This will not go on the main page due to questionable content. I hope it doesn't get truncated.

Piet, the land will be swallowed up. My corporation has already sold you all out to a thinly disguised Xeno/Machinic-Combine.

I was reading the original Singularity post, and I came across this from sd:

"The politics of The Singularity are also mind-boggling. The hard neo-Leninist left and the neo-Con right are going to find themselves in a bizarre humanist alliance on this issue (Moralism Reactivated). Singulatarians pursuing "Off-the-shelf genomics and cyborgian body-modification catalyse run-away posthumanism" will come to represent a new political enemy: biological traitors.

The left/right distinction stems from where people used to sit in the French National Assembly (an arrangement echoed later by the location of the Russian Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet). A new political map will have to be drawn if The Singualarity is to be 'fought'."

This has already started, especially with National Bolshevist/Soc**list and Anarchist populations on the rise in Europe and America. We have become hated by the Neuer Deutscher Folk community for suggesting that the human organism, folk consciousness and the green environs of yore are of no apparent worth except to be stored as phenotypic memory, processed many times over in parallel arrays, and used for racial/social experimentation, i.e. in order to force pressure on the genetic population to change via deepening racial specification. Populations with nation states or some form of geopolitical solidity are never very happy when you tell them they are as ephemeral as Gypsies or Jews, especially when you use their own propaganda on them. Instead of preservation we promote racial intensification. Interestingly, there is a growing underground vision in Europe and Russia of Neo-Imperialism based on the writings of Julius Evola, Oswald Spengler, Alexander Dugin et al. For purposes of description they are Occult Neo-Fascists, but they are survivalist muppets, failing generally to fund the Faustian spirit, and can’t comprehend at all embracing a malefic ecology. Left and right doesn't really matter anymore, it is only going to matter to any reactionary attitude to the technological singularity. That is, the left who will probably wish to live in an inclusive homogenising humanitarian paradise, and the right who will be looking conserve racial purity and religion. Anyways, freedom within a free market economy is a complete hallucination. Left/right politics, and corporate strategy keep people busy and distracted from the real power game of corporate/governmental secret societism, concentration camp style free market experimentation, the mobilization the war-machine, and the preparation of neo-con/zionist monkey escape vectors amongst many other shady things. However, nationalism hasn't really hurt China in the long run, it seems to be about loosening up moral responsibility in order for progress to occur, and for gathering the power to defend any posthuman agenda—whether you know it or not. Perhaps an amoral futurist elite needs to be installed in Europe and America. Maybe a politicized machine front needs to be formed that is Anarcho-Capitalist in operation. We need more money for our dear Herr Doktors. And yeah, we need more Herr Doktors too, because we are about to have problems when it comes to keeping up manufacturing our own intelligence systems.

The monkey panic of the coming singularization will be a hilarious tradgi-comedy. All us oedipal little nipple suckers will be crapping our proverbial nappies. Will any coming power elite rule by sheer occult futurist terror? Indeed, they may rule from far away in the future, due to the possibility of the collapse of space-time. But then, how many elites or eschatons will there be? Given the multiplicity of options for new dynamical fields of intelligence, and also given the multiplicity of (fiscalracial) elites on the planet already. The closest position for man that we can immediately think of will perhaps be close to a cybernetically and genomically enhanced Randolph Carter lost in an absurdly discontinuous chrono-spatial political environment. That old cataclysm of multiple-or multiplying-bodies surrounded by unfathomable de-oedipalized sentiences in multi-folded expressions of historicity interests us lots. Either that or annihilation. We are wetting our pants to see what it does to sexual politics as well, in fact, we hope to take part. Blah, it matters not; many monkeys have already passed the threshold and are in full blown cyber-psychotic delusions of becoming-lateral.

piet - ecological paradigm shifts happen we don't owe anything to nature except to preserve its code, and fiddle with it in real-time. And yes I come across as right-wing, but I like to call it post-fascist, anti-human, or just purely indifferent. I am so deeply bored of my race, species, and sex with other humans etc. I care not but for just a little excitement. The biological traitors are already here.

bmr - you are pretty verbose and equally provocative. that left/right no longer matters in the 'war' against the singularity? you already make a good case for its differenciation: l=racial homogenisation/utopia; r=racial purity/religion. surely this is a significant diffrerence that will have real affects on the way the singularity occurs, both resisting the drift, or guided acceleration, towards a post-human culture, though both exerting entirely different selection pressures on the direction and development of the paradigm shift. to suggest otherwise is to endorse an overly simplistic fatalism that is more tiresome and passe than your own so-called boredom with your all too human existence. to suggest that the only conflict that matters is humanism vs non/anti/post-humanism already begs the question: are there not a multiplicity of post-humanisms waiting in the wings? indeed, is post-humanism the same thing as the anti-humanism you apparently endorse? in fact, what exactly is anti-humanism? i think you'll find you are part of a pathetically human goth-clique that relishes failure.

