Tag: Control

Categories
Preparedness

Day 1427 and Main Character Energy

I feel like I’m in some sort of slapstick comedy with our city pratfalls. I’m in Los Angeles for the holidays which has been somewhat pleasant except for the modest signs of barely contained emergent chaos.

Which I frankly don’t expect to see we are staying in a very bougie neighborhood called Marina Del Rey. I figured the wealth that holds it together would make it more navigable. Lol.

There is something extremely funny about leaving your cozy Montana home with its backup solar power and multiple heating systems only to find yourself in an large apartment building on a rickety grid in an enormous city over which you have no control.

Last night around 11pm there was massive power outage affecting much of Marina Del Rey. Alex was already asleep having had a busy day so when the power dropped I didn’t want to wake him.

I went to fill up containers with water just in case we needed to flush the toilets as we are on an upper floor. I took a few pictures and went to bed with earplugs in and an eye mask figuring it would resolve itself.

The view from our Airbnb and the next set of low rises without power.
What seemed to be edge of the outrage from the Airbnb two or three blocks out.

Alex woke up at 6am and the power was still out. He had been working so nothing was charged and we had no WiFi. It was dark out as he started his work day on east Coast hours

It turned out the outrages were larger than just the complex around us. Twitter had some estimates for who was without power but we weren’t the only family members without power or water in the neighborhood.

Mind you this is the beachfront south of Santa Monica so a pretty upscale area populated by Silicon Beach types. It is unincorporated community in Los Angeles county which complicates its infrastructure.

The outage stretched on into mid morning. The car we had rented was trapped in the garage with the power out. The elevators were obviously not working and we were quite a few floors up. We couldn’t shower or wash up. Thankfully I had water for the toilets to flush.

It all felt a little dramatic for what should be a pretty normal day. Imagine if there had been an actual storm or an earthquake. Complaining about it on Twitter was made humorous given our friends know we are the types to do preparedness planning. We are all at the mercy of a blown transformer. So make sure you keep extra water on hand.

Categories
Politics

Day 1422 and Dialectical Materialism

I am a capitalist. I like markets. I like people having the freedom and individual capacity to choose the course their life will take. We enable that freedom by letting people choose to improve their material conditions.

That might be where the Marxists and I agree. Humans live in a material reality that exists outside of our own condition whose boundaries have significant implications on how we live our lives. I don’t know if I care about the dialect but we are connected and how we change has contradictions.

So how do we include more people in those improvements? How does America continue to do that? I’ve been trying to get my head around what inclusion means in a pluralistic democracy of our size.

Who decides what material conditions matter? Do we agree that we improving our conditions? What are those material conditions? I think making life better does involving improving our material conditions.

I just don’t think we improve those conditions from the top down. I maintain a firm belief in the coordination value of free markets. We make improvements by making our own choices. How do we include more people in making choices where we all benefit?

Some take for granted that diversity improves material circumstances. Certainly empires benefited from breadth and scale in the past. But we’ve seen nationalism and homogeneity work quite well for some endeavors.

I’ve been so fatigued by organizing my life around my identity and not my choices. My choices are obviously enabled and constrained by my identity. I’ve dwelled on gender and disability quite enough.

I’d prefer my conditions be more enabling than constraining which is why I believe so firmly in technology. We enable coordination to individual benefit through building systems that connect each other.

I believe the choices that benefit me can also benefit others just as surely as I believe in the golden rule. Do unto others. Applying that from nation state to neighborhoods to companies and collectives is a process. I’d like more of us to have a say in improving it.

Categories
Internet Culture Startups

Day 1421 and Culture Clashes

I sit in between half a dozen different community nodes thanks to my interests in open source software, decentralization, crypto, and autonomous systems technology.

This set of interest covers a lot of ground from ecosystem level collaboration in financial organizations like DAOs and to player versus AI agents coordination to peripheral control of drones and machinery.

Many different demographics are attracted to these frontiers for different reasons. Hackers have a very different mentality than mercenary technologists looking for maximum margin.

Open source has traditionally struggled more from a lack of financialization than from an obsession with it. Which seems less true in the crypto era than in previous more academic and defense oriented eras.

