Blog 2006 - Culture and Science from a Game Gene Perspective.

Socks and Sandals Belong to the World

How the fashion against wearing socks with sandals is a sign of a general stupidity.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, June 13, 2006

Fashions for foot binding, or tattoos, or earlobe plugs which stretch the ear skin into novelty cup holders are among the acceptable stupidities that grace the clique catwalks of various locales and eras.

On the adverse, the unacceptable stupidities are generally only ignored. However sometimes it is the unacceptable moments derived by pure genius that catch the most ire from the fashion police. One of these moments is the organic, frequently rediscovered fact that you should put socks on with sandals.

Everyday thousands of people make this discovery and wear this combo. Usually they're older, wiser and less threatened by fashionistas. Then there's the 'cool' kids. They think it's funny to see and point and tease the wise about their footwear, like children do with each other regarding natural bodily functions. But the organic inside of us calls everyone to the same facts.

A hot sunny day requires a way to keep your feet safe and cool. Sandals make the grade, but only to the first level because you soon realize there are a few drawbacks: the sun will still give your toes a good burn fairly quickly. All that sun screen you try to put on will wash off at the first opportunity and besides sun screen is always too uneven to rely on. And sun screen does nothing to stop your feet getting hot from the sunlight contacting the skin directly, a failure of forethought which defeats the whole purpose of the sandals. Next there is the fact that all that direct contact between smelly feet and sandals means slippery unsure footing when running and you get a quick whiff of unseen street people when you sit down at a cafe. Then if you walk any distance the dust and dirt sticks to your toes and adds luster to your 'bum's' tan. Finally you can add pain for the conventional sandal wearer: pebbles, blisters and cuts - not to mention the chaffing sores or a bloody stubbed toe.

What is it that the self appointed fashion police want to arrest anyway? They are a mixed up lot. Sometimes they add white to their complaints about sandals and socks as though white is an further insult to having socks. The colour white, need they be reminded, reflects the most sunlight and heat. White is easiest to clean and helps you discover hidden stones or bugs. What else could you want?

Now, if stupid is as stupid does, wearing white socks with sandals is about as far away as one could be. But that is not the problem. The problem is the general stupidity of humanity of which this present subject matter is only a symptom. People are stupid. I'm no exception. Intelligence and knowledge are not distinguishable from idiocy and ignorance. Morals and values are all based on stupid ideas and people. Even motives for living are all founded on moronic sensibilities. There is nothing that is done that is set on any hard foundation or rational purpose. Foolishness is an inbred fundmental requirement for every breath that is taken. There is not even a greater or lesser stupidity because any and all actions are equally foolish, just as all actions are equally actions. So why am I starting this pressure group called Socks and Sandals Forever? You can answer that as well as anyone.

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Scheming Against the New.

How we see only what we believe.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, June 6, 2006

The final episode of Desperate Housewives for this season called Remember had a moment of clarity of a particular kind. Lynette, played by Felicity Huffman, and her stage husband were confronted by his ex lover who now presents his secret fifteen year old love child to them both. Lynette assumed extorting 'child support' was all this mother wanted, but every time Lynette spoke or acted on that belief the mother reasonably and rationally corrected her, thus leaving Lynette confused.

It was difficult for Lynette to tell what this mother really wanted. Lynette's mouth was left agape because her original belief in what this situation was about was not working for her. Her state of mind was not disbelief but shock that she couldn't actually see what was happening. People are never in disbelief in these situations they are just 'hysterically' blind.

This makes sense because the last part in the process of perceiving anything, the 'framing' by the mind, cannot proceed without believing. Such 'framing' is the use of old beliefs to create newish old beliefs. The word schema is used in conventional psychology for the same process. Stunned faces and confused ideas only follow from old beliefs completely failing to fantasize a continuing reality. The moment of clarity in Desperate Housewives was such a moment because it illustrated this failure perfectly.

This observation is at least as old as Nietzsche; "One hears only those questions for which one is able to find answers", Gay Science. This uneven philosopher took up this idea and blazed the way for many profound scientists and psychologists to follow his lead. But few were able to follow for exactly the reason he states in the above quotation. What people can answer is what they already believe and the goals they already accept. This situation can be reduced to the 'McGuffins' I referred to last week. Then when you fail, and this happens frequently, your particular arbitrary McGuffin is lost, so you can't use it to see all those 'believable' bits and pieces that fed into it. Think of all the legal jargon at the bottom of a contract; not many people have the kind of McGuffin , such as a lawyer or politician does, to hang that babble on. The rest of us just see a jumble of words. We are in effect blind.

Lynette's McGuffin that the mother's own goal was extortion failed her and her refusal to take up an alternative showed her and us that the power of belief is that it is necessary for us to be allowed to see.

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A Kosovo Texan Enchilada

The Rio Grande hypocrisy. Why immigration is an important issue.

Blog, May 30, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

All the fuss going on in the States regarding Mexicans crossing into the US, and also regarding things like the anthem being sung in Spanish, shows what has been the case lately in any and every country: the hogwash attached to multiculturalism. The truth is we are all racists or need to be.

Of course hypocrisies abound on this issue, but it is the adjacent dangers which make my point. For one, without 'racism' everyone would have nothing to value. But first it's the hypocrisies that matter.

When Texas was a part of Mexico, English American immigrants crossed the Mexican border into Texas without controls on their numbers. Eventually, as these immigrants made no attempt to assimilate, these 'Americans' used their high numbers in that province to steal this territory away for their home country. We all know the rest because this famous theft has been spin doctored to death for everyone forced into the American sphere, including Mexicans.

Now the present reversing of the situation has the American spin doctors recognizing their own signature. They can see the problem of a potential Mexican takeover of some if not all of the states as a major challenge to the American race (More on race latter.) And they have the present example of Kosovo to stoke their fears and hypocrisy.

Kosovo is a common recent example. This province of Serbia was more important to Serbians than any Alamo or George Washington. It is their 'Jamestown' and their 'Plymouth'. It also happens to border Albania so when over a hundred years ago uncontrolled immigration from Albania to Serbia occurred it set in motion a series of events from the higher Albanian birth rate, to mutual expulsions, to the Serbians given minority status in their own homeland by outsiders.

It must give any half wit 'Texan' pause and make him think that any regionally strong group, from chinatown to poortown, could, if their not careful, do the same thing to his 'state' as the Albanians had done to Serbia, which he recalls is what Americans had done to Mexico and he would expect Mexico is now doing going to do right back at them.

For all this you can begin to see not just the hypocrisy, not just a language, not just skin colour, but how all meaning is tied up with the power of just any old thing used to represent a culture. It's not language or skin colour that makes the difference to people, its the 'McGuffin', the anything in a story that causes the plot to advance. Life cannot be lived without it because all values are standardized by McGuffins. Americans, Mexicans, Serbians, Albanians, are just McGuffins. Races are just McGuffins. However, if your McGuffin is about to be destroyed there is only one option for all people - patriotic war! Kick out the enemy and don't allow any weakening of your McGuffin ever again.

Everybody knows this when it comes down to it. If your new neighbour sneaks up on you, or momentarily overpowers you, and then changes not only the language that keeps you alive by gainful work but then he tells you you're cultural practices are bad or stupid and will jail you for them, then everybody understands - no exceptions. And people wonder why there are wars. Ha!

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Mao House Science
How science fails to live up to its own hype.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, May 23, 2006

Two situations help explain the folly of science as its 'reality' is claimed to be. A new TV show called House and an historical era during Mao's reign offer two aspects on the same hype regarding the norms in science.

House is a Fox TV drama on how doctoring is really just about using educated guess work. In last week's episode every treatment failed (again) so Dr. House concluded (in effect (from my memory)), 'We use sound scientific premises, make reasonable hypothesis, rational diagnosis, test every theory with experiments and properly treat the proven disease and we still put the patient on the verge of death. There must be something wrong with the scientific method.' (Great writers.) As is usual in this character's dialogue he hits on something left unquestioned in the real world : why is science so often wrong and simian trial and error always so necessary?
Then there are those like Mao Tse-tung who not only trust science and scientists to answer every problem and treat every ill, but they do so by faith in 'scientific logic'. Mao, on the recommendations of 'science' took his Great Leap Forward and killed not just one patient but thirty million. He did this even though Stalin reaped horrible results during his own similar, earlier experiment, and other Soviet leaders warned Mao it was a mistake even to attempt it.

