (as usual) to old radio shows about bunco artists.

When you understand how the world really works, you have an advantage over people who don't.

This also applies to cultures and nations. Cultures that are based on an accurate understanding of status and resources have an advantage when dealing with cultures that are based on PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE nonsense about "rights" and "meritocracy".

Why do Persians and Russians always see through our motives and strategies? They're not necessarily smarter in terms of IQ, but both are infinitely wiser in terms of culture. Sharia is based on an accurate SCIENTIFIC description of human status and duties. The Soviet system wasn't originally based on reality; it started out with pure Locke/Lincoln lunacy. But it finally came to terms with reality after futilely trying to convert the strong Russian realists to insanity.

Africans are also grounded in reality, but they're more susceptible to insanity conversion. Booker T had it right, and then MLK pulled his followers into the "meritocracy" lane where they could be run over by NYC bankers. The old ground point is still there, even when coated with capitalist shit.

= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:

First and most perfectly, in sharia law:

The Almighty has created this world as a trial and test for man; every person has therefore been made to depend on others for his living. No one in this world can live independently as regards his needs and requirements. A person of the highest rank turns to the most ordinary to fulfill them. In other words, every single person has an important role to play, without which this world cannot continue.

This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources, which vary from person to person. In fact, it is because of this variation that a society comes into being. Consequently, laborers and workers, artisans and craftsmen, tillers and peasants are as indispensable as scholars and thinkers, savants and sages, leaders and rulers. Every individual is an integral component of the society and contributes to its formation according to his abilities.

By creating various classes of people, the Almighty is testing whether the big and the small, the high and the low create a society based on co-operation and respect or create disorder in the world by disregarding the role each person has been ordained to play.

= = = = =

Second, in the 1977 Soviet constitution:

The state exercises control over the measure of labour and of consumption in accordance with the principle of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work". It fixes the rate of taxation on taxable income.

Socially useful work and its results determine a person's status in society. By combining material and moral incentives and encouraging innovation and a creative attitude to work, the state helps transform labour into the prime vital need of every Soviet citizen.

= = = = =

Third, in FDR's fireside chat on Sept 6, 1936.

I have, however, used the argument in relation only to a small area -- it holds good in its effect on the nation as a whole. Every state in the drought area is now doing and always will do business with every state outside it.

The very existence of the men and women working in the clothing factories of New York, making clothes worn by farmers and their families; of the workers in the steel mills in Pittsburgh, in the automobile factories of Detroit, and in the harvester factories of Illinois, depend upon the farmers' ability to purchase the commodities they produce. In the same way it is the purchasing power of the workers in these factories in the cities that enables them and their wives and children to eat more beef, more pork, more wheat, more corn, more fruit and more dairy products, and to buy more clothing made from cotton, wool and leather. In a physical and a property sense, as well as in a spiritual sense, we are members one of another.

= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT.

We had a chance to give up Locke/Lincoln lunacy. After FDR died, Deepstate came roaring back to life and turned us back into useless suckers, ready to bite into the poisoned apple of "meritocracy". And we took a BIG FUCKING BITE.

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

  ¶ 11:11 PM

  Astrocyte Abacus, reprinted
I was searching for 'abacus' inside the blog, just to check the animations for the IBM 650 (DCL). I wasn't sure if I'd replaced a bad frame.

'Abacus' led first to this item from 2019, which turns out to be important and timely.

Meritocracy is one of Deepstate's oldest weapons in the war of attrition against peasants and incorrect people. We are trained to try harder FOREVER to achieve PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE goals. The Enlightenment lies of tabula rasa and equality were meant to kill us in a way that demons find especially fun to watch.

Trying harder forever is UNNATURAL, and we have a specific mechanism to stop wasted effort.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Another astonishing discovery in brain function.

Learning is controlled by an internal abacus.

Via Eurekalert, a study using larval zebrafish.

These two pictures tell the story.



The experimental setup is 'virtual reality' or in old-fashioned terms a flight simulator. The fish is held firmly in place in a small aquarium. A visual landscape is moved forward and backward in response to the swimming motion. In real life each wiggle moves the fish forward, and then the counterwiggle moves backward a bit. (Like a rowboat with incompletely lifted oars on the backstroke.) So the simulated landscape does the same thing.



As long as the landscape moves, the fish moves forward in bursts. Swim for a second, rest for a second. When the experimenters turn off the motion, the fish tries harder for about 30 seconds, then gives up entirely.

