Friam

Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Classic

List

Threaded

35 messages Options

Alfredo Covaleda Vélez-2

Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

I couldn't find it directly on their web site, but might I infer from
some of the stories that this is a national newspaper of Colombia?

2018-01-14 17:06 GMT-05:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:
>
> https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Alfredo Covaleda Vélez-2

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Yes it is the second most broadly distributed newspaper of Colombia. El Espectador is the newspaper that was blowed up by a drug cartel. I remember It was a terrible explosion that waked me up. His owner and director was killed by the same guys. The newspaper was closed but at the begining of this century and because of his tradition It was bought and reopened by the richest family of Colombia; althought the sucessors of the patriarc are American born and they appear in Forbes list between the richest US citizens.

On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 6:46 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

I couldn't find it directly on their web site, but might I infer from
some of the stories that this is a national newspaper of Colombia?

2018-01-14 17:06 GMT-05:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:
>
> https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Alfredo Covaleda Vélez-2

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by Alfredo Covaleda Vélez-2

https://www.facebook.com/gondwana.collection.namibia/videos/2272449069447736/

2018-01-14 17:06 GMT-05:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048

cody dooderson

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Wikipdedia says that 86% of El Salvadorians have native American Heritage. How can anyone take arguments for their deportation seriously, when they are spewing from the mouths of first or second generation Eropean-Americans. It just seems hypocritical.

I do have a serious quetion 'though. As a 2nd generation European-American, what would take for me to get deported? It would be an interesting form of protest to get shipped to some country I've never been to. Many DACA kids have no real connection to the country they might get shipped to either. Maybe a whole bunch of us could get "a free one-way plane ticket to return to the country you want" as Ann Coulter put it.

Cody Smith

2018-01-20 11:55 GMT-07:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.facebook.com/gondwana.collection.namibia/videos/2272449069447736/

2018-01-14 17:06 GMT-05:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

< Many DACA kids have no real connection to the country they might get shipped to either. Maybe a whole bunch of us could get "a free one-way plane ticket to return to the country you want" as Ann Coulter put it. >

With Amazon and Azure servers all over the world, and high speed networking and teleconferencing becoming ubiquitous, I wonder if there will soon come a day when there are few advantages to being in North America, Europe, or Asia? Living in major U.S. cities is a pain with the cost of real estate and the constant traffic problems. I don't need to be motivated by a manager to do my work -- really their presence just reduces my productivity. On the other extreme are outposts like Los Alamos where there is really way too little alternative economic activity.

Still, if I look at jobs at a big company like Microsoft, there are more interesting (and high paying) jobs in a city like Seattle compared to Mexico City. Maybe if enough of us take Coulter's advice the U.S. wil become the protectionist sh*thole -- the last resort for the underskilled.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of cody dooderson <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 9:22:06 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Cody Smith

2018-01-20 11:55 GMT-07:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.facebook.com/gondwana.collection.namibia/videos/2272449069447736/

2018-01-14 17:06 GMT-05:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

I grew up on California but I can't move there in retirement because I'm not willing to pay $1 million for a 2 BR 1 bath house. Now, if Amazon locates it's HQ2 in Pittsburgh I won't be able to move back there either. Fortunately I like New Mexico.

Frank

----
Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Jan 22, 2018 10:47 AM, "Marcus Daniels" <[hidden email]> wrote:

< Many DACA kids have no real connection to the country they might get shipped to either. Maybe a whole bunch of us could get "a free one-way plane ticket to return to the country you want" as Ann Coulter put it. >

With Amazon and Azure servers all over the world, and high speed networking and teleconferencing becoming ubiquitous, I wonder if there will soon come a day when there are few advantages to being in North America, Europe, or Asia? Living in major U.S. cities is a pain with the cost of real estate and the constant traffic problems. I don't need to be motivated by a manager to do my work -- really their presence just reduces my productivity. On the other extreme are outposts like Los Alamos where there is really way too little alternative economic activity.

