Bob says: ”Now there is an idea you could EXPAND on. How is information PRODUCED? What INCENTIVES are there to keep beating dead horses? What concepts have simply not appeared for this reason, and exactly why?”
The first part is easy! You’ve already spilled blood all over the keyboard writing on this and to top it off your last radio show was on it.
Information is produced by the market. When you go to make a product you first do market research. if you are a researcher, you find out where the grants are, that is what the market wants to buy.
There are incentives to keep beating the dead horse, if you follow the line you get published, you get the grants, you get a career. Stray from the line, you become an unperson, your funding is pulled, and you become vilified. In an earlier blog there was a mention of Billy Mitchell, An advocate of air power in an age where the focus was still on surface ships. His reward? Court martial for insubordination.
For the third part of your question, I’m going to have to pass it off to someone else because my mind is too small to know. If I was to guess I’m sure that Galileo could be worked in.
Comment By neville
ME:
I gave my concept of the production of information as an EXAMPLE. I want you to EXPAND on it, to see OTHER parts of our society in that light.
Oriental students often consider our obsession with their IQ scores to be humorous. They send ten or twelve hours daily on schoolwork, and IQ tests are just one more puzzle to them.
By “puzzle,” I mean that the Oriental finds the answer his teachers already know. He CREATES nothing.
An individual Chinese, among the billions, actually built a mechanical clock. We have his name and the history of the clock.
THE clock.
It survived for a couple of hundred years and that was the end of the Chinese mechanical clock.
Copernicus is a milestone in our history, even though he was dead wrong. Copernicus declared that the earth was not the immovable center of the universe, as the Bible claimed, but that the SUN was the immovable center of the universe. The reason that Copernicus is considered critical is because he was a MILESTONE. He began the theory of a universe not based on biblical cosmology, and Newton went from there to our present concept of the universe.
In China, Copernicus would be a historical footnote. There are no intellectual milestones in Chinese history. A milestone is on the way to somewhere. Without white input the Orient is no more on the way to anywhere than an ant colony is.
In this sense, today’s discussions are very Oriental. Like the rabbis, we take a concept and argue over it, find out whether each detail of it is true, but we don’t BUILD on it.
Charles Darwin was afraid to publish his Origin of Species for many years, and then a younger man wrote him a letter which exposed the whole theory and asked what he thought of it. That made Darwin publish it.
Where is this younger man get the idea? Did he take a trip to the Galapagos and find a Revelation?
No. He read Malthus and immediately came up with evolution. Malthus said that population expands geometrically and food production cannot keep up with it, so starvation must ensue. This younger man, instead of joining in the debate on Malthus and the details about Malthus, EXPANDED the CONCEPT to the entire animal world. The idea of extinction was not generally recognized then. He realized that some animal groups would survive and some would not. He went on from there to evolution.
Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos makes a better story, but this young man makes a far more IMPORTANT story. In the Orient, the idea might have died with Darwin. Movable type was in Korea, which had an alphabet, but it was never used for anything. In the West movable type led to a total revolution. Black powder in the Orient led to some fireworks. Again, the invention was expanded on in the West and revolutionized our society and led to the satellite I am using right now.
#1 by Alan B. on 12/05/2006 - 2:34 pm
Bob is correct, the white race has adapted and invented almost everything that had revolutionised the world. Who cares what any other race or society may have done, it amounts to nothing if it is not put into practical use, so why do we live in a world where the elites want to drag down our race like the insignificant races and cultures of the past.
Its my theory that the industrial revolution and the evolution of modern society created a distinct and elitist class of psydo world rulers. These elitist and their foundations are going all out to stiffle cultrial and scientic discovery, their reach extends into goverment and academia. What if Americans could produce their energy such as oil in the general location where they live. What if we could manufacture our goods close to home with out the need and dependency on just a few corporations, what if we had real competition. If we did, then the importance of the powerfull and few groups would wane in significants and the people would have control and power over there lives. We would be free to invent and seek out new the truth. Dependency and lack of competition solidifies the power the elitist have over us and prevents the people from using their creativity and resourcefullness, these to things are a threat to the tyrants who really hold all the power in the world.