This is rational behavior for all animals in all** situations. Modern human dysculture aka "meritocracy" turns us irrational by persuading us that forward motion is ALWAYS necessary regardless of our observed gains relative to the status landscape. If you're not gaining, you need to try harder. We keep trying harder, wasting exponentially increasing quantities of energy and soul, until we violently burn out and die.

The experimenters were trying to determine how the fish decides when to quit. Is it just a buildup of charge or neurotransmitter on a comparator neuron?

What they found is ASTONISHING. The action is controlled by a specialized type of glial cell, not by neurons.

Here, we found that the fish analog of the mammalian astrocyte is a central computational element of a circuit implementing a behavioral-state change after integrating sensory information.

Specifically, radial astrocytes in a subregion of the brainstem in larval zebrafish temporally integrate noradrenergically encoded failures to accumulate evidence of futility before inducing a state of passivity (giving up). This behavioral pattern has a familiar combination of features: trying to achieve a goal, repeatedly failing despite trying harder, giving up temporarily, and then trying again. Fish swim more vigorously in open loop (i.e., ineffective swim attempts), become passive, then swim again.

First try harder, then give up for a while.

Using whole-brain imaging, we found that astrocytic calcium was elevated just before and during passive states. Activation and silencing experiments established that these glial cells are required to trigger the passive state. Neuronal imaging and manipulation showed that the NE system encodes an expectation-outcome mismatch signal, which activates Ca2+ signaling in radial astrocytes. Thus, behavioral failures are detected by NE-MO and integrated by glia, which, after accumulating sufficient evidence of motor futility, trigger a passive behavioral state via GABAergic neurons. Once passivity is triggered, its persistence may be due to sustained effects of the glial cells on neurons, or a lag in the reactivation of swim circuits.

In other words, the astrocytes serve as a kind of scorecard or abacus outside of the neurons. The neurons click up the astrocytes, and when the number of raised beads reaches a threshold the neurons tell the muscles to stop swimming.

= = = = =

** Later thought: It's obvious that frustration is universal, but why is it universal? Why do so many situations need this calculated give-up response? Specifically, why would zebrafish need to know when their attempt to swim didn't result in forward motion? Virtual reality experimental setups aren't exactly common in the real ocean. A headwind in the current would be the main reason for lack of progress. When you're moving against a headwind you do have to try harder, but I'd think the frustration response would include something like gliding down to the floor for stability until the current slows down, or turning around to swim with the current.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

We're seeing millions of people reaching the last bead on their abacus. Some jump off bridges, most just stop actively living. It's even happening in China, where it's called Lying Flat.

A sane and SURVIVABLE civilization recognizes that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT, and guides each type of person into an appropriate niche where his particular talents lead to ACHIEVABLE goals.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Maybe worth asking
An unsurprising article on the Peter Principle. Nothing new, but the terminology stirred up a testable hypothesis.

Our research suggests that companies are largely aware of the Peter Principle. Because workers value promotion above and beyond a simple increase in salary, firms may not want to rid themselves entirely of promotion-based incentives. However, strategies that decouple a worker’s current job performance from his or her future career potential can minimise the costs of the Peter Principle.

Decouple. Evocative word.

What's the best way to decouple the Peter Power of meritocracy? Family.

In a family-owned company everyone knows that the top management positions will stay in the family. In a hereditary monarchy everyone knows that the top positions will stay in the family. Top management is NOT AN ASPIRATION, which means everyone outside the family can relax and do their proper jobs.

This should be a testable hypothesis.

Facts: SKILLS AND STATUS ARE INNATE AND PERMANENT. The best politicians have been politicians from birth.

Meritocracy is a specific reversal and destruction of the basic facts of genetics.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 1:29 AM

  It's all Spanish Prisoner
Democracy and meritocracy are variants on the Spanish Prisoner racket.

The classic version of the racket goes like this:

I need to get access to a pile of money.

I can't reach the money without some 'processing', which may be travel or bribing officials or paying taxes.

Will you help me with the 'processing'? If you help me, I'll give you a cut of the money.

And then the scammer simply disappears. You've lost money and received nothing.

= = = = =

Bribing is the most common version of 'processing'. When you believe you're helping to violate a law, you're less likely to call the cops.

The modern scammers, known as the Yahoo Boys, have reduced the pattern to the absolute minimum, and it still works. Sucker Filter.