Still, if I look at jobs at a big company like Microsoft, there are more interesting (and high paying) jobs in a city like Seattle compared to Mexico City. Maybe if enough of us take Coulter's advice the U.S. wil become the protectionist sh*thole -- the last resort for the underskilled.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of cody dooderson <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 9:22:06 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Wikipdedia says that 86% of El Salvadorians have native American Heritage. How can anyone take arguments for their deportation seriously, when they are spewing from the mouths of first or second generation Eropean-Americans. It just seems hypocritical.
I do have a serious quetion 'though. As a 2nd generation European-American, what would take for me to get deported? It would be an interesting form of protest to get shipped to some country I've never been to. Many DACA kids have no real connection to the country they might get shipped to either. Maybe a whole bunch of us could get "a free one-way plane ticket to return to the country you want" as Ann Coulter put it.

Cody Smith

2018-01-20 11:55 GMT-07:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.facebook.com/gondwana.collection.namibia/videos/2272449069447736/

2018-01-14 17:06 GMT-05:00 Alfredo Covaleda Vélez <[hidden email]>:

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-eeuu-articulo-733048

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Yeah, but this raises the fundamental question. We're used to having "respect for persons" ... as if it's somehow imperative to think of humans as ends in and of themselves. As we go from hunter gatherer, through agricultural, through industrial, and informational population sizes to something more akin to a biofilm covering the surface of the planet, the question isn't about what you, as a single cell "like". The question is one of finding a place where we can exploit you to the fullest extent.

Are you really that useful to _us_ (not you) living in New Mexico? Or could we squeeze a little more RoI from you if you lived in CA or Pittsburgh?

I'm not being completely facetious, here. For concreteness, we were at a dinner party a month or so ago and one of us asked "What do you want to do when you retire?" (Of course, I'll never retire ... So there's only one right answer: "Mu". ... But I played along, anyway.) Everyone at the table, constituted by relatively well-off white people with white collar jobs, said "Travel". Already being horrified by the very question, this horrified me even more, given the carbon footprint of jetting around the globe for no other reason than your narcissistic desire to "see the sights". So I tried to deliver my blow softly. I would simply like to be useful until I die. So, my answer is: Whatever my tribe finds useful. If that forces me to rent a hovel in a crime-ridden neighborhood of Pittsburgh -- or worse yet, Kermit, TX -- then that's probably what I'll do. Luckily, it all hinges on the definition of "tribe". 8^)

On 01/22/2018 09:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I grew up on California but I can't move there in retirement because I'm not willing to pay $1 million for a 2 BR 1 bath house. Now, if Amazon locates it's HQ2 in Pittsburgh I won't be able to move back there either. Fortunately I like New Mexico.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by cody dooderson

Cody -

As Vietnam and the related Conscription of young men approached (like a freight train) in my teens, I seriously considered self-exile from the US to avoid risking becoming yet another trained/habituated killer (or more likely but not mutually exclusively a PTSD-damaged Veteran for life).   I have friends who managed to serve during that time and become neither, but the risk WAS significant.

I was living on the border of MX and spoke passable street Spanish and felt I knew my way around in MX well enough to go there (first). I had enough sense of idealism to believe that if I "fled" this "service" I would be forfeiting my rights to citizenship and should not plan to return as so many of my peers did. I was honestly trying to face being a (voluntary) exile for life. It was a useful thing to consider, and by a small measure could be considered "forced exile" given the choices (conscription or incarceration).   They rescinded the requirement to sign up for "selective service" 4 months before I turned 18, and active conscription had not happened for at least a year by that time (1974), so I "dodged that bullet".   Many others here (a few years my senior) had even more acute experiences of this time, either serving in the military or using a variety of deferments (educational most often) to put off their conscription long enough for the war to end, I don't know if anyone here left the country or gave up their citizenship or accepted " conscientious objector " status

It was confrontational to ask myself "who would WANT me, if I rejected my country of origin?" I had no reason to believe any other country would grant me citizenship, and at best would "tolerate me", most likely by living under the radar as so many Central American immigrants do here today.   I did not feel that I "deserved" the welcome haven Canada offered, for example... I felt that while avoiding conscription was the "right" (only) thing for me to do, that I deserved to serve some kind of penance in the shadow of it.   I felt somewhat like a political refugee.

