AltSci Cell

Sept 30, 2009

My talk just got accepted for Toorcon San Diego 11. It's an incredible honor that I completely hope to live up to by working my tail off for another 26 days. I'm happy about everything and I'm looking forward to swimming in the ocean no matter how cold it is.

I told my mother about my interest in the singularity today. The singularity explains the slope of exponential technology growth when it is impossible to keep up with it. The explanation I gave my mother is like showing a television to a child. The television does something that the child understands but the child doesn't understand why. Confusion with sufficiently advanced technology is certainly expected (the CEO of Amazon thought DSL was complex in 2003) but that isn't what the singularity is about. The singularity assumes that the change in technology will be more rapid than any single human can understand a reasonable sized chunk. You can understand your specialty and you can understand what your colleagues say, but a person can't understand the gadgets they will need to carry around. But education is incredibly important to people in our society. It doesn't take long to document what you're doing, but even with completely open source it takes far longer to understand how something works than to figure out how to use it. With user interfaces improving by repetition and copying as well as impressively intelligent designers putting time into UI, understanding will always be behind usage. If we assume that technology will continue to grow exponentially, we are in for a treat as it washes over us like HG Well's Eloi in the classic Time Machine. My plan is to reassess the situation every so often and decide what to do on a case by case basis. Planning too far ahead for something like the singularity seems like a bad idea.

Sept 14, 2009

When I was young, I was pretty miserable due to my circumstances and my unwillingness to accept situations that didn't make proper sense. When I was very young, I questioned capitalism because it didn't make sense and I mistrusted authority based on money. I was right to be so, the economics of those I have questioned have been proven faulty. No, capitalism has not been proven faulty just yet and I have since changed my mind quite a bit. In fact I have embraced capitalism, but also in the same time I embrace anarchism and I still hold businesses accountable for their unbelievably bad business practices. I know that anarchists are supposed to loathe capitalism, but a new breed of anarchist has arisen from the wild west of the Internet. Self-reliance of Thoreau, community of Ghandi, sensibility of Tom Paine, and recklessness of Emma Goldman, the community grows in individual mind and foot.

But this essay isn't about Anarchism, it's about capitalism and misery. Good business practices can often bring as much misery as bad ones. When I was young I didn't understand the connection between money and value. If I wanted something of value I needed money, but there was never a question of if I wanted money, I needed value. Money was given to me for each hour I spent in misery and I couldn't wait until I was free of it. In fact, had I not found a really good distraction at age 16, I would've walked away for better or for worse. When faced with misery in exchange for money I do not consider it to be a fair trade. But capitalism is designed to do exactly that.

Aug 28, 2009

The job market is indeed quite fierce and the candidates are qualified. It is perfect timing to be hiring, and so AltSci Concepts is hiring a Programmer. I'm going through the right channels (Craigslist, $25) and I'm reading up on effective interviewing techniques of the pros. I guess I really am serious about this.

If I don't find a person, then I definitely have something wrong with my HR Model. My original essay involved paying a person to do work and judging their performance. When you have 6 candidates, paying each a reasonable sum of money only steals money from the one who wins. If the one who wins doesn't pass the HR model test (while being paid), the HR model can move on to the next candidate. I don't see why that wouldn't work.

July 20, 2009

I was thinking that maybe the reason I am so long winded in my blogs is the same reason that I have a long password. Security demands that a password that is being constantly attacked and never defended must be stronger than the possibility of an attacker finding the password. How does that relate to blogs? Blogs are information, a strength of intelligent monologue can tell a real person from a fake one. A blog that includes a single video and the words in the box below is indistinguishable from a spam. A spam takes a fraction of a second to create when properly automated. Spams cost so little that even when they are blocked by 90% of users, 10% is still enough to turn a profit. Think about that for a second. In a capitalist society profit is the motive force deciding business decisions. Long term, short term, it's all part of the same game. A spammer can overlook a million people who have lost 5 seconds to their scheme for ten measly bucks so long as the spammer turns a profit. Ethics is where spam fails, but profit is where spam succeeds. Many, many people are able to overlook the means for the ends. Whenever someone says that the ends justifies the means, think about spam. Philosophy discusses right and wrong and whether ends are able to justify the means. Of course the great philosophical debates of the ages have shown time and again that people cannot agree on the base moral and ethical foundations of our civilization. Philosophers doubly so.