They don't even bother to promise that you'll get a cut. You're doing it solely for "friendship", or in some cases for "patriotism". The scammers pretend to be US soldiers trapped in Yemen or Syria or Afghanistan.

= = = = =

Elections follow the same pattern, except that the potential windfall is power, not money.

A candidate says:

I need to get access to a pile of power.

I can't reach the power without some 'processing', which may be travel or bribing officials or campaign expenses.

Will you help me with the 'processing'? If you help me, I'll give you a cut of the power.

After you help, the candidate wins and proceeds to implement exactly the same agenda as the other politicians. Or else he stops running and endorses the Deepstate candidate. He now has access to power, but you don't get a cut of the power. Your views are still completely ignored and unrepresented.

= = = = =

Meritocracy follows the same pattern, except that the windfall is status, not money.

You think you're paying to get access to a cut of status. After you pay, the mentor or school or advertiser has more money, but you still don't have any more status.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 8:24 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

  Stability again
Halfway following from previous item about squashing competition....

I've talked a lot about the myth of meritocracy, the false idea that human nature is an infinitely malleable blank slate.

A secondary semi-false idea always runs along with meritocracy, but it doesn't have a name. The semi-myth tells us that economies are not zero-sum, that business grows by adding new innovations.

Not entirely false. Brand-new products do occasionally increase the production of real value.

Mostly, though, increased value is simply an increased quantity of the same product. Grow more wheat, make more washing machines. Historically there's a not much correlation between newness and increased production. A good product like Campbell's Soup or WD-40 or the Jeep can gradually increase its production without major change for many decades. When you factor in the development cost of a new product, the net result strongly favors continued production of an old product.

Real growth, like real learning, requires STABILITY.

The nonzero sum myth is easiest to debunk by looking at patents. The myth tells us that solo inventors in their garages get patents to grow the economy. Thus patents are the measure of innovation and growth.

False on all counts. Gradual innovation comes from established labs and workshops inside corporations, or sponsored by a group of corporations. Patents are NOT used as weapons to spur innovation. Patents are used as DEFENSIVE weapons to block competition.

This myth has a parallel in the area of military war and conquest. Commentators on both sides assume that we invade nations to gain resources.

This WAS true, at least as a pretext, before 1920. It's no longer true. Most of our invasions are pure evil, with no economic purpose at all. Invasions with economic purposes are aimed to STOP the production of a resource, not to STEAL the resource.

We can see this myth in operation right now. Commenters are assuming that we invaded Afghanistan for the lithium, and China will now invade for the lithium. The first part is obviously false. We did nothing at all with minerals in the 20 years of occupation. The second part is half true. China will now create mines and processing plants in Afghanistan by peaceful capitalism, sharing the profit and wages with Afghans. China doesn't invade and doesn't blockade. China INCREASES real value and real production, giving benefits to the local businessmen and workers along with benefits to China.

  ¶ 6:23 AM

  Not exactly
Not exactly a shared lie, more like a shared bad purpose.

After the Notre Dame fire, both "sides" want to rebuild the grandiose structure. One "side" wants to restore it precisely, the other "side" wants to make it more modern and secular in flavor.

Jules Gomes speaks passionately for the sacred side:

Gothic architecture is the “representation of supernatural reality. To those who designed the cathedrals, as to their contemporaries who worshipped in them, this symbolic aspect or function of sacred architecture overshadowed all others. To us, it has become the least comprehensible,” notes Otto Von Simson in The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order.

So how hubristic of President Emmanuel Macron to claim: “We will rebuild Notre Dame, more beautiful than before – and I want it done in the next five years. We can do it.” Really? We can do it without a vision of the supernatural? We can do it partially blinded by the cataract of aesthetic relativism? Doesn’t rebuilding Notre Dame contradict everything secular Europe represents?

The underlying vision doesn't matter. Cathedrals are centralized power.

Rebuilding a massive and hugely expensive structure is simply a continuation of centralized power, no matter which vision motivates it. Cathedrals were built to advance the Prosperity Gospel of 1200. The church was burning heretics who wanted to remind people that Jesus wasn't rich. Cathedrals were part of the same mission. A grandiose celebration of the church's wealth and wickedness, and a way of forcibly snatching labor and money from ordinary people to help the church celebrate its wealth. The spires were exponential graphs of upward redistribution and concentration of wealth.