What is it about science that misses so much about reality? There could be a couple of related reasons. The abuse of logic is one.

As many others have noted over the centuries logic has no relation to reality. Logic is a set of rules superimposed on any situation. Math is a special kind of logic that is an extreme formalism. It is far from being the language of the universe, but, if you decide to measure the universe with math, your game may satisfy your mind. That's all math does. It is there to fit into the games we need and want to play.

But what happens when any logic, math included, is taken as some absolute universal hidden code is that we forget what game we are playing at that moment and we see much more in our results then is organically there. Such is the case with our two curmudgeons.

Both Mao and House are pursuing a game of saving the patient, both see an avenue that could work, both look for justification to take that avenue, both find justification to go on that avenue despite impediments, and finally both fail miserably in the stated goal of saving the patient. Both are logical, scientific and right, so why do they fail? There is never a correct path, even in science. The path taken is always arbitrary. No math formula can change that. There are thousands of paths to success and even more to failure and there are no organic goals that define success in the first place, so every decision can be nothing but completley arbitrary. No reasoning or logic can get around this. Mao and House didn't realize this so were surprised when they failed.

Another abuse of science is the distancing some practitioners do from failures. They calls scientists who make mistakes 'quacks' as though fraud was the goal. Most times these 'quacks' are using the same intelligence, techniques and methods and are as honest as their colleagues. What is more important here is that the abusive term is meant to create the impression that real science finds absolute objective logical truths and failures must be therefore unscientific - by definition almost. The result is that those scientists who do tread down the primrose path of failure, but who maintain the us (scientists) versus them (quacks) mentality, will treat their own logical stupidities as illuminations and useful because they themselves are the scientific ones and that is enough.

Mao and his backers in the scientific community are called quacks and murderers now because they failed, but they were essentially no different than any successful team you wish to mention except that they played the same game differently in time and place. House played his game exactly as most scientists would have and he failed too and that kind of thing happens everyday.

Trial and error saved the day though, for both House and Mao. Eventually, the most rudimentary method is the best one. From parrot, to fish, to monkey, to scientist, trial and error is what gets the job done.

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Merry-Go-Economics

Water pump in South Africa shows games power survival.

Blog, May 16, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

A PBS Frontline / World segment, called The Play Pump on a South African entrepreneur's, Trevor Field's, charity project to help his country's rural people get drinking water, shows simply and directly that games do power survival.

When the old hand pumps proved not powerful enough to bring water from deep wells and not pleasurable enough to motivate pumping in excess of immediate needs, Trevor and a designer came up with a solution: make pumping a game which already has value. He made a pump 'handle' the size and shape of a playground merry-go-round.

The idea works because typical local kids would be attracted to such a game; there are few competing games to play with, like tv, or even other playground games like slides. Kids play on it for hours incidentally pumping water into a ten metre high water tower which gives easy access to clean drinking water for anyone who needs it.

Game power as opposed to 'survival power' is a real phenomenon of existence and is demonstrated in this case and in many other ways from rutting seasons to hang gliding. Few, if any, beings wish to survive as a goal. If anything they will be hoping for a game to come along -- which is a game in and of itself which happens to keep these beings alive while waiting and hoping, and at times using boring old hand pumps to get adequate drinking water in the mean time. Games can have no connection to vital stuffs, and can not only deliver the necessities but can get you what your heart never dared to desire.

The downside of a trick like this merry-go-round is that it gives kids motion sickness and, besides, they all will get bored of it soon and move on. What the plan will therefore really count on is a fresh crop of young kids to pump the water. It might even degenerate into some local people having babies just to man the pump with these short term suckers. What could be worse for them all is if the play pump becomes uncool to play with. No one might go there except as mules to pump water that they alone need.

For all the good work Trevor and others think they are doing there is no end to the need. Time to begin from the ground up and examine everything.

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On the Supposed Impossibly of Artificial Intelligence

Peter Kassan's article in Skeptic Magazine erroneously claims A.I. is a mirage.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, May 9, 2006

Skeptic Magazine's article on artificial intelligence purports to prove A.I. is impossible. The subtitle says it all: the futile quest for artificial intelligence. Author Peter Kassan makes many technical points showing the statistical improbability of a machine ever reaching the complexity of a human brain - as if that is the only legitimate benchmark. However, Kassan's first point and also his over arching critique, that the how is not possible until the what is discovered, also makes his entire subsequent technical probability arguments irrelevant. Also it makes his apocalyptic words ring like so many expert's famous last words as in the 'bumble bees cannot fly' logic.

Right now the what is answered by gamegene theory. In 2001, I began, in the following unfinished piece, to articulate the A.I. solution inherent in my 1996 deduction of the game gene. I include it here by way of showing any development I may have made and to show Kassan's point is at least five years out of date.

Artificial Intelligence and the Missing Link: Game Gene Theory
April 5, 2001
There is now a solution to the unrealized ambitions of scientists who wish to create artificial intelligence (AI). This solution helps determine what constitutes actual life-like intelligence and to use that determination to create life-like intelligence from scratch. This solution is derived from the Game Gene Theory.

The problem with AI, as understood by many scientists in the field, is to decide how to build a machine with AI. However, the precursor should be how to decide what intelligence is, and further back, why would an AI want to exist? because if AI is going to be more than a computer it must have its own thoughts, wishes and hopes. It must be primarily independent in action. Scientists are getting lost along the way.

From what I understand of their problem scientists are stuck on how to allow for learning and seperately how to create consciousness. Both are necessary at the same time for their game to succeed - the first because, according to these scientists, it mimics the development we see in life forms and the second despite it being imagined by them to be of unique significance to human beings, all life has consciousness and so must AI.

The answer to their problem is too simple for these people: it is this - recognize that all life is playing games, even when learning, and that all life must have a consciousness which is defined only as a sense of self.

To make a sense of self a technology is perhaps something like this. A massive cpu will have a sensor attached to itself which informs itself of the space it takes in the world, so to speak. This space need only be like a minor premise that says that its being is more important than any other fact. Other senses would be established to influence the cpu, including sensors which actually allows harm and gain to be inflicted on the cpu in the form of less or more ram, for example.

All these sensors would formally mimic the physical and emotional influences found in actual life forms. The reward/punishment system must be outside of the direct control of the cpu and tied indirectly to the reactions of the cpu to the games it plays. If it perceives a success the extra ram is given. An internally perceived reversal implies the adverse award. Arbitrary harm and praise too needs to be awarded at times to keep it all unpredictable for the AI so that only games are what works.

The main operating system program must play games based on only a few starter goals. Then those goals are developed and influenced by the memory of 'emotional' and 'physical' reactions to previous games.

No regular short cuts to rewards can be given to the cpu, as, for example, in human life forms a person can take a narcotic which rewards the individual irrespective of the games' progress.

There must be a method for making arbitrary choices. That method could involve a time limit or a general rule to cut off self debate......
Unfinished

Today I have little to add to these basic concepts because I generally don't care if AI succeeds. That is, except to say, no one, not even an AI robot, needs to exist, but if you're going to force one to live you may as well get it right.

Peter Kassan and Skeptic Magazine may have similar ideas to what I've laid our here but it's not because they wish to spare some future AI some suffering, or even to get it right, they want math and conventional science to win the day so they can continue their real work of assulting all those who don't conform.

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The Red Paper Clip Phenomenon Encapsulates Economics
Games make economics, from money to bartering, meaningful.

Blog, May 2, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

A story has been making the rounds of all the major news organizations in North America. A young Vancouver internet hound wondered what he could get if he bartered a red ordinary size paper clip online. He hoped for a house, but didn't say right away. What he got was a pen. Neat. But he decided to keep on bartering with the proceeds until he was offerd something more valuable. Of course this bartering snowballed like crazy or no one would be talking about it. Today it is now magically the house.