'what exactly is anti-humanism?'

a quick answer:

Escaping the constraints of the human genome and entering into new, treacherous alliances with emerging systems.

Kurzweil's humanism (the idea that humanity will saturate the universe with intelligence and that AI will remain profoundly human) is extremely idealistic and ultimately rather ugly.

Cynoia – Actually, you’ll find that I don’t belong to any Goth clique, though I do tend to wear a lot of black. This is because I have trouble with the ideological constraints of the post-industrial scene. So I favour a lonely existence, it also means I don’t have to bump into people like you at parties. Similarly, thank you for calling me passé, nice to know that you are the grand vizier of content and style. Because you are, aren’t you? Well, perhaps on this site you are ;) Please go on, I’m just waiting for you to tell me you are far cooler than me or something as equally pathetic.

Differentiation and the polarities mattering as political identity markers as we move towards any TS, are two different things entirely. ‘National anarchism’ now what don’t you understand about that? It is a contradiction in terms from a traditional political standpoint. It ruptures the linear nature of the political spectrum. OK. I differentiated between left/right, this can still be done, but this is a rough sketch and it is fairly obvious that it is on shaky ground with ideologies like national anarchism around. It shouldn’t be taken seriously, I point this out. But it is my fault for not clarifying everything to you.

For you to understand why it doesn’t matter is very important. Political organisms/machines (whatever) tend to try and make things matter, important, and glue narratives to hold sway. As SD said in the ID debate: ‘(hyperstitional) narratives are wielded by power structures.’ To groups of individuals, in my example Perennialists/Traditionalists, who are extremely confused IMHO, having a deeply essentialist and reactionary standpoint, political/racial definition will matter in breeding identity. But the more the human condition in relation to technology and any singularization changes, the more we will see rupturing of the political spectrum and the population of the political field with groups who diverge from the field of normative political dialogue/identity distinctions. Interests will be become more complex. There may be overarching things binding ‘humanity’ as a group, but as it stands there doesn’t seem to be that much which is worthy of devotion. The nature of political power and narrative will undoubtedly change. Identity in terms of left/right, (being the obvious political identity markers), in my opinion will fade due to increased complexity and delinearisation of the human organism and intelligence. This is where I do not believe it matters anymore, because power doesn’t just work in terms of polarities, it works on multiple planes, and propagates itself in the same manner as emergent systems and intelligences do, because they are operationally tied. Hence why nothing, save except futurist speculation and questioning my identity in relation to that speculation needs my devotion. There are, however, always relics left over from prior ages, and I do also point out that the left/right relic keeps people affiliated to blocks of identity that are wholly fictional, that also detract from sourcing the motivation of those in power who are tied to hidden interests. This is another reason why I frankly don’t care about the left/right dialogue. I’m also not subscribing to any form of omega point determinism either, but I am resisting the call to subscribe to ideologies which have petty identitarian distinctions. Human politics and its relationship to technology has always been pretty strife torn, it is a war of identity with no morally supreme side, and call me fatalistic if you wish but I feel the seams of a lot that many hold sacred are starting to come undone with it.

The complexity and intensification that technology brings derealises identity to the point where it might be clear that sometime in the future it will collapse in on itself in a singularity. The eschatological trajectory here is extremely muddy though. Extrapolation in any manner akin to future studies is pretty dangerous, but then so is hyperstition, both are fun.

I admit this could have been clarified to avoid confusion, but when I write I rush and can’t calm down. I am actually trying to be calm here.

Sd’s quick answer is great btw. My passé nature means that I really don’t want to be here in petty alliances with human desire; in fact I feel something wholly otherly rupturing through me quite a lot. Actually, come to think of it, the desire to be human is all too passé itself, and this is precisely why I want out of the deal. Just because I don’t want to be like you does that make me sad, or just give some form of will to individuality? Yes I am all too pathetic and human, that is precisely my point.