Macron is a banker, the secular equivalent of an archbishop. He is preaching the secular version of Prosperity Gospel, which is meritocracy. You must help EU build its massive financial structures, and you must help EU invade you with migrants. Work hard to make Macron super-rich, and you will be rewarded in heaven. You certainly won't be rewarded here; you'll be impoverished by environmental nonsense and raped by migrants. But that's OK as long as Macron gets richer.

The alternative to both versions of Prosperity Gospel is decentralized religion and decentralized business. No cathedrals, no Central Banks. Storefront churches, storefront businesses. Profit motive instead of indulgences and Share Value. Let each church supply its own peculiar brand of religion, suited to its own people. People know what they need. If they aren't getting what they need, they should be able to find another church or another store that supplies it.

This requires BREAKING UP MONOPOLIES, not building new symbols of monopoly.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Shared Lie

  ¶ 1:14 AM

  Starting to understand
Article in Psych Today is at least starting to understand depression, but still missing the solution.

Now, models like the Polyvagal Theory suggest that we’ve got it backward. It’s the body that detects danger and initiates a defense strategy meant to help us survive. That biological strategy is called immobilization, and it manifests in the mind and the body with a set of symptoms we call depression.

When we think of depression as irrational and unnecessary suffering, we stigmatize people and rob them of hope. But when we begin to understand that depression, at least initially, happens for a good reason we lift the shame. People with depression are courageous survivors, not damaged invalids.

Well, you don't need any theories. You just need to observe reality without preconceptions.

Depression comes from misplaced expectations. You try everything available and everything advised, and nothing achieves your expected and predicted goal.

The solution is to alter the expectation so it conforms to reality.

In modern Western "culture", ever since the Endarkenment of the 1700s but worst since 1960, genes are heresy. Everyone can be popular and successful if they TRY hard enough and use the right PRODUCTS and follow the right ADVICE.

All of the available ADVICE is based on the completely destructive lies about "rights" and "meritocracy". Genes don't exist. Everyone is identical and everyone must seek identical goals, as defined by attractive and popular and rich and powerful people.

In fact genes exist. People are different. Your innate tendencies are unique. The situation you're in may be utterly insane because DEMONIC people are in charge everywhere except Tanzania.

Aside from the current universal insanity, there have always been inescapable situations in some places. Bad parents, bad schools, bad workplaces, neighborhoods controlled by gangs.

The solution starts by aligning your expectations with HARDASS REALITY. If you're not likable now, you will never be likable. If you're not smart now, you will never be smart. If you're not rich now, you will never be rich.

You have to find ways of gaining satisfaction within the boundaries of reality. Sometimes the satisfaction is solely intrinsic, the pleasure of completing hard tasks or creating beautiful things. Sometimes you can get approval for your products and services, even though you'll never get approval for your appearance and personality. There's always a path, and it's always unique to your genes and situation.

The cited article has a healthy attitude but doesn't start to touch the solutions:

One of the symptoms of depression is shame, a sense of having let other people down or being unworthy to be with them. When people are told that depression is an aberration, we are telling them that they are not part of the tribe. They are not right, they don’t belong. That’s when their shame deepens and they avoid social connection. We have cut them off from the path that leads them out of depression.

It is time that we start honoring the courage and strength of depressed people. It is time we start valuing the incredible capacity of our biology to find a way in hard times.

Sounds good, can't happen. "Therapists" will certainly never do it, and Zuckerberg and Bezos won't let it happen in the broader range of social outputs. Seeking social contact is GUARANTEED to make things worse. It's also strictly illegal now everywhere except Tanzania.

As I've noted repeatedly, media in previous eras was more empathetic and less meritocratic, leaving more room for DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Marriage and popularity and success were not enforced as automatic and universal goals.

There's no way to get back to those empathetic attitudes.

Labels: endless hell, From rights to duties

  ¶ 3:11 AM

  Finally a useful dream
Another symbolic dream. This one isn't mysterious.

In the dream:

I was looking at two T-shirts.

One of them was somehow built so that it turned into blocky modernist shapes. A Bauhaus T-shirt. I was coldly and objectively analyzing how it was built, trying to see how the seams motivated the cloth into such bizarre and painful shapes.

The other T-shirt had a normal shape, but it was printed with insinuating slogans, the repetitive shit you find in any combox or in any "media" account of "terrorism". Instead of analyzing why it was printed this way, I responded to the slogans emotionally, exactly as the printers intended. I felt ashamed and alienated.

First thought, not new:

Chaotic art and architecture serve the same purpose as "media". Both drive people crazy and CHANNEL people into radical expressions.