How could anyone essentially trade a paper clip for a house? Well he didn't do that, but what he did was demonstrate the ultimate essence of economics. Business and economics are not about exchanging one value for an equal value, like labour for money, or fur coat for sex, or WB for AOL. It is about getting rid of something you don't value much for something you do and this whole thing can only be considered a game.

The reason it is a game is because we change our evaluations all the time, have no clear idea how to get what we momentarily imagine as valuable and always need to adjust our method of acquiring the 'greater' value. Ultimately, like all games, we abandon all these values because they become stale and not just because we cannot take them with us into death.

There was nothing he bartered for that was valuable to him in this case except the game itself. By this he was able to do what others thought impossible. His goal was to see what he could get and that was all. The house idea was too crazy to take seriously, but it gave him some kind of goal that at least told him the game wasn't over yet. There is no end to that type of impossible game until one gets bored with it or until no one else wants to play too.

Now, if he had planned for this all to happen, he admits, everyone would laugh, including him. Bold predictions by an internet hound that anyone could trade a paper clip for a house would put the whole internet to shame. But mistakes served him well. My former crazy landlord, for example, wanted me to look up on the new fangled internet the location of undiscovered gold fields in his home country of the Ukraine. Everyone laughed when I told them that one but can an economy grow without that kind of thinking? Both case are evidence of stupidity. The main difference is that my landlord's was never played out as it could have been. Mistakes like these two are more the life blood of economic growth than stock markets or direct investments. The Red paper clip story shows the real value of things in the economic sphere foolishness can get you anything.

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Jamie the Gladiator

Jamie the Gladiator
Jamie Oliver lets it (ethics) all hang out.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, April 25, 2006

This weeks Jamie's Great Italian Escape has brought out some ethical issues for his world-wide audiences regarding the meaning of death (food). More importantly is there such a thing as a real meaning to anything. At the same time a relevant replaying of Gladiators: The Brutal Truth spotlighted another Italian era and how seemingly absolute values, like death, cannot mesh between cultures distanced by either time or space. Both shows taken together and Jamie's two epiphanies in his show, that he could kill a lamb and that he could actually do it on camera, brought up vast amounts of cultural bile for his audience.

This whole issue for Jamie came up when he decided to stay with an Italian family in Le Marche, east of Tuscany. The family hunted boar and slaughtered their own meats and didn't believe in modern farming methods. As this was an episode for his newest series Jamie was trying to find a sustainable system of living that was also healthy. When, eventually, the family asked Jamie to cut the throat of a lamb (Silence of the Lambs might have come to his mind) he at first said, "I don't think I can kill a lamb to be honest with you." Then he tightened his thinking and said it would be hypocritical after serving hundreds of lamb dishes not to be willing to kill one.

After shocking millions of his fans by slitting the throat of the lamb and skinning it according to Italian local custom, as well as trying to shoot a wild boar, Jamie began to openly wonder about all cultural differences. He saw two local toddlers hanging out around the lamb carcass as a cat licked from the pool of blood and saw a resemblance between these toddlers and his own two. He said it was wonderful the way local kids were exposed to the slaughter; kids should be desensitized to these facts of life and death, and how food is procured for them. Never, though, does the alternative come to his mind. Now hold that thought for a bit while we go to gladiators.

Terry Jones the host of 'Brutal Truth' wondered many times during the show why old Italians like the Romans made the death of animals and people so common as to make it an entertainment. Of course he began with some historical timelines and developments, which for him really explained nothing because even afterwards he chose to be perplexed.

Why did norms like this come to be? Why do any norms arise? Jones might have asked. He needed to go back to the historical developments which he had rushed through and begin with the question, 'Where do all norms come from?' He shouldn't just confuse himself by taking one norm only and not, at least, also include his own norm of twenty-first century 'humanitarianism' as an equal partner in the scientific quest. Ask 'Why did they all arise?' and the developments of both norms, and other norms as well, can be seen easily within the historical factors to be essentially arbitrary games, no less so than the gladiatorial games themselves.

For example, say, one day a guy near Rome in 600 BC thinks direct human sacrifice is boring and knows it also make his slaves upset. Next, he wants to determine who his most expendable slaves are so he tells two he doesn't care much about to fight to the death during the funeral sacrifice thus solving several issues at once. Suddenly gladiators are born. Others see it as a good idea and it grows. There is no mystery as to how these things happen really. We cannot be sure of any actual history, but how anything can happen within life is usually in a simultaneous sequence of personal ideas and decisions that we can see all around us everyday of our lives. Sensitivity to animal suffering, or not, is just one of those things - no big deal - it's just the result of one more kind of game. Jamie's throat cutting and the gladiatorial games now have a context that makes sense of any value and how all historical developments have a part to play in how any value arises.

Next, when you remember how any and all people feel pleasure when they torture 'bad' people (personal enemies), it is quite simple to understand how any violence becomes accepted. All you need to do is change the norm and bad can be made out of anyone, from rivals in checkers, to unfaithful spouses, to enemy nationals.

Thomas Carlyle, for example, in 1853 generally wanted all arable land to come under cultivation because 'God' hated wasting the potential of the land. Carlyle also hated industrialization and modern work methods because it turns souls into machines. But Carlyle liked having black slaves, so when The Empire's slaves had been freed he came up with this idea for England's West Indies. "... no black man who will not work {in the sugar cane fields} according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right {no right} to eat pumpkin {do subsistence farming} , or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled {by whipping he says}, by the real proprietors of said land {whites}..." Suddenly, farming the land is an act of laziness and modern methods are fine. He twisted his own standards in order to create his wanted norm and found torture and violence desirable and pleasurable.

Violence and suffering is enjoyed when we manipulate the norm in ourselves and others. New kinds of 'gladiatorial games' surround us all the time in the norms of gangster rappers, death penalty advocates, and road rage participants, and when we confront it normally we just call it a bad day. When we take these other's norms up as issues, like Jamie, like his shocked fans, we manipulate the context in order to create or massage norms, so that we can, vitally, care about something, and secondly, still enjoy our own secreted silencing of the lambs.

So Jamie, why then didn't you consider the alternative? Why must children be desensitized to the slaughter? No Births Jamie! There is no reason for any of it. So if you want to really end suffering you should never have had children.

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Global Dimming and the Further Dimming of Reasons for Birth

When the sky does fall we won't notice, so why not hurry it?

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, April 18, 2006

Donald Rumsfeld often says sarcastically about journalists "Henny penny! The sky is falling", wrongly claiming that they're always saying disaster is upon us and then nothing happens (the Iraqi insurgent war, etc., which did happen). However, the reverse is true. A disaster happens and no one notices it as a disaster. People look outside their own windows and see the same old cows munching, the same neighbour picking up the newspaper and think this disaster wasn't so disastrous. This happened when Gorbachov predicted that war would break out all over the Soviet Union if Yeltsin had his way and the Union was dissolved. Well Gorbachov was correct, but afterward everybody just accepted the wars as normal. This thing happens all the time because the act of worrying causes worse feelings than the disaster itself. The 'worrier' also has no idea about the other factors that will mitigate his horror afterward, mainly the self delusion that all is well enough.

So now we have a new environmental disaster called global dimming which cools the earth even as green house gases warm it. The cooling effects of dirt in the air, which dims the world's sunlight an average of 22 percent, also masks the rising temperatures, reducing average temps by 1 percent from a 2.5 potential rise. It's a self-made mitigation /slash/ self delusion.

The dilemma is the cleaner we make the smog the faster global warming's effects will be exposed. But to keep the atmosphere dirty means health and other climate disasters loom. Further, to allow one problem to fight the other for you will be like building a house of cards on a ship. And it will not stop either the global dimming or warming from hurting everything anyway. Even a sudden collapse of the world economy and the end to dirty air overnight would only accelerate the rise in temperatures.

