A MarketPlace of Ideas

Ray Kurzweil is a serious inventor / technologist.  He’s no Art Bell type with lots of wild claims and no underlying fiber of intellect or work to back it all up.  This guy is serious.

His book is a hard read with some redundance and so I read passages skipping a solid read from cover to cover.  I read it because I take Ray seriously in spite of what seems to be a tacit acceptance of global warming.  Even though I am absolutely certain global warming is a tee shirt scam I let Ray slide on it because he’s not vocal about it.  In his mind he has good reason not to worry.

In “The Singularity is Near” he talks primarily about the exponential rate of growth of knowledge and technology.  Flowing from this are talks on augmentation of the human organism.  The essential thesis is that we are taking control of our own evolution.  No longer will it be on the order of bits per thousand years.  Nanotech, AI, genetic engineering and robotics will lead us inexorably to radical life extension, radically greater intelligence and finally physical forms that scarcely resemble our present ones.   

While it may make some people uncomfortable that we will become essentially immortal or that some people will probably morph themselves in rather wild trendy directions its an unstoppable process.  Should any legislation try to thwart the process it will merely go offshore and / or underground.

Personally I’m looking forward to the day when the increase in intelligence completely eliminates liberalism.  With no patsies to feed upon and dupe, liberalism has no chance of survival. Its in the cards.  Its only a matter of time now.

I had a girlfriend who was a teacher in South Phoenix in the worst school in the city.  She was a liberal that could self rationalize ANYTHING.  Just tell her two widely separated points A and B.  Suggest which should be predicated and justified on the basis of other, for example B therefore A and she would pronto beat out an argument that she fully believed.  I was at a party with her and one of the other attendees was a parole officer.  Nadie the teacher posited that oh these black kids are the most confident people she had ever seen.  They would brag on themselvs so much.   I shot back that most likely this indicated they were actually lacking in confidence.  If you really believe what’s the necessity of telling anyone ?  The parole officer agreed based on her experience on the job.

So when you see a mouth little twerp like Marshall Mathers AKA Eminem you have to assume he’s not what many assume him to be.  Show business is all image.  

Excerpted Arty relating M’s ex-wifes words:  She categorized sex with her twice ex-husband as “bad,” and said “he’s not very well endowed.” She added, “If you’re going to have sex with Marshall, make sure you have a little blue pill, because otherwise it does not work.”  

I’m not much into show business and gossip.  However I am into debunking show business.  These people have had too much influence in our society.   Its about time we start treating them and paying them like they were paid in the middle ages.  During that era they were considered rubes that were not to be taken seriously from any point of view.  They were paid accordingly.

You can spot the vast vast majority of fraudsters even through their language in Emails. Thus is there any excuse to not see it when you can see the fraudsters face and hear their modes of speech?

OBSERVATION:  Through several years of experience selling over the net I have observed I can spot fraud without even talking to someone.  I can spot it through their emails by carefully absorbing their modes of expression in print and evaluating their proposed actions.

Its akin to black magic but its entirely easy to do.  The funny thing is that these fraudsters give themselves away.  However you must augment this by a basic honesty and practical senses.  The maxim goes this way in my mind:  Its hard to cheat a man that is not looking for “something for nothing”.  Why do I say this?

I have a funny / embarrassing story from when I was at the University of Cincinnati.  My junior year of college I was living in the typical run down college house on Glendora Avenue with 4 dope smoking roomates.  Naturally they wanted a color TV.  We had lived there up to that point with only a black and white TV.  One roomate approaches me and says a guy at the local grocery came up to him and pitched a cheap color TV to him.   My roomy in turn came to me as he did not have the cash. 

The story was this:  Guy who happened to be black and live in the nearby housing project said his friend worked at a warehouse and had some color TV’s and that he was selling them out for 40 dollars a piece.  A fantastic price at the time. We should take him via car to his friends place at the nearby housing project and he take the money in and get the TV and bring it out. Naturally his friend was sensitive about anyone seeing his face as he did not want to lose his warehouse job.  So around back of the project we went and he went in what was a basement stairwell door and up the flight of steps and dissappeared never to be seen again.  Naturally.

While this was the mistake of a country boy in the big city there is more to the story than meets the eye.  Sure I could have avoided this if I had grown up in the big city.  But I learned EVEN MORE because I grew up in the country.  WHAT DID I LEARN?   In the intervening years ( this occurred in 1982 ) I have repeatedly reflected on so many situations that have arisen.  An example would be the Enron debacle.  Like the TV situation Enron was a “too good to be true” situation.  Like my TV event the people wanted something for nothing. 

For me the big takeaway lesson on all this has been:  Its hard to cheat a man who’s not looking for something for nothing.  

This is a good lesson for those who look to government or otherwise for givaways.  There is no such thing as a free lunch. On the level of kharma, zen whatever you want to call that part of us that can not be adequately captured in words you can not ever escape the consequences of what we do. NEVER.  Let me do you a big favor just in case the reader is skeptical.  NEVER NEVER NEVER.  Do yourself a favor, disabuse yourself NOW.  The quality of your life depends on this.  While I am an athiest I believe this as much as I believe in the law of gravity.  I see this just as clearly.  There is a law of gravity of the “soul” that you can not ever defy.  Now if a super skeptical athiest says something like this don’t you think you should at least consider it ?