Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Elite

Civilisations and societies throughout history have been governed by the ruling class system. The English parliamentary system and the American revolution were isolated attempts at displacing the system of ruling elites.

I'd guess the impetus for this reform of the ancient central elite system was the expansion of the free market. The decentralised, unplanned free market system had been delivering improvements to the ordinary people for some time, without the participation of the central power elite, who if anything fought against the free market to protect their system of patronage. When people see their wealth coming from each other, and not a central authority, that central authority is on thin ice, especially when it comes to extorting taxes.

So, the ruling class were tamed by a system of contrary powers. Power divided is power diminished.

But the left is against limitations on the power of the elite, because they consider themselves rightful members of a ruling elite and resent limitations on their own powers. The left is a counter-revolutionary movement trying to undo the limitations on central authority brought in by, for example, the American revolution.

The left are a part of the push-back from the old system. At least that would be part of it. The other attraction of the central authority system is that it's fairly simple to understand: Central authority says do 'A'. People do 'A' (or else). It's simple enough for the adolescent mind of the leftist to grasp.

It's even worse when the left are the elite, because at least in the old system the ruling elite were either the strongest and smartest of their society, or at least employed the strongest and smartest. The modern left, by contrast, are a bunch of dodo heads.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Adolescent Left

The leftist program is tailor-made for the narcissist. It promises the narcissistic mind the dream of forcing other people to conform to its own vision. The leftist puts through a government regulation and other people are forced to dance to its tune. He is the puppet master and the great unwashed will be the puppets.

That’s the dream. The dream of the adolescent mind. All the rest – all the programs and entitlements – is a smoke-screen.

On the other hand it’s hard for someone involved in a market system (where the road to success is to better serve other people) to be a narcissist. A system where success involves focussing on other people’s wants will very quickly snap someone out of any reserve of narcissism they may have carried over from adolescence. Every customer is your boss. The narcissist who tries to play puppet master with his customers is going to find himself short of customers in no time.

That’s why leftists hate the market system: It has no use for narcissists; it forces them to grow up.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

AI or IA?

Artificial Intelligence of Intelligence Amplified?

The idea of AI is quite spooky, perhaps dangerous. IA is, however, here and now.

I can't work out the area of a circle in my head, but I can work it out with a calculator. That's an example of intelligence amplified. A better one is the probabilistic programming tools that can generate more accurate diagnoses than human doctors; they can take into account signals in the output streams of monitoring machinery that doctors and nurses can't even detect.