Saturday, August 31, 2019

The latest get rich quick scheme

My how times have changed.


Repugnantans: The Assault Party

Good one Donny Deutsch. And he says to market the Dems as The Protection Party. That goes along with effective framing per Lakoff.

Beth Hart - Bad Woman Blues

She's soooooooooooo bad. For one of her other flavors, also check out War in My Mind.

Buy union made for labor day cookouts

From the AFL-CIO:


Sophie Lloyd - Bulletproof Revolver

Here's the latest update to her original song.

The relational tensegrity of hier(an)archical synplexity

Continuing this post, even the prefix meta in the context of metamodernism (MM) means above and beyond, like into the wild blue yonder. It's a subject that analyzes another subject from a higher, more abstract level, transcending it. It's another version of the transcend and include metaphor, subsuming its lower subject within its matrix, lording over it from above. It's very consistent with the notions above about a savior from on high.

Then there's the suffix ism meaning a doctrine, theory or system. MM is a system that is beyond and above the modern system, including but transcending it. So I'm wondering if we are really to go to the metaphorical next level, so to speak, if we really need to step outside of these frames of doctrines that save us from above and beyond like the deus ex machina, itself a worldview holdover from both the religious and modern worldviews? Even the MM (and integral) buzzwords hierarchy and complexity mean rule from an abstract above and beyond.

It's one reason I prefer the prefix syn, meaning with or together, and its corollary syntegral, more akin with the collaborative commons. It shows how together we commoners enact a way of thinking, being and doing without need of metaisms. It too is a metanarrative in the sense of an overall, cohering story, but one that synscends, blends, braids its various elements, creating a different sort of part/whole inter(en)action, a new and hybrid flavor, one that comes from our shared commons instead of a savior elite above and beyond us. The era of the deus ex machina is over. It's time for new expressions compatible with the emerging story. The era of hier(an)archical synplexity has arrived. And it lives in the relational tensegrity between its twin stars Syn City and Multipli City.

Friday, August 30, 2019

Lindsey Stirling - Artemis

Play on Goddess.

AOC on Boxer's corporate lobbying

Prior to the bookmark in the video below, The Rational National sets it up by noting that former Senator Boxer is lobbying for Lyft, which is opposed to a new Bill requiring gig companies to classify their workers as employees. Boxer has an ad that at best misrepresents the situation in defense of Lyft but seems more like an outright, intentional lie. The video starts with AOC's Tweet, noting that former representatives should not move on to corporate lobbying jobs because it is "an abuse of power and a stain on public service." No wonder corporate Dems hate her and we the people love her.

Pox's Cavuto to Dump: We don't work for you

Love it. Cavuto takes Dump to task for not fawning over him like his mindless followers, including some of Pox's very own commentators. He fact checks a number of times Dump lied and/or was outright wrong, rightfully calling out Dump as the creator of fake news. Now that at least some at Pox are causing Dump to retaliate, perhaps Dump's threat of finding a different news outlet will lead him to finally creating his own State propaganda fake news source. It's the only way he can control those unruly news-people that won't suck on his tiny, misshapen mushroom.

Metamodernism: the next metanarrative?

Here's an interview with a couple of artists involved in the upcoming Metamodern Art Festival in Kiev. A common theme about the definition of metamodernism is a return to an overall meta-narrative, that is, a story that provides meaning to all aspects of life, that grounds our beliefs in something beyond our individual selves. They also note that in times of cultural stress we are more likely to see visions of helpers from some beyond, like angels and fairies in times past, and now in a more technological society UFOs. So I'm wondering if this attraction to metamodernism's own meta-narrative is exactly one of those beyonds to/for which we are seeking aid in this troubled time? It's almost as if the system of metamodernism itself is the next deus ex machina.

Whereas something else Alexandra said seems a more likely candidate for the next metanarrative, the collaborative commons, which has no need of a beyond to save us, for it comes from we the people saving ourselves. She said:

"Since the revolution in 2014 normal people have become politically active and don’t rely on the government like they did before. Instead of waiting for the Government to come and fix things they are doing what they need for themselves, cooperating and collaborating without any command. They have realised that they have the power to create their own country. Before, it was kind of detached because everything was in the power of oligarchs and criminals. Now the situation is changing and although people realise that it won’t happen overnight they think that maybe we can achieve a better social and economic situation if we work for it. People are starting to feel like they are part of this grand narrative, part of history."