While *I* was born and raised entirely in the US Southwest (AZ/NM) I lived primarily among people who could claim significantly deeper roots than I.   Native Americans who could claim lineage back for millenia, Navajo/Hispanics whose legacy nominally begins in the 1400s/1500s in this area, and in some cases (like Frank Wimberly), Anglos whose grandparents were here. While my most recent European immigrant ancestor was a single great-grandmother from Poland (mid 1800s), my parents moved west from KY after WWII.

As an adult, I have looked mildly at trying to emigrate to other countries such as NZ/AU or Canada.   Even when I was relatively young (i.e. under 40) I did not feel that welcome there... on the surface of it, I felt that they considered *any* immigrant to be a potential burden. At 60, I have no illusions that any country (especially with good socialized medicine) would want me to come and burden them with my old age.   There are always considerations offered for people bringing acutely needed skills and/or big piles of cash with them.   Many third world countries DO offer permanent resident visas for "pensioners", people who bring their retirement savings/income to their countries and spend it there... and similarly most countries accept people who can demonstrate their resources and ability to start up a significant business there. Gary Schlitz can probably illuminate us on this a bit better from his vantage point in Ecuador.

We may have a few other such "expats" in the crowd, as well as a number of folks from outside the US. I believe *most* of our constituency here from outside the US is from Europe but at least a handful from elsewhere.   It feels like the EU "solved" many problems with Nationalism by adopting a common currency and lowering their borders to work and trade, but are now suffering some of the dark side of it in exchange.

As we continue to "automate" our labor, including many skills formerly held to require humans (will machine-learning/AI deprecate programmers in your lifetime?), it is more and more likely that many of us will have no obvious skills to offer and will rely on the collective to agree to provide access to goods and services as a "basic right".

Even if we are not "deported" from our own homelands, we may be "deprecated" if we do not work hard to shape our society around this new reality. The Industrial Revolution caused quite a stir, and folks like the Luddites saw the writing on the wall of losing their livelihoods ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite ).   Dystopian futures such as Soylent Green caution us against building a future where *most* humans are irrelevant and best considered a burden on the few who are not.

This alone is good enough reason (to me) to fight against the xenophobic, nationalistic forces afoot today who want to declare *some humans* to be too irrelevant to be more than a burden. Unfortunately we also need to help shape a vision for a society which acknowledges this shift in how humans can (and should or must?) participate in the larger experience...   it isn't enough to demand "our rights".   While I do agree with the realities/likelihood/undesirability of some of the dystopian images that Conservatives and Libertarians caste of "nanny states" and "welfare states", I don't agree with their implied "solutions"...   I believe that humans are evolved to need meaningful engagement in their lives, and the futures we are creating take that away from most if not all, either through poverty or through "bread and circuses".

I fear that most of those who support(ed?) Donald Trump's ascendency do not realize that the future(s) he offers are MUCH more dystopian for them and their progeny than that offered by the dreaded "Socialists" (Bernie) and "Bleeding Heart/Tax-Spend/Globalist Liberals" (Hillary) and "Crunchy Granola Greens" (Jill). If the "elitism" of being educated scares them, the "elitism" of controlling the *only* means of production/survival of controlling massive wealth should scare them much more.   In my opinion FWIW.

- Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by gepr

I'm willing to be useful but my age is a problem. Not for my capacity to be useful but because potential employers don't believe I can be. I still get calls from recruiters but lately I say, "It sounds like a good match but the hiring manager won't be interested because of my age."

Recently a recruiter said that I was getting in my own way and that the company (in Ann Arbor) that he represents isn't the least bit guilty of ageism. He said that they have lots of employees in their fifties. When I said I was in my seventies he seemed less motivated.

