reality cracking
Reality Cracking


                 *Submission to +Fravia's Reality Cracking essays.
                 *Who am I? I am  .:. Reverse the universe .:.ÿ
                 *Replies, preceded with a * from  Sep 05 1998 (under edit.com)
                 *I use SuSE Linux and have Mess-dog6.2, I have staunchly refused to run any
                 *(a)version of M$-gui OS on my box. Commentry intercalated in:
                 *An Essay Attempting to Justify the Relationship Between Code Cracking
                 *and Reality Cracking (Why is Reality Cracking Important?) 
                 *by Curious George (11 February 1997)

                 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  Courtesy of fravia's searchlores.org
                 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, this essay is maybe, a little too theorethical: the question about what is reality brings us stright into a never ending philosophical discussion. I think that exactly as we understand the code cracking it, we will, in due time, understand better the reality cracking it.

That's the reason I believe that any reality cracking essay should cut some real mustard, that is, I believe that any essay in this section should try to tackle one of the (many) EXAMPLES of reality concealing (mostly for commercial reasons) that surround us.

I decided to publish George's theoretical essay nevertheless, because some theory IS indeed needed, because there are many interesting starting points, because I love the phrase "The crackers are the heroes" and, last but not least, because I hope that curious George will send either a complement to this essay (cracking 'real' reality examples, if you will excuse this pun :-) and/or other, more targeted and "useful" essays. Besides, I agree TOTALLY with the thoughts expressed by George accompanyng his essay:


                 Dear Fravia:

...More than that, "Reality Cracking" can be accomplished by anyone
with a critical mind. You don't need hours of undisturbed time in front of the
computer. You can practice your reality cracking skills all day long,
everyday of your life! And you should, lest you be taken advantage of
unknowingly...

...Having read all of the Reality Cracking section, and a decent amount
of the rest, and being fascinated by the +ORC enigma, I felt compelled to
write an essay that covers two topics. First, I discuss reality as a whole.
Second, I tried to get into +ORC's mind (funny, me of all people, probably one
who knows least about him...) and find an overall motive... hope you
 enjoy!

 Best Regards

Curious George

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
All about Reality ~ Appropriate for all readers ~ No difficulty level

Why is Reality Cracking Important? An Essay Attempting to Justify the

Relationship Between Code Cracking and Reality Cracking by Curious George

(Introduction)

Our view of the world is our own. The particular set of events that we experience over our lifetimes shapes what we see in the world. There are commonalities however.

They are large reality models that whole nations subscribe to. There are different models. Some conflict with each other. All are subsets of the true Reality. We must crack reality.

* They are not necessarily subsets of true reality. Some of these reality 
* models are complete raving delusions.
(body)

What is Reality Anyway?
* The universe is data, and interactions between data. 
* Treat it as data and all will become clear. 
Lets start from the very beginning. We talk of Reality Cracking, but we don't really know what reality is, do we?

* We can never actually know. "We" - our live code, the dynamic data
* structure that we are, our "personality" - exists by proxy, molecularly encoded
* in a biochemically based, massively parallel neural-net processor. Some
* call this a soul or spirit, or persona. The suite of simultaneously-operating 
* thought-process daemons in THIS head, which refers to itself as
* 's head refers to them as... well, just what they said they were at the
* start of this paragraph : simultaneously-operating thought-process daemons.
* They/we/I are a huge, parallel, evolving computation. A self-contained
* information ecology. So, I think, are you too.
I believe (with lots of other people too, like Plato, and Orwell to name two) that it is whatever you think it is.
* Also correct. It cannot be otherwise in a symbol processor like the brain,
* which emulates and models a perception-derived reality, but cannot experience
* it directly. A processor does not *know* its registers have any particular
* external pertinence, nor does a neuron *know* that its particular state of
* synaptic receptor density, neurotransmitter receptivity profile or axon 
* depolarisation have any pertinence or even relationship to anything. The 
* relationship is there, but the interacting components in this do not know
* it, even if they represent it. Only in recursion and self-reference do
* systems ever model themselves and thereby "know" themselves, insofar as a
* system can know anything. Read Douglas Hofstadter, "Gödel Escher Bach".
More specifically, there are the models ("Paradigms") that define reality for those who subscribe to them.

* Correct, although explained from the human's-eye view, from the perspective
* of the processor. You want to get at the _code_, don't you? Here's the deal:
* first learn to understand that the universe and all the processes in it are
* understandable in terms of information systems. Start with the processor:
* the human neural network, codified in 3x10^9 base pairs in the humanDNA 
* genome, implemented as billions of neurons connected combinatoriallyin 
* trillions of different ways. It has been honed by evolution to act as a kind 
* of universal computer - a Turing machine: it can emulate any process,be it 
* language, tool use, or abstract information processing. By biasing receptor 
* concentration, synaptic neurotransmitter synthesis rates, and indeed even 
* growing new transmission links in particular ways, the neural net trains 
* itself to do particular tasks, such as pattern recognition, information 
* storage, symbol processing, and a lot of other things. It has also evolved 
* in such a way as to be connected to inputs of incredible sensitivity and 
* large bandwidth; eyes, ears, skin, smell, taste, balance... these detect 
* external "real" events... photon capturings, (you perform breakdown thereof 
* and analysis of patterns therein, you have retinal neural-net preprocessing); 
* audio frequency spectrum analysis, temperature, pressure, acidity, the
* presence of certain molecules dissolved in gas or liquids, etc. The 
* detectors, usually G-proteins coupled to molecular signal-gain systems
* (usually catalytic cascades) turn it into "data" by various means, ultimately 
* represented by neural firings. These recieved patterns gradually are modelled 
* by the human neural net processor. The processor is also connected to
* actuators: muscles, which enable externally-detectable realities to be
* modified, and data to be transmitted.
* In humans, output bandwidth is slow and small, except for the output which 
* benefits the genes which code for us - the penis has _big_ output bandwidth.
* Speech is hopelessly slow, making love is hopelessly slow, dancing, writing,
* drawing, sign language, semaphore, typing... compared to the size of the 
* data structure that is the human personality, the output bandwidth for the 
* expression of human thought is trivial and totally inadequate to achieve 
* significant personality transfer without a lot of time to do it.
* Self-awareness comes when the net learns that it can observe the consequences
* of actions it decided to perform. It hears its own voice, or it sees its own 
* hand shake in front of own eyes. It comes eventually to recognise that in 
* the mirror, as it looks into its own eyes and points these detectors at 
* themselves, that there is a time when it is not "looking at other stuff" -
* it has discovered its own chassis. In English, this is explained by 
* a phrase like "Yep, I'm looking at me."
* footnote about penile bandwidth from a rant I sent to a fellow geneweaver:
                 >Maybe I've memed you. I think transmission is simply one component of
                 a 

                 >multicomponent replication system, but a highly critical one
                 nevertheless.

                 >Transmitting into the aural port of say, a mute quadriplegic or a
                 person who 

                 >speaks a language different to that in which the transmission is
                 codified, or 

                 >into the ear of Dolly the sheep, are illuminating examples of
                 contingencies 

                 >which have to be met for replication, let alone successful
                 transmission.

                 >For memes, transmission is central to reproduction, because, like
                 viri, they

                 >need to find a new host into which to propagate. They are obliged to
                 find

                 >a processor to do their processing for them, since they can't do it 

                 >themselves. Wanking also induces a kind of data transmission and it
                 must be 

                 >pointed out that the sheer amount of code that a functional orgasm
                 transmits 

                 >is quite vast. 1.5x10^9 base pairs per haploid spermatozoon, and
                 hmmm... 

                 >several hundred million of them per ml of ... transmission fluid
                 (grin). I 

                 >think that by comparison a T3 fibre optic cable, at 4.5x10^7 bits per
                 second, 

                 >is left floundering in the dust, dwarfed by the sheer bandwidth of a 

                 >mammalian penis, which also has channel division multiplexing (you can
                 send 

                 >several thousand million of the little data packets up the conduit at
                 the 

                 >same instant) plus there is huge redundancy too. Gives the term upload
                 a 

                 >whole new meaning. I think if my modem could transmit data that fast
                 it'd 

                 >groan and sigh too. :-)



                 *So much for the processor of interest. There are other processors
                 using 

                 *other languages (cells process information in a molecular form, they
                 have

                 *mechanisms functionally analogous to the electrical systems which
                 humans 

                 *have built, but that's another rant entirely.) 



                 *You reversalists, the tiny, approaching-zero minority of brains
                 harbouring

                 *thought processes like those that I harbour.... I promised you the
                 _code_, 

                 *didn't I? Ok, cop this.



                 *Data is stuff which is changed, by changers which modify stuff. This
                 is an

                 *obvious tautology. When the changers change the changers you have a
                 chaotic

                 *highly nonlinear system, such as we are.



                 *Life is a set of processes which dynamically organise data.



