Neo-Capitalism Updates

Announcement: Freeing Growth Foundation Taking Over This Site

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:37:01 -0700

Our apologies to viewers for this site being down for the last few weeks - we were hit like some 100,000 other sites by the VAServ outage which took down the server upon which this website is currently hosted.

We are glad to announce that the Freeing Growth project is being incorporated into a wider Freeing Growth Foundation non-profit organisation whose remit is considerably expanded beyond just the publication of the Freeing Growth books. As part of this change, we will be moving freeinggrowth.org and neocapitalism.org onto a new and much larger dedicated server around the start of July, and the Foundation shall be taking over the provision and running of freeinggrowth.org and neocapitalism.org along with a new site, deepereconomics.org. After the server migration we shall revamp freeinggrowth.org with information about its mission and purpose. We still intend to publish our set of books, though in tandem with other publications operating under different trading and brand names.

It will take some time before the Foundation can accept charitable tax-free donations - we will however keep you posted! We look forward to your continuing visits!

Stupid Plone portal_javascripts

admin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:33:38 -0700

I just spent the last day or so of my life tracking down what the fuck was wrong with Plone v3.1.7's portal_javascripts (part of Plone's resource registries). I had tried replacing Plone 3.1's default jQuery v1.2.6 with v1.3.2 in order to use the latest jQuery UI which has fixes for IE8 (plus, it's a LOT faster). I did the usual: customise 3rd_party/jquery.js and upload the new content.

It all worked fine in portal_javascripts debug mode i.e. with compression, merging and caching turned off. Unfortunately it certainly didn't work when debug was off - it would merge the first file only and forget the rest in its merge group. Needless to say this completely wankered this website.

The fix which most people on the internet use for this problem is to permanently disable caching and merging - with the obvious performance penalties for end users. Needless to say, I wasn't happy with that idea, so after MUCH trial & error it turns out that there is a bug in Zope's file upload mechanism. If you choose a javascript text file and upload it, something subtly breaks inside Zope such that the resource registries silently die during parsing - you can tell this because if you turn on compression in portal_javascripts and then choose the "Merged JS Composition" tab and open the keycache file, you'll see that the one single file in there hasn't been compressed. I don't think it is UTF-8 (a common Python 2.x problem) nor Windows format CR/LF as I tried stripping these before file upload. Who knows?

Anyway, the workaround is as follows: simply don't upload the file and just create an empty one, then open it up in the web browser view where it gives you a textarea to type into, and now simply copy and paste the javascript into the textarea and save.

And voila! Plone works! I hope this saves some of you lots of heartache like me. I have submitted a bug report to Plone at http://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/9087

[masterinclude]

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:04:55 -0700

??changed:
-.. _qubit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubits
.. _qubits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubits

[TheUniversalRulesOfAllExistence]