Second thought, new:

I should respond to both of these chaotizers coldly and objectively. Both are designed to ruin civilization.

= = = = =

After waking, another pair of thoughts:

First thought, not new:

We fought WW2 fiercely and loyally because we TRUSTED the government. Why did we TRUST the government? Because FDR's administration had been trying to tell us the plain and simple truth. Radio, under hardass FCC scrutiny, was forced to follow suit. Radio represented war accurately, and represented human nature accurately. No nonsense about "spreading democracy to the benighted natives", no nonsense about "meritocracy". Newspapers continued their natural habit of fomenting genocide and creating crime, but radio was the dominant media.

Second thought, new:

And what did the New Deal build? We instantly associate the '30s with brutal modernist Bauhaus shit, but the brutality was NOT coming from the New Deal. Art Deco and other "form fakes function" architecture was built by rich fuckheads and big corporations.

WPA and CCC were building five types of structures. (1) Dams and roads and windbreaks, serving REAL functions with no particular style. (2) Parks and recreation facilities, using natural materials in natural or vernacular styles. (3) Public housing, which was vernacular, not modernist. (4) Public buildings like schools and post offices, which were classical. (5) Most important of all: A structure of USEFUL citizens. Millions of Americans had been discarded as useless by the brutalist corporations. FDR provided USEFUL and PRODUCTIVE work to rebuild SOCIETY.

Putting it simply: From 1933 to 1945 the government and its subordinates were creating ORDER and BEAUTY and VALUE in all possible ways. From 1933 to 1945 the only chaotizers were corporations and rich fuckheads.

What happened in 1946 wasn't a reversal as you might expect. Instead, Deepstate recaptured the government. Since 1946 the government AND the corporations are run by the same bankers with the same purpose of obliterating civilization.

Labels: Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 1:05 AM

  Constants and variables 33
Another convective thought on Trump vs the elites...

The political, cultural and "scientific" elites will sacrifice anything, including millions of lives, to preserve the leftist lie that humans are identical and all differences are ideology.

On the surface the elite vs populist conflict looks like an ideological battle. Nationalism is not just a heresy, it's inconceivable to the satanic mind. Borders and tariffs and Natural Law are Unideas that can't be imagined by Satans. Anyone who advocates against outsourcing and Die-Versity is an Unperson.

Down deep, it's not ideology at all. It's PURELY genes.

Why? Because the Satans are perfectly capable of adopting nationalist views when it suits them. Even after adopting sane views, they continue to shun and banish Real Nationalists.

Look at Orban in Hungary. Even after Merkel finally started imposing her own border controls, Orban's border controls are still UNTHINKABLE INTOLERABLE ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE. Orban is the wrong sort of person. Not one of us. His ideas are still absolute heresy even after we're doing the exact same thing.

We have a PERFECT controlled experiment with Trump and Sheldon Adelson. Trump and Adelson are direct opponents in the Vegas casino industry, so they should be equivalent in terms of meritocracy. Both are hugely rich, both are capable of moving lots of money around; both hire and fire lots of people.

All the other Repooflican candidates have shaped their agendas to obey Adelson. Adelson is the only voter who counts. 310 million residents of this fucked former country do not exist. Only Adelson exists.

Trump is paying attention to the 310 million residents, appealing to what we know is true, offering solutions that will actually work. Therefore he's a fascist buffoon.

Another experiment: Eric Schmidt and Donald Trump are proposing the exact same type of Internet censorship to filter out ISIS.

Eric Schmidt is obviously correct because he is the right sort of person. Trump is a dumb fascist buffoon for proposing the same thing because he is not one of us.

Here as everywhere else, ideology is just a cover for good old-fashioned caste. Blood-borne aristocracy.

Labels: Asked and answered, Constants and Variables

  ¶ 2:46 AM

  Cinderella vs Booker T
Convective thought.

First, one unquestionable absolute truth.

All human traits and talents and tendencies are innate and permanent. Some traits are more strictly determined than others, but the initial condition is always permanent. You can't change your status or your skills or your likability.

In his strong and lyrical discussion of peasant life, Michelet sees the origin of fables like Cinderella and Ugly Duckling.

A very real and very genuine passion underlies it, that of her unhappy, quite hopeless love, one that cruel Nature often sows between pure souls of too widely separated ranks, the poignant regret of the peasant woman that she cannot make herself fair and desirable, to be loved of the knight; the stifled sighs of the serf, as looking down his furrow, he sees riding by on a white horse a too, too charming vision, the beautiful, the adored, mistress of the castle and the lands he tills. It is like the Eastern fable, the melancholy idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the Nightingale.