I'll just keep playing tennis and studying the mathematics of quantum field theory, I guess.

Frank

----
Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Jan 22, 2018 11:19 AM, "uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yeah, but this raises the fundamental question. We're used to having "respect for persons" ... as if it's somehow imperative to think of humans as ends in and of themselves. As we go from hunter gatherer, through agricultural, through industrial, and informational population sizes to something more akin to a biofilm covering the surface of the planet, the question isn't about what you, as a single cell "like". The question is one of finding a place where we can exploit you to the fullest extent.

Are you really that useful to _us_ (not you) living in New Mexico? Or could we squeeze a little more RoI from you if you lived in CA or Pittsburgh?

I'm not being completely facetious, here. For concreteness, we were at a dinner party a month or so ago and one of us asked "What do you want to do when you retire?" (Of course, I'll never retire ... So there's only one right answer: "Mu". ... But I played along, anyway.) Everyone at the table, constituted by relatively well-off white people with white collar jobs, said "Travel". Already being horrified by the very question, this horrified me even more, given the carbon footprint of jetting around the globe for no other reason than your narcissistic desire to "see the sights". So I tried to deliver my blow softly. I would simply like to be useful until I die. So, my answer is: Whatever my tribe finds useful. If that forces me to rent a hovel in a crime-ridden neighborhood of Pittsburgh -- or worse yet, Kermit, TX -- then that's probably what I'll do. Luckily, it all hinges on the definition of "tribe". 8^)

On 01/22/2018 09:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I grew up on California but I can't move there in retirement because I'm not willing to pay $1 million for a 2 BR 1 bath house. Now, if Amazon locates it's HQ2 in Pittsburgh I won't be able to move back there either. Fortunately I like New Mexico.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

I think most of us are entrained by the concept that one derives their identity from their *job*.

But if we give it a fair bit of thought, it's insidious. To ham-handedly lob at Stanley again, it's part of the myth of the objective. Corporations definitely have charters, mission statements, for- or non-profit objectives, etc. So, it seems trivial to lump them into part of the problem, not the solution. But nation states? It's unclear to me what their purpose is (perhaps should be capitalized and pluralized: Purposes are). Beyond that, to what extent *can* we synthesize a collective purpose from the purposes of its parts? And to what extent can/should we design collectives as forcing structures so that all their parts "line up"?

Opinions of the Dreamers and immigration, as a whole, seem categorizable according to opinions of how/when/whether collectives cohere.

The point is also on-topic for the Women's March, perhaps peripherally to #MeToo, though, and more towards pay inequality. Being useful to one's tribe has absolutely nothing to do with what you think they want/need, job recruiters, or anything of the sort. Keeping a house (or mowing the lawn at the local church ... or any number of very useful, often unrecognized contributions) are at least as useful as what we normally call "skills". In fact, the very word "skill" is the fallacy of begging the question.

And going back to my comment to Frank, in the same way those around us often *know* us better than we know ourselves, it's largely irrelevant what you enjoy or *think* you're good at. It's probably more useful to allow others to tell you what you should be doing. (Pick up those damned socks!) But more importantly, any *singular* assessment of need/skill/etc. will be false.

What we need are estimators of collective parameters (to which our libertarian/individualist/capitalist/masculine values make us allergic).

On 01/22/2018 10:32 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> It was confrontational to ask myself "who would WANT me, if I rejected my country of origin?"
> ...
> Even if we are not "deported" from our own homelands, we may be "deprecated" if we do not work hard to shape our society around this new reality.

On 01/22/2018 10:32 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I'm willing to be useful but my age is a problem. Not for my capacity to be useful but because potential employers don't believe I can be. I still get calls from recruiters but lately I say, "It sounds like a good match but the hiring manager won't be interested because of my age."

