*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.
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
* They are not necessarily subsets of true reality. Some of these reality * models are complete raving delusions.(body)
* 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 *I believe (with lots of other people too, like Plato, and Orwell to name two) that it is whatever you think it is.'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.
* 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.
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