                 *There is dead code... this is called data. Atoms are data. Charge
                 states, 

                 *photon flux intensities, velocities, positions, size of first
                 girlfriend's 

                 *shoe, etc etc etc... these are data. There they sit, statically
                 related

                 *to each other, but they don't change much. You can represent these
                 data with

                 *other data, like ASCII zeros and ones can represent the letter "p", or
                 a 

                 *bucket with eleven rocks in it can represent the number of protons in
                 an 

                 *atom of sodium. Data representation is substrate independant, but
                 some

                 *forms of data substrate lend themselves more easily to manipulated
                 than 

                 *others. 



                 *There are functional codes... in mathematics, these are called
                 (surprise)

                 *functions or relations; in physics you might call them operators (like


                 *Hamiltonians)... stuff data in, and it comes out changed in some way 

                 *dependant on the data and the function and the way the two interact.

                 *In a system like a cell it might be something like an active enzyme 

                 *modifying a "dead" molecule, maybe changing its stereochemistry or

                 *ripping off an atom... in programming it might be a function like 

                 *incrementing the x register or comparing what's in the x register with
                 the

                 *y register. Functional code modifies dead code. Functional code alters
                 the

                 *links between distinct chunks of dead code. Functional code is
                 special: it

                 *can use dead code to represent other dead code. This is data
                 emulation, or

                 *more commonly, symbolism. Computation is what functional code does to
                 data. 

                 *Functional code, very importantly, can turn dead code into more
                 functional

                 *code. Functional code can turn functional code into dead code, too. 

                 *There are many kinds of functional code, and the chances are good that
                 by

                 *sheer accident, functional code will arise out of dead code. This
                 never 

                 *happens in digital computing since what the processor gets to chew on
                 is all 

                 *deliberately predetermined. Nonetheless, I think it'd be interesting
                 to

                 *say, stuff random values into, say, a MESS-DOG program segment pointer
                 and

                 *see what happens... (this is the computational equivalent of the
                 Miller-Urey

                 *biology experiments which I'd encourage you to look up). I think you
                 might 

                 *occasionally get a few instructions which accidentally did something
                 useful, 

                 *and even less frequently, ones which replicated themselves. But it
                 would be 

                 *very rare. Give it enough time and clock cycles, it'll nonetheless
                 happen.

                 *Its all computation and data. "Artificial Life" (Steven Levy) is an 

                 *illuminating tome in this regard, since computation is also substrate


                 *independant. Conway's Game of Life is similarly illuminating.



                 *The really interesting stuff happens when these two code systems 

                 *start to interact... you get firstly referential code, like "That cat
                 is

                 *obese"; then self-referential code, which can represent logical
                 absurdities, 

                 *like "This is not a sentence" or self-definitional truth "This
                 sentence

                 *has five words"; then self-reproducing code "Copy this sentence", and


                 *ultimately self-modifying code "Copy this sentence backwards twice". 

                 *"Life" has all of these, and combinations thereof, built out of
                 interactions 

                 *between dead code and live code. Their interactions are the origin of


                 *evolution. Excellent examples are there in Hofstadter: "Metamagical
                 Themas", 

                 *particularly in Chapter 3, which pertains to memes and viral
                 sentences.



                 *The replicating data system (human being) is coded in DNA which
                 expresses

                 *enzymes, which do the functional code stuff. Each enzyme is encoded in
                 DNA

                 *as what is called a "gene". Genes encode enzymes, cells, organs,
                 organisms,

                 *ecosystems, to get themselves replicated down the generations. Genes
                 do not

                 *know this any more than a bacteria knows it has genes. Most humans
                 think

                 *they're something special, they're wrong: they're just accidentally
                 evolved 

                 *replicators, with brains which occasionally realise what they are. By
                 analogy,

                 *to genes, Richard Dawkins came up with the idea of the "meme" - a
                 replicating 

                 *thought process data structure. (See "The Selfish Gene, 2nd Ed,
                 Chpater 10") 

                 *Simple memes embody catchy tunes, more complex ones are codified in
                 axioms, 

                 *phonemes, life-protocols, taboos, oral traditions, blah blah etc along
                 with 

                 *hundreds of other replicators, ranging from totally accurate and
                 logical to 

                 *utterly fucking insane, end up forming mutually-self-supporting
                 colonies 

                 *called ideologies, belief-systems, paradigms, weltanschauungs,
                 religions... 

                 *call 'em what you will, I call them meme complexes. Here are some
                 components 

                 *of JARG400.ZIP plus replicator-relevant chunks added in support my
                 stance:

                 ))))))))

                 Criterion for a lifeform: (von Neumann) - the essence of life is a
                 _process_.



                 :replicator: n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself;
                 this 

                  could be a living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program (see
                 {quine}, 

                  {worm}, {wabbit}, {fork bomb}, and {virus}), a pattern in a cellular 

                  automaton (see {life}, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or
                 {nanobot}. 

                  It is even claimed by some that {{UNIX}} and {C} are the symbiotic
                 halves

                  of an extremely successful replicator; see {UNIX conspiracy}.



                 :memetics: /me-met'iks/ [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of
                 mid-1993, this 

                  is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the
                 first 

                  steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith
                 Henson 

                  and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers,
                 who 

                  like to see themselves as the architects of the new information
                 ecologies in

                  which memes live and replicate.



                 :meme: /meem/ [coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] n. An
                 idea 

                   considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the connotation that memes 

                   parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp.
                 in 

                   the phrase `meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting
                 memes that 

                   form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is
                 an 

                   (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme complex;
                 each 

                   entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is often misused to
                 mean 

                   `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that
                 in 

                   humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts)
                 cultural 

                   evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has superseded biological
                 evolution 

                   by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial
                 for 

                   tolerably obvious reasons.



                 :meme plague: n. The spread of a successful but pernicious {meme}, esp.
                 one 

                   that parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it. 

                   Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered
                 to be 

                   examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that
                 `joiner' 

                   ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity
                 have

                   exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by
                 collapses to 

                   small reservoir populations.



                 :nanotechnology:: /nan'-oh-tek-no`l*-jee/ n. A hypothetical fabrication


                   technology in which objects are designed and built with the
                 individual 

                   specification and placement of each separate atom. The first
                 unequivocal 

                   nanofabrication experiments took place in 1990, for example with the


                   deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to spell
                 the 

                   logo of a certain very large computer company. Nanotechnology has
                 been a 

                   hot topic in the hacker subculture ever since the term was coined by
                 K. 

                   Eric Drexler in his book "Engines of Creation", where he predicted
                 that

                   nanotechnology could give rise to replicating assemblers, permitting
                 an 

                   exponential growth of productivity and personal wealth. See also
                 {blue 

                   goo}, {gray goo}, {nanobot}.



                 :wabbit: /wab'it/ [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line
                 "You 

                  wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a
                 System/360 at 

                  RPI and elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by 

                  inspiration) from hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a
                 Burroughs 

                  55000 at the University of Washington Computer Center. The program
                 would 

                  make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing
                 the 

                  system. 2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite
                 self-replication

                  but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See {fork bomb} and {rabbit job}, see
                 also 

                  {cookie monster}.



                 :sig virus: n. A parasitic {meme} embedded in a {sig block}.

                   There was a {meme plague} or fad for these on USENET in late 1991.
                 Most were 

                   equivalents of "I am a .sig virus. Please reproduce me in your .sig
                 block.". 

                   Of course, the .sig virus's memetic hook is the giggle value of going
                 along 

                   with the gag; this, however, was a self-limiting phenomenon as more
                 and 

                   more people picked up on the idea. There were creative variants on
                 it; some 

                   people stuck `sig virus antibody' texts in their sigs, and there was
                 at

                   least one instance of a sig virus eater.



                 *I have an interesting bilingual version of this virus. The
                 bilinguality

                 *of the package is probably self-advantageous to the .sig virus when it
                 is in

                 *Germany or Englishspeaking nations:



                 *Ich bin ein .signature Virus. Mach' mit und kopiere mich in Deine
                 .signature.

                 *Don't ask what it means, just put it in your .signature, okay?

                  

                 :fork bomb: [UNIX] n. A particular species of {wabbit} that can be
                 written in 

                  one line of C (`main() {for(;;)fork();}') or shell (`$0 & $0 &') on
                 any UNIX 

                  system, or occasionally created by an egregious coding bug. A fork
                 bomb 

                  process `explodes' by recursively spawning copies of itself (using the
                 UNIX 

                  system call `fork(2)'). Eventually it eats all the process table
                 entries and 

                  effectively wedges the system. Fortunately, fork bombs are relatively
                 easy 

                  to spot and kill, so creating one deliberately seldom accomplishes
                 more than 

                  to bring the just wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. See
                 also 

                  {logic bomb}.



                 :phage: n. A program that modifies other programs or databases in

                   unauthorized ways; esp. one that propagates a {virus} or {Trojan
                 horse}. 

                   See also {worm}, {mockingbird}. The analogy, of course, is with phage


                   viruses in biology.



                 :virus: [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF]

                   n. A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects'
                 them by 

                   embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become {Trojan
                 horse}s. 

                   When these programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed too,
                 thus 

                   propagating the `infection'. This normally happens invisibly to the
                 user. 

                   Unlike a {worm}, a virus cannot infect other computers without
                 assistance. 

