Crazy Rich People!
May. 18th, 2017 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo Dollman calls me up yesterday morning because he spent most of the weekend with Boy Genius and the Boy Genius entourage, and he wanted to dish.
People like to tell me things.
It was a super-power that stood me in good stead during my years as a celebrity journalist.
“So? What did you think?” I asked.
A slight pause before, “I think he’s bat shit crazy. In fact, I’d be prepared to wager he’s three months out from a complete psychotic breakdown.”
“Is he charismatic?”
“Not in the slightest. ‘Earnest’ is an adjective I might apply to him. Geeky. But, of course, incredibly rich, so that loans him a certain charisma.”
“Inherited money? Or did he make it himself?”
“Oh, he made it himself. Do you know DivX?”
“Of course!”
“Well, he was one of the cofounders. After learning the trade at Mp3.com. DivX sold for something like $600 million. So assuming his various share protections were in place, I’d estimate Boy Genius walked away with at least $100 million.”
“That makes me want to be his Bestest Friend!” I said.
“There used to be a term in the DSM: ‘meglomania’…”
“Replaced, I believe, by ‘narcissistic personality disorder,’” I said helpfully.
“Right. Boy Genius is the illustration in the Wikipedia entry. Right now he’s embarked upon a feverish campaign to save the world from civil war, which he’s projecting will happen within six months.”
“Only Boy Genius can save the planet!” I said.
“Well. With assistance from massive doses of 5MEO.”
“Is he hearing voices?” I asked. “Does he believe he’s the new messiah?”
“Two very distinct possibilities,” Dollman said.
###
Dollman was really fun to talk to.
If I can’t ingratiate myself with the fabulously wealthy and batshit crazy Boy Genius – and really, I can’t, on account of I don’t really give a fuck about collective intelligence plus I’m old and no longer have great beauty and seductiveness to parlay with – then Dollman would be a great backup Bestest Friend. Dollman is kind of an intellectual equivalent of Truman Capote.
###
Later in the day, Alpha Male contacted me in a panic: Boy Genius had decide to bail on the Soooper Sekrit Political Group!
I consider the experiment to be over and that it demonstrates that an online community can coordinate and maintain minor coherence, but it cannot build coherence, Boy Genius wrote in an email to Alpha Male. I cannot be part of the group. My association with it creates bad signal and actually dilutes my potential. People outside think that RPA is close to me and meaningful. Since this isn't the case, it's lackluster performance reflects poorly on me and reduces my ability to do what I need to do. It has already proven expensive.
Fuckin’ idjit, I thought. Doesn’t know the difference between “it’s” and “its”!
You can tell where my priorities lie!
I like Alpha Male, so I tried to calm him down: “Did it ever occur to you that you’re dealing with someone who has serious mental health issues?” I asked.
Alpha Male was unaware that Boy Genius’s plans involve flying off to Sweden in the coming week so he and the Girlfriend can do massive amounts of 5MEO with Nora Bateson.
Nora Bateson is the official Keeper of the Eternal Flame for Gregory Bateson.
I know the name “Gregory Bateson” ‘cause Bateson was big on the various psychedelic circuits I inhabited as a California flower child way back in the Jurassic. I get Bateson confused, though, with John Lilly, the dolphin guy, and R.D. Laing, the “schizophrenia is just another maladaptive behavior” guy.
The pattern that connects…
What the hell does that mean anywayI?
“He seemed perfectly fine when he was visiting me here in Virginia last month,” said Alpha Male. “Showed a little cognitive diminution – worse memory than in the past – but in general, he was his ‘normal’ self. I mean, he’s always had those neuro-atypical tendencies. Not quite Asbergers. But along those lines.
“On the other hand, he has been gobbling those damn NeuroHacker supplements for quite a while, been dabbling with micro-dosing of hallucinogens, and probably mega-dosing too.
“So he might have snapped.”
###
Of course, if you ever want to write a satirical novel about ridiculous fictional people who are based upon even more ridiculous real life people, it helps to have a sample of ridiculous real life verbiage and thought patterns on tap.