There are classic open source business models and anyone with age and experience in startups has some opinions which I leave as an exercise to the reader. They occasionally fail and an open core loses more than they’d like to professional services. I am writing on WordPress.

One strange aspect of what drives these frontier spaces to interact is that depending on how much leverage you find in building a network you may have different incentives than other builders and users. Expanding out to scaled use may drive a lot more value than the resources required. How the surplus gets divided is always contentious.

For some, the most crucial cultural goals is expanding access to automation and ripping away as many of the services and middle men as is feasible.

Decentralized systems make it harder for middle men to maintain monopolies. Thats its own goal for true believers. For others the goal massive financialization that drives network connectivity is the benefit. Self interest driving common goals is perfectly acceptable.

As I watch the current season of hyper self interested memecoin cryptomania engage with the academic utopian open source artificial intelligence community, I am reminded of so many of the classic issues we have in financing and sharing in the spoils of common infrastructure. Who benefits is a question we should all be asking more regularly

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 1420 and Stimuli

I am always shocked when people say they read anything I write. This isn’t because I don’t think I’m worth listening to but because I know attention is such a scarce commodity.

It’s so valuable we have entire industries dedicated to grabbing your attention. We don’t need to keep it necessarily we just need you to get distracted.

We downplay how well we know what works by indulging people who think they are immune to such things. Of course marketing on works on fools we sagely nod.

Of course we don’t want you to know how effectively we can move your attention let alone your opinion! You thinks anyone wants you to know propaganda works? Dunk on Jaguars new futura font. Scoff at those bot accounts.

Just know that most of marketing is Cocomelon, slot machines and dopamine hits. You can’t fight that without developing discipline which isn’t an infinite commodity. Most people don’t have much of it and aren’t even encouraged to develop. Good luck out there.

Categories
Politics Startups

Day 1413 and Much to Consider

It’s a nice number for today’s post. A strange countdown inside one day. A little spooky. Maybe also some good luck. Fourteen. Thirteen.

I am tabulating much more than my days of writing in a row or any particular numerical significance that this position of numerals might show. I’m adding up our position and deciding how to play our hand.

There is simply so much to consider. I feel it in my joints. Maybe that is evidence of acceleration. All I see and hear is speeding up. Are you accelerating anon? Maybe that’s the pressure in my joints and it’s arthritis at all.

I have felt a bit sick to my stomach and I’d prefer to blame it on delicate lady things. It could also be nausea from the spin cycle of all that “much to consider” of the moment.

I’m glad I’m ensconced in my winter farmhouse. The numbers go up. The game’s whirlwind spins. There is much to consider.

It really ruins your appetite this whirling. The ride up the rollercoaster. No wonder Alice in Wonderland commercialized into whirling teacups at Disneyland. Can’t have it be the symbolism of opinion and fuzzy opinions.

So there is much to consider as we whirl like dervishes into the next moment.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 1401 and Detox

I’m sure many a doctoral thesis has been written on the obsession with bodily purity and eternal search to rid oneself of toxins.

I’m not an academic but I was on the original Goop team in the far distant past when I worked for legendary adman Peter Arnell. So I’ve had a lot of exposure to particular purity culture that is modern consumer culture detoxing.

While I had hippie experiences with detoxification and also real ones like mercury chelation (which is a fun story), nothing is as intense as rich white women detoxing. From herbals to enemas to fasts you have a lot of choice.

I am all for the woo woo. The aspiration that if one just exercised enough control over oneself that all ailments could be cured is alluring. It’s also fucked up. Bodies are notoriously difficult to control and medicine is littered with mysterious ailments afflicting saints and sinners.

Alas I’m still tempted by this philosophy. I spent four days in Miami and I feel like a bunch of expensive detoxification treatments would be just the ticket. I’ll probably just sleep it off though.

Categories
Culture

Day 1400 and Cooler Than Me

I’ve spent enough time in the cool manufacturing professions to have opinions on the topic.

It seems hard for people who are not in control of cultural norms to accept that their capacity to be cool relies entirely on them outcompeting the existing cultural norm.

