# 19

[Don Stockbauer]

Here we go again.

[Don Stockbauer]

I once got into a discussion, the subject of which was "disruption is good".
I objected , I said disruption is bad. I was told disruption is good because it keeps civilization from stagnating . I replied I think it's a "you don't want too little or too much" thing. Too little and civilization stagnates , too much and you have World War III and a planet in flames within an hour.

[Don Stockbauer]

So I suppose this virus has not caused a few pandemics before to give it some immunity , the reason why we have so little immunity against it.

[Don Stockbauer]

Welpie, Dr. Jackson , you've lived longer than I have , do you remember anything like this in your lifetime ? do you remember any type of virus people have very little immunity to? is it like I said earlier a new virus comes along and it has to go through a few pandemics before it becomes an ordinary problem like the common flu. and you surely can't advocate nowadays letting the disease go uncontrolled, but maybe that's what it takes to get worldwide immunity .
The black death . suppose somebody back then determined it was Carried by fleas on rats. how do you get the news out ?very slowly . no Internet . almost to the point where the Discovery might as well not have been made. suppose they discovered that and they got the information spread around . are those people going to be able to kill all the fleas ond rats ? nope .
here's a story . my father and I went to a ranching meeting , there were top-level veterinarians there .they were worried about foot and mouth disease getting reestablished , a horrible fear , it can be transmitted by you driving through your neighbors pasture, getting mud on your tires and transferring it to your ranch .the veterinarians said if it outbreaks we are going to get the Army out and at the epicenter of the outbreak we're going to kill every cloven footed animal for a large radius of it. clove footed animals include deer, pigs, cows, etc. lot of that land is Brush . you're going to get these army people out there and kill every animal back in this brush ?those veterinarians were Aggies

Whenever there is the outbreak of a disease there are survivors that have immunity.

[Don Stockbauer]

They tell us were supposed to practice "social distancing" to prevent the virus. Hell, I've been practicing that for years. Nobody will have a damn thing to do with me.

[Don Stockbauer]

I was watching a YouTube the other day it was called Mary's room or something like that ,a philosophical discussion and I thought to myself how many other subjects like this could you study , a million , a billion, 1 trillion? so you ask yourself maybe intelligence is not so much knowing subjects as knowing how to choose amongst them.

[Don Stockbauer]

I believe, in Kingdom come.
Then all the colors will bleed into one.
Bleed into one.
But yes, I'm still running…

[Don Stockbauer]

Someone just sent me a message in Spanish. I ran it through a translator and it translated "We are experiencing high-volume right now. Try again later." So was that the translation or was that a message from the translator.

Another one going around Facebook: big come on that says "the question of the day " . you open it and there's no question . so what's the question of the day ? the question of the day is "what is the question of the day.

Listened to Larry King on the radio , some lady phones and said "Larry , the word for today is petunia." Larry said "what do you mean , lady" . she said "the word for today is petunia" Larry says "I don't know what you're getting at lady " She said "well Larry don't all these radio talk shows have a special word of the day ". he said "no we don't lady " and hung up and then said "my God , I hope she isn't a KGB agent!"

[Don Stockbauer]

There are some science fiction stories which describe alien civilizations that are supremely advanced . I wonder if we have that in store for us?

[Don Stockbauer]

We're trained to believe that no one is exceptional.

[Don Stockbauer]

all human interaction is a game.

one , people make moves ;that is, they send messages to each other.

two, they take turns.

and finally , the object of the game is to achieve bragging rights : the winner is more intelligent.

[Don Stockbauer]

Socialism as applied to government is a very different thing than global socialism (the global brain). Global socialism turns the Earth into a single living organism , and that's probably not a bad thing.

[Don Stockbauer]

It all has to do with how the Earth is organized, and you probably don't get much better than the Earth being organized as a single living organism.

[Don Stockbauer]

It's possible that the earth is no longer being governed by politicians. The true governance may be in the person to person , person to machine and machine to machine global interactions.

[Don Stockbauer]

I've been practicing social distancing tor years! No one will have anything to do with me!

[Don Stockbauer]

Gus Richter once showed me how to make toilet paper from a newspaper. You crush it and straighten it over and over until it becomes like cloth.

[Don Stockbauer]

That's a whole lot better than the slick pages from the Sears catalog.

[Don Stockbauer]

Lunatic fringe,
I know you're out there.
You're in hiding,
And you go to your meetings.

[Don Stockbauer]

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius

[Don Stockbauer]

This coronavirus hysteria is beginning to get to me even.