But there is one great difference; the bird and the flower are both beautiful, equal even in beauty. But here the inferior being, so low placed in the scale of rank, confesses humbly, "I am plain and homely, a monster of ugliness!" The pity of it ! . . . But all the same, with a persistency and a heroic power of will unknown to the East, and by the very ardour of his longing, he breaks through the silly obstacles in his way. He loves so truly he is loved in turn, this monster; and Love makes him beautiful.

Those fables may have been helpful in an era when your job was also predetermined and permanent. They're destructive in an era when jobs, and other ways of using your skills, are more flexible.

Unpopular people can't become more popular or respected, but they CAN seek indirect popularity for their products or services. This is the ONLY way to avoid total frustration and depression. If you are hoping for a miracle that makes you attractive or likable, you're bound to fail. If you try to provide respectable products or services, you have a good chance of success.

Even in the empathetic '30s, very few stories made this point. After WW2, raw meritocracy sponsored by Deepstate made the truth impossible to say or see. Every source tells us that riches and popularity are possible for everyone if you try hard enough. This is a DEADLY LIE.

Booker T Washington is the only celebrity who ever told the truth. He has been forgotten and canceled for a long time.

Labels: 2000=1000, Carver, From rights to duties

  ¶ 1:17 AM

  Unbridgeable
I was thinking about the unbridgeable gap between Insatiables and Deplorables last night. Is it innate?

Looking back at childhood acquaintances and experiences, I think it is. The two types are visible at least in elementary school, thus probably from birth.

I was supposed to be an Insatiable, and was raised as an Insatiable but couldn't master the withering contempt for the lower classes. I've never been a competent Deplorable either, so I've always been stuck in between.

If I had understood these permanent distinctions, I would have leveraged my prison experience to learn the fine points of criminality. Unfortunately the American myth of "meritocracy" was still undisputed at that time, so there was little opportunity to hear realistic views of caste and "honesty".

= = = = =

On waking the first news item I noticed was yet another vile foul betrayal of the Deplorables by Trump. Sucking Saudi cock for pennies. Making a new war every week to serve our Masters in both Saudi and Israel. The only difference is that Israel never pays. Israel merely EXPECTS obedience and gets it.

Looking for appropriate curses to write a sort of imprecatory psalm, I found an old journal for high-school 'classics' teachers.. Paging through the PDF, the first thing I saw was even better than curses. A century-old picture of the eternal war between Insatiables vs Deplorables.



Plato sounds just like Romney or Rush or Rand.

Pulling out the relevant piece:

It will be observed that these criticisms of the Athenian and American juries start from different points of view. Athenian writers regret the fact that pay for service was introduced because it made it possible for the poor and idle and unambitious to sit as jurors. American critics feel that not enough pay is given to make it possible to get the ablest type of man on the jury. In both cases, however, the attitude toward the resultant nature of the juries is the same.

And the author's attitude is also the same. He laments that robber barons are unable to get a fair shake from "idle and unambitious" jurors, who are resentful of the "better element".

= = = = =

In modern times young Deplorables who can't bridge the gap end up jumping from bridges. Like this 1922 author, modern Insatiables pretend to worry about the jumpers.

Continued in next item.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter

  ¶ 12:24 AM

  Surprisingly useful lesson
I like to watch '50s cop shows before bedtime. A nice escapist dose of actual justice, which was rare in real life then and totally extinct now.

This episode of 'The Detectives' just popped up on Youtube.

At first it looks like the usual Arthur Miller / Shirley Jackson shit, making thinly veiled references to Joe McCarthy and the Deplorables of the era. You expect the heroes to shame the Deplorables into total submission to Freud and Meritocracy. At the end the retarded superstitious Deplorables are warbling falsetto hymns of praise to Almighty Lady Edgar.

Nope. This episode sharply departs from the standard nonsense, with a useful lesson at the end. The writers recognize that healing is an important natural function, often accomplished through religious or superstitious methods. The writers also recognize that even Deplorables deserve to hear an honest picture of reality.

In neurological terms, placebo works even when you know it's placebo. Trust and confidence are the main ingredients of health and immunity.
  ¶ 6:12 AM

  Astrocyte abacus
Another astonishing discovery in brain function.

