Friday, January 3, 2020

Easiest Engineering Discipline

Myth: social engineering is impossible.

Reality: social engineering is the easiest engineering discipline.

Classical physics is in fact a special case of quantum physics. In large numbers, all the weird randomness cancels out and you're left with a bit of algebra. Similarly, predicting a single person (especially at range) is extraordinarily difficult, but with large numbers the divergences average out to be particularly simple.

Helpfully, the Russians checked this hypothesis for us. The KBG ran around executing elaborate plans engineering controlled demolitions of other societies. Sociology is so easy they didn't even need to prototype. It just worked.

The myth comes from progressives, as modern myths are wont to do.

Since sociology is easy, the negative effects of progressive reforms were all predicted in advance. Minimum wages killed employment, especially among the poor. Affirmative action led to the 'beneficiaries' becoming violent, degenerate fops. 'Emancipating' women destroyed the family. Etc. etc. If you had to wait for the proof of the calculation problem to know that communism would be a catastrophic failure, you were an idiot.

But, for obvious reason that I'll nevertheless belabour, progressives lie about it. (Recall the difference between lay proggies and the leadership.) They do these things because it benefits them. Since they are perceived to be evil and are in fact comically destructive, proggies are can't be upfront about it. Nevertheless, you can tell the policies are working as intended because they're never rolled back.

Further, for the same reason, you can tell that for the most part it's a plan and purpose. While certainly there are prospiracy aspects to the progressive parasite regime, for the most part sociology is easy so they plan and then it just works.

When minimum wage laws destroy the dignity of lower class neighbourhoods, they become dependent on the government for survival. To paraphrase a certain fungous insect, if you own a man's livelihood there's one thing you've certainly bought - his vote. Proggies outlawed marriage because married women are far more likely to vote on the right. Proggies opened holes for illegal immigration because, even setting aside the vote thing, a suspicious, distrustful population is far easier to divide and conquer. Indeed the whole immigration thing comes with its own built-in division. Saves time on cutting new ones. Letting homosexuals out of the closet destroys male companionship, thus men must turn to the government. In case you think this is just a gay coincidence, in areas where sodomites can't be used to dismantle male camaraderie, heavy-handed persecution is applied. If military history can't be made fruity or boring enough, then funding for curricula and departments is simply cut, and amateur societies are brought before kangaroo courts.

If it were some kind of blind groping there should be policies that accidentally harm progressives. These failed initiatives should be rolled back. In practice, Cthulu always swims left. There have been rollbacks but because of overreach, not because the policies ever threatened progressive hegemony.

The peasants have the attitudes the progressives want them to have. If they don't behave exactly as progressives want them to, it's due to failure of will. The progressives prefer to be the most hip and fashionable in any case, so this is more feature than bug.

16 comments:

Dave said...

Memes spread and evolve faster than genes, so the memetic hare outruns the genetic tortoise but ultimately loses the race when it runs out of other people's children to brainwash. Ilhan Omar's children will not be progressives, nor will Tessa Majors'.

Dave said...

Imagine an Indian chief telling his best scout, "Go and observe the white man, find his deadliest weapon, and bring it back to us." The scout obeys, and comes back with smallpox.

That happened to most of Asia, including Russia. They sent their smartest kids to European universities to learn the secrets of Western technology, and those kids came back with Marxist ideas to which their societies had had no chance to evolve immunity.

TheDividualist said...

The Permanent Government does not really need votes. Any non-Trump president is okay for them. They can prosper under a Bush type, no probs. Welfare might buy votes, but it is more important that it creates jobs in the Permanent Government for administering it, and a whole lot more jobs for dealing with its consequences.