So. It looks like I have binocular vision. Looking through my FB feed, I notice *both* that:
- Trump is within nanoseconds of impeachment (and likely execution for high treason) for selling out national security to the Russians; and
- The DNC (and John Podesta specifically) are now firmly established as the murderers of Seth Rich for leaking all those "Russian Hacking" emails to Wikileaks.
Amazing, I currently think that both narratives are completely true. The real question is - why?
I think that this thread largely does what I wanted. Notice the very wide variation of axioms, biases, methodologies and positions. A few folks can be thrown out as not having good pattern recognition. But many are high quality - and yet near dissonance.
Lets look at the Syria article you link.
1. NY Times. High signal? Per se propaganda? Pick your team.
2. Malachy Browne - don't know the guy. Trustworthy or shill? Bot? At a minimum will take research to establish some level of confidence.
3. The underlying research. Seems like a super neat approach that looks a lot like the stuff that 4Chan has been doing. Quality? Veracity? No chance of really duplicating it yourself - so these depend on #1 and #2 above.
4. Is google itself trusted? It is highly unlikely that they modified the underlying google earth - but certainly possible. NSA, China, Russia and Mossad certainly all have the capacity to have modified these maps. Not likely they did. But now that this article has been written . . .
5. As you work through the entire article, you end up with something like (a) an attack did happen and (b) Assad is either lying, uninformed or manipulated. Which rules out the last (throw-away) hypothesis of my War on Sensemaking article, but doesn't effect any the others meaningfully. You can get to some facts - but you are still far from sensemaking.
6. To do so, you then have to run some kind of strategy/intent/approach model on the underlying data. For example - why would Assad make this attack? Would anyone else benefit from it and be able to execute on the effects tracked in this video? Why would Russia/Assad lie? Why would anyone else lie?
Which is to say: I'm now a good two hours into analyzing this particular piece of data and I'm maybe 7% more clear on the underlying problem than I was before. And this is with the benefit of *you* who seem to be a relatively well informed good faith sensemaker (although, of course, I can't actually confirm this to be true). For almost everyone else . . .
In other news, I bet Rupert Murdoch is kicking himself under the table. If only he’d known Roger Ailes would drop dead a mere nine months after Ailes was, uh, resigned, Murdoch could have saved News Corp $50 million!
People like to tell me things.
It was a super-power that stood me in good stead during my years as a celebrity journalist.
“So? What did you think?” I asked.
A slight pause before, “I think he’s bat shit crazy. In fact, I’d be prepared to wager he’s three months out from a complete psychotic breakdown.”
“Is he charismatic?”
“Not in the slightest. ‘Earnest’ is an adjective I might apply to him. Geeky. But, of course, incredibly rich, so that loans him a certain charisma.”
“Inherited money? Or did he make it himself?”
“Oh, he made it himself. Do you know DivX?”
“Of course!”
“Well, he was one of the cofounders. After learning the trade at Mp3.com. DivX sold for something like $600 million. So assuming his various share protections were in place, I’d estimate Boy Genius walked away with at least $100 million.”
“That makes me want to be his Bestest Friend!” I said.
“There used to be a term in the DSM: ‘meglomania’…”
“Replaced, I believe, by ‘narcissistic personality disorder,’” I said helpfully.
“Right. Boy Genius is the illustration in the Wikipedia entry. Right now he’s embarked upon a feverish campaign to save the world from civil war, which he’s projecting will happen within six months.”
“Only Boy Genius can save the planet!” I said.
“Well. With assistance from massive doses of 5MEO.”
“Is he hearing voices?” I asked. “Does he believe he’s the new messiah?”
“Two very distinct possibilities,” Dollman said.
###
Dollman was really fun to talk to.
If I can’t ingratiate myself with the fabulously wealthy and batshit crazy Boy Genius – and really, I can’t, on account of I don’t really give a fuck about collective intelligence plus I’m old and no longer have great beauty and seductiveness to parlay with – then Dollman would be a great backup Bestest Friend. Dollman is kind of an intellectual equivalent of Truman Capote.
###
Later in the day, Alpha Male contacted me in a panic: Boy Genius had decide to bail on the Soooper Sekrit Political Group!