Learning is controlled by an internal abacus.

Via Eurekalert, a study using larval zebrafish.

These two pictures tell the story.



The experimental setup is 'virtual reality' or in old-fashioned terms a flight simulator. The fish is held firmly in place in a small aquarium. A visual landscape is moved forward and backward in response to the swimming motion. In real life each wiggle moves the fish forward, and then the counterwiggle moves backward a bit. (Like a rowboat with incompletely lifted oars on the backstroke.) So the simulated landscape does the same thing.



As long as the landscape moves, the fish moves forward in bursts. Swim for a second, rest for a second. When the experimenters turn off the motion, the fish tries harder for about 30 seconds, then gives up entirely.

This is rational behavior for all animals in all** situations. Modern human dysculture aka "meritocracy" turns us irrational by persuading us that forward motion is ALWAYS necessary regardless of our observed gains relative to the status landscape. If you're not gaining, you need to try harder. We keep trying harder, wasting exponentially increasing quantities of energy and soul, until we violently burn out and die.

The experimenters were trying to determine how the fish decides when to quit. Is it just a buildup of charge or neurotransmitter on a comparator neuron?

What they found is ASTONISHING. The action is controlled by a specialized type of glial cell, not by neurons.

Here, we found that the fish analog of the mammalian astrocyte is a central computational element of a circuit implementing a behavioral-state change after integrating sensory information.

Specifically, radial astrocytes in a subregion of the brainstem in larval zebrafish temporally integrate noradrenergically encoded failures to accumulate evidence of futility before inducing a state of passivity (giving up). This behavioral pattern has a familiar combination of features: trying to achieve a goal, repeatedly failing despite trying harder, giving up temporarily, and then trying again. Fish swim more vigorously in open loop (i.e., ineffective swim attempts), become passive, then swim again.

First try harder, then give up for a while.

Using whole-brain imaging, we found that astrocytic calcium was elevated just before and during passive states. Activation and silencing experiments established that these glial cells are required to trigger the passive state. Neuronal imaging and manipulation showed that the NE system encodes an expectation-outcome mismatch signal, which activates Ca2+ signaling in radial astrocytes. Thus, behavioral failures are detected by NE-MO and integrated by glia, which, after accumulating sufficient evidence of motor futility, trigger a passive behavioral state via GABAergic neurons. Once passivity is triggered, its persistence may be due to sustained effects of the glial cells on neurons, or a lag in the reactivation of swim circuits.

In other words, the astrocytes serve as a kind of scorecard or abacus outside of the neurons. The neurons click up the astrocytes, and when the number of raised beads reaches a threshold the neurons tell the muscles to stop swimming.

= = = = =

** Later thought: It's obvious that frustration is universal, but why is it universal? Why do so many situations need this calculated give-up response? Specifically, why would zebrafish need to know when their attempt to swim didn't result in forward motion? Virtual reality experimental setups aren't exactly common in the real ocean. A headwind in the current would be the main reason for lack of progress. When you're moving against a headwind you do have to try harder, but I'd think the frustration response would include something like gliding down to the floor for stability until the current slows down, or turning around to swim with the current.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:27 AM

  Repeating for the record
Yesterday I wrote a comment on a site where it will probably get deleted. It wasn't an original thought by any means, but it was more concise than my usual ramblings. Putting it here for the record...

In a meritocracy the worst people end up at the top by self-selection. In Gilded Age 1 and Gilded Age 2, our leaders came from humble backgrounds and rose to the top through intense unyielding crime and evil. From JP Morgan to Bezos and Soros and Zuckerberg and Musk, our leaders are psychopathic all-consuming destroyers whose sole purpose in life is to BE the universe. All civilization must be SMASHED so that MY WILL can occupy all of space and time.

In an aristocracy the leaders gain their position through tradition and history. Some aristocrats are crazy, but most are sane. The sane aristocrats are NOT inclined to destroy the traditions that give them power.

This thought arises from Paine vs Morris, the ideal fable of meritocrat vs aristocrat.

= = = = =

A bit later: Thanks, Elon, for proving my point: "There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week."

CHANGING THE WORLD IS AN ACT OF WAR.

Psychopaths and cult leaders and tyrants always CHANGE THE WORLD to suit their own purposes and match their own holy godlike thoughts. CHANGING THE WORLD always requires killing millions of "unchangeable" Deplorables.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, From rights to duties

  ¶ 11:15 PM