Metanarratives yes. A command and control one that must define itself as the next one saving us all, maybe not so much. It's the same theme as my "Do our models get in the way" post.

Meditation induces liberal political attitude

Jordan Peterson is in on this study. "Inducing a spiritual experience through a guided meditation exercise led both liberals and conservatives to endorse more liberal political attitudes." More:

"The researchers confirmed that religiousness was associated with political conservatism, while spirituality was associated with political liberalism. These associations were in turn due to the common values underlying these orientations: conservatism and religiousness both emphasize the importance of tradition, while liberalism and spirituality both emphasize the importance of equality and social harmony."

"Spiritual experiences seem to make people feel more of a connection with others. The boundaries we normally maintain between ourselves and the world tend to dissolve during spiritual experiences. These feelings of self-transcendence make it easier to recognize that we are all part of the same system, promoting an inclusive and egalitarian mindset."

Peterson maintains that both religion and spirituality are necessary, the former forming cohesive social bonding, the latter opening us to renewal and change. But what Peterson doesn't say is what is emphasized in the article itself: That meditation opens us to a wider, more inclusive equality and social harmony. And that traditional, fundamental religion remains fixated on only caring for those that are within its limited religious tradition. That mediation opened the religious to a wider embrace of social harmony is indicative of that key difference.

Schumer blacklisting progressive Senate candidates

This is some seriously sick shit. Schumer, through the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), is threatening consultants that if they work with a progressive candidate then they won't get any more business from the DSCC. This after the DSCC takes money from the oil and insurance industries, so that any candidate opposed to those industries are blacklisted. Sanders is right that the system is rigged, and on both sides. Hence we need to vote those doing the rigging out, including establishment Dems.

Extreme Party identity exhibits cognitive inflexibility

This study first asked for a self report on Party identification. Then it tested for cognitive flexibility. Those who most strongly supported either party were correlated with cognitive inflexibility. Which says nothing about what specific policies are better or worse than others.

Just using terms like left and right conflates and confuses that significant data point, as if policies intentionally framed as extreme left like Medicare For All or fair taxation are therefore inflexible, which is absolute nonsense. As Michael pointed out, just being strongly anti-fascist, or anti-pathological lying, could be lumped in with extreme left positions, again nonsense.


On the other hand, it is true that there are inflexible people in both Parties which tend to go along with the crowd no matter what. But again, that does not mean that both Parties are equally extreme, especially on policy. Yes, establishment Dems can be and are legitimately criticized by their progressive counterparts for their corporate teat sucking. But to portray the progressive wing of the Party as extreme, even by establishment Dems, is the extreme spin by those that wish to maintain the status quo. Now that is the inflexible position.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Bernie and Killer Mike

Mike has lived what Bernie talks about before he became a successful rapper. And Mike sees that situation every day in the neighborhoods. That's why he supports him, like we who are in the same situation should if we want better lives.

The middle

Good song, but not applicable to middle of the road Democrats.

No free lunch algorithm

Continuing the last post, from this article:

"A common graph mining task is community detection, which seeks an unsupervised decomposition of a network into groups based on statistical regularities in network connectivity. Although many such algorithms exist, community detection’s No Free Lunch theorem implies that no algorithm can be optimal across all inputs. [...] We find that (i) algorithms vary widely in the number and composition of communities they find, given the same input; (ii) algorithms can be clustered into distinct high-level groups based on similarities of their outputs on real-world networks; (iii) algorithmic differences induce wide variation in accuracy on link-based learning tasks; and, (iv) no algorithm is always the best at such tasks across all inputs."

Discrete-scale invariance deviates from power law

Continuing this post, power laws are a burr in my butt today. From this article:

"Many self-similar systems are scale invariant only in discrete steps. A blood vessel tends to branch into two smaller vessels, a fluid vortex into two or three smaller vortices, and the Sierpinski triangle is self-similar only by powers of two. These systems preserve relative proportions upon rescaling from one step to the next, but not upon arbitrary rescaling. This property is termed discrete-scale invariance or discrete renormalizability. It is a weaker condition than the continuous scale invariance underlying the Pareto distribution. Whereas strict scale invariance implies a power law and vice versa, discrete-scale invariance allows log-periodic modulations in the frequencies of observations that deviate from a pure power law such as Eq.(1). Such modulations are indeed observed in bronchial tube diameter, vortex ens-trophy, and financial asset prices."