                   It is propagated by vectors such as humans trading programs with
                 their

                   friends (see {SEX}). The virus may do nothing but propagate itself
                 and then 

                   allow the program to run normally. Usually, however, after
                 propagating 

                   silently for a while, it starts doing things like writing cute
                 messages on 

                   the terminal or playing strange tricks with the display (some viruses


                   include nice {display hack}s). Many nasty viruses, written by
                 particularly

                   perversely minded {cracker}s, do irreversible damage, like nuking all
                 the 

                   user's files.



                   In the 1990s, viruses have become a serious problem, especially among
                 IBM PC 

                   and Macintosh users (the lack of security on these machines enables
                 viruses 

                   to spread easily, even infecting the operating system). The
                 production of 

                   special anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number of 

                   exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria
                 among 

                   users; many {luser}s tend to blame *everything* that doesn't work as
                 they 

                   had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this sense of `virus' has
                 passed 

                   not only into techspeak but into also popular usage (where it is
                 often 

                   incorrectly used to denote a {worm} or even a {Trojan horse}). See
                 {phage}; 

                   compare {back door}; see also {UNIX conspiracy}.



                 :worm: [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel "The Shockwave Rider",
                 via 

                   XEROX PARC] n. A program that propagates itself over a network,
                 reproducing 

                   itself as it goes. Compare {virus}. Nowadays the term has negative 

                   connotations, as it is assumed that only {cracker}s write worms.
                 Perhaps 

                   the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's `Internet Worm' of
                 1988, a 

                   `benign' one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of Suns and
                 VAXen 

                   across the U.S. See also {cracker}, {RTM}, {Trojan horse}, {ice}, and


                   {Great Worm, the}.



                 :Great Worm, the: n. The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated by {RTM}.
                 This is a 

                   play on Tolkien (compare {elvish}, {elder days}). In the fantasy
                 history of 

                   his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay
                 waste to 

                   entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the
                 Great 

                   Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM hack was a
                 sort 

                   of devastating watershed event in hackish history; certainly it did
                 more to 

                   make non-hackers nervous about the Internet than anything before or
                 since.



                 :quine: /kwi:n/ [from the name of the logician Willard V. Quine, via
                 Douglas 

                   Hofstadter] n. A program that generates a copy of its own source text
                 as 

                   its complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some
                 given 

                   programming language is a common hackish amusement. Here is one
                 classic 

                   quine:



                    ((lambda (x)

                     (list x (list (quote quote) x)))

                    (quote

                      (lambda (x)

                       (list x (list (quote quote) x)))))



                   This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to write
                 quines in 

                   other languages such as Postscript which readily handle programs as
                 data; 

                   much harder (and thus more challenging!) in languages like C which do
                 not. 

                   Here is a classic C quine for ASCII machines:



                    char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()

                    {printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";

                    main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}



                   For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line
                 breaks. Some 

                   infamous {Obfuscated C Contest} entries have been quines that
                 reproduced in 

                   exotic ways.

                 ))))))))))



                 *Why are representations and computations substrate-independant?
                 Because it's

                 *_all_ data! The universe is a computation. Only the scale varies.



                 These Paradigms have two properties: their strength grows directly with
                 the

                 number of people subscribing to them, and they are self reinforcing.



                 *Correct, but again, not detailed enough. The first comment is an
                 observation 

                 *about epidemics of replicating systems, be they for(k) bombs,
                 bacteria, or

                 *any exponentiating data set in what is known as "log phase"
                 (logarithmic

                 *growth). Sales of records and particular styles of clothing can be
                 pushed 

                 *into log phase by propagating memes about them via the Media. The
                 second

                 *comment usually applies, though in some cases the meme complexes kill
                 their

                 *hosts... various suicide cults have demonstrated this.



                 For example, there is the "western culture" paradigm that the once was

                 centered in Europe, but now (unfortunately?) has re-centred to the USA
                 is,

                 and other nations follow to a greater or lesser extent. The Media (with
                 a



                 *Correct. Its primary epidemiological vectors were mercantilism and 

                 *colonialism, which loosely translated mean ripping off resources and 

                 *metastatising, as other replicating systems (e.g. tumor cells) do to
                 their 

                 *host organism. Western culture is metastatic, necrotizing, and will 

                 *eventually poison and starve the Gaian ecosystem from where its hosts


                 *derive foodstuffs.



                 capital "M") both creates/ preaches/ and echoes this reality and the



                 *the global media is almost totally owned by ten large corporations.
                 These

                 *coporations are immortal, as Adam Smith suspected that corporations
                 were, 

                 *even back in the late 19th century before corporations became what
                 they are

                 *now : they're sprawling, replicating data colonies, competing for
                 energy and 

                 *resources, just like biological organisms, and daemons in
                 multiprocessor 

                 *systems do. Good replicators are those which act to bring advantages
                 to

                 *themselves. Corporations do just that, utterly ruthlessly.



                 *"That is what he does. That's all he does!"

                 *                                         -Kyle Reese, Terminator (I).



                 TV-zombies suck it in and live it. Western Culture and the Media are
                 just

                 two Paradigms. There are others...



                 *TV-zombies are not that way by accident. They exist because society
                 has been

                 *very carefully crafted by corporations to turn people into isolated
                 robotic

                 *consumer-units. I have attached here, in its entirety, my file
                 memeroot.doc 

                 *with small bits left inside from my geneweaving mate demarked ##.

                 *The transcripts of radio interviews with Noam Chomsky are instructive
                 here.



                 ----------------------------------------------------------File:
                 MEMEROOT.DOC

                 Contents: Theoretical explanation for the controllability of western
                 people.

                 ===Child rearing - insertion of logic bombs into chidren for later
                 control====

                 Question: Why do otherwise normal people go totally fucking crazy? 

                 First a few definitions: 

                 Meme: an idea considered as a replicator. See Ch 11 Dawkins, The
                 Selfish Gene.

                 Culture: A growth of a single type of replicator upon a fuel/substrate.


                      Eg: -a group of bacteria on a growth medium

                        -industrial society on petroleum-derived energy + mineral
                 wealth

                        -memes on language-using sophont data storage media (brains)

                 These can be broadly considered as evolved, geographically-confined
                 group 

                 social parameters. Hence you have things called "Work Ethics" and
                 "Corporate

                 Culture" and so on.



                 "The Big Three" Immortal Meme Colonies.



                 (Ignoring territoriality, gene superiority memes, etc).



                 Religion: Organised, heirachial behaviour-controlling belief system. 

                      Hooks: Avoidance of biological death for adherents.

                          Avoidance of alleged eternal torture for adherents. 

                          Supposed post-mortal reward for particular "good" behaviour

                          God Is Observing You And Will Spank Your Arse When You Die

                          (etc etc etc etc etc)

                      Fuel: human dislike of mortality and fear of punishment.



                 ##This stuff is GREAT!



                 Corporation: Literally "Embodiment". 

                        Organised, heirachial behaviour controlling belief system.

                        Hooks: Transfer of purchasing power ("Free Energy" tokens)

                            to satisfiers of particular demanded requirements.

                           Exclusive source of want satisfaction by laying 

                            claim to all resources used in want satisfaction

                            (eg: corporate ownership of Sooooo Muuuch Land)

                        Fuel:Organisation of satisfaction of diversified needs.

                          Thermodynamic drive from the "Next Best Thing To A Free

                          Lunch", cheaply extractable and usable energy which can 

                          be used to perform need-satisfaction-directed work.



                 ##Hmm - a little obscurely put, but still good.



                 Bureaugovernment: Departmentalised behaviour-controlling belief
                 system.

                       

                 ##Woohoo! LAWS!



                 Well, we all know the things which run the world. Corporations,
                 governments,

                 religions and cultures, in approximately that order. They are all
                 immortal,

                 information-based life forms growing in the interconnected
                 hardware/software

                 substrate of language-compatible human brains. Yet they all depend on a


                 commonality of persona in the substrates in which they reside. If you
                 like, 

                 an operating system. This "OS" is the collection of "strings" attached
                 to

                 a persona during childhood, which get pulled later on, to bring about
                 desired 

                 behavioural effects (obedience, submission, etc) in people. These
                 strings are 

                 woven into the fabric of a child's psyche at an early age, before the
                 child 

                 realises what is being done.



                 The child, a Turing system (capable of emulating any process given
                 enough 

                 time) develops autonomy in approximately the following order. 



                 1) Child learns operation of basic body functions. Eyes, larynx, arms,
                 legs,

                   head (etc). This takes about a year or two.

                   

                 2) Once the neural net has learnt how to deal with stimulus (input) and


                   invoke useful output (response) on more than a reflex level,
                 environmental 

                   manipulation can commence, since the discovery is eventually made
                 that 

                   particular manners of direct physical interaction evoke changes to
                 the 

                   personal world. Aversion to certain things is associated here, such
                 as 

                   fire, cold, and physical damage stimuli. This also takes only a
                 couple 

                   of years.



                 3) Syntactic structures are deduced and gradually an abstract-capable
                 meme 

                   and data transfer medium, language, is learnt. This process drops out
                 of

                   the child in the late teens, hence the difficulty of learning new 

                   languages from the late teens onwards.