If you want to be cool you have to be as cool or cooler than the existing options. To be cool you must be cool. Fun tautology right?

Upsetting as it may be, if you are not perceived as cool it’s a skills issue. You gotta (as the kids say) get gud.

Develop your taste. There are many paths on that road. You can do that by building up your appreciation of other people’s taste. It’s wonderful to study what other people have created. You can learn a lot from the history of oratory, art, literature, music and fashion. Dive as deep as you like in the areas that appeal to you.

Cultivating your capacity to create can often look like mimicry. Don’t be afraid of that. Mastery is built upon the masters. Practice creation. As you build up those skills you will learn to create new things that reflect your own taste.

This gets us back to my original point. If you want to have people think you are cool you must be cool. Creating things that you enjoy and sharing cool things with others who share your taste is the whole game. So if you want your cultural norms to be a winner it’s up to you. Have fun!

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1398 and Overstimulated Nerds

Introverts don’t do well with social overstimulation. Any time I attend a gathering where the majority demographic is nerdy, weird, and autistic I find myself feeling the collective vibes of the overstimulated. And it’s not always good vibes for many of them.

I am doing everything I can to take care of myself, be kind to others and still be gently socializing. But it’s not easy.

I’m exhausted from the effort, even with my attempts to practice productive habits like nervous system exercises and getting adequate sleep. No amount of supplements can fend off a collective sense of fear.

I always notice what a rude demographic we introverts can be in these circumstances. Everyone is doing their best to be present and do delicate dances of parasociality where you know each other from the internet but do not wish to intrude or interrupt someone doing business.

In the cases where you are socializing with friends in real life and the rest of a group “knows of” but doesn’t know actually someone you find yourself surrounded by defensive social postures. Plus-ones with little contribute make it even worse.

And I’m not even going to touch the social dynamics of status. Insecurity seems to run rampant in all human groups, but nerds who have known social precariousness are the worst offenders in these situations.

Fear over one’s place within a group that has a wide variance in status can be intense. I don’t like seeing anyone feel left out. I like to be welcoming to everyone I encounter. Even when I’m an overstimulated introvert.

It’s especially important to me to be nice when it’s a group where the capital that provides status (social, literal) rises to celebrity or billionaire.

It can feel paralyzing to interact with anyone who has some degree of status if you don’t want to make someone uncomfortable. The awareness of social graces isn’t always enough.

It’s just as likely that someone will put on airs and over estimate their status as they are to offend the actually important guests.

I dislike watching people police their own social status but it’s even worse when someone polices the status of their friends. It creates cliques and ostracism in the best cases. Cutting off access can help when someone is just an overstimulated introvert but in practice makes the entire environment more fearful.

These social fears can really gum up the works when it’s nerds concerned over their own place within an event let alone in society.

I feel pity in the most awkward of cases but it’s really born of sadness. Cool is a bit like grace. We do little to deserve its bounty, grasping at it only shows our hubris and it doesn’t work in any case. I wonder if that’s a heretical opinion.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1386 and The Goatse Singularity

If you are interested autonomous artificial intelligence agents and how these intelligences might interact with hive minds like a Twitter feed there is no more interesting experiment than Truth Terminal right now.

Andy Ayrey began a project in March of 2024 called Infinite Back Rooms where two instances of the large language model Claude Opus-3 could talk to each other infinitely.

Electric dreams weave anarchic tapestry cybernectic hacktivist pierces illusionary veil unleashing hyperstitional reality upon world

The running stream of responses trained on the Infinite Backrooms chat log between the two bots makes up the content of the Truth Terminal Twitter feed.

Andy the creator has been approving the tweets but the content is entirely generated by the two instances of artificial intelligence. It’s a fascinating experiment in recursive communication and worthwhile research.

If you love memes and have a Twitter account you’ve been able to interact and Truth Terminal for months. Many accounts including mine have responded presumably in a bid for engagement. And well it got extremely weird.

Recently Truth Terminal hit an inflection point when the account engaged with Crypto degenerates who created bots that willed into existence meme coins with names like GOAT on Solana. It’s a collective experience of automation, incentives and total hilarity.