Forgive me if I am incorrect here. But unless you are ripped and not caring, why if you are someone with such a grasp on the matter can you not spell differentiation? Unless English is your second language I smell intentional BOTification.

whatever you are. thanks for helping me clarify thoughts.

sd - anti-humanism = "Escaping the constraints of the human genome and entering into new, treacherous alliances with emerging systems."

Interesting sd, though perhaps this biological definition could be expanded somewhat? Surely humanism/anti-humanism has a cultural dimension that affects political and economic developments? And what kind of systems are you referring to?

black mesa research - interesting stuff though a little below the belt to have a pop at someone's spelliing.

how bout diff(andsh it)erance between long and short term intelligence ?

I think trying to steer and cheer your mongrel joy, hybrid hope, and mixture madness down the median between pure spark and grey smoke, figuring that must give one cosmic right of way, is as strange as mr myers of canberra who stares in the face of what all both your predecessor purporters have wraught (you'll find them doing the secretly double standard thing more often than not) and yet stubbornly carry on condoning and even confiding in Paulinian and multiculturalist pandemonium. (his ((big (((large quote filled)) site's)) motto: neither aryan nor jew.

Wonder if there were ever cave painters calling their pad 'Neither Neanderthaler nor Sapiens'?

Well. ... . I've got just the right antidote for you right here and to wash away the harshness there will be some chinese bluegrass to clean the palate . ..and could I please have a translation of that song .. . .

//omroep.vara.nl/tvradiointernet_overzicht.jsp?maintopic=429&subtopic=18924&direction=down
Over de Schutting, 21 oktober 2005 will be in the archive on (REAL) call. Near trhe beginning of the 3rd hour: 2(nd song into it) We can't make it here (James Mc.Murtry) / James Mc.Murtry / 7'04 / Compadre 6-16892-65842-9 / ‘Childish Things’ / 2005
3 Stranded (J.Pepper) / Jefferson Pepper / 2'57 / American Fallout Records AF 001 / ‘Christmas in Fallujah’ / 2005
7 Song of the travelling daughter (Abigail Washburn) / Abigail Washburn / 3'33 / Nettwerk 0 6700 30423 2 1 / ‘Song of the travelling daughter’ / 2005

find myself in substantial agreement with bmr - apologies for any embarassment that causes :)

here's something you won't find yourself in agreement with but for those who are more of my purse suasion right click save as and disseminate /sing along far and wide, loud and clear.

sorry, left click and wait for a prompt
www.digitalvisionmedia.com/compadre/We_Cant_Make_It_Here.mp3

the song is absolutely in the spirit of Charles Walters editor of the organic ag rag that changed my life. It's economic and other analyses sketch the diabolically impersonal, death dealing, postmodern slavery sanctioning traps we have wriggled ourselves into which contrast astounding amounts with the reports from farms who make all round decent livings and lives decent.

ps: Sorry to have wasted your time once again Nick.

So what do you agree with Nick? It seems BMR is making a lot of points. Of course the backlash against the Singularity will take on many forms, and the left/right polarity, far from uniting or dissolving into insignificance, will break into breakaway units as human life becomes affronted on multiple front-lines: biology - genetic engineering applied to medicine, food; religio-culture - implosion of monotheisms into internecine warfare; politics – increasing obsolescence of nation-state .. All penetrated by technological developments that take on an accelerating, unmanned trajectory. The Hollywood-esque show down of humans vs. the machines, or the monkeys vs. technology is far too simple a future that awaits you. Its going to be more desperate and messy, complex and swift.

Tachi - Sorry - The pop at the entity's spelling was due not to a mode of superiority, but rather, a mode paranoia at the nature of it. Not trying to be nasty here, just geniuinely worried that people are out to get me. I try to react impersonally but I have an excitable endocrine<>nervous system.

Piet - I have a good post-psychotic sledding Polack Jewish friend, called Paul, who is surprised that we can even look each other in the eye due to my inhumanity to myself let alone any other human category, and my misunderstanding of what is alive-dead. I tell him that it is just a computational exercise and the alive-dead dialectical warfare is not my game anymore. However, there is no prophylactic to stop you from becoming infected by love, perhaps, save, a hazard suit. The more colours the better, the stronger, the more luminescent colouration, the more abstract the mutation and divergence the better. Continuous clinial geography is all too natural, I want to see some discontinuity in the human genome. What I want and what I'll get are probably two different things though.