Bernie dominates the Obama to Dump swing voters

We know that some people who voted for Obama, some of them twice, turned around and voted for Dump. And we need to win those voters back to beat Dump. In this demographic Bernie is much more likely to win back their votes than other Dem candidates based on the stats in the video below. Want to win in 2020? This is the demo that will do it and Bernie has the best chance.

The power of framing

Framing is a powerful tool that they've mastered, while progressives are lagging behind to their detriment.


Daheane: The Number Sense

Excerpt from the above book, pp. 242-45 are below. I'd say whether or not one believe in Platonic math, both it and formal math are abstract with a priori axioms divorced from concrete reality. The intuitionist  or constructivist math he notes below, while accepting our innate categories of thought, are not the same as the image schema and basic categories of cognitive linguistics (and in fact are not referenced). But it bases this similar idea on the relation of math to our embodiment.

"Twentieth-century mathematicians have been profoundly divided over this fundamental issue concerning the nature of mathematical objects. For some, traditionally labeled 'Platonists,' mathematical reality exists in an abstract plane, and its objects are as real as those of everyday life. [...] For an epistemologist, a neurobiologist, or a neuropsychologist, the Platonist position seems hard to defend—as unacceptable, in fact, as Cartesian dualism is as a scientific theory of the brain."

"A second category of mathematicians, the 'formalists,' view the issue of the existence of mathematical objects as meaningless and void. For them, mathematics is only a game in which one manipulates symbols according to precise formal rules. Mathematical objects such as numbers have no relation to reality: They are defined merely as a set of symbols that satisfy certain axioms. [...] Though the formalist position may account for the recent evolution of pure mathematics, it does not provide an adequate explanation of its origins."

"A third category of mathematicians is thus that of the 'intuitionists' or 'constructivists,' who believe that mathematical objects are nothing but constructions of the human mind.

Nonlinearity in living systems

Is the title of a recently published e-book by Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Here's an excerpt from the introductory editorial.

"The biological basis of physiological signals is incredibly complex. While many researches certainly appreciate molecular, cellular and systems approaches to unravel overall biological complexity, in the recent decades the interest for mathematical and computational characterization of structural and functional basis underlying biological phenomena gain wide popularity among scientists.[...] We witnessed wide range applications of nonlinear quantitative analysis that produced measures such as fractal dimension, power law scaling, Hurst exponent, Lyapunov exponent, approximate entropy, sample entropy, Lempel–Ziv complexity as well as other metric. [...] Also there is another more theoretical challenge of contemporary nonlinear signal measurements, especially including fractal-based methods. The question of choosing the right method and its possible adjustment in order for the results of the analysis to be as accurate as possible is the persistent problem.[...] We seek to bring together the recent practical and theoretical advances in the development and application of nonlinear methods or narrower fractal-based methods for characterizing the complex physiological systems at multiple levels of organization. [...]  A comprehensive understanding of advantages and disadvantages of each method, especially between its mathematical assumptions and real-world applicability, can help to find out what is at stake regarding the above aims and to direct us toward more fruitful application of nonlinear measures and statistics in physiology and biology in general."

Excerpts from this article in the ebook, "Measures and metrics of biological signals."

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Ostrom solved the tragedy of the commons

See this article. It reiterates a point I've made recently too: "Groups are capable of avoiding the tragedy of the commons without requiring top-down regulation," as long as they maintain certain principles. And that said principles were tailored to the requirements of autonomous locales in their own specific context. At the 2nd link I said:

"
Whereas the technology that enables it [the collaborative commons] to grow organically has no apparent need of this top down imposition. [...] While the principles are consistent across cooperatives, there are differences in how those principles are enacted given different locations and contexts. There really is no "one size fits all" model across all domains."