[Don Stockbauer]

Gus Richter used to say when watching television became popular that no useful work was done anymore. Nowadays it's the Internet.

[Don Stockbauer]

She's got better legs than thighs.

[Don Stockbauer]

And you ride yourselves over the fields,
And you make all your animal deals,
And your wise men don't know how it feels,
To be thick,
As a brick.

[Don Stockbauer]

And then this:

There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples. He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies – and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close. A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe. Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.

But he would think of something.

[Don Stockbauer]

What is the Singularity? Could it be the global brain itself , advancing in complexity and power? There are no discontinuities, there's a steady rise in power but the sheer magnitude of the increase seems like a Singularity.

[Don Stockbauer]

And then after he detonated the orbiting nuclear weapons he realized something;
he is but one of 7 billion humans.

[Don Stockbauer]

There's a Jethro Tull song "Aqualung" and in it there's a lyric "and he's stoops to pick a
dogend". I always wondered what it means, I've always assumed it was some sort of flower, it means "the unsmoked end of a cigar or cigarette."

[Don Stockbauer]

Why is the COVID-19 virus further accelerating the formation of the
global brain? People are staying inside, they're getting bored, almost the only thing they have to do is communicate like in the short story " The Machine Stops". Increased communication directly increases the power of the global brain.

[Don Stockbauer]

A phenomenon which is key to the formation of the Technological Singularity is that super-intelligent AIs should self-improve hundreds if not thousands of times. Francis Heylighen has determined that they won't do this, the most they will improve is several times similar to the way the Newton-Raphson method converges in just several iterations .

[Don Stockbauer]

I'm a cowboy,
On a steel horse I ride,
I'm wanted,
Dead or alive.

[Don Stockbauer]

There is one true physical infinity:

debating

[Don Stockbauer]

so we have one virus after another that behaves like this and humanity is shut down back to the Homo erectus level.

[Don Stockbauer]

When I was young, I asked my parents for a bat.

But then it flew away.

- Rodney Dangerfield

[Don Stockbauer]

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup.
They slither while they pass , they make their way across the Universe.

- Why SETI will succeed.

[Don Stockbauer]

A monk hangs by his teeth from a tree limb out over a precipice , his hands hold no branch , his feet touch no soil. He is asked "why did the Buddha go to China?"

[Don Stockbauer]

Lady on the radio: "Keep your family safe. Stay in your home. Don't go to the grocery store."

Don't go to the grocery store? Won't that get you quicker than the virus? I know you're supposed to stock up on food, but why give a death sentence to those who haven't?

[Don Stockbauer]

Course there's always delivery services . Or eating the worms in your backyard.

[Don Stockbauer]

Through autumn's golden gown we used to kick our way,
You always loved this time of year.

[Don Stockbauer]

A gentle rain falls softly on my weary eyes,
As if to hide a lonely tear.
My life will be forever autumn,
'Cause you're not here.

[Don Stockbauer]

the high tech that creates a nuclear weapons system always also creates the communication capability which forms a global brain so intelligent life forms throughout the universe are not necessarily doomed to self-extinction.

[Don Stockbauer]

There's been an enormous amount of resistance to the global brain theory . It's counterintuitive, people just hate it, but it sure explains a lot of things , like the last post , any civilization that develops a nuclear war capability will also certainly develop a worldwide communication system and thus would become a global brain whose philosophy would preclude nuclear war just like a well-adjusted human would never stab the back of their hand with a knife. Maybe an analogy to the slowness of penetration of ideas is that civilization is like a big block of concrete and you're trying to eat away at it with a weak acid. It will take you quite a while but it will get done.

[Don Stockbauer]

Sickness will surely take the mind, where minds don't usually go.
Come on the Amazing Journey, and learn all you should know.

[Don Stockbauer]

The global brain theory is probably a lot like Einstein's relativity . At first all you can do is thought experiments , then as time goes on you may be able to think of some real experiments to do , a lotta people right now say prove this thing , that has to come later , it's just like Arthur C. Clarke's laws about impossibility which boil down to what's impossible now may become possible in the future.

[Don Stockbauer]

I did not hijack this group . when I came into it there were just several other people . all those have left and no one new has come in so what does that leave?

[Don Stockbauer]

So the question arises how are we sure that the global brain is beneficent? Notice that I wrote "is" rather than "will be" because the theory if true is already here and growing more sophisticated each day. One way to look at it is I've heard evolution described as not being beneficent or filled with malice but merely indifferent. It seems to me a big neural network like the global brain would be indifferent, just like the circuits in your iPhone. Indifference means no nuclear war.