There is a sort of a deep lesson there. Suppose you own a hotel. You see muddy footprints here and there. You hire a janitor for cleaning it up. What the janitor wants is hiring three more janitors because he then gets to be boss janitor due to seniority. So he spends the night walking around in muddy boots and the day complaining that he cannot clean up that much alone. You have just made a classic mistake. You pay a guy for cleaning it up. You should actually pay a guy for mud not being there. This is not necessarily a janitor, it might be a lower level manager. His job is not cleaning it up or having someone clean it up, but ensuring it is not there. However he wants to. It might be cleaning it up. It might be fining customers who wear muddy boots. It might be even banning them. It might be buying a machine and an operator to clean everybody's boots. Whatever it takes. You must pay for results, not for work done. Every other approach is inherently iatrogenic. The Chinese had it right: you pay your doctor when you are healthy and you stop paying when you get ill. He is not paid precisely when he does the work of curing you and paid when he does not. It is super weird for everybody who thinks effort and work must be rewarded, that is only just and fair. But it has a flawless logic.

Parisian said...

I hadn't read you for a year and a half or so, but went back, and you want to be 'inspiring'. In fact you are, although it may be an oblique false I way I use some of what I think are your 'wisdoms'; you probably wouldn't care, and I know I don't if it enhances. You constantly boast, but at least it's for the most part true (fairly uncommon.)

One of the things was this 'overarching' being greater than these 'ad hocs' or even the added-up ad hocs. In that case, I could see how you were right in one context and wrong in another. This, despite that fact that you might consider that the context you were wrong in did not exist. Neither does that bother me, it just led to even better development, as far as I was concerned, and I did whatever I thought was going to benefit me most by profiteering from what you did not charge for. I could finally see what you were saying and why it had to be right, although I didn't care for it ever, not even when I understood it (you could just say I couldn't possibly have, of course), it at least made intellectual sense, or halfway did. The claim of superiority was, you thought necessary for it to be true.

This is the first time I see you write something I know to be 100% false. I wouldn't have thought you would have done it, or even be able to do it. However, you cannot know it to be true, because I know it is not true. That does not mean you have accepted your own ignorance in any field, any domain. You may remain incapable of that throughout your life in order to make the machine operate properly.

Nevertheless, your things are more like tomes of 'sayings' as of Chairman Mao, so that more than most you have already compiled a kind of 'Sayings of Alrenous' that I often refer to. And the NYC elite schools thing was hilarious, because your 'correction' made Miss Shaviro's unspeakable writing much funnier than your own.

Parisian said...

Forgot to mention that I'm sorry you were dismissed by Twitter, as I always enjoyed your Tweets since you blog rather infrequently. Did you write something threatening someone in particular or something? You wrote that all you knew was that it was a 'putrid coward', a nice turn of phrase. Rank and file in your set are always praising Brevik, but that wouldn't be like a threat or cheerlead for a murder or what have you. And you don't have any idea, it seems. How long have you been off it? Can't you get back on, or do they make it impossible?

TheDividualist said...

>In practice, Cthulu always swims left. There have been rollbacks but because of overreach, not because the policies ever threatened progressive hegemony.

Nope. This is something I have been working on for a while, not quite finished, but:

1) There is a certain order, in the sense of some people rule, others obey.
2) Leftists want to grab power and they first upset the system by sowing chaos.
3) Then they grab power and want to crystallize a new order out of it in which they rule and others obey.
4) This often fails, because they are a chaotic and infighty bunch, because the orders they create are not good, not stable orders etc.
5) Chaos ensues (either again, or the new order never happened) and Rightists, while they hate sowing chaos and don't do that, if they find chaos sown by someone else they can use that to crystallize their order out of it.

Alrenous said...

I completely agree with the Chinese about medicine.

--

I boast as an invitation to puncture the boast. I am not satisfied with the mere appearance of competence. Though also because it's a bad habit. Secondarily because I think you too can earn these boasts and I want to needle someone into doing the work. I'd rather everyone be as spiffy keen as I am.

I was born with an inflated self-opinion. I first tried altering the opinion to match reality but it turned out it was easier to change reality to match the opinion.

On twitter I told an overly edgy joke. If not getting banned was important to me I probably would have thought better of it.

I would never evade a twitter disciplinary action. That would be against the rules. We can't be breaking the rules now, can we?