Kasparian nails it on how to beat Dump

We don't want a centrist that compromises our basic values of fairness and justice with Repugnantans who no longer have any conception of those values. We want someone who stands strong, who fights against injustice and for a fair shake for we the people. And like Ana and Bernie, does so with passion. That is what beats Dump, not some wishy washy centrism.

Emancipation After Hegel

Continuing this post, one can see a Google book preview of the above title here. From the Introduction:

"The role of contradiction in Hegel's philosophy calls into question two pillars of traditional logic--the law of identity and the principle of noncontradiction. [...] Leibniz takes self-identity as banally true, as one of the primary truths of reason. It is so obvious that it is not informative, but one cannot dispute this law while remaining on the terrain of reason." He goes on to quote Aristotle that the law of noncontradiction "is naturally the starting point even for all other axioms."

It seems McGowan also states that the traditional Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis ultimately ends with the realization that contradiction is the "absolute." And that formal thought cannot grasp this absolute. Which would of course, for me, seem akin to Derrida's differance as "a prerequisite of being," but not "a transcendental a priori truth."

Now there's a paradoxical metaphor

Continuing this  and this post: When we get so attached to our abstract models as the final solution we can miss and dismiss the actual developments on the concrete ground. And/or try to fit those concretes into the abstract.

Now there's a metaphor: The abstract becomes like concrete, set in stone, while the concrete is the fluid development of nature. If we could but let that fluid nature inform our abstractions (like 2nd gen cogsci) then our abstractions and models could indeed work with that process. Granted, that's a big IF.

The right priorities

We are the ones that need some help in a system rigged against us by the billionaires. And Sanders is willing to fight for that help. If we elect him and others like him (The Squad, the progressive caucus) then we will once again get a fair shot at a good life instead of being harmed by those who would rather see us suffer and die.




Tuesday, August 27, 2019

New scientific model can predict moral and political development

According to this study in Nature Human Behavior, in time frames about fairness and preventing harm triumph over those about loyalty, purity and authority. The latter might succeed temporarily, like now in the US, but the more the former frames are strongly and repeatedly reinforced the quicker the results. Let's keep up our passionate frames, for this research supports that we will overcome the dark forces that have a temporary hold on our government. Also see Kohlberg's moral stages, showing that the former frames are more developed that the latter set.

"Their conclusion is that the key characteristic of opinions that gain ground is that they are supported by arguments about what is fair and what does not cause harm to others. [...] Opinions based on other classical grounds used to determine right and wrong actions—loyalty, authority, purity, religion—can gain support temporarily, but over time, opinions based on these arguments lose support all over the political spectrum. The stronger the connection an opinion has to arguments about fairness and harm, the greater the probability that it will gain ground in public opinion. Also, the stronger the connection is, the faster the change will come."

G7 final communique

It's unanimous what the world thinks of Dump. And the majority of Americans too, for that matter.


Maximizing inner peace

This cartoon sounds so much like the Superhuman OS sales pitch I had to laugh. Then there's my ad satires from the 80s about this phenomenon. Same shit, different day.

Bolsonaro rejects G7 money to combat Amazon fires

So Bolsonaro did lie about a commitment to climate measures, and is intentionally inciting people to start the fires in order to make way for cattle ranches, and he wants an apology? WTF? He and Dump should get gay married since they have so much in common.

Nomadic Jurassic - Gayatri Mantra

Enjoy it here.


Reich: 9 ways to stay sane during the primaries

Some good advice as we all seek to compare and contrast the candidates to make our choice.

Development in media res

Continuing this post, I'm also reminded of this Mascolo and Fischer paper. And yes, I know, this is also an example of using sources to support my own biases.

"Human development occurs in medias res– in the middle of everything. [...] We elaborate a model of human development that takes seriously the idea that the structures and processes of human action operate as dynamic processes that take diverse forms and trajectories as they develop in medias res."

"Human development is dynamic; it does not occur according to fixed plans whether those plans are regarded as genetic, psychological or cultural in origin. To understand the processes by which development occurs, we can no longer focus on individual forces, or even multiple forces acting independently; instead, it is necessary to analyze how biology, action and context interact within a relational developmental system."

Monday, August 26, 2019

DeVos is threatened

Borowitz headline:

BREAKING: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is being guarded by U.S. Marshals after she received a suspicious package containing a science textbook.