So disaster is coming, the sky will be falling very soon, but are we going to care when it does? Forget about stopping it. We won't change anything about ourselves enough to stop it. When the sky falls we'll not only continue eating the placenta of our babies, we'll be frying our own children filet style with some fava beans and wondering how the predictions of disaster could have been so wrong. Our views within disastrous times change so much that war, death, rape and speeding seem like so much fluff.

People will always be giving birth to frying pan size babies. There doesn't seem to be an end to the blind desire to have children. Even with all the looming disasters that we worry about, it make no difference to people. The reality is that these disasters can only be considered minor reasons for not giving birth, a sort of footnote really. There are countless better reasons not to have kids, beginning with the fact that birth is the only way to create death and suffering.

So here we begin another countdown to the end of the world. But many countries from Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and on and on have gone through their world-ending disasters and the people don't seem to give up hope. The possible mass extinctions envisioned by this PBS doomsday program are best described by the line from Waiting for Godot "...if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all...." Perhaps, the need for readiness could be made irrelevant too if there were no more births.

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Trump Trumped

The Donald finds success in every field but one - life

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, April 11, 2006

The 'talking cure' concept touted by psychoanalysts and others over the years should be really called the talking disease. It is the cause of great harm though it sometimes allows the discovery of what life is all about which in the following case was one and the same.

Donald Trump in his reality show The Apprentice last week had just such a damning epiphany. It all began when a situation arose over the previous few weeks when a Jew named Lee took his Jewish holidays as they fell, which turned out to be during two weeks of the show. The result was Lee got two byes into the next respective rounds while two others got fired. Lee knew before entering the contest that he would have this advantage, and so could have bowed out. What was worse was that an Israeli Russian Jew, Lenny, on the same team, did not use these holidays as an excuse (his view).

Trump saw this situation developing weeks before and called it unfair but acceptable back then. This last week it was more pronounced because Lenny was again in the line of fire while Lee had taken a second week off. The project manager, Bryce, had brought Lee and Lenny in with him to the boardroom as candidates for firing because he believed it was unfair to punish the others who did good work and stuck their necks out along with him. So he brought back those two who contributed the least in his view. Bryce knew that Lee would not be fired, but his logic was honourable by his reckoning.

Trump was upset by the dilemma he found himself in. There was no way he was going to fire Lee for honouring a Jewish holiday, nor did he want to fire Lenny who made an effort at least. Right away he knew his only choice was the fair minded Bryce. But in his reluctance to do the inevitable thing Trump began a long slow torturous conversation, his own talking cure.

It began with Trump responding to Bryce with "Life is unfair", then progressing to "Life is terrible", and finally ending with the sincere outburst "Life sucks. You know that?!" It was remarkable how these three levels of ever deepening despair were revealing what many suspected but few believed, that the rich are not always satisfied - and neither are the famous, the powerful - nor are the sexed up or the well liked. Trump is all these things, yet he feels and knows life sucks.

This is also a guy who has lots of kids, wants more (which hypocritical after "life sucks") and cares little about the world in general - other than through some rich guy's standard-charity-thinking. So as it seems Trump is not using any accurate moral sense, his talking cure then is evidence not of a warning to the world so as much as it is a realization of a truth created at that moment: A truth he didn't want to know. It's a new disease eating at his satisfaction.

Talking has the underrated ability to take us where we never expected or needed to go. Trump never needed to know life sucks. He might not have found this out if not for the series of spur-of-the-moment thoughts, words and emotions that just erupted from him and to him. However, it did happen and so the infection begins. Psychological diseases, if there can be such diseases, are often the result of talk, not discovered or improved by talk. Perhaps without talk there would be no need for talk's deadly cures, via psycho babble or not. If you want to avoid most talking diseases make friends with a dog, preferably one you can't understand.

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Sceptics Undoubted

So-called sceptics, CSICOPS, give themselves another free ride when examining a psychic.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, April 4, 2006

A program on Discovery called The Girl with X-ray Eyes was a perfect chance to test the self-appointed cops of the sceptic world CSICOPS, but it never happened. In this one hour documentary we are instead subjected to some shoddy science by smug condescending club members against a seventeen year old russian girl, Natasha Demkina, who was only wishing to prove once and for all that she can 'see' illnesses in people.

This girl calls her gift her 'medical sight' and claims no other unusual abilities. Her method is simple and has been the same since she began at 11 years old. She talks to the ailing people who come to her and then describes what she 'sees'. Generally she is looking for existing maladies like diseases, but can find locations of knitted bones from previous fractures. Her technique, however it's done or not done, is frequently verified by patients and subsequent events. My concern is not with her abilities, or lack thereof, but with CSICOPS and their ilk.

The CSICOPS crew, Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman, asked her to change her normal practises in several different ways. First she could not talk to the seven test subjects. They all wore glasses so there could be no eye contact and all were present together at the same time. Her usual method of concentrating on one person and using every indication at her disposal as a doctor does was not allowed. She was given multiple choices and told what medical facts to look for then match fact to subject. These facts also were not diseases, but harmed or altered body parts, not her normal area of concern.

A doctor comparitivly tested outside his natural method would flop on the first go-round. CSICOPS had no desire for Natasha to have a chance to practice the new method, they acted as if they expected her to perform perfectly the first time.

This following is what they asked her to 'see' according to one participant, Andrew A. Skolnick, "The target conditions were: a removed appendix, a removed lower section of the esophagus, metal staples left in the chest after surgery; an artificial hip joint; a surgically removed upper section of the left lung; and a metal plate covering a removed section of the skull." In addition one subject had no problem.

Her claim to 'see' problems was taken literally and they made 'seeing' her only test as though she actually claimed she had X-rays coming out of her eyes. This begins a whole cornucopia of errors by CSICOPS.

CSICOPS's experiment on Natasha included an arbitrary goal to indicate proof of her abilities based only on odds making (in this case five out of seven correct matching a condition with person), no control case, no statistically significant data, no idea what indicated utter failure, no room for seeing the ambiguous in the experiment's game and no tough rules to guarantee CSICOPS acceptance of the results if positive.

In the end the girl selected four of seven, not five. CSICOPS suddenly pronounced her a fraud and sent her home with the patronizing advise not to harm people with her 'medical sight', but, instead, to get a real doctor's skills at school. With all the bravado of an Augustus the God, CSICOPS was able to once again defend all conventional beliefs - which is the sole reason for its existence. However, in addition to the basic errors in science and their biases against unconventional ideas, there are general errors that allow CSICOPS to continue in its hogwash ways .

CSICOPS members forget that all experiments are inconsistent. Nothing is repeated perfectly or is identical to something else no matter how often one tries to make it, and this is especially true in science. How can they expect one small test like Natasha's to uncover enough data for a probability estimate in order to make any conclusion valid.

Next, everyone needs practice when playing a new game. Natasha had never played that experiment game before - ever. Doing this game, for her, was like playing cards with arms tied behind her back. Four out of seven is not a failure at all and until they find a doctor or regular Joe who can do as well, it is, on the face of it, significant enough that she scored so high, yet they ignored it and showed that they feared conducting a follow up or repetition of the experiment.

Finally, she could have just made a mistake. Being a psychic would not stop her from being human. One case of misidentifying a friend in a crowd does not make someone blind. Yet CSICOPS would have you believe the misidentification of one case constitutes proof that Natasha is blind.

The Joes at CSICOPS who call themselves sceptics are not willing to enter into the same test-tube into which they subject others. Sagan's illogical free pass to his buddies at CSICOPS which says extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence only make sense from an anthropological point of view, as in 'Look at the sods who use every political trick in the book to maintain their paradigm. Their enemies are going to need to use those same tricks in order to overturn it.' In other words, Segan and CSICOPS are referring to power and making ideological war and all that's fair about it. All claims need the same level of proof and all sceptics are required to evenly spread doubt towards all subjects, including themselves. Anything less is erroneous. To actively create anything less is the hogwash we have today called CSICOPS.