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:59:18 -0700

??changed:
-As mentioned in the [[Worldview]], we hold that there are a set of universal rules which always apply to all parts, all scales and all timespans no matter how large or small. These rules are made possible through some recursive logic in that they require the assumption of themselves in order to prove themselves (recursive logic differs from circular logic through the hierarchical structure built through inclusion of modified variant of self onto infinity).
-
-We do adhere to `Occam’s Razor`_ (also known as the Rule of Parsimony) through attempting to find the simplest rules which describe the most possible. Unlike most people who apply this rule narrowly by applying it solely to their one specialised area, we hold that everything must be consistent with everything else and if something isn't, the fault lies in a broken perception of the truth. In other words, if you can't see how absolutely everything ties in with everything else, that's a failure in how you see the world.
As mentioned in the [[Worldview]], we hold that there are a set of universal rules which always apply to all parts, all domains, all scales and all timespans no matter how large or small. These rules are made possible through some `recursive logic`_ in that they require the assumption of themselves in order to prove themselves (recursive logic differs from circular logic through the non-linear hierarchical structure built through inclusion of modified variant of self onto infinity - in other words, through the logical proposition including itself, which then includes another copy of itself, which further includes another copy and so on - what `Gödel Escher Bach – An Eternal Golden Braid `_ calls "strange loops"). We do adhere to `Occam's Razor`_ (also known as the Rule of Parsimony) through attempting to find the simplest rules which describe the most possible. Unlike most people who apply this rule narrowly by applying it solely within their one specialised area, we hold that everything must be consistent with everything else and if something isn't, the fault lies in a broken perception of the truth. In other words, if **you** can't see how absolutely everything ties in with everything else across boundaries and disciplines, then that's a failure in how **you** see the world. ??changed:
-**WARNING: The below is a summary and needs a lot more detailed explanation starting from first principles and therefore not requiring prior reading - we'll get a Freeing Growth book out on the topic sometime hopefully sooner rather than later**
.. WARNING:: The below is a summary extracted from the first `Freeing Growth`_ book draft and needs a lot more detailed explanation starting from first principles and therefore not requiring prior reading - we'll get a proper Freeing Growth book out on the topic sometime hopefully sooner rather than later ??changed:
-2. Structure is equivalent to accumulated memory, the discrete storage of information received from experience. The sum total of accumulated memory in the Universe is always increasing through an increasing fineness of structure detail which is identical to the progression of time. This means that ...
2. *Structure is equivalent to accumulated memory*, the **discrete** storage of information received from experience (this discreteness yields Planck's Length among other quantisation_ factors). The sum total of accumulated memory in the Universe is always increasing through an increasing fineness of structure detail which is **identical** to the progression of time. This means that ... ??changed:
-1. Many systems are composed of binary opposites, two diametrically opposed kinds of experience which give forth to one another. This is one of the results from everything in the Universe being relative to something else ([[Wikipedia]]:General_Relativity).
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-2. Such systems often undergo period doubling, whereby a lesser or finer second duality will become overlaid upon the dominant or harder duality (e.g. DNA, qubits, harmonics).
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-3. The presence of mutually repulsive duality is an excellent sign of the generation of internal stability, which signifies the externalisation of instability into a dissipative structure’s surroundings. Instability passing through a structure speeds up its rate of innovation and thus effectively speeds up its passage of time relative to others (relativity again).
1. Many boundaryied systems are composed of binary opposites, two diametrically opposed kinds of experience which give forth to one another. This is one of the results from everything in the Universe being relative to something else ([[Wikipedia]]:General_Relativity). 2. Such systems often undergo period doubling, whereby a lesser or finer second duality will become overlaid upon the dominant or harder duality to yield a four state system (e.g. DNA, qubits_, harmonics, quantum charge + spin etc). 3. The presence of mutually repulsive duality is an excellent sign of the generation of internal stability, which signifies the *externalisation* of instability into a dissipative structure’s surroundings (in order words, a dissipative structure creates and maintains a low entropy internal state by externalising disorder into just outside its boundaries i.e. it "pumps" entropy to outside of itself). Instability passing through a structure causes disruption which speeds up its rate of innovation and thus effectively speeds up its passage of time relative to others (relativity again). In other words, we define the passage of time as identical to the experience of the dissipation of entropy: the more spatially concentrated the dissipation, the faster the experience of the passage of time. ??changed:
-5. One of the most important binary dualities is the step-change versus incremental innovation as this drives the process of time itself. Of all change in most systems, around four fifths derives from incremental improvement and one fifth from step-change improvement. This notion of incremental and step-change corresponds to Erich Jantsch’s terminology of hypercycles of confirmation (incremental) and novelty (step-change).
5. One of the most important binary dualities is the step-change versus incremental innovation as this drives the process of time itself. Of all change in most systems, generally around four fifths derives from incremental improvement and one fifth from step-change improvement. This notion of incremental and step-change corresponds to Erich Jantsch’s terminology of hypercycles of confirmation (incremental) and novelty (step-change). ??changed:
-In our opinion, what truly made European civilisation greater than others is one very simple precept which we tend to downplay: we, far more than other cultures, **handle failure better**. In most Eastern cultures, failure is associated with loss of honour and thus a cause for shame – this causes officials to cover up their mistakes and obscure them to such an extent that others can never learn how to not repeat such mistakes – thus, overall learning in society diminishes. Europeans were far more fractured into tiny, competing splinters who took delight in conquering one another – thus, failure became revealed through warfare & conquest and the whole benefited. However, this was a lucky accident resulting more from our brutishness than our superior natures, and we as a people do not tend any more toward openness than any other people. Note how the Americans are the world superpower because their processes and structures allow **successful failure** - most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have experienced bankruptcy at least once, yet bankruptcy is severely punished in most European countries (e.g. the Germans never allow a Director of a bankrupted firm to ever be a Director of a firm again).
-
-You cannot impose better behaviour on people and expect success without their prior request – which **requires** their prior understanding. No person, no matter how learned or accomplished, knows the full consequences of any action or decision – but even if they did, even if they had the vision & understanding of God Himself, to deny another person the right to choose, their very freedom itself, is a most grevious sin.
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-This is why God never, ever denies anything their right to choose. This is why we have wars, disease, pestilence and evil – because WE CHOOSE to have these things in our world. We do this because we do not yet believe we deserve any better and until we do, *and make it happen*, we shall continue to give forth to a world in which we inflict suffering upon ourselves. God will never intervene, unless asked to do so and only then when it will not remove the free choice of another – and then God rarely gives you exactly what you ask for but rather something much better. Too often we react by being too prejudiced to thank Him for the gift of answering our prayers with something better than we wished – I often find it very funny when people say that ‘prayer does not work’ and so therefore a loss of faith in God is justified. This is total bunk: ask and you shall always receive, but never at the expense of the freedom of choice of any other thing animate or inanimate. How else could an infinitely merciful and loving God behave but to grant every single thing irrespective, big & small, its own liberty and freedom to choose for itself? -