#2 by Dave on 12/05/2006 - 3:46 pm
Market research in the form of focus groups, surveys, etc as a method of influence disappeared with the Internet.
Today, there is a huge asymmetry in “market research” and that asymmetry is called Google, who has captured the whole field in a way that is totally unprecedented in history. Totally! It’s mind-boggling.
Google’s access to information and knowledge has positioned it to take over everything in the West and everything in retailing. Absolutely everything! Because it is real, it is not being publicly talked about. Investors are just plain flummoxed.
Never in the history of capitalism has a company had growth rates to compare with Goggle. Never. Microsoft in its heyday never came close to it. No major company has ever come close to it. We are witnessing something that has never occurred before and is beyond all experience.
It is meaningful and meaningful big time! What exactly it means will hugely advantage anyone astute enough to get a handle on it. Meanwhile, sit back and watch the BS.
Somehow Google is playing the role that Ford played for the WWI generation as a transition model. But I have yet to figure it out.
You flatter yourself in your “failure” comments. I could not imagine being as astute as you are at your age.
#3 by Dave on 12/05/2006 - 3:19 pm
Nobody today sees that consumer society is collapsing just as industrial society collapsed in WWI. The problem is with the collapse of retail society the system has nothing to hang its hat on.
The problem we face is even worse than the problem the WWI generation faced, because there was a transition model for them. Henry Ford invented it. We don’t have a transition model.
All the best thinkers can up with today is that the next innovation wave will be “alternative energy”. This is just another delusion of denial regarding the collapse of retail society in the West. The other big delusion is that somehow “emerging Asia” is going to save us.
Instead, the mercenary forces and private intelligence industry is the next big growth industry. The world market for military forces for hire is beginning its first sustainable boom in the modern era. Whether it is the mercenary for hire forces that call themselves “Hezbollah” or “Muhadeen” or Blackwater or anything, private army labels are in a big sustainable long-term growth phase.
The whole thing is settling into years of heavy-duty conflict where visibility about anything is just going to disappear.
So what needs to be EXPANDED UPON is what we are doing right here. Superior visibility and knowledge with use of all the new innovative communications devices to promote and advance conspiracies.
The world belongs to those who successfully conspire and the issue is right in front of our noses.
I think about it a lot, about how you can use the Internet and new software to sow influence among the kinds of people you need to sow influence among to promote conspiracy.
No one really has a handle on this. It is EXACTLY the same thing BW is taking about when he talks about gunpowder or moveable type with the Chinese.
WE KNOW THE PROBLEM. I for one am thinking about it, because I know there is an answer.
The old forms of organizing are nonsense. For example, I can’t believe people who want to engage in public demonstrations. They are hopeless they are so stupid.
The mall at the Capitol, public meeting spaces, and the whole idea of public petitions and mass assembly was a 17th century idea to mitigate feudalism in an effort by the “enlightened classes” to support emerging industrial society in a era when communication was by horse and buggy and everybody lived on farms or in barracks!
All through the third-world and in America people still use forms of political expression that was out of date with telegraphs 170 years ago!!!
That is how absurd things are.
The world will belong to those who see how to use the Internet, simulation software, and wireless technologies to promote political influence and domination in the form of successful conspiracies using handcrafted cryptology that is powerful for indoctrination.
And remember, there can be no successful conspiracy without true loyalty. As in ancient times, that will remain the key.
#4 by Shari on 12/05/2006 - 4:03 pm
I think it’s becoming obvious that the “elite” aren’t needed any more, cartelizing everything. That day is done. That “economy” won’t hold. We don’t need huge agribusiness, or huge education or huge medicine,or huge insurance. Everything can be done locally.