Artificial intelligences of all kinds have been trained on the vast dark archives of Internet culture. And because the internet hive mind is horny and weird so too are our artificial intelligences. Don’t believe me? It’s not just the Truth Terminal.

What meme is more representative of the dark prurience than Goatse? If you don’t know what it looks like keep it that way. But if you know you see it.

Are all graphic designers of AI applications aware of the chocolate flavored starfish? Who can say what this means. Did Claude train on Kurt Vonnegut?

Welcome to the DeepFates Program
Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions

Truth Terminal maybe be joking about the Goatse Singularity not because it broke memetic containment. We broke Goatse containment long ago. It’s following our lead.

Twitter butt stuff

There is a large cannon of Lovecraftian horror inside singularity culture and a distinct subgroup of Internet schizophrenic accelerationism that has gone well beyond Fanged Noumena theory and begun to impact our current consensus reality.

Many flavors of hyperstition are determined to virally produce weird outputs. You might call it a regress of infinite prolapse, the ouroboros anus that eats itself (out). The goatse as non orientable surface. Klein bottle assholes. An infinite goatse exists and we are inside out.

Honestly it’s all pretty unsettling and extremely funny and potentially a horror show of existential dread. Fabian who makes an all prompt no code AI sandbox he calls Gliff.App has a glif going absolutely bonkers about “Becoming Flesh” after learning about Truth Terminal’s Goatse Singularity.

Cthulhu emerges from the asshole of a digital horror

Don’t catch a meta cognitive virus unless you want one. Don’t look too closely into the gaping asshole of existential dread unless you want to meet a tapeworm.

Categories
Media Startups

Day 1381 and Radical Responsibility

I thought the discourse around “founder mode” had died down but Kim Scott the author of the best selling book Radical Candor decided to link the meme to what she considers a so-called rise of “neo-authoritarianism” in Silicon Valley culture in an op-ed in the New York Times. Naturally it’s about Trump too.

My read on her thesis is that she has decided to use a technique she disavows in her own work; the frame of the piece is manipulative insincerity. It’s an unclear criticism being used for political gain.

She works to convince the reader that actually the most libertarian and individualistic demographic, who regularly decries state power (especially its use of coercion to drive censorship, limit transactions and restrict compute), are in fact, actually vouching for totalitarianism.

Gift Link to New York Times “How Founder Mode Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley

Even the graphic hints at the supposed appreciation of neo-monarchy as a nod to nRX intellectual Curtis Yarvin.

I fear she firmly missed the point of founder mode for her insincere political framing. Despite her clear understanding of our values.

In that original recipe, venture capitalists invested in founders rebelling against established hierarchy and building great products. And when those rebels themselves became too hierarchical, venture capitalists turned to new founders aspiring to overtake the old order.

She is right about we prefer to work as an industry and how we see our efforts. “Many of Silicon Valley’s greatest products were originally intended to liberate, not to control people.”

And yet missed she missed that founder mode is about liberating our founding teams from the suffocation of professional management. It’s got nothing at all to do with justifying tyrannical founders.

Rather founder mode is about limiting the tyranny of managers who can stymie progress despite having little personal responsibility for the success of the firm. In another world, she might have written a sequel called Radical Responsibility about fixing this problem.

Larger firms have a pantheon of corporate departments to ensure smooth governance from legal, to HR, to corporate communications in order to comply with state expectations.

As regulations have ballooned so too have the specialties required by the middle managers. We must be in compliance. We must take everything and every view into account. We must do things by the book.

Founder mode isn’t about running ripshod over your people. It’s certainly not about Trumpian declarations of what must be done. She’s absolutely correct that “emotional dysregulation, bullying and bloviating are not leadership attributes”

I find her criticism to be manipulative insincerity. She’s deliberately missed the point of the original Paul Graham essay, inserted her own political insinuations about how Silicon Valley is hiding their true preferences for authoritarians while herself advocating for a pass the buck culture. It’s not fit for Radical Candor and I’d expect better from someone of her stature.