[Don Stockbauer]

What you have to start doing is thinking in the language global brainese.

[Don Stockbauer]

Happy Easter , the holiday with the most complicated set of rules to determine its exact date.

[Don Stockbauer]

Those who don't believe in global warming should park their car inside their garage
with the motor running for a few hours with them inside.

[Don Stockbauer]

Elenore, gee, I think you're swell
And you really do me well
You're my pride and joy, et cetera

[Don Stockbauer]

The machine stops

It's written by EM Forster , written about 1908, not all that long after the telegraph and telephone were invented . to me the main thing it shows is how boring and worthless communication can be when that's all one does from their little apartment instead of having a life outside doing real things.

[Don Stockbauer]

I know. Communication is a real thing.

[Don Stockbauer]

The best way to detect extraterrestrials is to make sure your own civilization is highly advanced.

[Don Stockbauer]

But my dreams they aren't as empty,
As my conscience seems to be.

[Don Stockbauer]

Jesus loves the little children
all the children of the world
red and yellow , black and white
they are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Are there really any red people on the planet? except maybe for sunburned ones? seems to me the colors are more like browns, people we call red.

[Don Stockbauer]

How many mysteries are there?

[Don Stockbauer]

I want an exact count.

[Don Stockbauer]

How many things are not a pipe?

[Don Stockbauer]

(The complete lyrics of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" instantiated here.)

[Don Stockbauer]

How do you get someone who refuses to communicate with you to communicate with you ? maybe if you were the possessor of a body organ that would save their life , you possessing the only such organ on earth . but then , what if they're suicidal?

[Don Stockbauer]

How does the golden rule apply to a suicidal person ? well , the golden rule states to do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. a suicidal person would want you to kill them. since the golden rule says do unto others as would have them do unto you, the suicidal person would run around killing people. nice clear logic . who can argue with that???

[Don Stockbauer]

Conversation is such an incredibly entrenched subconscious game none of us realize we're playing it.

[Don Stockbauer]

I had too much to dream last night.

Does an LSD trip ever fully go away?
How would you even know?

[Don Stockbauer]

Guy goes into a company to interview.

The interviewer says, "Tell me about yourself."

The guy says, "I'm bipolar."

The interviewer says, "Great, that's just what we need here in our company!!!!"

[Don Stockbauer]

I know my short term memory is going . I can go to look up a word in Google and if I'm distracted for 10 or 15 seconds I'll forget the word.

[Don Stockbauer]

All in all you're just another brick system forming
the wall metasystem via metasystem transition.

[Don Stockbauer]

But the long-term memory and powers of analysis are doing pretty good . I think the way you look at it is like you lose an arm ,sure you're suffering a loss but you find ways around it.

[Don Stockbauer]

I saw this cartoon once , that showed the Tin man driving a tractor.

[Don Stockbauer]

I saw this cartoon once, there was this big maze made for kangaroos, instead of running the maze they just jumped over the walls.

Kind of a JOOTS deal.

[Don Stockbauer]

Ever take a supersaturated solution and shake it just a little bit , it'll crystallize in just a fraction of a second . so in other words metasystem transitions can go very fast , it's very possible the global brain will lock-in similarly fast, or go slowly, who knows?

[Don Stockbauer]

Tired of all those different kinds of infinity mathematicians come up with ? Like aleph null or the continuum? Well let cybernetics simplify your day. Cybernetically there are two infinities : the potential infinity , such as if we have a spacecraft report back every day knowing that something physical will eventually stop it , and there's the actual infinity, which physically cannot fit in the universe.

[Don Stockbauer]

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 8:33:40 PM UTC-5, Don Stockbauer wrote:
> Tired of all those different kinds of infinity mathematicians come up with ? Like aleph null or the continuum? Well let cybernetics simplify your day. Cybernetically there are two infinities : the potential infinity , such as if we have a spacecraft report back every day knowing that something physical will eventually stop it , and there's the actual infinity, which physically cannot fit in the universe.

A dog goes into a saloon out West and asked the bartender for a shot of whiskey. He said we don't serve dogs in this bar and pulls out a shootin iron and shoots the dog in the foot and he goes yelping out into the street.
A week later the dog strides into the bar all dressed up in a gunslinger's outfit , he walks up to the bar but there's a different bartender there this time, he says to the bartender "I'm lookin fur tha man what shot my paw."