-Let me tell you this: our ideal & perfect society is not one without bad things ever happening. It is in fact one where every one of us carries the power to destroy the Universe and yet does not. It is a world where every citizen is capable of the most despicable acts of evil at the same time as the greatest acts of good; where our most evil child rapists & serial killers have unrestrained power to do as they like and yet they choose to not perform such acts of evil. This is not achieved through repression, coercion or denial, it is achieved through understanding which requires education, NOT regulation. It is achieved through inspiring simplicity, not deadening complexity.
In our opinion, what truly made European civilisation greater than others is one very simple precept which we tend to downplay: we, far more than other cultures, **handle failure better**. In most Eastern cultures, failure is associated with loss of honour and thus a cause for shame – this causes officials to cover up their mistakes and obscure them to such an extent that others can never learn how to not repeat such mistakes – thus, overall learning in society diminishes. Europeans were far more fractured into tiny, competing splinters who took delight in conquering one another – thus, failure became revealed through warfare & conquest and the whole benefited. However, this was a lucky accident resulting more from our brutishness than our superior natures (and a very tolerating European ecosystem), and we as a people do not tend any more toward openness than any other people. Note how the Americans are the world superpower because their processes and structures allow **successful failure** - most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have experienced bankruptcy at least once, yet bankruptcy is severely punished in most European countries (e.g. the Germans never allow a Director of a bankrupted firm to ever be a Director of a firm again). You cannot impose better behaviour on people and expect success without their prior request – which **requires** their prior understanding. No person, no matter how learned or accomplished, knows the full consequences of any action or decision – but even if they did, even if they had the vision & understanding of God Himself, to deny another person the right to choose, their very freedom itself, is a most grevious sin. One cannot but deny another's right to choose if they are too ignorant to understand the choice which they are making. This is why God never, ever denies anything their right to choose despite all the prayer in the world. This is why we have wars, disease, pestilence and evil – because WE CHOOSE to have these things in our world. We do this because we do not yet believe we deserve any better and until we do, *and make it happen*, we shall continue to give forth to a world in which we inflict suffering upon ourselves and many more hundreds of millions will needlessly die in agony. God will never intervene, unless asked to do so and only then when it will not remove the free choice of another – and then God rarely gives you exactly what you ask for but rather something much better. Too often we react by being too prejudiced to thank Him for the gift of answering our prayers with something better than we wished – it is sad how people say that ‘prayer does not work’ and so therefore a loss of faith in God is justified. This is total bunk: ask and you shall always receive, but never at the expense of the freedom of choice of any other thing animate or inanimate. How else could an infinitely merciful and loving God behave but to grant every single thing irrespective, big & small, its own liberty and freedom to choose for itself? Let me tell you this: our ideal & perfect society is not one without bad things ever happening. It is in fact one where every one of us carries the power to destroy the Universe and yet does not. It is a world where every citizen is capable of the most despicable acts of evil at the same time as the greatest acts of good; where our most evil child rapists & serial killers have unrestrained power to do as they like and yet they *choose freely* to not perform such acts of evil. This is not achieved through repression, coercion or denial, it is achieved through understanding which requires education, NOT regulation. It is achieved through inspiring simplicity, not deadening complexity. ??changed:
-What is described by the fourth universal rule is very similar to [[Wikipedia]]:Santiago_Theory_of_Cognition, however it applies the process of cognition to all material structure rather than to just organic structures. Indeed we define a cognitive structure (i.e. a mind) as anything which transforms the nature of energy passing through it, so a rock which reflects, refracts, directs and converts electromagnetic radiation is a cognitive system.
What is described by the fourth universal rule is very similar to [[Wikipedia]]:Santiago_Theory_of_Cognition, however it applies the process of cognition to all material structure rather than to just organic structures. Indeed we define a cognitive structure (i.e. a mind) as **anything** which transforms the nature of energy passing through it, so a rock which reflects, refracts, directs and converts electromagnetic radiation is a cognitive system. ??changed:
-We know that most mathematicians fall into two types (the geometric and the semantic) and attempting to teach ‘the wrong kind’ to a particular student tends to generate a very negative and intense emotional reaction which puts them off maths for life. Interestingly, and entirely due to sociocultural factors, it also causes people so afflicted to think that people who are easy with maths are somehow ‘more intelligent’ than they are which is a classic example of a social stereotype in action. Politicians, most of whom are pretty useless with maths, will simply accept what an Economist says because he uses fancy math equations – when any Physicist would be appalled at the assumptions, contradictions & simple bad maths in the standard Neo-Classical Economic models. Statisticians get even more power because even most mathematicians dislike stats because you never get the automatic feeling of whether it’s right or not like you do with geometry or algebra. And of course, it’s very easy to make terrible mistakes in stats: there was a famous case in Britain a few years ago where a very eminent expert on child mortality had testified in many legal cases that a mother had to have shaken her child to death because he had calculated it as being several million to one that it could be otherwise. It turned out after dozens of mothers had been imprisoned that he had made a simple, first year undergraduate mistake in his stats – all these mothers were freed, and hopefully all eminent experts learned to always get a statistician (NOT a normal mathematician) to check your numbers before the court date !
We know that most mathematicians fall into two types (the geometric and the semantic, though 75-80% are the former) and attempting to teach ‘the wrong kind’ to a particular student tends to generate a very negative and intense emotional reaction which puts them off maths for life. Interestingly, and entirely due to sociocultural factors, it also causes people so afflicted to think that people who are relaxed with maths are somehow ‘more intelligent’ than they are which is a classic example of a social stereotype in action. Politicians, most of whom are pretty useless with maths, will simply accept what an Economist says because he uses fancy math equations – when any Physicist would be appalled at the assumptions, contradictions & simple bad maths in the standard Neo-Classical Economic models. Statisticians get even more power because even most mathematicians dislike stats because you never get the automatic feeling of whether it’s right or not like you do with geometry or algebra. And of course, it’s very easy to make terrible mistakes in stats: there was a famous case in Britain a few years ago where a very eminent expert on child mortality had testified in many legal cases that a mother had to have shaken her child to death because he had calculated it as being several million to one that it could be otherwise. It turned out after dozens of mothers had been wrongly imprisoned that he had made a simple, first year undergraduate mistake in his stats – all these mothers were freed, and hopefully all eminent experts learned to always get a statistician (NOT a normal mathematician) to check your numbers before the court date! ??changed:
-All organisms choose whether to react to external stimuli. A loud bang may make one person jump and another not. However, the organism may through its memory structure have an associated emotional response, so if the last time a bang occurred and the organism suffered greatly, chances are it will react with anxiety to a loud bang. Equally, a dog may associate a loud bang with its owner returning from work and begin salivating with the prospect of impending food. The lesson here is that we choose whether and how to react to events – a ‘bad’ event is never, ever bad in the absolute sense, it is bad relative to us, our prejudices and past experiences. Your family getting killed, all your possessions being destroyed and all your friends turning against you is probably pretty bad but if it turns you down a path during which one good thing happens which otherwise might have not, it is not entirely a bad thing. In a nutshell, we are saying that you will be as happy or sad as you choose to be – a person with a positive ‘can do’ attitude towards life is far wealthier than most ever will be.
