—“In my case, I was a hardcore mathematical platonist without being aware of it (coming from pure math background). Then saw your argument about Cantor, thought you were posturing initially, then kept thinking about it. … Major red pill.”— Propertarian Frank
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 22:30:00 UTC
—“You can’t understand decidability without computer science.—Propertarian Frank
That’s the conclusion I came to. I can read all those thinkers at the turn of the 20th century. And then I read … just ONE paper by Turing, and .. I get it. It wasn’t until I got to Mises and I understood he had it wrong somehow, but right somehow. It just took me a long time to put it all together.
Computers are a different way of thinking – a NEW way of thinking. They are as different as empiricism was from reason, and as different as rationalism was from reason, and as different as geometry was from arithmetic.
We burned a century because babbage couldn’t get his machine into production on a meaningful (military) problem.
We burned almost 2000 years because Achimedes was his era’s Babbage, and Athens and Sparta were our era’s Germany and Britain.
We could have dragged humanity out of ignorance and poverty 2000 years ago.
I know why now. I know what we do wrong.
And we, in our generation, must fix it forever.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 22:28:00 UTC
—“Doolittle’s Chainsaw: What is the particular decision problem this concept solves, and what are the particular actions and transformations we use to achieve decidability?”— @Propertarian Frank
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 22:11:00 UTC
DOOLITTLE’S CHAINSAW: WHY WE USE OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE
by @Propertarian Frank
(better than I can say it)(this man is an artist)
We use consistent naming with consistent and unique delineation.
And we start constructing our language by naming actions and transformations, rather than using names for ‘ideals’ or ‘essences’ or ‘ontological’ primitives, which are characterized by their inaccessibility to observation (discerning through measurement).
You can tell if a language employs idealist concepts by subjecting them to Curt Doolittle’s Chainsaw (lol) : “what is the particular decision problem this concept solves, and what are the particular actions and transformations we use to achieve decidability?”
For instance, the concept ‘mass’, provides commensurability among physical objects of similar scale, and is used to decide a wide variety of questions from mechanics to pricing groceries.
The specific way in which we construct and use instruments to measure ‘mass’ constitute the particular actions and transformations that are named by the symbol ‘mass’ and its unit of measurement. (Just as standard library functions in programming languages compile to specific machine instructions, so do operational names compile to specific actions and transformations )
Thus, there’s no single concept ‘mass’, but rather a spectrum of it, determined, and limited by tools of measurement at different scales.
You can idealize ‘mass’ by treating it as if it isn’t limited and determined by measurement (action), but that doesn’t mean ‘mass’ in formal operational grammar deploys that idealism.
Doolittle’s Chainsaw lets you know if an idealism is completely devoid of operationalizable content or not. For instance, while ideal ‘mass’ can be salvaged (operationally defined), things like infinity, continuum are not.
This idealist approach to language (also called Platonism), as opposed to operational language, is the single largest source of error in all domains of human knowledge. From mathematics (infinity, uncomputable numbers), to physics, to economics, to law (e.g. property rights as unconstructed ideal attributes, equality), to philosophy (lol almost all of it), across all levels of intellect, thinkers evidently fall for it.
This is why Curt says widespread adoption of operationalism will be at least as large a leap as empiricism over rationalism, and rationalism over mysticism were.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 21:14:00 UTC
All literature (and movies) seeks to innovate. There are a limited (small) number of possible narratives – a well studied subject. Arguably only one. categorically only a handful. Reasonably under 20. Stretching it into the 30’s.
We generally retell these stories in terms of current events, over and over again over the centuries. But that is all that changes.
Because of the volume of the stories we tell, and movies we make, they vary subtle features, vary characters, situations, (d) and use new technology to awe. DUring the fist age of film we usually saw either the underclasses in slapstick or the middle classes pretending to be uppper middle or upper. During the second age, the working class as middle class. During the current era, we are seeing the lower middle and uppper proletarian classes in all sorts of roles.