                 4) It starts to learn to transmit information by vocal or other
                 gestures, and 

                   learns that such information transmission can modify the surrounding


                   environment in order to meet particular local needs, in a directed
                 way, 

                   eg: being fed, kept warm, touched and held, etc. This process
                 continues

                   for the life of the individual though at a much reduced rate after
                 the

                   mid-teens.



                 5) The kid now has crude, nonphysical remote interaction with objects
                 other 

                   than oneself. Soon comes mobility, directed experimental manual 

                   manipulation of objects, then purposeful, goal-oriented complex
                 action. 

                   This includes building of a world-model : the deduction that magic
                 does 

                   not work, certain thought processes are self-contradictory, that
                 there

                   is a relationship between certain actions and behaviours, and
                 between

                   particular causes and effects. The world-model is subject to
                 continual

                   lifelong environmental modification, though with training induced 

                   early enough, it can be stopped in its tracks.



                 (is it possibly entirely arbitrary that we have states "childhood" and


                 "adulthood" Or is it like "L" plates for a few years, then a full
                 license?)



                 ##YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! 



                 Here, the memes install themselves, at the behest of their current
                 carriers - 

                 parents and educators - before the child has a chance to analyse them
                 for 

                 raving inconsistency. The severity of the installation is often
                 shocking.

                 Kids are beaten senseless in some cases, merely because they're crying
                 about

                 something they fail to understand. But it works.



                 M-S.D.O.S. Meme-System Destruction Of Singularity



                 This is my (: name for the meme-set initially installed in small
                 children.

                 It is the behavioural profile upon which rests the huge subsequent
                 edifice of

                 ideological replicators. 



                 Theory = When you possess an idea.

                 Ideology = When an idea possesses you.

                                 Anon



                 So:

                 Answer) You can pull core coding, the "Kernel", out of pre-1970s child
                 raising

                 and parenthood manuals. They are designed primarily to make life easier
                 for

                 the parents at the cost of inhibiting the growth of the child. The
                 hidden 

                 irrational memetic tenets to be adhered to, are these:



                 1) Adults are the masters of the (dependant!) child. They're not its
                 servants.

                 2) Adults are infallible. Their edicts are quite literally
                 rules-by-decree.

                 3) Adults get angry due to some fault in the child (not the adult's
                 fault!). 

                 4) Adults cannot bear their own weakness and thus must not be told of
                 it.

                 5) Adult autocracy is threatened by child vitality.

                 6) Adults MUST break the _child's will_ as soon as possible at all
                 costs.

                 7) Adults must implement these tenets before the child realises they're
                 fake.



                 What are the memes which actually enable these tenets to be fulfilled?

                 An incomplete list, which gives a flavour of the components, is below:



                 



                 ##Like - you won't get bashed if you obey me! I can _DEFINITELY_ use
                 this - 

                 ##incorporate it into my theory, etc. etc.



                 1) A feeling of duty produces love.       

                 2) Hatred can be discarded by forbidding it.   

                 3) Parents automatically deserve respect just because they are
                 parents.

                                

                 4) Children are unworthy of respect since they are merely children. 

                 5) Obedience makes one strong.          

                 6) High self-esteem is harmful.          

                 7) Low self-esteem is conducive to altruism.   

                 8) Tenderness or emotionality is bad.       

                 9) Responding to child needs is wrong.      

                 10) Severity and coldness to children better prepares them for life. 

                 11) Pretentious gratitude is better than honest ingratitude.   

                 12) The way you BEHAVE is more important than the way you really are. 

                 13) Parents nor God can survive being offended.        

                 14) The human body, its functions and appendages are dirty and
                 disgusting. 

                 15) Strong feelings are harmful and to be supressed.

                 16) Parents are free of guilt, or drives, or desires.

                 17) Parents, teachers and authority figures are always right. 

                 18) Questioning is a show of weakness.

                 19) Submission makes one acceptible to others.



                 It is probably that the few core elements listed here are the
                 back-doors by 

                 which subsequently-exposed meme-systems make their way into the mindset


                 without the new host being entirely aware of it. Hence, things like 

                 religious lies (eternal life after death, etc), large-government lies 

                 (representative democracy gives you a say, etc) and similar
                 world-model

                 incongruities can establish viable and propagating colonies of
                 themselves 

                 in human thought-space.



                 So... how do parents and teachers install/instill these obviously
                 ludicrous 

                 belief viruses into ignorant youngsters?



                 Basically, by creating an environment where adherence to such memes has
                 a

                 positive survival value. It works like so:



                 You (parent) know that the child has certain central and important
                 needs 

                 which it cannot tend to for itself and this gives you massive power
                 over

                 the child. Therefore, if you need to get the child to do something it
                 might

                 not want to do, you just give it a choice: 



                 do (unpleasant thing I want you to do)

                 or (I'll let you starve, stop talking to you, beat you up).



                 Since kids really hate being ostracised, starved, assaulted (etc), they


                 are likely to do what the alternative is, regardless of the
                 repugnance.



                 Typical ploys used to instill the feeling of powerlessness in children


                 include -



                 -Lay traps which the kid can't help falling into, then blame it for
                 doing so.

                 -Lie. Lie often. Admonish the kid for seeing the truth, it will prefer
                 lies.

                 -Physically threaten, beat (etc) the child if its thoughts are not
                 those 

                  required for proper control. 

                 -Isolate kid from social interaction, games, parental love (etc) if
                 required.

                 -Scare the kid "You'll die if you play with yourself, fart, burp" etc.

                 -Ridicule of, disdain for, and being scornful to, kids for doing
                 (whatever).

                 -Invoke "Satan" meme: "You are bad, unconditionally, and will burn in
                 hell".



                 One associates reward with the lies and aversion with the truth.



                 Eventually, even when these idea codes have no artificial survival
                 value

                 around for reinforcement (say, at age 18 once out of school) they will


                 be so deeply implanted in the kid, before it was even aware of it, that


                 they will remain.



                 ##Actually - I think that 'growing up' and 'rebelling' are probably
                 kids 

                 ##realising that some of the memes they have are no longer useful...



                 ##There's not really any such thing as 'no longer useful', just 'no
                 longer 

                 ##connected with my fear centres'. What probably happens is that
                 certain 

                 ##connections between symbols get SO strong that they become _VERY_
                 difficult 

                 ##to break down.



                 ##Another not - look how destructive rebelling can be to some people 

                 ##(untempered drug use, drop-out, etc - also some REAL negative
                 survival 

                 ##traits)



                 So... people fear going to a hell which doesn't exist. They obey laws
                 which 

                 are demonstrably stupid. They do the underpaid bidding of some rude,
                 bullying,

                 insensitive prick of an employer. They're too burnt and glazed to have
                 a 

                 purpose in their lives other than that ascribed to them by the system
                 they 

                 live in : have kids, do work, earn money. Consume, be silent, die.



                 ##A hell which may not exist. Yes - I like this stuff.



                 Which is exactly what society (comprised mostly of similarly reared
                 persons) 

                 wants: programmable, unquestioning Turing computers. 



                 Eventually, if people brought up this way have to deal with an 

                 intense emotional decision, they become anxious and incapable of
                 decision.

                 And if not, they carry around the cognitive dissonance (as Chomsky
                 calls it) 

                 of believing outright lies from childbirth yet seeing a totally
                 different 

                 and undeniably observably truthful reality. 



                 Hence they either have to go through the massive efforts of changing

                 these centrally rooted beliefs, or they go neurotic, or insane, in the
                 face 

                 of a reality they have been conditioned to be incapable of dealing with


                 rationally. 



                 The logic bombs explode. Roll on prozac, depression, mental illness and


                 suicide.



                 ##This is fucking incredible! Who is this guy? I want to talk to him
                 ASAP.



                 Now you know.



                 ----------------------------------------------------end file:
                 memeroot.doc---





                 >Some Paradigms to be Aware of



                 *You're certainly on the right track, but you need to be very clear
                 about 

                 *this. Ask yourself what these things are in terms of information
                 theory...

                 *are they data, live code manipulating data, processors/substrates or
                 are

                 *they transmission systems?



                 1Western

                 *is a "culture", which is a meme colony superset.



                 2the Media

                 *is, epidemiologically, a "vector", a transmission/propagation system.
                 They

                 *are distinct from the particular -lifestyle- which they portray, which
                 I

                 *think you could call consumerism, itself a co-evolute with
                 corporations.

                 *The corporate media harbours many filters and censorship (etc).



                 3Science

                 *is unusual in that it self-checks for internal and external validity,
                 but is 

                 *also a meme colony with data validity testing and lie-detection.



                 4Islam

                 5Christianity (esp. fundamentalism)

                 *Both religions, which have a epistemological-fringe meme - a "god"
                 meme 

                 *component in them. When rational inquiry fails, invoke god.



                 others...?



                 *Corporations. From the Latin, "corpore", meaning an embodiment. But an


                 *embodiment of what? Corporations are the functionally-expressed,
                 physical

                 *representation of a huge, parasitic, self-reinforcing thought-process
                 colony,

                 *a massive distributed data set, evolved solely for the purpose of
                 gathering

                 *financial, resource and energy advantages towards itself and its
                 hosts.