-
-
-TODO
-====
-Emotional reactions of a cognitive system are rather like being in a hall of mirrors: there are reflections upon reflections like multiple ripples moving in a pond. Most of the external stimuli we ever experience is filtered out by our cognitive apparatus because it is too much information to process, and it overwhelms you to the point of uselessness. LSD interferes with that filtration system, so taking a lot of LSD is approximately the same as turning the filter off and you directly experience the true reality of the Universe. Most modern people are unprepared for such a revelatory experience – traditionally, people in more primitive societies had to undergo years of preparation beforehand which was very wise of them. Having such chemicals illegal as at present simply guarantees a trip to the mental hospital for a small percentage of those who indulge – as indeed I personally found out.
-If you would like to know what the voice of God is like, it is when the quiet random emotional static noise at the back of your mind takes on a specific direction – a kaleidoscope of emotional states, abstract representations and very occasionally a single human language word or two. It is so quiet because our mental framework tries to exclude what it thinks isn’t pertinent, so the voice of God tends to get drowned out. However, in certain circumstances (i.e. highly emotionally charged situations either occurring naturally through circumstance e.g. a death of a loved one, severe lack of sleep – or induced artificially through drugs) the mind & body becomes open enough to hear the full roar of the voice of God. It is a humbling experience, rather like the difference between standing under a shower (normal existence) and under the full force of Niagara Falls (voice of God).
All organisms choose whether to react to external stimuli. A loud bang may make one person jump and another not. However, the organism may through its memory structure have an associated emotional response, so if the last time a bang occurred and the organism suffered greatly, chances are it will react with anxiety to a loud bang. Equally, a dog may associate a loud bang with its owner returning from work and begin salivating with the prospect of impending food. The lesson here is that we **choose whether and how to react to events** – a ‘bad’ event is never, ever bad in the absolute sense, it is bad relative to us, our prejudices and past experiences. Your family getting killed, all your possessions being destroyed and all your friends turning against you is probably pretty bad but if it turns you down a path during which one good thing happens which otherwise might have not, it is not entirely a bad thing. In a nutshell, we are saying that you will be as happy or sad as you choose to be – a person with a positive ‘can do’ attitude towards life is far wealthier than most ever will be. Other relevant notes and observations taken from the Freeing Growth book first draft
====================================================================================
Emotional reactions of a cognitive system are rather like being in a hall of mirrors: there are reflections upon reflections like multiple ripples moving in a pond. Most of the external stimuli we ever experience is filtered out by our cognitive apparatus because it is too much information to process, and it overwhelms you to the point of uselessness. LSD interferes with that filtration system, so taking a lot of LSD is approximately the same as turning the filter off and you directly experience the true reality of the Universe. Most modern people are unprepared for such a revelatory experience – traditionally, people in more primitive societies had to undergo years of preparation beforehand which was very wise of them. Having such chemicals illegal as at present simply guarantees a trip to the mental hospital for a small percentage of those who indulge – as indeed I personally found out. If you would like to know what the voice of God is like, it is when the quiet random emotional static noise at the back of your mind takes on a specific direction – a kaleidoscope of emotional states, abstract representations and very occasionally a single human language word or two. It is so quiet because our mental framework tries to exclude what it thinks isn’t pertinent, so the voice of God tends to get drowned out. However, in certain circumstances (i.e. highly emotionally charged situations either occurring naturally through circumstance e.g. a death of a loved one, severe lack of sleep – or induced artificially through drugs) the mind & body become open enough to hear the full roar of the voice of God. It is a humbling experience, rather like the difference between standing under a shower (normal existence) and under the full force of Niagara Falls (voice of God). ??changed:
-Every world religion is guilty of this most grievous sin and they should feel ashamed for such perversion of a gift from God. I will tell you something else: if a truly pious & non self-serving person who is fully open to God undertakes to modernise and keep on modernising scripture in order to keep it as relevant to now as possible , they will discover something truly wonderful.
-Before we can achieve that though, we need our population to be comfortable with maths. Maths is much more universal than human language, but like any axiomatic formal system it will always require a leap of faith to make it true and thus it becomes relativised to us and our present condition. Our society currently pretty much universally believes that numbers are cold, hard rational things which carry no emotional content – yet clearly, they must be discrete emotional states because for a number to carry any significance, it must evoke some kind of meaning – otherwise, it’s just some meaningless number. Indeed, we know that the very best mathematicians definitely ascribe emotions to numbers: many find Pi to be extremely beautiful and if you corrupt one of its digits even several hundred digits down, the number suddenly ‘feels’ wrong.
Every world religion is guilty of this most grievous sin and they should feel ashamed for such perversion of a gift from God. I will tell you something else: if a truly pious & non self-serving person who is fully open to God undertakes to modernise and keep on modernising scripture in order to keep it as relevant to now as possible, they will discover something truly wonderful. Before we can achieve that though, we need our population to be comfortable with maths. Maths is much more universal than human language, but like any axiomatic formal system it will always require a leap of faith to make it true and thus it becomes relativised to us and our present condition. Our society currently pretty much universally believes that numbers are cold, hard rational things which carry no emotional content – yet clearly, they must be discrete emotional states because for a number to carry any significance, it must evoke some kind of meaning – otherwise, it’s just some meaningless number. Indeed, we know that the very best mathematicians definitely ascribe emotions to numbers: many find Pi to be extremely beautiful and if you corrupt one of its digits even several hundred digits down, the number suddenly ‘feels’ wrong. ??changed:
-We already know from our logarithmic timelines that there are about forty levels of significance perceivable by the human cognitive system and the recent past is disproportionately weighted against the distant past (time heals all wounds!). This implies a more emotionally laden ‘recent space’ than ‘distant space’ because the nearer it is, the more it is perceived as likely to be important (i.e. perceived importance is clearly indicated by the lengths to which a person is prepared to go to affect an outcome). Not dissimilarly, we are much more at ease with smaller numbers: try making a list of all things related to the number fifty-two and compare the length of that list to one of all things related to the number fifty-two thousand. Now compare that to a list of things related to 5.2e52 and I bet that even the most educated among you would struggle to find more than five related items for such a large number. We already know from our logarithmic timelines ([[RelativityIsAbsolute]]) that there are about forty levels of significance perceivable by the human cognitive system and the recent past is disproportionately weighted against the distant past (time heals all wounds!). This implies a more emotionally laden ‘recent space’ than ‘distant space’ because the nearer it is, the more it is perceived as likely to be important (i.e. perceived importance is clearly indicated by the lengths to which a person is prepared to go to affect an outcome). Not dissimilarly, we are much more at ease with smaller numbers: try making a list of all things related to the number fifty-two and compare the length of that list to one of all things related to the number fifty-two thousand. Now compare that to a list of things related to 5.2e52 and I bet that even the most educated among you would struggle to find more than five related items for such a large number. ++added:

