Essay on Magical Thinking

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jennypenny
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Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by jennypenny »

Interesting read on collective solipsism and what the author calls "state-directed spell casting."

http://www.salientpartners.com/epsilon- ... -thinking/

Here it is in PDF form ... http://www.salientpartners.com/wp-conte ... 1-2016.pdf

BRUTE
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by BRUTE »

great article.

one confounding factor: wishful thinking actually DOES work for lots of things or for certain amounts of time. after all, society and many of its features (like money) are just what all humans agree upon. if all humans believe printing money leads to wealth, it works. for a while.

brute's favorite part of the article was the pointing out that the occurrence of "alt-priests" is a consequence of the current priesthood's failure.

brute is sick of mainstream politicians/leaders/propagandists driving the car into a corner at 200mph, taking the hands off the wheel, and then being surprised by Trump. THEY MADE THIS. it's the same with Brexit. fucking over the populace of an entire continent with lies for decades, then being surprised when they fall for the nationalists. fuck civilization.

enigmaT120
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by enigmaT120 »

"Let it come down."

Papers of Indenture
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by Papers of Indenture »

BRUTE wrote: brute is sick of mainstream politicians/leaders/propagandists driving the car into a corner at 200mph, taking the hands off the wheel, and then being surprised by Trump. THEY MADE THIS. it's the same with Brexit. fucking over the populace of an entire continent with lies for decades, then being surprised when they fall for the nationalists.
Preach it.

The alt priest snippet was a good gateway into the conversation in the Trump thread right now.

Don't worry though. I'm sure our governments are hard at work preparing for the new digital economy. Should be a real hoot. Can't wait to create free content for Facebook/Google to data mine and to earn my keep Turking for Amazon. Excited to spend my credits, redeemable at company store, on Pop Tarts delivered by drone for sustenance.

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GandK
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by GandK »

Papers of Indenture wrote:Don't worry though. I'm sure our governments are hard at work preparing for the new digital economy. Should be a real hoot. Can't wait to create free content for Facebook/Google to data mine and to earn my keep Turking for Amazon. Excited to spend my credits, redeemable at company store, on Pop Tarts delivered by drone for sustenance.
Yes. :( And this dovetails with the removal of $100 etc. bills thread. No more cash? Our every move gets tracked, recorded and mined for someone else's profit. Never our own. And no opting out.

theanimal
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by theanimal »

GandK wrote: Yes. :( And this dovetails with the removal of $100 etc. bills thread. No more cash? Our every move gets tracked, recorded and mined for someone else's profit. Never our own. And no opting out.
One of my guests was telling me last night that up until recently he worked for Mercedes Benz Artificial Engineering department. They were working on a new system designed to track the movements and driving habits of vehicle owners. It made me wonder who is going to end up seeing that data/how it will be used.

vezkor
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by vezkor »

@theanimal

Recently got back from a camping trip where I met a friend of a cousin who manages 2 petabytes of data for Ford motor company. What kind of data do they have? Everything from information concerning the purchase and sale of vehicles (new and used), maintenance of vehicles, driving patterns, accident reports to exactly how the user interacts with the vehicle's touch-screen console... and the list goes on and on. Literally everything I could think of to track, they track.

What are they using the data for? According to the friend: only internal purposes. Mostly marketing, advertising and helping engineer better vehicles. I asked why the driving patterns and he said if they want to keep up with the autonomous vehicle movement they have to have somewhere to start from, so they're building their own map from that. They're able to use AI (similar to Ok Google on android devices) to build "profiles" from the VIN number attached to the vehicle in question and predict future behavior. Currently it's as innocuous as suggesting a restaurant on your route, but nothing is ever getting deleted. Ever.

Smart car, indeed.

BRUTE
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by BRUTE »

creepy as fuck this brave new utopia.

FBeyer
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Re: Essay on Magical Thinking

Post by FBeyer »

A petabyte has kind of lost its meaning already.
We produce half a petabyte of data whenever we go to the lab. So... about 1 petabyte per year from our little team of experimental physicists.
2 petabytes for a large autocompany does not seem overwhelming at all to me.

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