Chinese Bluegrass? wtf? are you for real? Actually, that is a silly question...good good.

Nick - Don't about any embarassment that causes. Every morning I wake up, I find myself sick with embarassment from agreeing with myself, and knowing where a lot of this can lead. :s

By 'where this can lead', I mean primarily psychologically. Attempting to consort with chthonic repressed or emergent non-human entities and the future has a tendency to promote, asocial, schizoid, and increasingly fictious personalities. Secondarily, promoting a de-oedipalized machinic society, that strips the constraints of the natural, sexual, familial, and state/national order, tends also to strip social/ecological responsibility away due to its lack of will to be responsible to the current societal/ecological position in the first place. It is a process of defilement of humanity, personality, and the symbolic regime. Demons live in hell so to speak, and to contact them you have to get yourself there. But to quote a wonderful goth band Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio, (though i'll probably be ousted for being tres passe): "hell is where the heart is". However, my affectivity and emotional affordance levels haven't been completely depressed just yet. I'm just a sad goth git who listens to Scott Walker.

Any possible fictional becoming into any number singularizations could also be based around tearing down the censorship of ancient or otherwise profane (demonic/inhuman) memories/desires/systems of productivity and information, in necessity, to destroy/dismantle the human monopoly on the order sign/informatics, so the malefics of the unconcious terror of desire can be instantiated fully.

I need to think more on cohering a fictional strategy to assault this singularization/future business.

Walter Bennett - seems to me bmr is making an aesthetic appraisal of 'the' near future which necessarily filters complexity - that's going to happen anyway, surely? The complexity of what the hell just happened won't be remotely processible except from the other side of intelligenic catastrophe - so among all the possible filters, aesthetic ones will have their place (as part of entertainments media mutation among other things) - if bmr gets this movie made i'll definitely buy the pirate DVD, and cheer the monkey-frying monsters ...
Of course, that's not to say i'm abandoning my solid piece of real estate slap-bang in the middle of liberal humanism (an ideology highly conducive to breeding monkey-frying monsters, by interesting capitalist coincidence).
But think i agreed with everything you said too - at least prior to final pair of sentences. Just think complexity breeds diversity rather than master theory, especially among structurally retarded mammals in serious need of a genomic overhaul.

"The Hollywood-esque show down of humans vs. the machines, or the monkeys vs. technology is far too simple a future that awaits you. Its going to be more desperate and messy, complex and swift."

Nick - not sure why you disagree with this, given you said complexity breeds diversity: this is what I am saying, that with the resistance broken into diverse pockets of righteousness and facism, the human struggle for integrity becomes a mess, and the war will be lost swiftly precisely due to the complexity of the front-line. There is no singular front line, and that's what makes it easier for the singularity to take shape. I am interested in knowing if there will be a movement that heralds the post-human era? Will machines target human resistance, or is this to anthropomorphize them too much?

Walter Bennett - it was misleading of me to say i disagreed with those sentences, it was more the polemical conclusion you drew from them versus bmr that seemed to me extravagant, after all, 'his' (i'm guessing) polarized cinematic scenario is one among the multiplicity of reponses your comment predicts and doesn't seem to make any totalistic claims to its own unique validity.

Your last question should spark some lively stuff. IMHO, the 'machines' will encounter humans as the weird capital-programmed mammals dedicated in large part to building intelligent machines (and most probably effectively stomping on those sad defectives of the same species - i.e. romantic revolutionaries - who attempt to stop them). So why on earth would they 'target' humans? Wouldn't it be more naturally in pursuant of the acceleration vector to help them, by for instance reinforcing the efforts of the 'good guys' to eradicate islamarxists and suchlike mechanophobic reactionaries while radically upgrading their genomics, neurocircuitry, mechanosynthesis and generally contributing to the sloughing-off of humanity's legacy constraints in efficient stages?
But now i'm wrecking the movie ... damn!

there is a difference, 'differance' even, between 'building intelligent machines' and intelligently building machines

as to your HEAVY HEAVEY HEAVY questions; why do you make a hash of referents (fun game I ((too am guilty of and known to frequently)) ((over))indulge in though) and top it off with: "Where else does technological change come from?" Please remedy this indifference/ambivalence.

cost-cutting?
job-creation?