[DissipativeStructures]

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:30:50 -0700

??changed:
-Dissipative Structures are currently humankind's best available unified understanding of the processes and structures of the Universe (though note that this term is the structure-centric word for the entity: autopoesis is the process-centric term for the same entity). Dissipative Structures/Autopoesis govern absolutely everything from the tiniest to the largest, from the beginning of time across to the end, at every scale, part, nook & cranny. What we present here is the really, really short version: consult the following books if you want to know more:
-
-* Jantsch, E., (1980), *The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution*, Pergamon Press. This book is very hard to find: see [[Wikipedia]]:Erich_Jantsch.
-* `Capra, F., (1997), *The Web Of Life*, Flamingo Books, London. `_
-* Ken Wilber's *Sex, Ecology and Spirituality* (1995), an example of [[Wikipedia]]:Integral_Philosophy. We only recommend this if you are an academic philosopher by way of thinking - those of a more engineering and scientific disposition will find it nearly unreadable, whereas others either love or hate this book.
Dissipative Structures are currently humankind's best available unified understanding of the processes and structures of the Universe (though note that this term is the structure-centric word for the entity: Autopoesis ([[Wikipedia]]:Autopoesis) is the process-centric term for the same entity). Dissipative Structures/Autopoesis govern absolutely everything from the tiniest to the largest, from the beginning of time across to the end, at every scale, part, nook & cranny. What we present here is the really, really short version: consult the following books if you want to know more: * Jantsch, E., (1980), *The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution*, Pergamon Press. This book is very hard to find: see [[Wikipedia]]:Erich_Jantsch
* `Capra, F., (1997), The Web Of Life, Flamingo Books, London. `_ . This book is dated but is strongly recommended as a readable introduction.
* Ken Wilber's *Sex, Ecology and Spirituality* (1995), an example of [[Wikipedia]]:Integral_Philosophy . We only recommend this if you are an academic philosopher by way of thinking - those of a more engineering and scientific disposition will find it nearly unreadable, whereas others either love or hate this book.

[Worldview]