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Shooting Blanks

How people and stupidity go so well together when blindly creating life through sperm donations.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, March 28, 2006

60 minutes aired a piece on anonymous sperm donations and the extended families that have been created when parents and offspring voluntarily hook up as siblings and genetic fathers. All this was given a peachy-keen air as though the selling of sperm to needlessly create life doesn't amount to just another revival of slavery. But what was astonishing is the accuracy of one sperm seller, a doctor, in describing his own actions when he sold up to a hundred children into existence: he said, "I don't have to be able to predict the future exactly to be willing to wade into it." This sentiment is true of all and any life. That's how the game gene makes us all think, even if it's pure stupidly to think so. But there is much more to life. This purportedly 'caring' doctor who calls himself "quite a hunk� is missing the big picture, there's no reason to live. Not only is there a lack of absolute reasons, but one cannot even invent relative or stupid reasons before existence. This guy just wanted kids like a rabbit wants to shit.

Why must this doctor insist on having no thought for his children? He didn't even seriously consider his actions as fathering. He was selling sperm for seven years at 50 dollars a squirt. That's it. That's the significance of a life to him and his kind. But it's not much different for your average fathers. These regular guys just say things like they want immortality, or they just reason with an 'oops'.

Mothers are no better. They claim their clock is ticking, or they just want 'something' of their own, and use any means necessary to do it and they have not the faintest clue as to why they do. Wasting money and emotions on a game they never needed to play is a standard modus operandi.

The minds of greatest quality throughout history are no better then the dullest and some I admire, like Shake-speare, have been shooting blanks when it comes to reasons for their encouragement of all reproduction. Now sperm donations by people like doctors once again not only show evolution to be a farce, but also shows that increasing general stupidity is the must-have ingredient for the continuation of life.

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The Meaning of a Yellow Rolls Royce

How Shirley MacLaine's character in this old movie demonstrates that meaning comes from games not experience.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, March 21, 2006

When we're little kids, and our parents take us for a trip, sometimes there is nothing more torturous. Where do our parents get off taking us to Vermont or Paris? How boring is that? Then somehow over time we change and start wanting to go on trips and see new things. This is the turning point in an old technicolor extravaganza called The Yellow Rolls Royce.

In it Shirley MacLaine plays the character of a spoiled gangster's girl who is taken to Italy by George C. Scott's mafia boss character. There is nothing of interest to her. Nothing is beautiful and she loves no one. Scott buys the Yellow Rolls for the trip because MacLaine has a mysterious liking for it. In Pisa Scott fails to get any reaction out of MacLaine for the beauty of the leaning tower. Scott is frustrated because he wants MacLaine to be happy and see the beauty in life.

Then a local scam artist, a young good looking Italian man impresses Scott with his energy and balls and Scott takes him along. MacLaine can't stand the scam artist, but can't help but play inside his tricks. At least his lies are interesting and she knows there is danger involved. She is being chaperoned by Scott's underling Art Carney so when Scott needs to deal with Mafia business Scott insists MacLaine get something out of Italy and enjoy herself with Carney. This is when she falls in love with the scam artist and they openly romance each other along the Amalfi coast making love in the yellow Rolls at one point.

She starts dreaming of a life with him and he does with her, but suddenly Scott sends a letter informing them that he is returning early. His mission was successful and he killed all his rivals. He had secretly come to MacLaine's villa first then sent her the letter so as to spy on her and see how she would react. The scam artist decides he wants to stand up to Scott and take her away with him, but MacLaine knows Scott will just kill him. MacLaine decides to fain a lack of interest in the young man so as to save his life. Scott sees the whole scene and lets it all happen. He returns to MacLaine and outwardly she is the same disinterested girl he loves - but he knows she is crushed inside. Scott lets her think he does not know anything and he picks up where he left off with her trying to get her to appreciate the beauty of the Italian landscape. To his surprise she is now relishing a sunset and the gorgeous mountain villages - everything has beauty to her. Without her realizing it the love and heartbreak has turned her around and everything has meaning where none was before.

Any emotion helps us remember an incident, but sex and romance is one kind that is stronger than most. Heartbreak is about reminding oneself of that strength and of that power. The Yellow Rolls only became associated to that power by accident, but the car is no less important to her for being an accident. Such is the case with any incidental associations that happen along the way during her romance with the scam artist. Whereas years of her mere experience with the 'beauty' of the world produced no change in her and no love for what was around her, the accident of falling in love with this man she despised rubbed off on the entire world - everything meant more. Meaning and mystery grew in her heroic heartache as she remembered the good times - even the insurmountable grandness of a sun gained in meaning. As a child the same thing happens as with Shirley MacLaine's character to all of us, but usually over what we naive adults call toys and childish things. That is where all meaning comes from there is no avoiding it or finding a way in life without it.

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The Real Anthropomorphism Fallacy

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, March 14, 2006

One of the greatest blunders of modern science has been the claim of anthropomorphism. Animals do, act, are, can be just like humans in so many ways it is the basic assumption by scientists in medical research and evolutionary theory. Yet despite all this, somehow that assumption is called a fallacy when it suits these scientists.

The claim has many faults not least of which is irrelevancy. If you are looking for truths, what does it matter in itself if there are differences or similarities in various beings in the view of these scientists? Everything, every human being has differences and similarities. Darwin claimed every person is a mutant to some degree. There is nothing that is not dissimilar or similar according to the context you throw it in. So what? Why must they then constanty imply, when they don't state it bluntly, that humans are better? Whether it's intellegence, emotion, or some combination, scientists must run for this cover for no other reason than guilt. What they feel guilty about is the often thoughtless uses they put animals to. But even when the uses are thoughtful and the guilt is less strong, they become more bold in their claims and more ridiculous - like Descarte they even claim animals have the feeling and intelligence of a jack-in-the-box.

Usually some new cartesian, or other, will cite their stock assertion against animal rights sympathizers or someone just using common sense. Rarely, if ever, is the charge of anthropomorphism ever argued. It is usually used just in a mocking tone, as in "You poor fools, I'm not fooled". These scientists don't even know why they do it. When not feeling guilty sometimes they just want to feel superior to both animals and other humans.

Darwin is the patron saint for many of these same scientists even though he argued animals are like humans, especially emotionally. Yet somehow these blowhards can still disrespect Darwin and call his ideas pejoratively anthropomorphism. The other thing they do is dismiss as anecdotal the overwhelming numbers of cases of animal's manifest emotion and intellect laden motivations during actions for themselves or in helping people. They call that scientific observation a fallacy for no other reason than fear. Typically they never acknowledge a single problem with their basic assumption - that people are best - and swagger on behalf of their team like Kilgore in Apocalypse Now over the bodies of 'dirty Cong'. Maybe it time they got back to their main business of figuring things out and not trying maintain a humanist religion.

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Prisoner Games

In Spandau Prison Albert Speer and Rudolph Hess show what the brain needs and doesn't need. Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, March 7, 2006

A new documentary on Albert Speer called SPEER & HITLER played on HistoryTelevision this week. In it we are shown reenactments of Speer's time in Spandau Prison with among other prisoners Rudolph Hess. The key events of that time in prison were Speer's particular kind of activity and Hess' peculiar non-activity. More exactly Speer's games in a reduced context and Hess' lethargy.

This situation is important because it illustrates what happens in reduced contexts to anyone. A context here is what is typically and usually defined as a context, but it is moreover a game that an individual plays with as a reference point for all actions and thoughts. The context as reference point can be a cultural norm like a national constitution for example. A reduced context is the above cultural norm that is made smaller in some way. In Spandau prison the options and norms are minimized and in a very documented way so the context reduction of Speer is a useful example for understanding this important aspect of human psychology.

Albert Speer was a talented architect and manager who willingly led the constructive side of the Nazis and so was jailed for 20 years. During his first few years in jail Speer was unable to accept his newly reduced context and slowly had a psychological meltdown. Finally he gave up his thoughts of a grand past, stopped relating his games to the whole world and instead made his small context the whole world. He built a stone garden with temporary stackings of brick that looked like skyscrapers. He would surround a green the size of a bed with these faux buildings and lie down to then imagine a city growing up around himself.