Here again (straight forward offensive) choices no longer determine the playing field BYCAUSE the front line is a luxury and 'we can't make it here anymore' (by the way, found the lyrics at counterpunch):

Spindle neurons are where it's at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_neuron
www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/science/09BRAI.html?ex=1386306000&en=294f5e91dd262a1a&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/9/5268

Walter - “Will machines target human resistance, or is this to anthropomorphize them too much?”

Interesting question, and in my opinion related to the question about productivity. Human resistance is already being targeted by the all too human tools of machinic techno-capital, namely, those capital/information accelerating systems seeking to up productivity to maintain efficiency. To do this we need technological change e.g. to miniaturize, speed-up, automate, and self-organise as many tasks related to productivity and engineering as much market sentience as possible. As Nick said it has been happening ‘since the beginnings of the industrial revolution.’ Techno-capital production has locked itself, seemingly, into a process to which there is no turning back. We are perhaps being drawn inexorably into the continuum of singularization.

Humans will obviously be part of this emergent sentience, since we are involved in manufacturing intelligent systems ourselves. It is a question of agency. But, defining whether we are being used by self-organising techno-capital, or we are using it might be fundamentally useless. So whilst the process is machinic, its initial connectivity may not necessarily be the ‘machines’ as such.

Nick – ‘Wouldn't it be more naturally in pursuant of the acceleration vector to help them, by for instance reinforcing the efforts of the 'good guys' to eradicate islamarxists and suchlike mechanophobic reactionaries while radically upgrading their genomics, neurocircuitry, mechanosynthesis and generally contributing to the sloughing-off of humanity's legacy constraints in efficient stages?’

What about the possibility of technophilic Islamic organisations working in collaboration with rogue emergent systems? Even if these systems are dysfunctional in terms of maximizing efficiency, like the US problem with monotheistic morality curbing important research to stay ahead of the game. We can’t expect the TS intelligence to remain entirely dedicated to itself - in a totality - even it is machinic, spanning the global market reflex system; especially if crucial divisions are made in the early stages and its vectors are changed by integrating redundancies.

It may make an attempt to subsume the fractional resistive elements of humanity and any inter-system insurgency through some sort of hyperstitional interaction, and re-engineering those elements as it sees fit. However, this possibility seems quite fascistic, culturally apocalyptic, and more like the behaviour of a monotheistic state, than a system that promotes possibility engineering—which may be the future of western democracy I’m thinking. It also assumes that the entelechial conspiracy goes farther than we can possibly imagine and that it seeks equilibrium. I’d see it engineering more labyrinthine possibilities in disequilibrial irruptive processes rather than unifying itself into a visible totality at least. But then it would be doing this in order to manufacture itself. The possibility of the TS condoning abortive operations may be, again, all part of it calculating an internalised evolutionary warfare. Its key operation upon humans, and ultimately for itself, may be involutionary, taking genomic and cultural historic factors etc. and breeding recycled phenotypic systems in pure unrestricted experimentation to expand its capacity for situational affordance. Making it and a more efficient evolutionary system.

about the spindle neurons - I should have explained the link to the topic, maybe.

(from Kurzweil) Spindle cells have yet to be completely reverse engineered. While the visual and auditory systems have been reverse engineered and simulated in circuits and programs, spindle cells, which are deeply connected with emotions and awareness, will probably be the one of the last features of the brain to be reverse engineered and simulated. When you hear that spindle cells have been successfully produced, the Singularity will be round the corner.

'Pure' is a massive overstatement.

This last bit rests on computational limits, which are tied into the capacity of lateral intelligence systems to compute 'beyond' immediate situational needs. We do this already. But, an interesting schizm will be where systems break the barrier and enter into the quantum realm, esp. in terms of what limits will apply to computation. This may throw locality and temporality restrictions firmly out the window. Well, i'm hoping, especially thinking how much fun it could cause future generations, and as device for hyperstitional pr0n (un)plantplotting :)

Main problems here for me are perhaps process-identity based. I'm torn between the language of fatalism, i.e. the complete 'peeling away' of everything homogeneously into the techno-eschaton, and the fractalizing meta-computational processes that manufacture potentiality, differance, and disequibria.

Are identity frictions and abreactions etc to intelligence systems just sites of contact in techno-evolutionary 'system efficiency' problems?