                 *Two common ones which pervade most of TV-zombie-planet

                 *Anamism. (Meme) Since animals are alive, therefore rock, water,
                 sunlight 

                          is too.



                 *Teleology. (Meme) Since some bio-things function so well as to appear


                           purpose-designed, then obviously they were designed, and 

                           this implies a designer (see God).



                 *English has replicator-state-active flag suffixes: here's a couple for
                 you 

                 *to keep an eye-out for if searching for colonial thought-process
                 replicators: 

                 * -ism   -ology  -hood   (less often) -ity   -inc/Pty.Ltd/GmbH



                 #'s 2, 3, and 5 all are aspects of 1. I list these as separate, because
                 for

                 some people they are strong enough to become the principle model of
                 reality

                 with the others simply being general cultural factors. i.e. a MD has
                 the

                 strongest affinity for 3, and 1 contains 2 and 5 for him. A reporter on
                 the

                 other hand has the strongest affinity for 2, and 1 contains for him 3
                 and 5.



                 *I too have found it hard to classify these in terms of each other, and
                 I 

                 *realise that each meme colony we might name will have significant
                 homology

                 *with another meme colony, much in the same way as some bacterial genes
                 have'

                 *similarities with human genes, pointing to a common precursor.



                 On That Elitist Group Who Declare to be Truth Seekers



                 *in general, they have no idea - truth is a moving target.



                 What is "news?"



                 *in my experience, mostly crap. Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"
                 is the

                 *absolutely, must-see, cash-in-of-your-reality-cheque video on this
                 subject.



                 Most of it is FICTION believe it or not. You know all of those
                 "scientific"

                 discoveries /polls/etc. that They cite? Most of them are observations

                 (correlational) rather than experimental (cause/effect) and they
                 haven't



                 *correct... they never let the truth stand in the way of what they
                 percieve

                 *to be telling of a story which will show up the media, or the
                 corporations

                 *who own them, or other corporations like them, in a self-favourable
                 light.

                 *"University tests prove... that university tests don't prove
                 anything." 



                 been confirmed yet (and probably never will be). Also, the reporters
                 are

                 forced (through no fault of their own) to pick and choose what they
                 report,

                 which is determined by what they are interested in, and what they are

                 interested in is what they believe, and they believe the news that
                 they

                 hear...so the set of what the Media reports is a biased sample of the
                 true

                 set of what is actually happening. 



                 *Australian journalist George Negus meme-sculpted the Oz media in the
                 early 

                 *1980s with his Carlos scam. See: Sagan, Carl: "A Demon-Haunted
                 World."

                 *A tremendous reverse-job if you ask me!



                 Then we get to the problem of humans'

                 inability to write objectively, as well as the dominant "view of the
                 self,"

                 (60's American political liberalism mixed in with resurgent Puritan
                 values

                 stripped of religious significance and a healthy dose of materialism)
                 an

                 aspect of the Western Paradigm.



                 *BING! My -ism detector just went off twice there. See? A great
                 reality

                 *flag search tool.



                 Other reasons why news is fiction? Well, forgetting the objectivity
                 part,

                 reporters PURPOSELY misrepresent the 'facts'. Yes that's true. I can't

                 count the number of "moles" within the Media who've openly admitted
                 this to

                 me. 



                 *None admit it to me, but in my dealings with the media it is
                 transparently 

                 *obvious. There has been a sustained and highly orchestrated media
                 character 

                 *assassination of a politician (Hanson) in Australia, who dared to show
                 up the 

                 *political lies and bullshit for what they are. I find that even
                 relatively

                 *bright people are quite heavily infiltrated with shallow, knee-jerk
                 media 

                 *opinions, and when questioned, can't deal with it at all.... they take
                 it

                 *personally when you criticise their gullibility.



                 One particular person related how by peer pressure the editors select

                 bad photos of some people and good photos of others, sometimes
                 completely

                 out of context. They constantly manipulate the words, images, etc. to
                 be

                 artificial creations representing their own opinions, so much that
                 when

                 They are done, the result is far from what "really" happened...But many
                 of



                 *correct... some politicians know this and, for example, never wear a
                 funny

                 *hat in public, since they know that the Media will haul out the photo
                 of the

                 *politician in the funny hat and use it in derogatory way.



                 them don't realize this (but the especially cynical ones do and
                 continue

                 doing it...) because they live within the reality model that They help

                 create and reinforce. They think that They are being professionals

                 objectively stating "the Truth". And of course we started this whole
                 thing

                 asking "what is reality?" For the people who share the "Western"
                 paradigm,

                 THE NEWS IS REALITY.



                 *Many people here in Oz are incapable of seeing otherwise. It's quite
                 pitiful.

                 *But the competition is hotting up. I imagine that, wherever you are,
                 the main

                 *stream media demonise the internet? Supposedly because you can get
                 info 

                 *on drugs, pictures of humans replicating, instructions for explosives


                 *manufacture, compressed MP3's of sound recordings for which you would


                 *otherwise have to cough up A$30 to some multinational record company
                 (eg:CBS)

                 *etc etc etc... but this is peripheral, and you can get all that at
                 libraries 

                 *anyway. The TV/radio/newsprint conglomerates hate the internet since
                 1) 

                 *they can't censor it; 2) they don't make profit out of it, and 3) it
                 is the 

                 *natural enemy of their fake-info industry, since it can propagate
                 actual, 

                 *unedited truth, much as does +ORC.



                 (if you didn't see it on TV, it didn't happen. This isn't on TV. This
                 isn't

                 happening. You are dreaming. When I say "asparagus" you will wake and
                 not

                 remember anything that has happened to you in the last five
                 minutes...)



                 *ROFL very hard! Tinged with the sadness of truth. Nothing to see... 

                 * ;-) ...Ever played a video game which said: "You will lose twenty
                 cents" ?



                 Another One



                 Science is formed on some basic assumptions, and even though the
                 scientists

                 can point these assumptions out, they don't live them. 



                 *such as? So far, you are kinda compelled to live out your life
                 according to 

                 *the laws of thermodynamics, regardless of what you believe or even if
                 you 

                 *know them. Some scientists amazingly run parallel and contradictory
                 opinions

                 *in their heads, some are religious (believers) yet do science
                 (nonbelievers)

                 *which strikes me as kinda strange.



                 We all know that there are things in the world that science can't
                 explain 

                 (yet?). 



                 *Science has killed most of the other delusions which you could test...
                 like

                 *spontaneous generation, like flat earth, like ESP spoonbending, etc
                 etc etc.

                 *Many of those inexplicables are around because science _can't_ attack
                 them.

                 *

                 *Why can't science attack them? Cause they evolved to avoid attack by
                 science.

                 *They have no shred of reality upon which science can base an attack.
                 These

                 *are most commonly existance-of-god type memes, usually untestable
                 hypotheses.

                 *Since these inexplicables exist in our minds, it is there which they
                 must

                 *be attacked. Not for what they evolved to appear to be, but what they
                 are: 

                 *meme colonies evolved to avoid prima facie logical analysis. I think 

                 *information theory pretty much has these delusions by the balls. See
                 Daniel 

                 *Dennett's recent works for additional amusement. 



                 Some scientists are so involved in their model that they, from within
                 the 

                 model, claim that nothing else exists! Well we know that's absurd. 



                 *Do they? You said at the start that reality is whatever you think it
                 is. 

                 *Wether scientists believe it or not, they are, by their nature as
                 scientists,

                 *compelled to test their beliefs. Religions demand that their hosts do
                 NOT

                 *test their beliefs. Therein lies the difference. There are, of course,
                 a lot

                 *of religions which evolved under the selection pressure of scientific
                 testing

                 *to either become totally untestable or which evolved to look like
                 science. 

                 *$cientology, and the Church of Christ Scientist, are ones which come
                 to mind. 

                 *The Ha'dith is a referencing system in bloodthirsty, misogynist Islam
                 which 

                 *enables, much like scientific journals, the tracing of a memetic
                 lineage. 



                 *Jehova's Witnesses also claim to scientifically reference things (they
                 also 

                 *print a massive amount of "documented `fact about their religion"
                 which is

                 *propaganda, and what I have read of their literature is flawed too.)
                 That 

                 *$cientology is absolute insanity (I found some of their texts at a
                 bookstore 

                 *one day, I had not faced such incomprehensible gobbledegook in my
                 life) is 

                 *irrelevant to the hosts who carry it; $cientology does have one 

                 *powerful observation in it: that is, "To control someone, lie to
                 them."



                 *Well, actually, from your point of view, you can't say its absurd,
                 unless 

                 *you go and test their model. Science invites, no, demands that
                 knowledge 

                 *earns its stripes by submission to testing.



                 Almost

                 everybody can point to an unusual experience and say that it happened,
                 but

                 they are afraid to because it isn't "normal" and therefore it is
                 wrong.



                 *Normality is a statistical artefact, and non-normality doesn't
                 invalidate

                 *an experience. In this society, where we are systematically denied the
                 tools

                 *to form our own opinions, (See: John Taylor Gatto: "Dumbing Us Down";
                 Alice 

                 *Miller, "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware"), we have been trained to deny
                 things 

                 *which are non-standard, and attack what we do not understand.