Like a child he used his imagination here, but unlike a child, who can't actually make cities like he can, he was not allowed to use his manifest skills and build the real thing. When he got over his middle age highbrow pomposity and accepted his reduced context he was able to be satisfied practicing this architecture game however it could be accomplished. This playing like a child was not about learning, it was about creating new meanings, happy meanings.

Speer's second reduced context game illustrates the same point but involves Hess. Speer would sometimes walk laps in the prison yard. One day he said to Hess that he was going to walk east around the world. He measured the laps and said seven laps equaled a kilometre. Hess suggested that Speer use a tree's seeds to count laps by putting a handful in one pocket and transferring one to the other pocket for each lap completed. Speer could keep track afterwards in his cell.

Speer immediately got into the spirit of the game and traveled via his imagination and his knowledge of geography as far as Mexico before being released in 1968. Even in his letters he maintained this game and had his friends outside prison interested in all his adventures. Speer was mentally healthy after jail as a result of all these games and went on to write his memoirs which made him a rich man for a second time.

Hess, in contrast, never did more than mope around. After helping Speer to begin his faux journey he just munched on the tree's seeds, or stared at walls and waited to get out. That day finally came for Hess after forty years - but only through his own suicide.

The reduced context of a prison may seem like an unusual situation in which to discover a common human nature, but, as with brain damage people whose actions indicate what a missing brain part does, the study of prison life indicates what is missing and what is still there. What is missing in Spandau are big goals and grand designs. What is there is that the satisfaction that can be found in the smallest of goals and tiniest of playing fields feels the same and is the same.

Let's, for the sake of a fair well mind experiment, think of the future expanded, gigantic, huge, spectacular context as the normal for today with its futuristic teleportation and telepathy, and think of what you have now in your real life with your primitive cars and cell phones as a reduction of that futuristic setting. By thinking this way it turns out you live in a kind of prison life and can be equally contented to have it so as you were before you realized it was a prison. Really, it turns out all eras are prisons that cut us off from greater possibilities. All nations, cultures and cliques are prisons of reduced contexts which most people never think to challenge and so they travel to their imaginary Mexicos and toy skyscrapers and are as happy and healthy as Speer in Spandau.

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Lamenting the Geishas

Geishas and dry sex, how are we ever going to return to the best of sex?

Blog, February 28, 2006

The recent film Memoirs of a Geisha reminds me of how asexual the world is trying to become. With the growth of breast-implant style pornography, metrosexual men and Brazilian waxing you might think the world is more sexed-up than ever before. You would be wrong. Sex is so overblown and genitalized that the orgasm has become the defining act of sex. So whether it is romantic ("How good was it for you?"), scientific ("Her orgasm or lack of one means she doesn't wants to reproduce."), or barroom banter ("Did she cum?"), sex has lost much of its art.

In previous eras the idea of sex as an art had many kinds of heydays. There was burlesque, the courtesan, tantric sex and, of course, the geisha. ln the film a geisha's use of her genitals is highly prized only because it is made part of a long journey. Even when the goal is reached it is taken away again to a great distance in order to restore its value and allow a new journey to begin.

This game is acknowledged, as such, midway in the film when the old geisha sets up a dance performance by the young geisha for three suitors; the young geisha sees the setup as a mysterious game with rules only known by others. The dance in the movie is truly wonderful. The suitors bid highly against each other making her hymen now the costliest ever in Kyoto. On one level this is a perfect example of how any business must be conducted. On the sexual level it shows how games like dance and psychological manipulation actually increase the real meaning and value of sex.

But there is all kinds of sex that goes even further in not going all the way. The kind of sex that make the goal to never have intercourse is the best game there is. Usually that goal must be accompanied by some imperative, or pretext that sounds like some imperative. This situation happened twice in my own life. Both times the meaning, value, emotions -- everything became hyper-wonderful. A kiss was not a kiss anymore. A sigh was not a sigh any longer. There is the greatest sexual space created in the mind when nothing is done about a sexual feeling other than by touch. Love grows. Energy grows. Hope grows.

The geisha is all about creating those things and more. Of course, individual people today can create that again whenever they choose, but as a whole, except for the hostesses of Japan, the decline in that kind of experience is measurable by how you rarely hear anyone talk about abstaining from intercourse except as part of a ti-tantric joke. Whether it is for money, as with the geisha, or for other values, this emotion is the most we can squeeze out of life.

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Cheney's Shot in the Face

Our mistake was not only giving Cheney a gun, but being a sucker for him and everybody like him.

Blog, February 21, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

How hard is it to fool some of the people some of the time, until it is enough to rule all of the people all of the time? It turns out it is very easy.

When the US VP D Cheney, for example, wants to fool the people he does it in their face. I don't mean with buckshot, I mean with contexts. As the real leader of the US government, it was his idea that once Americans entered the context game of war, even strong opponents would be forced to enter it and shut the hell up. He hoped for "Pearl Harbour" like attacks before 911 for precisely this reason. He knew his opponents would have to "support the troops", "pray for victory" and "fight the long war". Under that cover, all personal gain was possible, and as such, impunity was his. Cheney could even repent to god (if he was ever Christian) yet keep the effects of that sin.

Contexts are just ongoing games that people are forced to enter into unless they can forcefully resist them, which is extremely difficult to accomplish. US troops today are told that there are "good guys" and "bad guys" in the world, because that context allows any kind of torture and killing to be done to anybody, as a recent study shows. Experiments in the future will show such labeling as "good" and "bad" short-circuits reasoning because it is a long running and familiar game that everyone plays with against their personal enemies and it can be picked up any time when the social context forces it. Even people who fight that game simultaneously get mixed up in it. For example, pro-American critics of US government torture will often notice that the torturers are just regular folks not "evil" doers. They understand those guys and see what led them to do it. But when those same critics refer to enemy torturers they dare not think the same claim. The context prevents even thought outside the context game.

If you want to see the context game that is going on at any one time, the rule of thumb is if a guy like Cheney condemns something forcefully, then he is doing it, or thinking of doing it, at that moment -- this is their tell. But don't let me get in the way of your play. If you want to be suckered by the Cheneys of this world, go ahead, you're at least guaranteed to have an easier time.

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Slavery Becoming Savoury

While bankrupcy laws slowed slavery down parental laws kept it alive and ready for its new rebirth.

Blog, February 14, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

Over the door of Auschwitz hung the motto, "Work Shall Set you Free". The irony is not only that it was a deception to keep inmates calm before they were killed, but that that whole situation describes our own forms of slavery today and for all times. It all begins with how parents use their children, but it extends from there and it is only kept in check today by bankruptcy law.

Bankruptcy law seems to have nothing to do with slavery, but it was the growth of that protection for debtors which gave legal and societal redress for all parties when debts could not be repaid. Up until these laws were created the only redress was legal slavery in one form or another. And no segment of the world's population ever saw a problem with using slavery to force debt repayment.

Socrates and Plato saw no problem with slavery. Aristotle even considered to be made a slave implies you're not even human. A common Greek idea was that paying one's debts is justice. It sounds familiar, as in paying one's debt to society, or as in the litigation that goes on for millions of dollars as payment for any old crime. Most slaves were only debtors. The trick was of course, they were rarely set free. Always the 'company store' kept a running tab which put them further into debt. Some societies made rules which allowed slaves to pay off the debt, but this was the exception. While war slaves formed a significant element, slavery was for eons universally maintained around debts.

When slavery became unsavory for powerful elements of various nations (due to their own game playing reasons), and slavery was outlawed, forms of slavery continued under various laws. The work house and plantation systems, along with the company store scams and various serf systems, kept the spirit of slavery going. Eventually the power of world wide Marxism scared the bankers and elite to ease debtor laws and make bankruptcy laws instead. This development killed open slavery and the rise of Marxism where ever it took hold. But there was one area that slavery found a final refuge: parental customs.

Parents have a whole host of problems surrounding their situation which I will leave aside. However one relevant problem that keeps slavery alive is how parenting is viewed by parents - through money.