--

If you want to show that Cthulu does not always swim left, it's enough to show an example. Given one example I can think of a pattern of essentially similar examples.

I think it's a mistake to consider rightism = order and leftism = disorder. Leftism is indeed, as you say, an order. However, it's an irresponsible order and thus tends to disorder.

In a cosmic sense it seems there might be nothing that is in fact chaos. Even disordered leftism is more like polyarchy. A gas is in a sense a bunch of crystals where each crystal is exactly one molecule big.

Parisian said...

I was born with an inflated self-opinion. I first tried altering the opinion to match reality but it turned out it was easier to change reality to match the opinion.

Totally cool. I've done the same thing and even re-ordered from 'the very beginning' recently as a result of your prescribed method of this being the only way it can be done. I didn't think it could, but it worked. I have the luxury of time to do it, so that that 'intuition' you talk about can be waited for. The process goes from dark to bright for awhile, then you've pinned it down, because you've tested it with all possible doubts that it might be so.

I obviously can't say much, but it's clear to me, at least, that there's a very idiosyncratic style (for lack of a better word, and I don't mean it frivolously) that is definitely different from some of your own 'inspirers'--I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said so in one of these posts from the last year. Probably I'm perceived as a 'normie freak'. You don't tend to the coarse or gratuitously cruel statement. Although I do owe that one (he's not one you mentioned) for getting me through the Gibbon--that book changed everything; I can see America for what a misshapen thing it is.

Secondarily because I think you too can earn these boasts and I want to needle someone into doing the work. I'd rather everyone be as spiffy keen as I am.

I can earn some of them, but will never be able to reach many that you do, of course. But still, that attitude I've read you express once before--that you think 'ultimately all problems can be solved'. I suppose it's to some degree that you express irony, but not in this almost religious way in all circumstances, rather when you have to be politely defensive. I can see that I wasn't *wrong* on the music thing, but that I was pushing it too much. The other thing was just a matter of proper decorum. However, I may be deluding myself, since I cannot see what is wrong with a 'qualitative assessment'. Is that a 'normie' thing that you look down on from your pristine position?

By now, I've given up almost all fandom except for Catherine Deneuve. But this one actually does bring ideas that are very useful, and I think many of them are first-hand. The attitude is refreshing, and 'spiffy keen' is peculiarly inclusive.

Parisian said...

That gets to some of it, but now organized enough, since I chose from many of your posts and remarks. I don't know about the 'social engineering' except that what you outlined in the post would be something that is not currently in effect, or at least not nearly everywhere. After 2 days, it seems obvious that the combination of your different kinds of statements, whether personal or non-personal, were used by me for some purpose eventually.

It seems to have worked as a kind of 'therapy' that doesn't try to treat narcissism by reducing it, as it were obviously an aberration, but to not only accept it (which is never the conventional stance), and to see it as perhaps the most worthwhile state of being, which cannot be avoided if you already know that you are extremely narcissistic; and so you cultivate it and seek to increase and polish it as something quite worthy, in fact.

At least this is what I've been able to integrate it already, either quickly or sometimes some parts immediately. That you are a generous narcissist is surely a part of it, or it would have no resonance (for me, at least), and indeed I do like the phrase "a narcissist who gives narcissism a bad name" (some definitely do.) In my case, it not only led to much more rapid 'time-travels' back to infancy and even pre-birth, but these were hastened by considering what you advised as 'starting with the one that hurts least'. I fell into it immediately, and then, in stages, where it gets gradually more difficult, you can ultimately 'stay' with the ones that 'hurt more or most', that finally reshapes what psychoanalysis offers to do while always contradicting the solution in the process, making 100% sure it 'still doesn't work': You are told to accept a duller tamer version which only phases any real originality and uniqueness out, then phases out the rest of you. Once you've just gotten laid-back enough to let dangle some of the ones definitely slated now for self-demolition, having been assessed as jndesirable, you can even see that intuition still more, not putting any effort toward pushing these images and 'objects' away--which did not work. There is no longer any trace of guilt at 'an inflated self-opinion', so it begins to move on toward offering precisely what one wants.