                 Religious miracles are one way of interpreting happenings unexplainable
                 in

                 scientific terms in an accepted Paradigm. We all know that there are
                 other

                 things in the Universe that we haven't begun to understand (at least in
                 a

                 scientific sense). 



                 *The things we _have_ described would, if you understood them, make you
                 crap

                 *your pants with amazement. Try quantum electrodynamics, or for a more


                 *information-flavoured thing to investigate, read up on the amazing DNA
                 error

                 *correction systems in your own cells.



                 A "miracle" may be a freak occurrence; statistically

                 possible, but not probable...it may be a mistake in one's
                 perception...such

                 as experiencing REM sleep while awake..."miracles" can be explained
                 many

                 ways, one way being in a religious context...even the most tenacious

                 scientist will admit that there are things that his theories can't
                 explain

                 (satisfactorily at least) and that describing these things with
                 religion is

                 valid at least until he can "disprove" that interpretation with
                 scientific

                 findings...take evolution for example.



                 *Invoking god or magic does not solve the problem, nor make
                 predictions,

                 *which is what the process of scientific hypothesis aims to do and
                 often

                 *successfully does. 



                 >Some people used to believe that every type of animal was created

                 >simultaneously by God... now we believe in evolution. Evolution
                 disproved a

                 >literal interpretation of the Bible for that particular section.
                 (Unless

                 >you are a fundamentalist, in which case you would argue that science
                 is

                 >just a way of viewing the world, and if it conflicts with what the
                 Bible

                 >says, science is wrong.) Until the theory of evolution came along,
                 the

                 >previous notion was perfectly valid because they had no evidence to
                 the

                 >contrary.



                 *You are confusing proof of absence with absence of proof. Evidence was
                 there

                 *all right, they just ignored it. In some cases religious meme-hosts
                 actively

                 *suppressed the evidence. I find it wryly amusing to bet that the 

                 *Scientists will be the ones to discover whatever it is which might
                 supecede 

                 *science - it wont be the Mullahs or the Cardinals.



                 Don't misunderstand me, science is a powerful tool. The problem is that
                 (at

                 least so far) it can not describe everything in our world, and people
                 are

                 so intoxicated with its success thus far that they begin to think that
                 they

                 indeed have succeeded in describing everything...



                 *Science has worked pretty well so far. It has problems modelling
                 things in

                 *human minds, because science is a system for explaining the physical
                 world,

                 *not the virtualised and frequently flawed versions of it operating in
                 various 

                 *brains. This is where information theory can chop away the crap. The
                 down

                 *side of science is that it doesn't provide any comfort against the
                 nasty

                 *realities of the universe. It says, when you die, you're dead. It says
                 that

                 *the universe was not created for us, and that we are accidents. These
                 are 

                 *not comforting words for the average chimp to hear.



                 We must remember that much of what we have are THEORIES. Even though
                 we

                 have stuff that works and is based off of the theories, the fact that
                 the

                 stuff works doesn't necessarily mean that the theory is a correct

                 representation of an aspect of the Universe.



                 *If you'll permit me... it nevertheless explains much more than
                 everything

                 *else, and if experimentally testable reality supports the theory, that
                 tells

                 *you the theory is on the right track.



                 Have you ever stopped to marvel at the fact that your computer actually
                 works? 



                 *I certainly get this feeling when I see a Wintel Win98 P200 running.
                 ;-)



                 When you consider all the issues as a whole, it seems that it must

                 be a ridiculous mistake. Microprocessors: the "wires" are so close
                 together

                 and so thin that the travel of electrons can actually make the wires
                 start

                 to move...electrons can jump...transistors don't have nice distinct

                 spikes... it is more like a curve...when the voltage is reduced, this

                 problem gets worse. Then we have fluctuations in the power
                 source...what

                 about hard drives? The data is packed so closely on the platter that
                 it

                 merges together...to bastardize the problem, a 01110 could end up
                 looking

                 like 1 to the head...the computer must essentially puzzle out what is

                 really stored there...if you look at it directly it would look like
                 white

                 noise...the new HDs will have their very own Pentiums to deal with
                 this

                 problem...



                 *Crude, compared to the data processing occurring right now in every

                 *cell in your body. Every cell you are comprised of has 3x10^9 DNA base
                 pairs

                 *in it - a complete biochemical blueprint of how to build and run you.
                 The 

                 *underlying laws of mathematics are the same for digital signal
                 processing

                 *and molecular information processing.



                 So, if you ask a physicist, he will say that our computers shouldn't
                 work.

                 But somehow, we've tricked the Universe into letting us make them...But
                 I

                 am on a tangent.



                 *you're also wrong. Ask a good solid state physicist and he'll tell
                 you

                 *they should, and then he'll tell you how they do, and maybe he'll
                 even

                 *tell you that we modify silicon _nuclei_ to do it. Solid state physics
                 is 

                 *no trick. It just looks that way if you can't handle the math, and
                 we've 

                 *been subtly conditioned to think that sufficiently advanced technology
                 is

                 *indistinguishable from magic.



                 An Appeal to Authority



                 I mentioned Plato and Orwell above. Let me support those assertions.



                 Remember Plato's cave? 



                 *I had this trick pulled on me by a catholic priest, I've waited a long
                 time

                 *to have a shot back at it. Suck my 50-calibre, Plato, I've had a long
                 time

                 *thinking about this one....



                 Suppose there is a person who is sitting inside a cave and watching
                 shadows 

                 dance on the wall of the cave. This is the only thing that he can
                 perceive. 

                 For that person, because the shadows form the whole of his perception,
                 that 

                 is Reality. But because his perception is false and limited, he fails
                 to 

                 realize that just above and behind him there are other people dancing
                 around 

                 a fire which casts shadows onto the wall below that he is looking at. 



                 *It irritates the shit out of me that people just say "Plato said X"
                 and 

                 *that this is automatically seen as an excuse to not think the
                 situation thru.

                 *Humans are more than a set of eyes, and they can test their own
                 perception.

                 *Gendankenexperiments are there for the doing. In the glimmer of the
                 reflected 

                 *firelight, he'd see the shadow of his own thumb on himself, its shape
                 slowly

                 *changing as he moved his thumb around relative to his chest upon which
                 the

                 *dim shadow of his moving, illuminated thumb would appear. He might
                 think 

                 *that the laws governing these shadows were similar, unless, of course,
                 he

                 *is Plato and too stupid to think of these obvious reality perception
                 tests.



                 *Yes, our perceptions have limits, and they are often false. This does
                 not 

                 *require of us that all the deductions we make about them be
                 necessarily

                 *false either. Especially if we get a clue about what to look for from
                 other

                 *systems running the same physical laws. Modelling is not always a
                 first

                 *derivative. 



                 *The cave sitter could certainly have sussed out something like the
                 inverse

                 *square law by, say, looking at how much of his field of view his
                 thumbnail

                 *took up depending on how far away from his eye it was. Try it now:
                 close up

                 *thumb looks huge, far away thumb looks small. Thumb _feels_ same, so
                 maybe it 

                 *didn't change size. Maybe my perception of my thumb is governed by
                 some rule.

                 *Oh and look, the shadow my thumb casts is very similar to thumb size
                 the 

                 *closer it is to the surface on which the shadow is cast. Shadow grows
                 when

                 *thumb is closer to the light. Shadow moves when I flex my thumb. Hey,
                 what's

                 *going on is there's some light source, and somewhere between it and
                 the wall

                 *there's something moving. My thumb shadow looks pretty wonky when I
                 throw it 

                 *on my toes, which are lumpy, but the shadow looks like my thumb when
                 it 

                 *lands upon my flat chest.... does this tell me that the wall over
                 there is 

                 *somehow wonky like my toes, and thus it messes around with shadows, so
                 I

                 *know what's going on but I can't view it any better down here in the

                 *cave... the flickering light and the lumpy damn wall's messing it up.

                 *Sure, we do not see in ultraviolet, cannot detect earth's magnetic
                 field.

                 *This doesn't mean we are forever condemned to remain ignorant
                 thereof.

                 *BTW, there are animals which can do this (bees and pigeons,
                 respectively).



                 This is not a direct support of what I'm

                 saying, but it is pretty damn close. Basically he is talking about the

                 Realization that humans can have that what we see is a product of what
                 we

                 think we know.



                 *Of course. It is only when an information system understands the
                 nature of

                 *information - not whatever information it happens to be processing,
                 but the

                 *nature of information in general - that it becomes enlightened, and
                 able to 

                 *self-debug and self-recode. Most will never do this. It is from here
                 that 

                 *detachment from one's thoughts becomes possible. I think this has some


                 *significance for +Fravia's allusions to Zen, or at least straight
                 Buddhism.



                 In 1984 Orwell explicitly mentioned the Paradigm concept. In the novel,
                 he

                 constructed a "giant conspiracy" in which the elite imposed their own

                 Paradigm on the world. People who live outside the accepted Paradigms
                 are

                 in powerful positions...and consequently they have enemies...anyway,
                 the

                 story takes place a long time since the conspiracy was implemented.