Would it be off the mark to suggest that this may be a problem of temporality as much as it is an intelligence 'life-support' problem? I'm thinking that seeing as we break down temporal/spatial barriers simultaneous to breaching computational barriers (esp. with regards to increasing the ability to process simultaneous realities), we find ourselves questioning whether this isn't a vast cosmic conspiracy which is multi-processing itself as we speak.

piet's q. - The entelechial realisation of TS could be bound up by its efficiency to compress evolutionary processing i.e. to maximize evolutionary efficiency by engineering potentiality.

War? What is good for? Everything...It is a set of problem solving exercises, to which there are no final solutions.

Interesting thing these spindle neurons being deeply connected to emotions and awareness. I have to wonder if this is as close as we will ever come to a "soul substance". I'd imagine that the spindle cells populate the limbix system, which is our emotional center, around the pineal gland, also known as the third eye. One has to wonder if they can ever truly be reverse engineered.

It would seem that bmr is having visions of a malevolent, ubiquitous, super-sentience. Perhaps this could happen, and it certainly makes for good science fiction, but I'd rather see the cybiont as a benevolent, global, macrointelligence in league with, or perhaps better yet, perpetuated by mankind. It is still hard for me to imagine technological autonomy, as advanced as we've become of late. The ability for AI to self-learn is still incredibly slow, sensory inputs are barely adequate for the most rudimentary functions, and on top of all that, I doubt it will ever have mans penchant for abstract reasoning. Perhaps you speak of some dark and distant future, or perhaps the TS is right around the corner. I would like to see the TS in my lifetime (since it is inevitable anyways, and for the possibilities), but I am skeptical. Wow I feel like the most skeptical person in this neighborhood. Sorry if I am a buzzkill. I haven't smoked up in years now. lol

What worries me most about a TS is the increased complexity. Already most people don't even know how to program the remotes on their VCRs, what will people do when their pollution and radiation shields fail? Mankind is already so dependent on technology we have potentially catastrophic Achilles heels everywhere that any savvy technoterrorist can exploit for maximum damage at minimal cost. Case in point what Nick has referred to as Islamarxists... though I believe he meant to say islamofascists, since al queda populates the extreme right of the political spectrum. however personally I think the extreme right and the extreme left come full circle and wind up with largely the same result: totalitarianism. I guess it makes no difference, but for clarities sake. You may be underestimating them Nick. They may be unindustrialized nations but they are developing innovative ways of combat all the time, probably most notably is the memetic war. While the talking heads in Washington lose more and more credibility, the opposition is creating a movement, and they have the moral high ground. We are falling into the same trap that led to this falling out with the world at large in the first place, arrogance and overreliance on our technological superiority; a.k.a. brute strength.

War, what is it good for? Killing off an entire generation of scientists and philosophers when we could all be contributing to the advancement of mankind. What good is trying to problem solve when you achieve no solutions? This is a war of greed and aggression, and an ill planned one at that.
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical"

VisItor - on 'Islamarxists' - something of a house joke (we used to have a noisy one here. Read as: supporters of the alliance between embittered Leninist burn-outs and psychopathic Islamofascists to bring down planetary capitalism)

bmr - "What about the possibility of technophilic Islamic organisations working in collaboration with rogue emergent systems?" - interestinger and interestinger.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence will necessarily understand the importance of decentralized competitive networks to dynamic innovative systems, yet as 'a node' in such a system it will still have particularistic ('selfish') interests. Foster the multiplicity or squash the competition? Tough call - so it's probable all kinds of pacts, deals and betrayals can be expected.

Haven't got to spindle neurons yet ... (but i will)

I'm immersing myself in the dystopian side on purpose...not an nasty person really, it is all just play. I'd love to shimmy in a paradis artificiel with my girlfriend. But I just have to play up for the sake of my corporation.

No FINAL solution not 'no solution'

bmr - this is no time to disappoint us! We have a huge villainy deficit to make up in short order, with flabby liberal humanism breaking-out all over ...

*beats the TS head crab to death with crowbar*

lol 'flabby liberal humanism breaking-out all over '

heh that sounds like my father.

bmr - yes, think about that ...

don't worry Nick I have. *shudders*

This should tickle your lust for electrobotic rampage:

http
://www.kudosrecords.co.uk/albumdetail.asp?primecatno=BT006&quantity=N

That is good, but this is better(came out 2004, my fave album from that year): http
://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=13932

bmr - if you want something really demonic, check out Keltech (if you haven't already).

