Halffull.org

Why is it that I’m such a magnet for pyramid schemes? I’ve now been approached three separate times about business opportunities that can change your lifestyle if you have dreams and can shift your perspective from factory to passive business model.

Yes, I was actually asked if I have dreams. Today. By an old guy who’s working in the same lumbering corporation as me. I hate to point out the obvious, but if this were such a great opportunity, wouldn’t he be long gone?

I’ll save you 15 minutes. The idea is that when you work for a typical company, you are a factory that merely turns your time into money. When you work passively, you do something now that pays you forever. In essence, you generate money from nothing. It’s like a money tree. Just pick the money off the branches! The money generates itself without any work, so you retire in a few years and still have income. Who wouldn’t like that?

Where, you might ask, does the free money come from? Well, all you have to do is buy beauty products from yourself and convince your friends and family to do the same. You get a portion of every sale. Next, you convince people to enter the same scam that you were suckered into, and you earn a portion of their sales, including the sales of the people they sucker.

Here’s a diagram:

That doesn’t look like any recognizable shape to me…

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Scott Adams has a great new post on free will called The Little Robot That Could. Adams is a stout determinist (that’s the opposite of a free willy) but I don’t think he properly defended his position in the post. Here’s what I think. (Go read his post or this won’t make any sense.)

The robot’s instructions are to free will as neurons are to consciousness. This is not a defect in the instructions, merely a lack of quantity and complexity. The human mind, which most determinists would say is identical to the brain, operates through astronomical numbers of unintelligent bits. Individually, the neurons only transmit charges; together, they awaken. Droplets form waves, bits form computers, ants form a hive. The robot, however, lacks complexity. It does not awaken.

The robot lacks the ability to reflect on its own programming and make introspective judgment. AI is simply not to this level, and particularly not when described as in your post. It could not, for example, weigh its options internally, ignoring or rewriting the code that tells it to use counters in the decision making process. Similarly, the wave could not evaluate its strength in various places and redistribute water to form a more even surface. The (modern) computer may only recode itself to a level previously coded.

The ant colony, if I may digress, is more interesting. The hive can evaluate itself and form new principles. It can redistribute ants as needed, adapting to new challenges. Ants could be considered beefed-up neurons. The hive is one of the best mental models we have, in my opinion. Ants pass signals. They are ignorant of the larger structure they compose, namely the hive. Individual ants are inaccessible from the hive, just as neurons are inaccessible from the mind.

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Note: This rant is incomplete and full of generalizations.  You could spend the whole time reading this screaming internally about how I got your religion wrong.  Is that really useful?  I’ll make it easy for you: I admit up front that there are lots of good things I’m missing about all religious mentioned below.  Except Hinduism, b/c you’re gods have way too many arms and I’m not backing down on that.  I will NOT agree with you that every other religion is wrong and yours is the right one. Scott Adams had a very clever point about reducing the conflict between Christians, Muslims and Jews.  Let’s take it in a different direction:  What’s similar?  Where can we all find common ground?

1.  Hindu’s, Buddhists, Wiccans, and Atheists are all going to Hell.  We can all agree on this one, let’s move on.  ( Oh, and if you’re an atheist, stop smiling right now.  You do worship a God, his name is Science, and you believe in just as many lies as those who worship God, or a “god”.  You believe that one ape got wings, used them to fly to get more bananas, fed the bananas to girl apes, and thus bing!  Flying monkeys.  You ignorant liberal redneck.)

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I wanted to write this about other people and how they use their cellphones. How it’s evil, and wrong, to have instant communication at our fingertips. We don’t need instant communication, etc. I wanted to rant and rave about those I’ve seen and friends of mine who use their cellphones and… then I remembered walking into a room the other day to return a loaner laptop, and I call someone on my cellphone - right before walking into the room. I ask the person on the phone to hold on, transact my business of returning the laptop and signing, and start my conversation with the person on the phone.

Why did I do this? Why didn’t either party stop me and say “You’re being rude”? Why is it that when a cellphone rings and I’m out somewhere with someone, I pick it up and say, “I’m at the mall with so and so. Lemme call you back later?”. Why do I have this ringing buzzing constant-communication device which causes me to be rude to others, to sit in a car ignoring a passenger while carrying on a conversation on a cell phone? To make it more perplexing, I would argue that a cellphone is more likely to be answered than a home phone. If you’re entertaining a guest, wouldn’t you just let the machine get it? Yet a cellphone has voicemail and we answer it anyway. Hi, I can’t talk right now, I’ll call you back. Or, oh hey, yeah I’ve got just a minute (minute being defined as however long we feel comfortable ignoring the other person).

What is it that we so urgently discuss on cellphones?

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