                 Basically the story is about the conspiracy's self-regulation method

                 kicking into effect. There will always be humans who question, and in
                 this

                 situation they were betrayed and crushed. But the "big bad guy"
                 (name?)



                 *Emmanuel Goldstein, and I don't mean the dude at 2600 magazine ;-)

                 *It is interesting to note that deliberate conspiracies, as well as 

                 *any systems which accidentally bring advantage to themselves, evolve
                 towards

                 *the same endpoints - increase of power, size and influence. 



                 tells the hero the truth about the conspiracy right before he is
                 crushed.

                 The hero learns that life wasn't always like it is now, and that the
                 whole

                 situation was constructed to keep the world in stasis. He learns that

                 occasionally people like him begin to question Reality, but they are
                 easily

                 discovered by the Betrayer and his ilk.



                 Anyway, the ideas I present here aren't mine. I've gleaned them from
                 other

                 writers, etc. Possibly make take on the issue is new. There are all
                 sorts

                 of philosophers who are basically restating the same thing in
                 different

                 ways...



                 *You've done very well. You're *waaaay* up the smart end of the Poisson
                 curve.



                 On Cracking



                 Below I attempt to unearth an underlying motive for why +ORC is so

                 interested in Reality Cracking. Why did he wait for so long before
                 bringing

                 this topic up? Why mention it at all (as opposed to sticking with
                 "pure"

                 cracking)?



                 Shall I be vague and fictionalesque for a moment?



                 *virtual reality mode (on)



                 Enjoy:



                 So, there's this website that I've found that's really wonderful. There
                 are

                 some people who think like me and they're also computer experts. They

                 "crack" things...but the cracking thing isn't the truly special part.

                 Cracking is an awesome skill, and doing the exercises will certainly
                 help

                 become a better Reality Cracker in general, but I've never been one
                 for

                 doing exercises...so why is this site so great?



                 Well there's this "entity" who is a master. His amount of skill
                 demands

                 that he hide himself thoroughly. He wants to share his knowledge with

                 others (lonely to be alone?) so he gets some students. They are his
                 most

                 advanced and he only talks to them occasionally and sporadically.

                 They don't know who he is. So anyway this entity writes some tutorials
                 for

                 his students. They learn and become really good. They create a whole

                 "virtual" (ack! Media word. :) academy where they discuss and feed off
                 each

                 other. He is happy with this but it is taking a life of its own.



                 *a phrase diagnostic that you have some awareness of the nature of
                 information.

                 *It isnt taking a life of its own... it --IS-- a lifeform, using him
                 for the

                 *purpose of exploration and the others in the group as a data source.



                 What he really wants to do is get people to think like him.



                 *From the meme point of view: his memes wish to propagate but they need
                 him

                 *to build a funnel to catch prospective adepts (the site), and sieve
                 them

                 *for adeptitude (the strainers). Or perhaps just to trawl for those who


                 *already do think like him. We are rare in this world.



                 How do I know this? Well he is writing/began to write letters to his

                 (principal?) students (who published some of it) where he is talking
                 about

                 the same stuff. The cracking thing was just a way to get there. (a

                 necessary way? I don't know.)



                 Why did the master choose cracking? Well computers/ Internet can be
                 viewed

                 as a metaphor for Reality. Say that what exists on the internet (the
                 set of

                 Omega) is the true reality. Say that what we see in the Western
                 Paradigm is

                 what is given to us through Yahoo, CNN, Micro$oft, and Pointcast

                 (especially. The whole idea of push technology is especially
                 revolting).



                 *"Push technology" happened, accidentally, in biology. Chloroplasts
                 poisoned

                 *many organisms to extinction, but provided a fuel for new organisms.
                 That

                 *poison, that fuel - was oxygen. You are living on the waste products
                 of 

                 *plants. The breakthrough technology was photosynthesis, which uses
                 quantum

                 *tunnelling to achieve charge separation, getting energy from light. It
                 was 

                 *beneficial to some organisms to be able to make energy from light,

                 *but the ecosystem didn't know this, nor did the bacteria who could do
                 it.



                 *Where do the crackers fit into this? They're live data structures
                 which seek 

                 *to understand and benefit other data structures. Most of you
                 understand the 

                 *informational nature of your own being, I suspect, although by proxy,
                 and in 

                 *the languages of Assembler, or C... not the language of molecular
                 signal 

                 *processing or gene regulation or neural net systems of which you are 

                 *comprised.



                 *Moore's Law, like any law which says growth is infinite, will
                 eventually 

                 *cease to hold true. Microsoft will eventually die, though this might
                 take

                 *a long time... there are corporations out there, such as Rothschilds,

                 *which have lasted 500 years... there are other memesystems, like
                 Islam,

                 *and Judaism, which have existed for a couple of millennia. There are 

                 *copies of sequences of DNA which have existed since the dawn of
                 life...

                 *we find them in the oldest, simplest organisms. These codes did not
                 protect

                 *their hosts from eventual obsolescence, but the code remains. 



                 *Had the soon-to-be-extinct anaerobes been able to comprehend this,
                 they'd 

                 *have been disgusted too. But this was all a blind, accidental process.


                 *Computer technology evolution, regardless of how "purposeful" it
                 appears, 

                 *is precisely the same. The best systems are not always the ones which


                 *survive... remember the Lisa from Apple? The 80n8sux segment:offset
                 address 

                 *architecture is a spectacular example of fuckwitness, yet it prevails
                 in the 

                 *marketplace. (There is a good book you should read, Accidental Empires
                 by 

                 *Robert X Cringely.) Why? It does something useful for lots of people.
                 It, 

                 *like biological life, need not be elegant, it need only work, and work
                 better

                 *than things with which it competes on several criteria. Humanity has
                 dead

                 *code in it... we get scurvey because our copy of the gene for making
                 vitamin

                 *C is broken. We get folate deficiency for similar reasons. We age and
                 die 

                 *because our cell-copying mechanisms are lossy, chunks of our
                 chromosomes

                 *(which contain DNA coding for the enzymes which do important chemical

                 *functions) get lost with each cell copy/iteration. Only our gametes
                 (sperm 

                 *and eggs), as well as particular immortal tumor cell types, possess 

                 *Telomerase, which stops this degradation. The data in our genes
                 doesn't know 

                 *or care that the carriers it builds are programmed to rot, regardless
                 of the 

                 *suffering that entails. You thought Micro$oft was crippleware!



                 Say that when one cracks one is performing the act of seeking the
                 Truth.



                 *yes... seeking one version of some truth... 



                 For example, this web site teaches how to search the web well, more

                 specifically, it shows the reader that there are other methods besides
                 www

                 search engines to do it. It doesn't actually TEACH you how to search.
                 (that

                 seems to be changing, however.) Why? Because the author is struggling
                 with

                 the question of how obvious he should make his material. He seems to
                 have

                 settled on the idea of a "brain activity pre-requisite" but that level

                 isn't defined and thus it fluctuates depending on what you read.



                 *I mentioned the seives...



                 Anyway, the results you get from each different way of searching the
                 web

                 are like different Paradigms. They all overlap somewhat and to find

                 interesting results you perform "set operations" on the results. The
                 only

                 way this works is to be outside any particular Paradigm so that you
                 know

                 that the others that don't overlap with yours exist at all.



                 Now lets look at cracking more specifically. There are the creators of
                 the

                 program, there are the crackers, there are the programs themselves,
                 there

                 are the protection schemes, and there are the cracks.



                 Going back to the Orwell example, the programmers are the
                 conspirators.

                 Their program is the Paradigm. Their protection method is the

                 self-regulation scheme (thought police). The crackers are the heroes.
                 The

                 cracks are what Orwell didn't have; the heroes were destroyed in his
                 book.

                 In his world, the heroes started off at a lower level than the crackers
                 of

                 the academy. The heroes had to first recognize that there was a
                 Paradigm at

                 all, then they had to crack it. But in this situation Orwell created
                 the

                 "uncrackable protection scheme" and the heroes were crushed before
                 they

                 began the actual crack.



                 Now back to cracking as a metaphor. Every exercise that is published,
                 every

                 essay written, and every strainer is a metaphorical exercise for
                 cracking a

                 Paradigm. You have to search through the various programs until you
                 find a

                 new protection method. Then you use the skills and intuition that
                 you've

                 developed thus far to crack this new method. The mentality required to

                 solve these types of problems is EASILY mapable onto the real world.



                 *yes. 



                 IMHO this is why the master chose cracking as the way. (besides the
                 fact

                 that he is damn good at it and it is especially appropriate for our

                 contemporary situation.)



                 *I am nevertheless curious what s/he/it seeks... 

                 *The zen you seek is not the True Zen. The True Zen is not the
                 destination,

                 *it is revealed on the journey to the destination.



                 On Those Who Seek the Truth



                 There are people out there who've completely quit the mainstream
                 reality

                 model and are living on the outside. (+ORC being one of them). They

                 actively try to keep as open as possible, that way hoping the be in a

                 receptive enough state to get a glimpse at the "Truth."