Parenting always has had an economic aspect. The children are bought and sold at birth and at marriage, forced to work in the fields or at chores, and expected to give love to their keeper. The whole time parents are pretending children are not really human and so cannot decide anything for themselves. Kids are manipulated and often punished. The parental program is to force kids to be alive even though it is just to die. Kids are not thought of as human until their debts are symbolically paid at 18 or at some other arbitrary age. The vote is denied them and, as a result, this allows for all kinds of laws to be made against them by parents so they can always be the master. Parents often claim the debt is never repaid and expect their kids to service the debt endlessly. All this is true of the nicest and weakest parents as well, no matter how they view themselves. Slave owners have always had weak and kind ones amongst their order.

Parents often claim these children could not survive without their version of the 'company store', but street kids survive all over the world and very well. Then parents say street kids become criminals who get abused. They say this because they are forgetting it was their inhuman laws that forced them to steal and be mistreated because they had prevented kids from getting human work and equal wages (today kids can legally be paid half what adults get paid for the same job). Every argument parents use circles back to them and their own abuses. All this is to show that parents are self-made masters of slaves.

Now parenting is where slavery began and is its constant training ground and repository. Former slaves have no qualms about owning slaves, so the desire to parent is passed on and can thrive anytime. That is all parenting is - a desire for slaves. Now we come back to ordinary insolvent debtors.

This year Brazil reports over 200,000 slaves in that nation. These are mostly men put into debt by local businesses. Sex slaves are in the millions around the world at any one time. Last week a PBS Frontline documentary showed how it is done. First, women, sometimes even with children and husbands watching out for them, are tricked into leaving their home country. They get their passports taken so that they first look like illegal immigrants to any honest local police. Quickly, they are forced to work as sex slaves to pay off the debt incurred from their own abduction. Florida, today, has the problem of slavery through the company store. In some parts of central Africa now you can rent girls in an open air slave market and in other African industries slaves are still being made use of. These are only a few examples. This is only the beginning of a new growth spurt in the slave trade. But this is not the only trend showing slavery is on the rise. The TV show "Desperate Housewives" had a slave made out as a joke, and when the slave was freed she was manipulated into a new kind of slavery.

With the demise of Marxism (as ridiculous as it was), or any other kind of opposition to the optomites of today, the poor have no power left and the elites know it. The rich have changed law after law to favour their perceived interests in every area including bankruptcy law. First they made the law favour them and their entities with Chapter 11 type schemes, now they are making bankruptcy harder and harder for the poor to get.

The future trend for regular debtors seems to be down hill: jail terms, work houses, indentured servitude, and finally full blown slavery are coming. But a taste for slavery is already current due to parenting rules which makes death camp slavery out of the whole world. The trend of the elites could be to dispense with the foreplay and rush to proclaim: "Work Shall Set you Free"

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Intersex: Frustration with Normal

Doctors and psychologists get it wrong again. Freedom from frustration is best treatment.

Geoffrey Hamilton

Blog, February 7, 2006

A British Channel 4 documentary called Secret Intersex on hermaphrodites, (now to be called intersex people), has given a fairly neutral portrait of the various kinds of people with this situation. What was significant in the program was the evidence given from the individual life stories. This was true especially in regard to the psychological factors involved in the physiological and genetic dispositions . And this is true of all people, not just intersex people. This evidence also showed how wrong the professionals, doctors and psychologists are when advising clients. Parents, and their own flinching minds, seem to be the professionals' real clients.

The worst tactic employed by these professionals on their intersex clients is the normal card. They consistently base all advise on the theory that a person wants to be normal. (Perhaps their theory is the reason being called 'special' by all social service professionals is so patronizing.) Normal can best be summed up as the stick figure, meaning the professionals have no idea and little imagination. What's worse is they have no follow up results to back up any claims. Imagination, or lack of it, is crucial to these professionals, because they are only guessing at their job and they need imagination, as small as it is.

The stick figure imagined is happy and has all its fingers and toes. That concept serves as a template when someone comes in the professional's door. One doctor, Patrick Malone is quoted as saying intersex people find it, "...almost impossible to be reared in a happy family environment..." without intervention as babies. Doctors rarely doubt how to proceed. Cut it, tuck it, make it look like something, anything, normal. But of course normal to them means normal to a viewers eyes not to the client's own disposition.

It turns out professionals are essentially trying to make a being that helps the viewer feel that the world is normal, and closer to our pathetic imagination of normal. In other words, they want the stick figure. And parents, usually, are trying to protect their eyes from what they see as grotesque about their kids.

Most of the cases from the documentary were subject to the chop shop. One girl, Louise, had around thirty unsuccessful operations since infancy. She was not told of her situation and was forced to be a girl, all on doctor's orders. Both are miserable and the mother now wishes Louise was raised a boy and Louise wishes they did nothing until she could choose for herself.

Now there is the very different case of Ilisana. At sixteen she has testicles where her ovaries might have been. Her parents, against doctors orders, did several things. For one, they told their daughter about her situation as soon as they were able and so made her proud of it. They considered it interesting and all wanted to learn from it.

Doctors had said Ilisana's testes should be removed due to a purported increased risk of cancer. Her parents left it up to her to decide and she reasoned well against it. Increased risk is the most absurd care in the world. Having a bath gives an increased risk of death, so does surgery. Ilisana knows better. When her sister was born with the same physical attributes everyone was happy about it, except the doctor who had suggested it be aborted.

Both Ilisana and her sister, Xenia, are vastly more 'normal' than Louise. They are happy, active socially, well adjusted, open about their situation, and not obsessed by anything regarding being intersex. The mother says her daughters' can instruct the world at large that there is a neutral gender if they want to. Their father says they have the best of both worlds. He then asked Xenia if she felt ill and she said no. What else do you want out of life?

In one final recent case, baby Bianca was forced into the chop shop, so, as her mother said, she wouldn't be different. Now Bianca will need drug treatment for the rest of her life. Obviously Bianca is not only still different, but much worse off.

What this all comes down to is a complete miscomprehension of the issue of freedom. When politicians and patriots tout freedom they usually portray it as about having no restrictions in life. Not only has there never been that kind of freedom and never will be, but these same people blindly call for all kinds of restrictions, usually in the same breath. What emotion they tap into when they make that cry for freedom is the feeling that you're doing what you are supposed to do -- what you are disposed to do in life.

The intersex people have a disposition that must not be interfered with or they will live lives of frustration and unhappiness. Louise is the one that had her disposition frustrated by the professionals' and parents' stick figure image for normal. Ilisana and Xenia had their normal dispositions allowed to exist in the directions they were designed to go. Their exceptional parents saw this, and additionally they all became curious about where the girls' dispositions would take them. This is all that is needed and it is what actual freedom is all about.

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Rose Coloured Evolution
More evidence supporting Self-Directed Mutation comes in the name of Evolution.

Blog, January 31, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

Geneticist Michael R. Rose on CBC's Quirks and Quarks: The Long Tomorrow uses fruit flies and evolution for age research conclusions. Experiment: young fruit flies have their laid eggs stolen. They are allowed to reproduce only when they are much older. This goes on generation after generation until these flies gradually live three times longer than the original flies.

To begin with, the name dropping of "natural selection" by Michael Rose does not sound accurate. He is actually trying to describe artificial selection. The CBC interview shows how. He says, "I tricked natural selection", "natural selection was forced", "I changed the rules of that game". Even if he is not artificially selecting the fruit fly winners of his game, he is part of the game itself. (This is not to be pedantic, but to lay ground for further concepts.) Secondly, he uses natural selection, as nearly everyone does, to imply organic selection. Organic, in the sense I mean, has generally come to suggest 'without human interference', or 'without conscious input', and is more useful in making a contrast with artificial selection. What is 'natural' is everything that happens, or is thought of by anyone, and has nothing to distinguish it from artificial selection. ...So... Rose should say organic selection, but says it's natural, and then actually describes artificial selection. That's just the beginning.