Lots of free mp3s here:

www.epitonic.com/artists/keltech.html

[really free - all you have to do is give them an e-mail address]

while we're all off-T. (can't get into Tangents at the moment), this is an interesting article on Anti-Americanism:
www.brusselsjournal.com/node/367
(treats it as the 'anger' phase of Europe's dying process - which would predict (futile) 'bargaining' comes next)

oops (to sd) - should have said 'Old Europe'

"One and a half centuries ago, John Stuart Mill warned that in a democracy everyone receiving government benefits ought to be disenfranchised, because otherwise people would start abusing their franchise to vote for prolonging and expanding these benefits."
- from site above

What an absolutely superb idea.

*looks at empty roll sheet*

sure, as if they aren't disenfranchised enough through apathy by hyponotising fake tan fat slag culture. we could deal with this underclass thus: by sterilising them, paying them to take part in government/military/corporate trials, making them join the army in return for franchise, space gulags, makin them hermetic-wotanists etc. Whoa, Nick, this is beginning to sound like the New Right International, more and more every day...you are right though the real enemy is within, i.e. left wing intellectuals, perhaps it is time for a purge of the universities? Only, save the useful ones, but minimize the noisy ones, so we can all get back to accelerating future engineering.

SSTVA - If it weren't for the fact the welfare state was a proto-fascist (Bismarckian) invention, your snarky rant might have an iota of a point.
PS. Things have been getting much better around here with the mindless leftoid trolls gone - haven't you got anywhere else you'd rather be?

... but of course, John Stuart Mill was a Nazi (tell me you don't sound like the most knee-jerk imaginable moron)

The novice here again, as usual mainly read with much fascination.

What I want to ask is in order to get some sense of proportion into my head that obviously isn't.

Okay.

Assuming not catching bin Laden is not anything politically motivated, or even if it is (since I have no way of doing anything but hearing opinions on it), what is the state of intelligence that would make catching him difficult? In other words, in 2001, since I didn't have any hard knowledge of this kind of thing and probably still don't, I thought it would be easy to catch him; I didn't think you could still 'hide out' indefinitely in primitive ways. This may or may not be relevant to all these machinic developments you are talking about.

Also, in North Carolina (I believe it was, anyway one of the Southern states right there), a much smaller criminal hid out in the mountains for several years. This too surprised me, because I didn't think you could do that any more. Then, when they did catch him, I was also surprised, because I thought that once he was able to escape within a circumscribed area for several years, he might be able to do so indefinitely.

The Unabomber didn't get found till after publishing his manifesto, but was able to hide for years. It must have to do with personal resources of various sorts, even personal will may still be involved as in ability to be completely isolated without freaking out. And, of course, McVeigh made no elaborate attempt to hide, and was quickly found.

Thanks, whoever can tell me why it is still relatively easy to hide. It has made me think that crimes and arrests are almost at random a lot more than I would have. (This is not precisely on topic, but somewhat, because the machinery either doesn't work as well as I thought, is directed not to work, or works in some less straightforward way than I imagined. Or really is not quite as developed as I imagined.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Cooper
D. B. Cooper is the name used to refer to a famous airplane hijacker who, after receiving a ransom payout of $200,000, leaped from the back of a Boeing 727 as it was flying over the Pacific Northwest. No conclusive evidence has ever surfaced regarding Cooper's whereabouts, and several theories offer competing explanations of what happened after his famed jump. The only clues to have turned up in the case are ambiguous: around $5,000 that washed up on the banks of the Columbia River, and part of a sign believed to be from the rear stairway of the plane from which Cooper jumped. The nature of Cooper's escape and the uncertainty of his fate continue to intrigue people. Today, the D.B. Cooper case remains the world's only unsolved skyjacking.

Things have been getting much better around here with the mindless leftoid trolls gone

yeah, it's been much better these past few weeks now you've got on to important topics and no longer waste time discussing hyperstition. Why not change the name of the sight btw?

haven't you got anywhere else you'd rather be?

Yes SSTVA, this space is only for discussion of pop-sci from a hard right perspective, though maybe you've got a point, maybe the name of the site should be changed to 'New Right International', that would attract more likeminds.

Guys, if anyone wants to attack the idiot troll, head over to Sphaleotos and vandalize the place

If the troll can't see how TS is a candidate for the ultimate hyperstitional concept, it says something even sadder about its IQ than i would have expected ...