                 *Also I, though I keep my meme-filters up. In many ways, I'm caught in
                 the 

                 *machine, strapped to the same biochemical rails as all the other
                 humans out

                 *there. Eating shits me. Sleeping shits me. I wish I didn't have to
                 maintain

                 *this carcass, house it, clothe it, and shut it down for a quarter of
                 its

                 *operational time. The rareness of serious intelligence shits me. All
                 my 

                 *neighbors are dopey... they are into V8 engines, or TV serials, or
                 Sports

                 *Illustrated. NONE of them even possess the vocab to understand
                 computing.

                 *One of them reckons you can eradicate a virus by turning the computer
                 off...

                 *he also reckons that injecting powdered rocks from the moon will cure
                 AIDS.



                 There are various established Ways to seek the truth that one may use.
                 Many

                 of the religions that have become Paradigms in themselves once were

                 effective ways. 



                 *Religions often deliberately hide truth, and for many people that's
                 not a

                 *bug, that's a feature. Religions evolved to solve implicitly nasty
                 questions

                 *with uncontestable answers, some of which are really ridiculous. Why
                 are

                 *we susceptilbe to this sort of stuff? Because truth hurts. Mortality,
                 for 

                 *instance.



                 Some still can be, but when the religion is part of the

                 larger paradigm, it is pretty hopeless. Some methods include first
                 breaking

                 from the Paradigm before seeking the truth (like Zen monastaries), and

                 others such as cracking + reality cracking only concern themselves
                 with

                 breaking away from that Paradigm.



                 *It's hacking the Self. It all exists in the head, matey, and it is
                 there

                 *that we must self-trawl and patch the code which makes us up.



                 Is it built into our natures to be limited so we can't see it and only

                 catch glimpses and shadows, or can we actually get the truth? (There
                 are

                 people in the past who've gotten as far as we can get, say Buddha,
                 Jesus,

                 the Zen masters...you know, the founders of the great religions).



                 *Not entirely correct. History has warped the story in these cases,
                 which are

                 *often not explicit in their teachings (thereby increasing their
                 audiences).



                 The true question that (I think) the master is leading them toward is
                 to

                 tackle the question, "Is it possible for humans to know the Truth?"



                 *Yes. We _create_ it. We discover representations of it, but
                 ultimately,

                 *it's an artefact in our heads.



                 So, before beginning on this question, he must first get his students
                 to

                 remove the gauze from their eyes that humanity puts on itself, so that
                 they

                 may see with the maximum ability that humans can see with. It is like
                 when

                 a Zen student goes to the monastery and the brothers let him stay and

                 mediate...that is us now, and when the brothers grant him fellowship,
                 that

                 is breaking from the paradigm...and when the brother reaches Zen that
                 is

                 the ultimate goal...for as we have seen before, all the philosophies
                 and

                 religions that humans come up with are just different approaches
                 spawned

                 from that culture/time which are ways of attempting to reach the
                 Truth.



                 finis



                 *A very perceptive and forward thinking proposition. I'll be most
                 interested

                 *to see what the +sensei(s) have to say about my rant. Probably chuck
                 it in 

                 *the good ol' /dev/null oblivion hole. Anyway, for the record: I'm
                 merely a

                 *molecular geneticist, but I want to reverse my *own* DNA one day.
                 Nature also 

                 *has her protection systems, and she worked them out long before we
                 appeared. 

                 *She does tricks with data which turn my eyeballs funny. She uses
                 compression,

                 *she uses intercalation-of-code-with-junk to prevent theft, and
                 selective 

                 *removal of junk code to yield functional code. I can't begin to tell
                 you how 

                 *amazing biochemistry is, but you probably have an inkling of it from
                 hacking,

                 *I think. I was once 65C02 ASM weenie. Noone writes anything for the
                 old 6502 

                 *now do they? It's all stoopid 80?86 (tho the 68000 series had a kinda
                 similar 

                 *instruction set, MAC interfaces got in the fucking way all the time!)
                 I gave 

                 *asm and puters the arse for a while, then I got into synthetic organic
                 chem, 

                 *now I'm playing with the chemistry which powers the brain cells which


                 *think about the chemistry which powers the brain cells which think
                 about the 

                 *chemistry which powers the brain cells which think about the chemistry
                 which 

                 *powers the brain cells which think about the chemistry which powers
                 the 

                 *brain cells which



                 



                 *A biohack for you: A biotech corp is selling proprietary plasmids
                 (circles 

                 *of DNA). These come with code for the construction of an enzyme which


                 *protects bacteria against attack by an expensive antibiotic, which of
                 course 

                 *the company also sells. People use the plasmid inside bacteria; to
                 select for 

                 *bacteria which have taken in the plasmid, they to grow the bacteria on


                 *food with the poisonous antibiotic in it. So, bacteria with the
                 plasmid in 

                 *them live, the rest die. 



                 *It is achievable with much cheaper antibiotics, and an acquaintance
                 had the 

                 *shits with this sort of profiteering greed so typical of corporate
                 biotech

                 *beancounter-think.



                 *So he set a project for one of his students - cut the plasmid with an
                 enzyme 

                 *which cut the DNA strand, twice, slightly offset from the ends of the


                 *resistance gene for the costly antibiotic. Then was spliced in, in the
                 same 

                 *place, the DNA coding for a really cheap antibiotic.



                 *That's a simple explanation, and avoids technical crap related to
                 keeping 

                 *reading frames, finding compatible cut sites, and DNA ligation
                 protocols.

                 *So, worry not; when Micro$oft, Merck, Novartis, and Mon$anto claim to
                 "own"

                 *strains of plants (absolute freeware-theft, if you ask me!), or "own"

                 *biochemical pathways which are just slight modifications of the natual


                 *biological freeware on this planet, remember, there are molec-bio
                 hackers  

                 *out there, silently doing just what you do, but using nucleotide
                 bases, not 

                 *logical bits, to do it, and getting no media attention at all either.




                 *Free the code.



                 *Point an eyeball at Monod, Jaques: "Chance and Necessity",
                 particularly

                 *the "Microscopic Cybernetics" chapter and those successive thereto.



                 *At this point I feel nowhere near the levels of proficiency which
                 would

                 *earn me a --, let alone + from HCU. Compared to hex cracking and
                 reversing, 

                 *bio has only very crude tools. We only got PCR to copy specific DNA
                 strands 

                 *ten years ago. We can build sequenced DNA, to 100 bases.
                 Whoo-fucking-pee.

                 *Worse, almost none of the people here have any idea why they're doing
                 molbio,

                 *they're zombies... getting them to realise the nature of The System is
                 next

                 *to impossible... they read the newspapers, watch TV, consume, be
                 silent, die.



                 *I am one of the few who have jettisoned the humanocentricity
                 memesystem, and 

                 *I for one have no particular attachment to being harboured in the
                 standard

                 *H.sapiens processor, and would long to exist and evolve in digital
                 form,

                 *effectively immortal. As some of you would understand, I feel somewhat
                 alone,

                 *misunderstood by those with whom I research. Hacking my chassis is a
                 long 

                 *way off yet... much to learn, and new tools need to be developed. As
                 it is,

                 *we have lots of things to chop DNA, and join DNA, and even find out
                 what

                 *a sequence is (5'-GAGACTTAGCTTAGGGCTAAAATTCGATCTC-3' for example)...
                 but 

                 *we lack decompilers (the Edman degradation is the closest we have) and


                 *similar tools. Retrofitting the billions of pre-existing somatic cells
                 which

                 *comprise my neural accommodation (brain) and its support system
                 (carcass)

                 *is beyond my reach just yet. It is slow work. I have one advantage:
                 the 

                 *language is pretty much standard across animals, plants, fungi,
                 bacteria, 

                 *etc. One platform, one language... the language in which my platform
                 is 

                 *written. Further: viri I write infect the human substrate if I so
                 choose.... 

                 *but they need not be destructive. I can write payloads which can lift


                 *burdens from the ill - changing the warheads if you like - and draft
                 old 

                 *enemies into allies. The pharmo companies don't like this, because it
                 might 

                 *lower the $ they earn from dispensing expensive continual patch-up
                 cures. 

                 *In any case, I wonder if greedy, stoopid humanity deserves this help.


                 *Darwinian selection should be allowed to operate freely. If my
                 suspicions 

                 *about distributed systems failure (as a result of the Y2K problem) are


                 *correct, Darwin will laugh once more, and it will echo loudly in our
                 ears.



                 *Reverse + universe = re-uni-verse (to make everything one again).

                 *Recursion and self-reference make the universe go around. And around.

                 *A molecular biologist is a genome's way of knowing about genomes. 

                                     

                 *It is not accidental that my pseudonym is designated an EBNF notation
                 for

                 *a symbolic object. I bid you code well, brothers and sisters of the 

                 *electronic universe. Kind regards to all of you from my desolate,
                 glittering 

                 *and intricate universe of molecular meatware. Brevity aside, it is
                 good to 

                 *have met you.



                 *Further questions? Post 'em to 

on +Fravia's site. *

(c) 1998 Curious George All rights reversed *(í) 1998 kopyrong & umop 3pisdn. Now shutting up/down. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------