I don't how how 'qualitative' this appears to you to be, but the full embrace of one's narcissism does seem to solve potential problems that could arise, even of their is definitely difference of opinion about some of them: The disagreement would then be defused by a kind of *reserve reflex* (since the disagreements would be seen as permanently established). It would therefore not seem like flattery since it was, something one acted on and didn't even need a second opinion or a coaching to be sure it was all moving into place. But then this is different from what you would see it as doing to some degree at least, because groups you see yourself as allied with are not the ones I'm allied with (my alliances are much less specific and some of them are very traditioinal.) The one who might be said to have led me to find this 'therapy' is not just distant, but wholly disappeared. And if this is not considered optimal engineering, you would have to conceal it from view from any of different *creeds* who might partake of it. Although apparently not so many have seen the benefits of forcing 'reality to match the opinion'.

So that narcissism is then seen to itself be the 'cure', not something which must be cured--or even curbed except within obvious limits.

Alrenous said...

"Since sociology is easy, the negative effects of progressive reforms were all predicted in advance."

For example, https://www.takimag.com/article/civil-rights-gone-wrong/#.XifYNy3hAvo.twitter

much as Burke did a better job in 1790 of forecasting the course of the French Revolution, he finds that the old Southern critics of the new order foresaw the implications of the civil rights revolution more clearly than did its advocates:

Those who opposed the legislation proved wiser about its consequences than those who sponsored it


It's simpler to assume that the sponsors knew just as well as the critics what the effects were going to be. They just lied about it since their teleology was the destruction of the things that ended up destroyed.

Parisian said...

I just read all the Twitter you left and it took probably 3-4 hours to read about--what was it? three months worth? Is encyclopaedic,but both professional and dilettantish (neither a validation nor a vacation), and as I got fully immersed, it was like some of the best porno I've seen. 3 or 4 times during the last year I've watched porn for this length, this is perhaps the first non-sexual porn, insofar as it might have been. That was quite a gulp and the perceptions changed as it barrelled through going literally everywhere, exploding like crazy. I doubt anyone, including yourself has read it like that without a single interruption. So--an expensive conscience that has produced a revenue of exactly zero. It's as though there are many voice changes, suddenly but often sustained for very long periods.

Alrenous said...

Revenue of exactly zero, huh?

Parisian said...

I thought that's what you said regarding your 'conscience', and you did. But maybe not 'exactly zero', because the 'exactly' is superfluous. Having read a lot of you by now, that could easily be the only detail that interests you. But also having read that many thousands of tweets until 3 a.m. I could have no way of finding it again, since no time-clue was in it, nor was it in most of them. Another one that was of interest was regarding timelessness, where you advocated somebody doing something that was 'timeless', but it'can't be more timeless than mine', which is cryptic enough. It's not ever going to be sure clarity to the reader on all your proposals, but you'd mentioned you have all these things and that few are interested in or only people like me who are out of the loop. I know you have some fans in these parts, but I think it's good that you could be beneficial to those not in your 'pack' as well, even though that many Tweets in 3 hours is a little like running into a blast furnace. Or--maybe you do have a lot of people interested, you could even convince me you're Peter Thiel, I guess. So it's often very useful and practically so (at least for someone not obviously 'practical' like me, as well as useless to your group, which could mean I don't understand any of what you say--because none of it would make me anything but bewildered at talk of 'entryism'), even if you don't think you need to clarify too much.

If it's means, I would imagine you have plenty and do extremely well in whatever profession. You are even more guarded than many of your buddies, so misinterpretations are going to abound. Superb things like imagining how wonderful life would have been in Ur, things that few else think of.

