Well trolled! It’s time for me to turn of the news for a while. I am even closer to hysteria than usual.
I want to say it shouldn’t MATTER who said it; it should only matter whether it’s true or not. It’s the “true, shmoo <https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/this-website-works-better-in-microsoft-edge-160fa918-d581-4932-9e4e-1075c4713595?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us> !” move that drives me crazy. I concede that complexity thinking should turn us all into hopeless dyonesians, but I will not have it! N Nick Thompson <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West Sent: Friday, November 12, 2021 9:46 AM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in ethological studies of bird flocks Nick, Nothing you say below or said in the original post is false. All are true. Trump could not have written what you wrote, he lacks the literacy as well as the ability to avoid "hyperisms" in his speech. However ... each of your points about the Chinese in both posts have been stated by Trump; albeit in his distorted/garbled playground bully vernacular. The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong mouthpiece with a huge anti-China bias. Nevertheless it has/does publish essays and news pieces that also state, just as eloquently as do you, the same points and warnings about what China is doing and why. What I am teasing you (trolling with a huge smile on my face because I think the world of you) about — via the ad hominen — is the fact that "truth" (non-falsity) of the statements made are somehow made dependent on the identity of the messenger. When Trump or the Epoch Times makes the statements they are racist cant, but when Nick states them, they are wisdom to paid attention to. davew On Thu, Nov 11, 2021, at 10:11 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: Dave, So, ad hominem aside, which of the assertions I made are false. Is Hong Kong not being digested as we speak? Is pressure not increasing on the Taiwanese? Are islands not being built and fortified in the international waters around China? Are the Uighurs not being confined in work camps? Are the Chinese not massively deploying surveillance technology? Look, I don’t hold it against the Chinese. Given our behavior in the last decade, I think a very good case can be made for the superiority of authoritarian rule in the avoidance of economic and social chaos. If democracies are capable of producing Hitlers and Trumps and the current Turkish and Hungarian leaders, which exactly IS their special call on our loyalty. Could that loyalty just be so much romantic twaddle. The democratical citizens of Athens murdered an entire defenseless city of their fellow Greeks—put them to the sword, I believe is how Thucydides put it. I don’t happen to agree with the argument, but I don’t have to think of the Chinese as some hideous yellow peril to believe that they sincerely believe it. I just have to think that they are expanding, as we did after the cold war, into a vacuum left by our own sudden ambivalence concerning our own values. I don’t believe that Trump could have written the above, but even if he could, a stopped clock has to be right two times a day (or only once, if it is a twenty four our clock.) I would love to believe that I am wrong about any of this. Democracies are caving all over the world and I think it’s fair to say that a majority of americans have given up on the idea as well. The one thing I am desperately naïve about and that complexity denies is that it is valuable to think ahead, to plan, to share plans with fellow citizens, and to follow some fair rules for arriving at a consensus, being ever vigilant for the perils of mob psychology and group think, before taking action. All of that is in peril, right now, and when the history is written it will have been us that let it happen. N Nick Thompson <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Prof David West Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 9:39 PM To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in ethological studies of bird flocks Nick, get out your dagger repellent you Trumpist you! I have heard, almost verbatim, your entire paragraph from the mouth of the Donald, and seen the exact same notions discussed, ad nauseam, in Glen's favorite newspaper, The Epoch Times. [Don't shoot me glen, it is a joke.] davew On Thu, Nov 11, 2021, at 11:57 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: Steve, Well, I may be the victim of recent “neo- (aka archeo-) liberal” pod casts, but I really get the impression that the Chinese are going for it, boasting a Chinese Exceptionalism every bit as toxic as the one we have espoused. From their point of view, this moment in history is the analogue of our moment after WW two. They are ready to move ahead and there is nobody “out there” with the organization or resources to oppose them. Why would they not take the opportunity? The age of sino-hegemony is upon us. We either pull our socks up politically or settle down to be the new Yugoslavia. Nick Thompson <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 11:58 AM To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in ethological studies of bird flocks Nick - I asked this because the style of your statement felt like it had the flavor of Cold War Rhetoric which I was (also) raised on. I (want to) think something more sophisticated (and interesting) is afoot today and that while I don't want to fall into the low-entropy stylization implied by this CCP Spectre, I *do* want to believe (or seek) something good that the CCP "great experiment" might have found while we were on our NeoLiberal hyperCapitalism "great experiment". Is there room to learn something (humanist/humanitarian) from them? I believe StephenG's familiarity with China in modern times (as well as others) may offer us some parallax? - Steve On 11/11/21 10:42 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: Steve, No. You are right on target for the thread. My understanding of the present Government is that it is absolutely convinced that the centralist, technological, authoritarian model of government superior to other models and that this is their time to demonstrate that superiority. I can really imagine some CCP leaders reading this research and thinking, “mmmmmmmmm! THAT’S interesting. In my back yard, back in the sixties, there was a teensy little CIA research station figuring out how to get animals –dogs, ravens, pigeons, donkeys, what-have-you, to carry bombs for them, using a combination of training and neural implants. When the gave up the project, they left behind two gigantic glass carboys filled with pickled dogs heads. The Shadow Knows. Nick Nick Thompson <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 11:22 AM To: friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Application of robo-pigeon in ethological studies of bird flocks Nick - Chinese science moves ahead in the development of the ideal society. I don't mean to be flip in my question, but have to ask if you are being flip in this statement? Can you say more about what you think the Chinese gov't/people/culture might be "trying" to do, either overtly, or implicitly by simply following their individual goals/interests/desires? I believe that the collective dynamics between Nations/Peoples are what is dominating the movement/evolution of humanity (cultural, not genetic) and that it is like an N-body problem in complexity and subtlety but is effected primarily through network relations. Like Gene Expression Networks, I believe that the more important "memes" (I think this is a useful but risky metaphorical binding that Dawkins coined for us most of a career (for me) ago) are those that are _regulatory_ which is why the likes of Trump and Bannon and Stone and the whole cabal of supervillians we are coping with these days focus on things like "fake news!" and "big lie!", etc. In the spirit of McLuhan, "the medium IS the message", the medium itself becomes the _thing to manipulate_ like trying to disrupt the news credibility and the election process as well as becoming the definition of a tweetHole, and using Facebook to disseminate dysInfo etc. I know this is an acute threadbend, you were trying to talk about birds and flocking and experimental techniques for studying same... if you do feel inclined to answer, it is probably best to rethread. https://jin.imrpress.com/article/2020/1757-448X/1757-448X-19-3-443.shtml If the robo-pigeon is a dominant member of the flock, you can make the flock do loop-di-loops by commanding the robo-pigeon to loop. If subordinate, the loop-di-looping behavior of the robopigeon has no effect on the flock. A robo-pigeon is one with a brain implant and pigeons are operated on AFTER their dominance in the flock has been determined. I hope I have this all right. Nick .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . 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