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:32:01 -0700

??changed:
-It is however extremely easy to sum up in one sentence: **Our worldview is the universal application to each and every field of the simplest rules of behaviour which appear at every scale of distance, time, mass and thought**. Put simply, we observe what is common in the pattern of every single thing in the Universe no matter how large (e.g. galaxies) nor small (e.g. atoms), no matter how old (e.g. our planet) nor young (e.g. a fleeting thought) and certainly no matter the domain (i.e. we don't separate thoughts from the physical world as European culture is apt to do, especially since the mind-body split of [[Wikipedia]]:René_Descartes). To achieve this, we had to significantly bend most disciplines in a way their experts will hotly contest. On the other hand, we gain a universal applicability of our principles with a useful power to which very few others can aspire.
It is however extremely easy to sum up in one sentence: **Our worldview is the universal application to each and every field of the simplest rules of behaviour which appear at every scale of distance, time, mass and thought**. Put simply, we observe what is common in the pattern of every single thing in the Universe no matter how large (e.g. galaxies) nor small (e.g. atoms), no matter how old (e.g. our planet) nor young (e.g. a fleeting thought) and certainly no matter the domain (i.e. we don't separate thoughts from the physical world as European culture is apt to do, especially since the mind-body "Cartesian Split" of [[Wikipedia]]:Rene_Descartes). To achieve this, we had to significantly bend most disciplines in a way their experts will hotly contest. On the other hand, we gain a universal applicability of our principles across traditional semantic boundaries with a useful power to which very few other approaches can aspire. ??changed:
-In truth, we see paradox logic as that logic which lives on the boundary between cognitive systems - it is the sliver of infinitely structured chaos where formal boundaries begin and end, and just like chaotic systems or `fractal topologies`_, it is the source of [[OurCreativeConnectionWithGod]]. This is an extension of the sentiment:
In truth, we see paradox logic as that logic which lives on the boundary between cognitive systems - it is the sliver of infinitely structured chaos where formal boundaries begin and end, and just like chaotic systems or `fractal geometries`_, it is the source of [[OurCreativeConnectionWithGod]]. This is an extension of the sentiment: ??changed:
-From a long-term historical perspective, this reluctance seems both warranted and weird. On the one hand, there has been a long-term European trend of extracting society from the dogmatic hand of the Roman Catholic Church, and far too often the word "God" is perceived as having a strong identity with the word "religion" when religion is *man's* response to the **fear** of God and therefore has very little to actually do with God Himself per se. Religion when at its best searches for a deeper understanding of the light of truth, however once again that is *man's* search and again, doesn't have much to do with God. God is both the destination of the journey and is the source of motion - but God has little to do with man's **choice** of path of journey except by enabling the existence of choice and therefore multiple paths to the same destination. It is very similar to having children: they owe their entire existence to their parents, but it is hardly like their daily choices have much to do with their parents or anything about their parents. Why we should follow one logic with our own kith and kin and yet something totally different when it involves God makes no sense except as a response of fear.
From a long-term historical perspective, this reluctance seems both warranted and weird. Firstly, one of the most obvious hallmarks of every known human civilisation is the widespread and systemic belief in some form of deity (usually polytheistic, and usually partially humanised and animalised representations of vital forces) and as [[Wikipedia]]:Joseph_Campbell so wonderfully illustrates, it is **we** in the late 20th and early 21st century who are the aberration and much of that is due to the peculiarities of European history. There has been a long-term European trend of extracting society from the dogmatic hand of the Roman Catholic Church which was really what the Roman Empire converted itself into in order to survive as the Dark Ages approached, and far too often the word "God" is perceived as having a strong identity with the word "religion" when religion is *man's* response to the **fear** of God and therefore has very little to actually do with God Himself per se. Religion when at its best searches for a deeper understanding of the light of truth, however once again that is *man's* search and again, doesn't have much to do with God. God is both the destination of the journey and is the source of motion - but God has little to do with the **choice** of path of journey except by enabling the existence of choice and therefore multiple paths to the same destination. It is very similar to having children: they owe their entire existence to their parents, but it is hardly like their daily choices have much to do with their parents or anything about their parents. Why we should follow one logic with our own kith and kin and yet something totally different when it involves God makes no sense except as a response of fear. We seem to like to blame God for our (usually self-created) misery, yet are remarkably ungrateful when times are good. It is almost like we try our best to not think about God except when forced to do so - again, another sign of fear. ??changed:
-You don't need to believe in God or accept the existence of God in any of the proposals made in Neo-Capitalism - that's your personal choice and it remains that way. We certainly don't ram any deity down anyone's throats.
**You don't need to believe in God or accept the existence of God in any of the proposals made in Neo-Capitalism** - that's your personal choice and it remains that way. We certainly don't ram any deity down anyone's throats. Put simply, having God around makes building and interpreting the computer models easier and hence we tend to use Him for that and that alone: as a simplification tool which greatly enhances the understandability of the models and proposals. If you want, you can replace the word "God" with "Universe" or even "Karma". ??changed:
-We make some significantly "drastic" changes to how we interpret science, though none of these are incompatible with empirical evidence (and in fact, our approach makes many "insoluble" problems much more tractable). Fundamentally speaking we believe in a much enhanced superset of the terribly named [[Wikipedia]]:Digital_philosophy [#digitalphilosophy]_ cosmology which holds that the universe is a quantum computer which computes through reduction of paradox (and therefore uncertainty). In particular, we hold:
-
-1. The universe is resolved by itself into contradictory bits, with each bit made of smaller bits.
-2. These contradictory bits, or paradoxes, form a fractal structure in truth-space. One can have chains of truths and meta-truths, but one can also have islands of truths and meta-truths which have no connection to other islands of truth. One can periodicity superimposed upon other periodicity yet without causation - however lack of causation has no relation to *interaction* as islands of truths can and do interact through their being understood.
-3. Anything which can understand must maintain memory. Therefore, all structure is embodied and encapsulated memory. We quite literally mean by this that a rock, through its structure, is a memory and indeed represents a slice of all that has ever happened.
We make some significantly "drastic" changes to how we interpret science, though none of these are incompatible with empirical evidence (and in fact, our approach makes many "insoluble" problems much more tractable). Fundamentally speaking we believe in a much enhanced superset of the terribly named [[Wikipedia]]:Digital_philosophy [#digitalphilosophy]_ cosmology which holds that the universe is a quantum computer which computes through reduction of paradox (and therefore uncertainty) - our most significant difference is that we don't see digital states as being the primary state of anything, instead we see "unreduced paradox" as being the primary state and therefore the primary mode of computation. In particular, we hold: 1. The universe is resolved by itself into self-contradictory bits, with each bit made of smaller bits.
2. These self-contradictory bits, or paradoxes, form a fractal structure in truth-space. One can have chains of truths and meta-truths, but one can also have islands of truths and meta-truths which have no connection to other islands of truth. One can periodicity superimposed upon other periodicity yet without causation - however lack of causation has no relation to *interaction* as islands of truths can and do interact through their being understood via a meta-structure.
3. Anything which can understand must maintain memory. Therefore, all structure is embodied and encapsulated memory. We quite literally mean by this that a rock, through its structure, is a living memory and indeed represents a slice of all that has ever happened. ??changed:
-5. Emotion is the primary communication language of the universe [#emotionbaselanguage]_.
-
-This equivalence of the structure of physical matter with living memory allows the traditionally disparate realms of cognitive and psychological theory to be united with empirical science - in fact, holding this simple equivalence has proved a tremendously productive source of creative inspiration in generating our proposals, and one wonders why it is not commonly held by just about everyone out of sheer usefulness. Of course the consequence is that now that absolutely everything is alive and feels emotion which obviously changes the moral consequence of many of our actions.
5. Emotion is the primary communication language of the universe [#emotionbaselanguage]_. Mathematics is the primary descriptive language of the universe. This equivalence of the structure of physical matter with living memory allows the traditionally disparate realms of cognitive and psychological theory to be united with physical science - in fact, holding this simple equivalence has proved a tremendously productive source of creative inspiration in generating our proposals, and one wonders why it is not commonly held by just about everyone out of sheer usefulness. Of course the consequence is that now that absolutely everything is alive and feels emotion which obviously changes the moral consequence of many of our actions.