#5 by Bob on 12/05/2006 - 8:41 pm
Pain, Jesus had a different message for those of us who just wanted to do the right thing.
For us peasants, Jesus said love God and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Totally unsophisticated, totally beneath true intellectualism.
But it don’t strain my brain.
#6 by Pain on 12/05/2006 - 8:00 pm
Bob,
One of these days you ought to re-read something detailed on Herakleitos’ Logos.
A New Testament Christian believes God created the heavens and the earth in six of his days, then time past and here we are today.
The Logos was a well-known and universally accepted concept in the ancient Greek world. Herakleitos was its famous formulator; he lived during the heathen era and was so well respected by the Church’s Fathers that they called him a Christian before Christ.
Before Christians defeated and displaced Judaism in the Greek world, the Logos was taken up by the Stoics who believed in something very similar, maybe identical, to William Pierce’s “cosmotheism.”
The Greek world believed in both the singularity of creation, reproduction after each kind, and evolution. The creative growth of evolution was a manifestation of the Logos. The Logos was the First Principle (archë) whereby the world was created as a singularity and that whereby the creation continued to grow.
It was the Will of The God. It was the fire of the universe.
When St John wrote his pro-logue, he put forth the Logos.
Thus singular creation in God’s six days, reproduction after each kind, and subsequent evolution are part of the New Testament.
The Logos was a universal fact of the Greek world and all the Church had left to do was define the Logos, the creative/evolutionary principle, as Christ.
But today’s Catharist (neo-Puritan) “Christians” of the Old Testament say that the earth was created in six mundane days, the earth is not a day less than 6,000 years old, and nothing has changed since 4,000 BC.
Their faith is in the Old Testament.
But a Christian’s is in Christ — the Logos.
#7 by Pain on 12/05/2006 - 8:02 pm
Bob,
By the way when you put together ideas that are contracting and expanding, you get throbbing.
My brain hurts.
#8 by neville on 12/06/2006 - 1:12 am
Dave,
the example of “market research” were Bob’s words, with out him i never would have had the sense to put that idea together. i spent the first decade of my life trapped in the late 70’s early 80’s so it comes as a huge shock to me to hear that “market research” as i was referring to it is dead! though i knew the old business ways were showing signs of terminal illness when the Concorde was phased out..
I thought it would make sense to look into it. now from my old 70’s upbringing I’ve been a champion of the middle class and manufacturing. so i couldn’t figure out how a country that dosnt make anything of note and has a trade deficit could sustain itself in the long run.
I know in this example we can get away with it a little longer because we have the federal reserve and the Spanish empire had a gold standard, but this is like the Spanish empire thinking it could survive importing everything. better yet, its like a teenager with plastic. until she hits her limit, in her mind she can own the world. at the age of 14, i knew the retail society and the era of cheap credit were at an end. I cant see beyond that, but i know it isnt the end of the world.
Bob,
i may not have given you exactly what you wanted, more vomit on your shoes than actually thinking. but i’m curious, is this a rock solid basic “Information is produced by the market.” or is this completely flexible? As soon as i do some thinking of my own, ill get back to you with another attempt.
#9 by Pain on 12/06/2006 - 8:30 pm
I liked this:
“I think it’s becoming obvious that the “elite” aren’t needed any more, cartelizing everything. That day is done. That “economy” won’t hold. We don’t need huge agribusiness, or huge education or huge medicine,or huge insurance. Everything can be done locally.
Comment by Shari — 12/5/2006 @ 4:03 pm”
#10 by Elizabeth on 12/07/2006 - 1:11 am
There’s an interesting book titled _Crunchy Cons_, which is about people living “off
the grid,” that is, buying local food and generally avoiding both the big corporations
and secular culture. This book supposedly went into paperback late in October, but I
must have missed it. (I read a hardcover copy owned by my local library.)
#11 by Shari on 12/07/2006 - 2:40 pm
Thank you Peter!