Let's, for the sake of argument, say his experiments with flies can, eventually, show a case of organic selection. Even so, his conclusions stated on the CBC do not show that flies change due to organic selection, nor even is change demonstrated to be due to artificial selection.

Organically, the fly's eggs being stolen at one point cannot connect to the future offspring of that fly. Selection based on reproduction is not happening here and cannot happen based on past, disconnected events.

Artificially, no one has supposedly selected the flies that live longer and had their eggs removed. Where is the connection between a fly's laid eggs, their destruction and, later, the offspring fly's genetic makeup? Where is the organic selection happening? Where is even Rose's selection happening? Neither are happening.

Random mutation is not what is happening or masses of mutations must be happening in huge packets. If 20 percent of flies get older the next generation then that effect must be in 20 percent of the individuals, just for the hell of it, waiting for a systematic egg thief to show up. Considering the nearly infinite kinds of random mutations possible, to find that mutation ready to go at a moments notice would indicate millions and millions of mutations are made and are ready to go for any contingency. It is like using an A-bomb to kill a flea.

What is happening? really? The eggs are removed after they are laid by the fly. The fly is finished its work and has no physical part left to play. A thousand generations of watching and the only variable factor will be is the fly's knowledge that her babies are nowhere to be seen. Sexual selection would not matter. The flies are still getting sex and giving 'birth'. Their work is done. It is the flies' knowledge that there are no progeny that is the one variable.

With that one variable, a fly knowing she has no offspring, a whole theory is given a longer life. Self-Directed Mutation says the conscious assessing of one's own experience informs an unconscious process which can change the inheritable genetic makeup of life. It is like the lioness who will switch on its reproduction factory only when it consciously knows its last batch of cubs is grown up or dead. In the fly's case it switches on its gene factory to make corrections for future generations.

This theory answers Rose's unasked question. How did the egg theft get from here to their genetic makeup? And it answers it like this: The fly noticed her eggs were 'failing' until she got older. Something in her mind triggered a redesign of her genes in the exact (or nearly exact) location where it was needed. This redesign was used in the next generation specifically in the hopes it could prolong the life of the new fly and so it could get around the nasty egg thief. Each time the thief stole the eggs later and later, later and later in each generation the redesign happened.

Now this only happened in some flies because not all of them cared to change, some couldn't change that way and others just misunderstood the name of the game was age. The result of self directed mutation is change that is much faster than chance, more efficient and successful, (if that's your thing), and makes more sense all round. Now it's time to adjust evolution, or get rid of it.

Gh

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The Tortoise
and the Hippo

On inter-species friendships.
Blog, January 24, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

How inter-species friendships show that evolution has marbles in its mouth.

When animals of very different species bond the name inter-species friendships describes a behavior that completely baffles scientists who tout evolution as the answer for everything. But once again the theory comes up short and leaves these 'experts' unable to explain something that we see everyday with our pets.

Recently, in Tokyo, a snake was given a hamster as food but instead made friends with it. This is not unheard of. A lioness adopted five antelope over time, each she cared for as long as she could. She even ate the last one after it died of organic causes showing she was not confused about what she was caring for. The growing fame of the hippo and the tortoise, Owen and Mzee, shows that people are confused, most likely due to the experts that are brought in to help.

In an Amanda Onion piece for ABC News we have one floundering expert opinion after another.

Here is first of many. "In this case, it sounds like any port in a storm" said Katherine Houpt of Cornell University

"When you look at sanctuaries and zoos, animals don't always have access to their usual crowd," said Joanne Oliva-Purdy, an applied animal behaviorist based in Leadville, Colo..

"It happens all the time," said David Barash of the University of Washington in Seattle. "I don't think there's anything that truly defies biological explanation." He gives other nothing answers like "a happy coincidence" and "There is a self-serving component to love and companionship," he said. "From a biological perspective it's a mechanism whereby natural selection has gotten critters to care for each other. Whatever works, works." Could he say less? It is very obvious he is just talking because he is expected to.

Gamegene theory and simolution actually do explain inter-species friendships. All beings have a consciousness which is a mechanism for playing games, like a poker table, it's place where the stakes are made. Every being needs to play games. Whether it helps them survive and reproduce is unimportant and incidental.

When two species meet that have no prior history - no previous games played between them - or if the value of previous meetings of the same species were good (or anything but completely negative), they can play together. Like any game the meeting is unpredictable and can come down to any chance snort or fart and how the other reacts to it.

In the case of the hamster and the snake, the snake might have not been hungry at first, and during that time, as he grew to be hungry, he began to enjoy watching the hamster play - the entertainment kept the snake from being bored. Slowly, the snake liked the hamster's touch and company. From the hamster's perspective it was lonely, and just touching the snake as an experiment led it to enjoy the smooth scaly skin and it may not be happy without it from now on.

Nothing about any of this was a forgone conclusion. It's only rare because the game is very rare. The hippo and the tortoise actually talk to each other with their own sounds and they must have just worked it out with various agreements over the last year. These kinds of games go on all the time with our pets and between pets that we have.

What evolution needs is actual explanatory power, not spin doctors and snake oil salesmen. Where does natural selection actually explain anything regarding inter-species friendships? Nowhere.

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Golden Globe Goals
Blog, January 17, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

TV's award show again demonstrates how films with clear goals get all the winnings.

"The essence of high concept is that it is both brief and provocative." says Robert Kosberg regarding how Hollywood movies need to be sold both to producers in the pitching stage, and when the idea is a finished product to a TV audience. But there is one other area where the idea of high concept needs to work and that is the award show.

Last night the Golden Globes once again demonstrated the high concept in action. We had winners who all offered a high concept. George Clooney got fat, Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, and Philip Seymour Hoffman imitated well known public figures, Felicity Huffman played a man and Rachel Weisz really lived with the dirty people she acted with. All games which are easily seen and identified. The judges, whoever they are, need that kind of easy-to-spot criteria to feel confident to make a vote. Just think of the long history of acting prizes and other film awards and it's all about getting to the high concept. Robert De Niro got fat and won. Meryl Streep used an accent and won. Charlize Theron got ugly and won. Hilary Swank played a girl playing a boy, and later a girl acting like a boy and won twice. Robert Redford, Warren Beatty and Kevin Costner win at directing because they are actors and Peter Jackson wins because of the challenge and effort involved in shooting the whole of Lord of the Rings. The list is endless but not one hundred percent because sometimes there is no high concept to choose from that year, so it goes to the least unlike the high concept. They pick an english actor because they're always good.

If it wasn't for these high concept ways of doing things in the world (it's not just in Hollywood this is done) we would be wasting time figuring things are not as good as we thought, and we might start to lose hope. So keep the up the good work Hollywood, we need you to lead us well into the future.

Geoffrey Hamilton

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Bachelor Evolution
Blog, January 10, 2006 Geoffrey Hamilton
TV's The Bachelor Paris

When two doctors get together as a couple how do you think they're going to talk? Like reproduction machines it turns out, at least on the ABC reality show The Bachelor Paris.

Doctors Allie G., and star Travis Stork get together on the first night of the game and Ms. Allie wastes no time trying to win Travis' heart by telling him her clock is ticking and she is there to get married because marriage is designed to cause reproduction to occur.

Travis has no trouble handling her several counter-attacks which followed her quick booting out of the door. But what was remarkable, besides her quick leap to feminist politics - claiming he was just threatened by her high status, was her evident membership in the cult of evolution. Her intense drive to "reproduce" (her term) and desperate sense of failure not to have done so thus far has the sole stamp of the evolutionary fallicy that life has the goal of "reproduction" and that any life is a failure without it. The dead end of evolution is one of the hallmarks of the average theorist and for the first time in my life they have a true follower, someone who feels like a failure.

I'm glad I'm on the other side of that cult. Of course I believe in simolution, but the main point is I will never reproduce by choice. When the defacto goal of life is death the better we do that the more successful we will be. A child not only creates just another death for all to deal with but it makes your eventual death all that much more the most horrible failure there is - you will be actually responsible for a death.

Geoffrey Hamilton

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