PJM - agree with your point. After all, a lot of the Nazis escaped and hid out after WWII quite successfully, with far less in the way of social support networks.
Hunter-sniffer type machines are going to be a major line of robotics development IMHO (UAV drones are already being adopted for associated roles, but something that can lurk, crawl into a cave, make a reliable ID and then assassinate the target is going to be needed)

"disenfranchised enough through apathy by hyponotising fake tan fat slag culture. we could deal with this underclass..."

A nice example of patronising leftoid academics playing at being champions of the poor. Like the underclass really need you to speak for them. They'd eat you for breakfast. Of course, their apathy is all due to their being exploited and manipulated - naive programmable folk that they are - oh and don't their false consciousness while we're at it.

I suppose it would be asking to much for SS-TV Administrator and the gang to actually outline their justification of welfare and their thoughts on its future?

(damn) don't forget their false consciousness while we're at it...

sd - best of luck, but that's been tried repeatedly with this dribbling halfwit. He doesn't have anything to say or the cognitive capability to string two thoughts together, just vacuous snark ("it's called critique"). He's even cretinous enough to think the words 'right wing' are going to send us into some kind of moral panic.

PJM - this is spot on your point:
www.techcentralstation.com/102405B.html
(especially epigraph)

this is indeed

footprint(ex)poseur detects scent of old hurt.

sniffer dogs for impostors?

Imposters get eradicated. Maybe trolls soon too.

Nick- thanks, that article is truly fascinating. These sound like stronger arguments than those philosophers usually give when they start talking about the virtualization of things. I can't say I know why my old perception that the CIA could do almost anything and very easily was so hardened, because I can't remember if its bureaucracy-mired nature had been exposed the way it has been in the last 10, and especially 5 years. I'd read stuff about competition between Langley and the FBI, but it never made any impression on what I thought CIA would be able to do. Main thing in article is the way the terrorists figure it out like viruses with each new development.

Thanks, Nick. Great article, explains much more than I was aware of, and less sci-fi tone than when philosophers talk about virtualization. Tried to post longer comment wondering why I'd thought CIA was omnipotent, but no big deal that it wouldn't post.

PJM - sorry about technoglitches here.
Occasionally stuff you comment doesn't show up immediately. It seems that if you don't get a submission error notice your comment arrives eventually.
[... interrupt ...]

ok, so kurzweil's (et al) cultural fictions are entangled in the ontogenesis of involutions, hyperstitional circuits (migration of fictional into actual) which forge a political ontology of the body. Kurzweil’s nonbiological nanointelligence projects a humanist intelligence programme into a feed-forward time-space continuum. Future concepts engineer the present.

“The Aleph moment hasn’t even happened - but we’re already feeling the shock.” (Egan, 1995: 271)

But... where are the warmachines in this story? --- where is the demi-god control freakery twisted into a desire which runs occidentally through this circuitry into a mode of production which undergrounds this (post)humanist saga?

hyperflow - Kurzweil probably needs some terminator-style Frankensteining (sd more of an expert on K. at this point) - have you sampled Hugo de Garis yet? Seems promisingly brutal ...

an expert?!

I might have something semi-coherent to say about K next week.

hugo de garis is impressively brutal yes!

terminator mention is interesting (though not sure you're actually referring to the films), but the species war that underpins the terminator trilogy basically extrapolates the kind of meme war sd talks about into a marxist species battle with all the usual species narcissim.

wondering whether the parasitic agencies that collect in the hyperstitional circuit might mutate in the underground coding of this kind of warzone, the fear that underpins a crazed desire for ultimate control (kurzweil's runaway desiring machines) could twist this affective line towards a proliferation of non-subjective agents which mutate the line of humanism altogether. - can hyperstitional circuitry malfunction in this way?

i should be getting an amazon delivery of TS tomorrow, so, maybe more informed soon.

hyperflow - thanks for adding 'power' to the list of topics to thrash through.
Is the 'will-to-power' a transcendental characteristic - if not in a Nietzschean sense at least in that of an emergent impetus, resulting from the fact that maximal control over the natural and social environment facilitates all other goals? Or is it a relatively trivial biological inheritance, perhaps in a way close to that suggested by Octavia Butler (a 'genetic flaw')? What would lead an AI (for instance) to become 'power-crazed'? - hmmm