[RelativityIsAbsolute]

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:12:34 -0700

??changed:
-In Progress
IN PROGRESS IGNORE THESE NOTES
============================== Our Truth in Perception
-----------------------
There is a funny thing about History when you think about it: .. figure:: images/CreativeStepsToPresent.png :align: center Log plot of Creative Steps (left scale) and Human Population (right scale) before year 2008 (`data `_) This is a log graph of [[CreativeStepsLeadingToPresent]] which is an estimation of the most important creative steps undertaken by the universe to date from our self-referential viewpoint. You will surely note the nearly straight line - this hard fact about our perception of History has been known since the mid-20th century, indeed `Heinz von Foerster`_ (one of the grandfathers of cybernetics) spent some time investigating it and furthermore Wikipedia has compiled a similar list at [[Wikipedia]]:Detailed_logarithmic_timeline. Why is this important? If you plot the most important revolutions (as in "major leaps forward") in any sufficiently large field (e.g. music, art, maths etc), you **always** get around forty milestones. In other words, the human cognitive system tends to "max out" its perceptive capacity at around forty orders of exponentiality We hold that this is [[APowerLawOfConnectednessWithTheUniverse]] and this relationship is used heavily our spatial computer models.

[APowerLawOfConnectednessWithTheUniverse]

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:12:37 -0700

??changed:
-
In progress

[OurCreativeConnectionWithGod]

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:02:10 -0700

??changed:
-
In progress

[ShortHistoryOfAccounting]