[Don Stockbauer]

And we never failed to fail; it was the easiest thing to do.

[Don Stockbauer]

She used to let me kiss her only on the cheek…
But it's all over now.

[Don Stockbauer]

There's this song "Bus Stop" by the Hollies. There's a line in it which goes "Someday my name and hers is going to be the same." So what's he going to do? Change his name to Daphne?

[Don Stockbauer]

If you're going to try to change the world, you better have a correct model of it in your head.

[Don Stockbauer]

But then if you slap and kill a mosquito you've just changed the world.

[Don Stockbauer]

I wonder if the Nobel committee will ever give a prize to a general systems thinker instead of people working in specialty fields.

[Don Stockbauer]

Humans are not the toolmaking animal ; they're the arguing animal.

[Don Stockbauer]

A hidden treasure map :
Does that mean a map which will help you find hidden treasure , or does that mean that the map itself has been hidden , perhaps randomly stuck into a book in your house of which you may have 10,000, and it cannot be used to find hidden treasure.

[Don Stockbauer]

After a revolution you're right back where you started.

[Don Stockbauer]

"So Farmer Jones , now that you've won the lottery, what are you going to do with all that money?"

"Well, I guess I'll just keep on farming and farming and farming until it's all gone."

[Don Stockbauer]

there was this guy he was running some prostitutes in downtown New York City , he called his group of ladies my ho's but then one day he was going in to downtown New York City and he he had a long handled garden implement with him that he called a hoe so someone asked him what are you doing and he says I'm going downtown to check on my ho's and I got this hoe here and I'm gonna go over to the community garden an do some gardening with my hoe to just show what a good guy I am .ho ho ho.

[Don Stockbauer]

"Sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent."

I wonder what type of bad intent these little girls had towards Aqualung? Maybe they were going to mug him?

[Don Stockbauer]

How to win the heart of a young lady and influence people.

I was in Grandy's the other day , which is a local restaurant , and a man went up to a young lady bussing tables and asked
"Do you have a boyfriend?" She replied "Yes, I do." He replied "That's a shame, you sure are pretty."

[Don Stockbauer]

Things are sure getting more and more complex. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

[Don Stockbauer]

If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.

[Don Stockbauer]

"The Man Who Mistook the Neighbor Lady's Vagina for his Wife's Vagina."

[Don Stockbauer]

Ever get tired of every software company in the Universe bragging about their platform?
*********
The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the Master Programmer to examine. The Magician wheeled a large black box into the Master's office while the Master waited in silence.
"This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation," began the Magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct. Is it not amazing?"
The Master Programmer raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he said.
"Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the Magician, "that everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree to this?"
"Certainly," replied the Master. "I will have it transported to the Data Center immediately!" And the Magician returned to his tower, well pleased.
Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the Master Programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do you know where it might be?"
"Yes," replied the Master, "the listings are stacked on the platform in the Data Center."

[Don Stockbauer]

Do you think it should mean the death penalty for someone that takes a nice quiet car and slaps crap on it to make it sound like a jet engine ? Don't you wish the police would enforce existing noise ordinances? Do you know that Babbage had his street nuisances, we have the same thing today .

[Don Stockbauer]

Usually the more earth shaking ideas are the less the general public will accept them and will ridicule them, sadly keeping the person trying to promote them quiet. Perhaps it's a feedback mechanism to prevent too much change happening too quickly.

[Don Stockbauer]

Humans are not the toolmaking animal, they are the gameplaying animal.

[Don Stockbauer]

do your thoughts undergo metasystem transition?

[Don Stockbauer]

When there's no one left to leave you ,
Even you don't quite believe you ,
That's when nothing can deceive you.

Steve Winwood

Not quite true , you can easily deceive yourself.

there are all sorts of cutesy clichés floating around, the one I like is "revenge is a dish best served cold" well , that sounds darling ,doesn't it ? you have a squabble with your friend , you make up and then your friend gets his revenge 20 years later by poisoning you to death .

revenge is a dish best served cold

[Don Stockbauer]

There's that Queen song "We are the champions" , and it has the line "I consider it a challenge before the whole human race, and I lose all the time ".

[Don Stockbauer]

Hubble gave us a deep field, Webb has given us deep field (s?) , what if we keep extrapolating to bigger telescopes, say a kilometer in diameter , a thousand kilometers, the question is if you get a deep field with those telescopes will the field keep getting richer and richer with increasing telescope size , or will it actually start getting poorer because it will image objects right at the cosmological event horizon red shifted to near invisibility?