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen writes:

< So, my answer is: Whatever my tribe finds useful. If that forces me to rent a hovel in a crime-ridden neighborhood of Pittsburgh -- or worse yet, Kermit, TX -- then that's probably what I'll do. Luckily, it all hinges on the definition of "tribe". >

Is a company a tribe? Is a (e.g. married) couple a tribe? Is a political party a tribe? Are anonymous contributing members of a non-profit organization a tribe? Is any group of people that orient around some small but similar set of features is a tribe? Is a group less tribal as the features advanced by any member is overlaps relatively little with other members? What if the relative overlap of features is small, but the absolute amount is larger than another group with higher relative overlap? Is tribalism just the preoccupation with the group over the purpose for the group? When people say everyone is tribal (which I guess includes me), I feel insulted! I want a way out of this madness.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 11:18:48 AM
To: FriAM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by gepr

< Keeping a house (or mowing the lawn at the local church ... or any number of very useful, often unrecognized contributions) are at least as useful as what we normally call "skills". >

Take, for example, not mowing your own lawn. Some of your neighbors may want to see the neighborhood being manicured to certain standards, but for the sake of argument this hypothetical community has no formal rules -- the lots are just independent.

So some of the neighbors that have these weird expectations may band together to attempt to pressure you into mowing and other things. Perhaps you are an adherent of a Plants Rights organization, and don't want to torture natural processes with high RPM rotors. Heck, you had no idea that people would do such things! Now you have become of a `member' of this grass-torturing-tribe. Why should you want to do anything `useful' for this tribe?

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 12:26:15 PM
To: FriAM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

Friam Info Page - Redfish

redfish.com

FRIAM Group is an emergent organization of Complexity researchers and software developers in Santa Fe, New Mexico interested in Applied Complexity, Artificial Life ...

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

FRIAM: The Comic Edition

friam-comic.blogspot.com

or Dave "Wade right in"? (also seen "Give em enuff Rope Ropella", "Marcus Snarkus", "Smithereens" and "Nick 'Eyebrows' Thompson" )

gepr

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Obviously, the word is susceptible to over-simplification. I tend to take it as a complex construct with layers of scoping. And it's not even orthogonally based. E.g. I'd suggest that your innermost tribal scope is your variety of intra-personal needs and motives. Your math homunculus might disagree a *lot* with your poetry homunculus. Together, they are useful to each other. However, your poetry homunculus may break the intra-personal scope and be more tightly coupled with, say, the other members of your poetry circle than it is with your math homunculus.

The same is true of inter-personal scopes. E.g. I'm fairly loyal to Renee'. But my nerd herd will usually win in any conflict with her family. I'm *very* unlikely to move back to Texas because all the members of my nerd herd are elsewhere, here, Seattle, New Mexico, California, Virginia, Sweden, Ireland, Canada!, etc.

Beware anyone who tries to over-simplify "tribe". But this is mostly a rarefied point. The larger obstacle, before anyone's ready to have the complexity of tribe conversation, is to think of oneself as a *tool*, a means to an end, not an end in yourself. I've always been confused by the "tool" insult, not least of why because they're one of my favorite bands. 8^) I've always been a tool; and I'm proud of it. I fear the day I'll no longer be a tool ... even a dull one. There's nothing sadder than that old, broken, wooden-handled hammer, that sits there unused in the garage.

On 01/22/2018 11:26 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Is a company a tribe? Is a (e.g. married) couple a tribe? Is a political party a tribe? Are anonymous contributing members of a non-profit organization a tribe? Is any group of people that orient around some small but similar set of features is a tribe? Is a group less tribal as the features advanced by any member is overlaps relatively little with other members? What if the relative overlap of features is small, but the absolute amount is larger than another group with higher relative overlap? Is tribalism just the preoccupation with the group over the purpose for the group? When people say everyone is tribal (which I guess includes me), I feel insulted! I want a way out of this madness.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Ha! We don't need to go to such rhetorical extremes! I *am* a member of the Dandelion Lovers tribe. But not because I like the overly bitter leaves in my salad. I'm a reluctant member of the DL because it's a fantastic bittering herb for beer ... and it's infinitely cheaper than hops ... because it's free and grows in the yard ... if you don't mow, anyway. Finish off the boil with some hops and toss some in later and your beer snob tribe will never know the difference.