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:37:05 -0700

??changed:
-The invention of accounting without doubt precedes the invention of writing
The invention of accounting without doubt precedes the invention of writing - currently the academic consensus is that accounting began around 11,000 years ago whereas writing only began around 6000 years ago (see [[CreativeStepsLeadingToPresent]]). Book keeping, in the sense of keeping account, also without doubt long precedes writing down history - we know far more about the purchases and sales of the Sumerian royalty than their history. The contemporary form of accounting, the double-entry dual-sided ledger ([[Wikipedia]]:Double-entry_accounting_system), is fairly ancient with it being extensively used by the Romans, the Islamic Caliphate and the Normans, whose particular formulation is still in almost unchanged usage today. Ibn Taymiyyah ([[Wikipedia]]:Ibn_Taymiyyah) codified the Arab practice in his twelfth century book *Hisba* and Luca Pacoli ([[Wikipedia]]:Luca_Pacoli) did the same for the Renaissance practice in his fifteenth century book *Summa* - however what is remarkable is just how few differences there are. Accounting practice today would be entirely understandable by a factor (the old name for an accountant) living two thousand years ago and its current formulation would be entirely understandable to a Norman factor who advised William the Conqueror on how much his invasion of England would cost. Think about that for a second ...
=================================
We are using today in the twenty-first century an almost **identical** accounting system as that used in the Norman invasion of England in 1066. In particular, our **cost valuation** system [#costvaluationdef]_ is practically identical to that used by the Normans, and yet this fact is not only unchallenged in the teaching of Accounting, **it is not even recognised by those who practice Accounting**. The Norman cost valuation system was specifically adopted at that time as a **wartime** cost valuation system - it was intended to only be used during wars only because it was recognised as being fundamentally unsustainable in the long term (indeed its usage caused quite a fight between the King and the rudimentary accounting profession at the time). Unfortunately, Europe being what it is, constant warmongering caused the establishment of this wartime accounting system as the de facto accounting system and people forgot why it was originally adopted. The Norman "Wartime" Cost Valuation System
==========================================
This wartime cost valuation system is very simple: an item is valued as *the cost of obtaining a resource at whatever it takes to obtain it* **today**. If you need five thousand trees by tomorrow and it takes one worker four hours to cut down and transport a tree, then you need 2,500 workers at whatever the current rate of pay is. One therefore gets the old adage that "time is money" because one must now exchange hastiness with cost i.e. more haste usually means more cost. More importantly, **everything** becomes convertible into money values which opens the door to cost-benefit analyses. This enabled the 12th century Norman knight Gerald of Wales ([[Wikipedia]]:Gerald_of_Wales) to survey the Welsh lands and to generate a report for King Henry II which laid out an accounting ledger detailing an estimation of the cost of "clearing" the Welsh lands of their occupants (i.e. genocide) versus that of building a ring of castles to impose order - and as the latter was very significantly cheaper, that was the option chosen. This cost valuation system is entirely appropriate for times of imminent threat. If your country is about to be invaded and you must do whatever is required as quickly as possible to defend yourself, then you must extract as many required resources as quickly as possible for the cheapest possible cost today. However, if you persist with a mentality of being on a constant war footing - and indeed, that is exactly what Western civilisation has done since the 11th century without pause - then one's civilisation will extract ALL resources as quickly as possible for the cheapest cost today until you don't have any resources left. The consequence of that is what you witness all around you today where we are converting so much Natural Capital into short-term human profits today that we are on the brink of ecosystem collapse, and therefore the complete collapse of human civilisation. Much as we tried to illustrate in [[MoneyIsMakeBelieve]], what we have today is a Ponzi scheme ([[Wikipedia]]:Ponzi_scheme) where the value of most of our economy and human civilisation is utterly unsustainable and is merely a price bubble destined to collapse sooner rather than later - indeed, we describe how this will play out in the preamble to `The Neo-Capitalist Manifesto`_. Just imagine to yourself the current Credit Crunch amplified a million fold - and that will hit us before 2020 as price rises in energy make much of our resource extraction too costly to sustain the Ponzi scheme. What other form of cost valuation do you propose?
=================================================
What we need is a long-term sustainable cost valuation system which returns our accounting ledger to more accurately representing true reality. For that, we need to make the first major change to our accounting system in a thousand years - however, don't worry, it's only a *little* change which incorporates more modern mathematics. Our fundamental premise is the operation of three sets of parallel books, each using three separate currencies which run three separate sets of cost valuation systems. We add a calculated confidence interval to these accounts which represent a statistical likelihood of accuracy, and we then let the free market handle via a floating exchange rate the interoperation of the cost valuation systems. Accounts then become refined over time (their confidence interval shrinks) as more information becomes available, with a line being drawn under them after five years. We explain this system in much greater detail in [[DivorcingTheMoneySupply]]. .. [#costvaluationdef] To be clear, by "cost valuation system" we mean a much wider scope than that the very limited asset valuation methods usually taught in Accounting theory e.g. historical cost, fair value, discounted cash flows etc. What we mean is by how a money number value itself is assigned to represent a cost.

Some Cunning Python

admin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:29:31 -0700

As you have almost certainly noticed by now if you are watching (and according to Google Analytics, no one is :)), the Neo-Capitalism Wiki is very slowly gaining content. As soon as I am freed from this albatross which is university study, I am very much looking forward to finally getting some of what is in my head into the wiki - for now, I grab an hour or two when I can in between the pointless labour of gaining yet more unnecessary bits of academic qualification.

Something of interest: in the process of hacking the DTML in ZWiki to show the children of the pages as well as their ancestors, I had need to deflatten a list i.e. to convert ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'] into ['a', ['b', ['c', ['d']]]] and worse still, I needed to do it as an inline function because of how DTML works (ok, I could define a DTML function I know, but that sounded like hassle when there was an opportunity for some truly nasty Python scripting!). What I have come up with is truly appalling: a recursive lambda function:

Python 2.4.5 (#2, Aug 1 2008, 02:20:59)
[GCC 4.3.1] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> x=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
>>> print (lambda f, a: f(f, a))(lambda x, y: (lambda:[y[0], x(x, y[1:])], lambda:y)[1==len(y)](), x)
['a', ['b', ['c', ['d']]]]
>>>

Horrible eh! I have used lambda's to implement both recursive lambda's and a ternary operator - nevertheless, it works, though passing it much of a long list would quickly exhaust the stack due to the use of a double trampoline.

[DivorcingTheMoneySupply]

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:48:10 -0700

??changed:
-
In Progress

[MoneyIsMakeBelieve]

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:47:35 -0700

??changed:
- UK Retail Price Index 1264-2007 UK Retail Price Index 1264-2007 (`Excel Data `_) ??changed:
-.. [#Duncan-Jones1998] `Duncan-Jones, R. (1998). Money and Government in the Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press `_
.. [#Duncan-Jones1998] `Duncan-Jones, R. (1998). Money and Government in the Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press p. 25 onwards `_

Site Opened

admin — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:04:35 -0800

As always, there never seems enough time to do anything in life especially with so many other things to be doing. However, after what seems like forever there is finally some content up on neocapitalism.org though admittedly not a lot as yet.