One of the principle reasons for the moovement away from movie theatres is that serials (beginning with Saving Private Ryan i believe) are able to create richer combinations but require more running time.
SO this trend is what we should expect to continue to see until there is yet another model. My view is that computer games and movies will converge at some point to the degree that they are inseparable (simulations) where the only difference is whether the viewers campfire-watch, or engage. and that this ist heonly possible direction for the arts.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 19:23:00 UTC
—“If you were given a new position as head of a large, multi-national company, which was still around in spite of poor to abysmal management over the course of 100 or so years, how long do you think it would take you to turn that company around and set it on the right track?
Assuming you have the knowledge and acumen for the job from years of experience successfully running other, smaller, but similar companies.
Do you think you’d make any mistakes along the way? Do things that seem like mistakes to the casual observer, who doesn’t have your same experience, information, and understanding of the situation?
How long before you start to see real results?
Two years?
Five years?
Ten?
Twenty?
What about two and a half months?”—Danny O’Quillinan
In my experience, almost always, the problems are :
1) Debt that can’t be exited.
2) Maximized rent-seeking that can’t be exited. (pensions etc)
3) A board or management that can’t be exited, and Incentives that are perversely against the interests of the business.
4) Capital Equipment or Information Systems, Contractual relations that are deadly but extremely difficult to change without causing even worse damage to the business immediately.
5) Poor quality employees that cannot be trained to compete in the new market.
6) The loss of the upper 10-20% of the best talent leaving you with little to work with – talent is the most scarce transitional capital.
7) Inability to attract the talent necessary to restore competitive excellence.
8) You’ve been hired too late, and they either want a fall guy, an organized end to the business, a sale to a competitor at fire sale prices. Or they’re stupid and they think a miracle will happen.
The principle problem in restoring a company is whether you are able to bring in enough talent to make the change with a good enough plan, and enough capital to do it with, and have enough time to do it with, and if once you achieve it, the end product is worth more than what you have already.
I have never seen a company I could not turn around assuming I had those options. The truth is that in the company, and in all companies, everyone or at least a lot of them, know what to do, but there are some sort of political or economic barriers that prevent them from doing it.
Why did Microsoft displace IBM, but google and apple and sun fail to displace microsoft given all msft’s series of failures? the error was on both sides. Would you rather have 80% of your revenue dependent upon the iPhone or Windows+Office? (Samsung is a better phone btw).
Why did nokia fail and iphone/samsung eat their lunch?
Why is search a dead tennis ball and Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon together have replaced Sears (and its imitators)?
Why did amazon succeed and barnes and noble (and everyone else) fail?
When the Xbox team was started why did they demand separate offices away from the rest of campus, and why did that product (sort of) succeed where most other microsoft initiatives fail?
I can usually diagnose a company in two weeks, and with certainty in thirty days. The problems are not hard.
If you can’t turn it in two to three years you probably can’t turn it. I would make mistakes. Everyone does. Your strategy for the turnaround has to assume you will make mistakes, and have multiple tiers of success so that you can achieve different levels of success depending upon mistakes surprises, and shocks.
THE PEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 14:54:00 UTC
“Cope-posting” – great new word. lol
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 11:30:00 UTC
Propertarianism tells me that people don’t need to conspire – it’s too costly, they just follow incentives – it’s too cheap not to.
I work with INCENTIVES and FACTS. I don’t do conspiracy theories, and I don’t do racism, I don’t do memes, and I do as little ‘stupid’ as I can tolerate.
I love my delete key.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 11:29:00 UTC
(OMG. too much stupid the past few days. Break time. I love people… but. You know? sigh.)
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 11:21:00 UTC
Until 2015 I wouldn’t comment on politics. Got animated by the election. Possibility that we could revolt under trump at lower costs to the revolutoinaries.
Wish I hadn’t gone there tho.
Source date (UTC): 2017-04-07 11:10:00 UTC