On 01/22/2018 11:51 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> So some of the neighbors that have these weird expectations may band together to attempt to pressure you into mowing and other things. Perhaps you are an adherent of a Plants Rights organization, and don't want to torture natural processes with high RPM rotors. Heck, you had no idea that people would do such things! Now you have become of a `member' of this grass-torturing-tribe. Why should you want to do anything `useful' for this tribe?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

merging with the mob (was Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.)

In reply to this post by gepr

There's a lot of that I could respond to. But I'll try to stay focused. I would not argue for pan-consciousness, at least not for this argument. It's a fine idea. But it's not necessary for this conversation. I'm arguing that consciousness has types and scope. By "type", I mean something fuzzy, where one type could actually be another (proximal) type, but that very distant types are distinguishable. And by scope, I mean something like domains and co-domains.

So, I think we can distinguish between being barely conscious of, say, standing on one leg in the shower, cleaning between our toes *while* thinking about, say, changing the oil in the car. The awareness that you're cleaning your toes is (somehow) different from being aware of your car (1000 feet away) and the algorithm for changing the oil. That implies that consciousness (or awareness if you'd like to distinguish) has types.

Further, the scope of the awareness for toe-cleaning is distinguishable from the scope of the awareness for changing oil. E.g. they can both be dangerous... you can slip in the shower or you can be crushed under your car. But the consequences and extent to which you take precautions against those dangers is distinguishable.

The same is true with being aware of one's "agency" or "capability for causal action". E.g. if I wake up in the middle of the night all tied up in my sheets, I'm never wholly ignorant of how that situation came to be. I either slept restlessly and tossed a lot *or* I was having an active dream. The *type* of that self-awareness, that "I" that caused my body to be tied up in those sheets is distinguishable. So distinguishable, that there are actually 2 I's, the one that was running from monsters vs. the one that simply couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep well.

When you ask your "Oh ho! Now I've got you!", sophist question of *who* is convincing or being convinced if there's no me, nor you, you are *explicitly* denying the above types and scopes. You're suggesting there is a well-defined sense of self in the first place and that denying that somehow violates some law of the excluded middle or somesuch. That's not very useful. What is useful, though, is taking seriously the suggestion that we are huge complicated systems that wander in and out of consciousness, whose attention waxes and wanes, and wanders from object to object, sometimes in a loopy way so that the subject becomes the object. Etc.

*That's* what I'm suggesting. I think we ought to give ourselves over to our "tribes" in much the same way we give ourselves over to, say, eating pizza because our body likes high-glycemic food, every once in awhile. Every so often, it just feels good to be part of the *mob*. To quote Slayer:

Close your eyes
And forget your name
Step outside yourself
And let your thoughts drain
As you go insane, insane

On 01/22/2018 03:58 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> How in the world can the "indviduated self" I call YOU or "Glen" (or
> uǝlƃ ☣ for that matter) convince the individuated self/*me* that
> signifies identity here as sasmyth or Steven A. Smith if those
> individuated selves don't exist or exist merely as an illusion... And
> then one (if not me/I/self) must ask just *who* or *what* holds this
> illusion? Is your model that there is a pan-consciousness which is
> *somewhat* compartmentalized into myriad illusory selves, of which the
> "you" and the "me" in this discussion are merely degenerate examples
> thereof?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: merging with the mob (was Re: Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.)

Glen writes:

< I think we ought to give ourselves over to our "tribes" in much the same way we give ourselves over to, say, eating pizza because our body likes high-glycemic food, every once in awhile. Every so often, it just feels good to be part of the *mob*. >

The kind of people that will accept your service aren’t worthy of it, and often don’t even know what to do with it.