I consider the experiment to be over and that it demonstrates that an online community can coordinate and maintain minor coherence, but it cannot build coherence, Boy Genius wrote in an email to Alpha Male. I cannot be part of the group. My association with it creates bad signal and actually dilutes my potential. People outside think that RPA is close to me and meaningful. Since this isn't the case, it's lackluster performance reflects poorly on me and reduces my ability to do what I need to do. It has already proven expensive.
Fuckin’ idjit, I thought. Doesn’t know the difference between “it’s” and “its”!
You can tell where my priorities lie!
I like Alpha Male, so I tried to calm him down: “Did it ever occur to you that you’re dealing with someone who has serious mental health issues?” I asked.
Alpha Male was unaware that Boy Genius’s plans involve flying off to Sweden in the coming week so he and the Girlfriend can do massive amounts of 5MEO with Nora Bateson.
Nora Bateson is the official Keeper of the Eternal Flame for Gregory Bateson.
I know the name “Gregory Bateson” ‘cause Bateson was big on the various psychedelic circuits I inhabited as a California flower child way back in the Jurassic. I get Bateson confused, though, with John Lilly, the dolphin guy, and R.D. Laing, the “schizophrenia is just another maladaptive behavior” guy.
The pattern that connects…
What the hell does that mean anywayI?
“He seemed perfectly fine when he was visiting me here in Virginia last month,” said Alpha Male. “Showed a little cognitive diminution – worse memory than in the past – but in general, he was his ‘normal’ self. I mean, he’s always had those neuro-atypical tendencies. Not quite Asbergers. But along those lines.
“On the other hand, he has been gobbling those damn NeuroHacker supplements for quite a while, been dabbling with micro-dosing of hallucinogens, and probably mega-dosing too.
“So he might have snapped.”
###
Of course, if you ever want to write a satirical novel about ridiculous fictional people who are based upon even more ridiculous real life people, it helps to have a sample of ridiculous real life verbiage and thought patterns on tap.
So. It looks like I have binocular vision. Looking through my FB feed, I notice *both* that:
- Trump is within nanoseconds of impeachment (and likely execution for high treason) for selling out national security to the Russians; and
- The DNC (and John Podesta specifically) are now firmly established as the murderers of Seth Rich for leaking all those "Russian Hacking" emails to Wikileaks.
Amazing, I currently think that both narratives are completely true. The real question is - why?
I think that this thread largely does what I wanted. Notice the very wide variation of axioms, biases, methodologies and positions. A few folks can be thrown out as not having good pattern recognition. But many are high quality - and yet near dissonance.
Lets look at the Syria article you link.
1. NY Times. High signal? Per se propaganda? Pick your team.
2. Malachy Browne - don't know the guy. Trustworthy or shill? Bot? At a minimum will take research to establish some level of confidence.
3. The underlying research. Seems like a super neat approach that looks a lot like the stuff that 4Chan has been doing. Quality? Veracity? No chance of really duplicating it yourself - so these depend on #1 and #2 above.
4. Is google itself trusted? It is highly unlikely that they modified the underlying google earth - but certainly possible. NSA, China, Russia and Mossad certainly all have the capacity to have modified these maps. Not likely they did. But now that this article has been written . . .
5. As you work through the entire article, you end up with something like (a) an attack did happen and (b) Assad is either lying, uninformed or manipulated. Which rules out the last (throw-away) hypothesis of my War on Sensemaking article, but doesn't effect any the others meaningfully. You can get to some facts - but you are still far from sensemaking.
6. To do so, you then have to run some kind of strategy/intent/approach model on the underlying data. For example - why would Assad make this attack? Would anyone else benefit from it and be able to execute on the effects tracked in this video? Why would Russia/Assad lie? Why would anyone else lie?
Which is to say: I'm now a good two hours into analyzing this particular piece of data and I'm maybe 7% more clear on the underlying problem than I was before. And this is with the benefit of *you* who seem to be a relatively well informed good faith sensemaker (although, of course, I can't actually confirm this to be true). For almost everyone else . . .
In other news, I bet Rupert Murdoch is kicking himself under the table. If only he’d known Roger Ailes would drop dead a mere nine months after Ailes was, uh, resigned, Murdoch could have saved News Corp $50 million!