Look, I don't mean to be obnoxious, I wouldn't get a lot out of your things if I didn't. You seem an okay fellow, but then again, you don't reveal nearly as much as some of your buddies I truly can't tolerate and are just coarse and crude. But no--I imagine you have plenty of money, if that's what you thought I misrepresented. Just that 'your conscience' isn't what pays, or if does, say so. I still won't know a thing else--and don't need to, your brain is such that there was even a Tweet about how women think some kind of threatening Unknown (that may be incorrect, but again I can't find it) if you bring something effectively 'non-sexual' to their poor consciousnesses. Since you were so much more active on Twitter than I even knew, I wonder now where all that thought goes, given that the blog is fairly sparse, though always thought-provoking as well as sometimes just provocative. It could go into that 'vacation', I suppose.

TheDividualist said...

Hi Alrenous,

Not sure how long you are going to check ESR's older comment threads so I thought I will rather bring what you raised in http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8600#comment-2360738 here.

A friend of mine is a member of a hobby robot building club. A few years ago when I was enthusiastic about Exit, I proposed him how can they replace the yearly election for club chairman with Exit. Have a similar yearly event, but every candidate for chairman and their supporters must declare clearly that if they do not win, they are going to fork the club, i.e. leave and start their own club. On the other hand the current chairman is not obliged to resign, whatever the results are in this sense there are is no winning or losing as such because there is no vote. Rather, say, three candidates step up and thus four possible clubs are virtually founded, with everybody deciding which club they want to join, the original one under current chairman or one of the new ones. After that, the four leaders are simply going to negotiate, make each other and each others supporters offers. Ideally, what we want to see is that they make an agreement, and there is just one club again. Worst case, two, but not four. The negotiations should ideally prevent that. Most of them should be able to find a compromise.

The advantage of such a system is twofolds. First, people are making a much better choice if they are just choosing one of the clubs for themselves, instead of casting a vote to elect a chairman for everybody. Second, the system is similar to voting, and the end result if the club stays one club should be somewhat similar to how countries with multi-party systems form a coalition government, the major coalition partner accepting to implement part of the program of the minor coalition partner.
But it is different from voting in the sense that not all votes are equal. Usually in such a club only a few people do real work and most of them are just paying membership fees and hanging out, because people like to hang out and socialize with people of similar interests, but most people are kinda lazy, they do not really want to put much work in, or are not skilled enough to be able. But that is normal and okay. There will also be a few people who contribute more than their share to the costs, paying over the membership fee or just bringing in tools and resources. Let's say there are 8 people who put in the real work, 2 financers, and 40 who hang out.

So when they see four potential clubs forming in the four corners of the room, each leader also sees WHO is supporting whom. Of course all 4 leaders tend to come from the 8 who do real work. In an election not, but in such a system yes. So current chairman sees all he got is 10 hangers-outs. Candidate #2 has another 10 hangers-outs. Candidate #3 has 1 additional real worker and 1 financer and 10 hangers-outs, and Candidate #4 has another 3 real-workers and 1 financer and 10 hangers-outs It is #4 whose new club looks the most viable. For the club to stay together, the optimal negotiation is to make him the chairman, throwing a bigger bone to the third and some bones to the other two. If the negotiation is unsuceesful, guy four actually makes a new club, and I expect that most people will eventually drift over to there because that is where the things are happening.

TheDividualist said...

The problem with the system is that the club has property that is hard to divide up. One solution is the Distributist method, that is, the club should have no property, rather, people should donate merely lend usage right of their tools and materials to the club which can be canceled in case of a fork. So people cooperate while keeping their own private property, being a true co-op, not a fake co-op like how most co-ops are fake because they do pool property. In this case also no membership fees. But the hangers-out should be forced to contribute to the costs. So instead of a membership fee, a rule can be made that everybody has to contribute either buying $100 worth of materials a year or lend the use of tools worth at least $1000. This stays their own, thus if someone bought materials that become a part of a robot, if he leaves, either as a fork or just personally deciding to leave, either he will take that physically with him or others will have to buy him out.

The systems still seems more complicated than a vote and that is an issue.

Alrenous said...

If your property is hard to distribute you've already screwed up. Though I think a few exit cycles would sort that out.

Have a club owner, who personally buys the stuff. Have the new club buy the equipment from them, if they succeed.