Marcus

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: merging with the mob

On 01/22/2018 05:17 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The kind of people that will accept your service aren’t worthy of it, and often don’t even know what to do with it.

Yeah, maybe. But to be clear, I'm not suggesting a complete and continuous abdication of agency, only a little more (and more frequent) embedding into the surrounding tissue. The fractures we're seeing in society, I think, are caused by an artificial discretization between individuals and tribes. Millionaires discretize themselves from minimum wage workers. Retired people discretize themselves from the working class. Cops discretize themselves from the populace they police. Etc. If people would, more often, set aside their (mostly illusory anyway) agency and focus on accepting a Pawn role in others' games, we'd see fewer fractures.

No doubt it's generational. The septua- and octo-genarians are mostly stuck in their ways. Sad as it is to say, death is the most radical change they'll experience from here on out, despite the technological advances we've made in change inducers like nootropics, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise, etc. 20 or so years ago, I would have lumped the 60 year olds in there, too. Perhaps only because I'm approaching that, am I unwilling to make the same assertion about that age frame. 8^)

It seems increasingly clear that our young people accept and constitute a cultural fabric, a tissue, to a continuously increasing extent. While it's fair that a 70 year old would claim they "pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps" (even though they did not), it's safe to say that's less and less true as population density grows. Isolatory ontogeny requires lots of land area and a lack of nesting infrastructure like cities, roads, power grids, internet, etc. Such claims to "self-making" are directly proportional to age.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: merging with the mob

< The fractures we're seeing in society, I think, are caused by an artificial discretization between individuals and tribes. Millionaires discretize themselves from minimum wage workers. Retired people discretize themselves from the working class. Cops discretize themselves from the populace they police. Etc. If people would, more often, set aside their (mostly illusory anyway) agency and focus on accepting a Pawn role in others' games, we'd see fewer fractures. >

This may be true, but for me it is not about agency or identity. My `tribe’, if you insist on that word, is anonymous and (I believe, at least) pursues group goals not individual goals. I don’t even know a Dreamer, but if there is a government shutdown in order to secure their place in this country, that’s fine with me. It seems to me what you advocate is an exercise in incrementalism and tolerance of intolerance. You’ll adapt to local rules because the counterparty feels the need to have them. Maybe they just shouldn’t be like that in the first place. Maybe what is _needed_ is a good strong amplification of conflict to bring things into focus?

Marcus

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

gepr

Re: merging with the mob

On 01/23/2018 08:32 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> This may be true, but for me it is not about agency or identity. My `tribe’, if you insist on that word, is anonymous and (I believe, at least) pursues group goals not individual goals. I don’t even know a Dreamer, but if there is a government shutdown in order to secure their place in this country, that’s fine with me. It seems to me what you advocate is an exercise in incrementalism and tolerance of intolerance. You’ll adapt to local rules because the counterparty feels the need to have them. Maybe they just shouldn’t be like that in the first place. Maybe what is _needed_ is a good strong amplification of conflict to bring things into focus?

Well, I'm not omniscient. So, yeah, maybe. I adopt that (Devil's Advocate) argument fairly often: that Trump is a) a natural outcome of our reality TV, 15 minutes of fame, culture and that b) we *needed* to elect a troll like Trump to the most powerful position in the country. We needed to do it to test the limits of our progression to exalting celebrity, the need for drama in high offices. It's one thing to go on and on about the Kardashians. But they're useless people. We need drama amongst the ranks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mitch McConnell, and the Director of the FBI! That's the only way political science will ever infiltrate the minds of our celebrity obsessed, phone poking, children.

But, in the end, I reject that argument. That need for celebrity, that need for drama, or "strong amplification of conflict to bring things into focus" is the problem, not the solution. The solution is geeks like Hillary who are capable of not only ignoring the drama, but rolling up her sleeves and working in spite of it. And for me to believe such an argument is kinda sad, since I thrive on confrontation. 8^(

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen