Thursday, October 17, 2002

Some time ago, I noticed that conflict resolution, in order to be successful, often requires that the resolving party be familiar with the nature and character of conflict.

Accordingly, I have researched the matter, and it seems nearly universal. So I am led to an inescapable conclusion, that the successful avoidance and resolution of conflict in my future will require my familiarity and skill with the tools and techniques of conflict, which, for the purposes of discussion will involve hostile intelligences of peer level. (The possibility of hostile intelligences of infra-justin level, and super-justin level are fundamentally different problems and require different solutions.(peer level in this case encompasses the multitude of human level opponnents at this point. I see no reason or inclination to expand this range further, as both a dog bent upon my destruction, and a hostile transhuman seem to bear no real insight in mentioning.))

It is helpful to remember and injunction of Nietzche: "When fighting monsters, one must take care not to become a monster oneself". However, in order to fully understand threats, one must delve (perhaps dangerously) into the psychology, and application of violence.

Violence is something human beings and most mammals are very good at, generally. Our evolutionary history is littered with violent adaptations and such nasty things. Interestingly however, the more structured complicated forms of violence that our abstract reasoning allows us to achieve, like wars, terrorism, and taxes appear to follow similar patterns to the more simple mammal to mammal violence our species developed with. Given this surface similarity, investigating the roots of violence leads one to the urge to categorize. I dont' like categorizing, I think axioms and similar nonsense simplify and badly fit the situations one finds oneself experiencing. However, it's occasionally useful to have rules of thumb to apply.

There are seemingly two basic strategies within violence of various brands.

1. Playing to Advantages You Have; This is a relatively straightforward strategy, you have reach, so you stay far, you have money, so you force your opponnent into a bidding war. Forcing the conflict into arenas where you have relative strengths can take many forms, and it behooves you to employ variations on this theme whenever possible, because it increases your applied force, much like a machine of war.

2. Playing to Their Disadvantage; Similarly, the opposite strategem is to force the conflict into arenas where your opponnent has relative weaknesses, such as pressing a lanky opponent into a corner, or shifting the conflict with a generalist to a specific domain where you hold superiority, like commodity trading vs. money markets.

Perversely, stronger opponnents are better off with strategems within 2. Because their greater resource or skill allows them to force opponnents into unwise arenas more easily, with fewer risks. Weaker opponents are better off in 1. as evidenced by the success of forms like Guerrilla warfare, because weak opponnents cannot employ strategies which rely on the stronger opponent to take actions which may endanger the Stronger. The risk of forcing a move is often too costly for a weaker opponent to bear. Context is important. A weaker boxer often plays strategem 2, because boxing is a fluid sport, where forcing moves is relatively simple. Whereas weaker economic powers almost always play 1. because economics moves relatively slowly, and interactions are weaker, making feints and leading motions more difficult to successfully complete.

Keep in mind that the proper application of the knowledge of conflict is to end it. No thinking being deserves suffering, and the most capable party is also the most responsible. Good hunting.

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Someone asked me recently, if outlawpoet daily represented the quality and nature of my thoughts, if it were a window into my thought life and opinions.


Outlawpoet Daily is a way for me to muse online, and contains a lot of assumptions. An invisible audience is one of them, and I edit accordingly. I also add far more context than I find it neccesary to think about. And finally, sometimes I say or wonder about things that I dont' actually believe, as a method of exploration, or to expand a line of thought that I usually leave unturned.

Plus, I find it more useful to adopt multiple points of view for the purposes of my own edification.

So do not think my play indicates my true nature or opinion. But that shouldn't be the real issue anyway, you should evaluate arguments based on their strength and consistency, not who gives them, or who agrees with them. My presentation of thoughts for your analysis is a gift, perhaps I am right or wrong without being aware. You decide.

Monday, October 07, 2002

On being an artist

An artist, particularly a visual one, is something I am particularly proud of being. This is not a pride proportional to my talent, as a pride of achievement is, but a pride that is a little more involved. This may be because of my approach, and may be because I am dissatisfied with my current skill, but believe my progress is sufficient to reach a level satisfactory to such a pride. I am not certain.

Artistry, unfortunately, is usually approached in an intellectual manner with more pretension than skill, and certainly more holism than reductionism. Which leads to unbalanced big theories of artistry that center around the artist being a mutant genius afloat in a sea of experience among the morons and pharisees, inevitably.(If that sentence didn't resonate with you, you haven't read much art theory or worldview statements by artists)

The big issue with Art is communication. It's a transmissive medium, as I see it, and it's purpose is dirtied otherwise. The largest technical issue with making art, is icons, and your mind's predilectation for making them. For example, when you see a tree, rarely do you conciously explore it's details, edges, proportions, and colours. You rather, measure the tree in a basic and self-impactful way, and replace it in your map of the area with a simplified version based on your basic icon for a tree. Which is why when children start drawing, they invariably start with stick figures and similar. Their internal icons are very simple, and almost universal. Autistic children, lacking some higher-order integrative faculties, often are 'good' artists, because they sit and regurgitate details, forming complex pictures from memories. dwelling on details, rather than icons significant to themselves.
The problem is that our internal models rarely interact with other people or even ourselves. To combat being a bad artist in this way, you have two choices. You can force yourself to notice detail, proportion, and line, as a concious-level process, while you make art. This is a reciprocating process, where you duplicate detail, check your art, duplicate another detail, and so on. The other route, which almost all artists do, conciously or not, is to increase the detail level of your internal models of things you see. The more you do art, the more you will notice detail, until you hold your personal limit of visual detail without overloading your working memory. Very good artists often start with very complex internal visual models, others develop them through practice. Both approaches are valid, and both are usually pursued by artists, to varying degrees of reliance and skill. The mechanics of pen, brush, stylus, claymould, and blowtorch control are largely incidental and handled by specialized parts of your brain that everybody has anyway. Artistic talent is largely that of model complexity, and mental techniques for complexity management.

The really tricky bit is then taking the talent, and moving it to an art piece. This largely involves reverse-engineering the detail and line of the displayed object, and re-inserting your removed iconography and emotional subtext, without destroying the integrity of the picture, balancing detail and abstraction in an effort to both resonate and be recognized. The visual mediums have their own vocabulary, and it is within your choices as an artist, to determine which vocabularies you use. Realistic Art uses the terms and icons all are familiar with, objects and people, all close within normative reality, limiting the amount of icon work, and subtext you may insert. Abstract art often takes advantage of vocabularies not everyone has, limiting the potential audience, and how specific you can be, but allowing far more subtext and iconography to be inserted.
Artistic quality of a specific piece is a separate notion entirely, and rest on too many factors for me to lay bare. If I do get any closer to doing so personally, you'll be the first to know.

I've used iconography and several other words recklessly and outside their usual definitions, for this I apologise, and I promise I'm not a pretensetic artist with a tendency for neologisms, just a hapless prole at a librarium without a thesaral reference.

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Given our current cognitive architecture, the level of self knowledge that is achievable depends a great deal on your awareness of that architecture. The structure and source of your mind/brain, is one of the central tenets of any philosophy of self that hopes to have any success in allowing real introspection. Understanding your biological basis is the first step to transcending it in a substantial way. (Yes, I did just use the word transcend, please do not misunderstand, This is not an endorsement of the emotional context that the concept of transcension finds itself in these days, it's just the only appropriate word. When your biological substrate is that of a social predator that's sole evolutionary purpose is to have complexly successful progeny, and lots of them, doing maths, and building houses, can all be understood as transcending your design. Real Transcendence, manipulating your substrate, channeling and directing your evolutionary impulses, only comes with understanding, and effort. Unfortunately, we're not at a place where we can flip switches and get better. It takes real time to become aware of the processes of your mind, and move them closer to where you want to be.)

With that in mind, I'd like to discuss daily life. Daily, or moment to moment, is the way most people really experience life. Noble thoughts, and works of poetry can have great emotional impact, but ideas only alter a person, when they begin to intrude upon their actions and a decisions in a detailed way. The Ideas of Rationality, of the Scientific Method, of Altruism, and of Transhumanity, can have great emotional impact, but in many cases, I see it having little impact on daily life. People continue doing their jobs, and driving their cars, and may make plans to do things, but rarely get up the next day and alter. It may be that rationalist thought has a weakness, which prevents it from deeply affecting the majority of humans who encounter it. I'm tempted to say this is a weakness of the human design, that our cognitive architecture is too specialized towards our context and evolutionary environment to embrace rational ways of thinking. But it is more likely that as a memetic trigger, the concept of rationalism has been missing something in it's presentation to most people.

A major, if informal objection to the way I think and formalize and act, is that it has little passion or inspiration. I invariably disagree, and say that I feel very strongly about the things I do and think. But the point is well-taken. I come across to people as dry or unfeeling so often, that there appears to be a pattern I am unable as of yet to correct for. I am not unfeeling. But communication is one of my claimed strengths, and I am evidently failing to communicate. It has it's roots, I think, in the emotional quality of poetry vs. Scientific Journalism. It is said, usually by proponents of emotional quality, that less is more. Perhaps it is the endless qualifications and adjunct specifications that kills the 'passion' of my positions. Or perhaps it's the bad formation. Usually, when I am writing or talking, the subject has a quality of exploration. Because I range so far afield, when I do spend time on a specifics, often, it's for the first time. So my speaking or writing is always littered with new ideas, expressed well or badly, or limpingly explored. Perhaps it is this quality that seems to make my rationalism passionless. Example: Richard Feynman, perhaps one of the best scientific authors I've ever read. His deep understanding of physics paradoxically allowed him to make some concepts absurdly simple, and easy to understand. His talks and writing are both full of excitement and passion, and almost always well thought out. Perhaps as a function then, understanding always progresses towards poetry, simple, exact, and emotional.

I'm not certain, but I don't it's quite that simple. It never is, in my experience. The truth is likely halfway between, that rationalist thought has never really been presented clearly, only being represented in human beings, whose understanding of it has been flawed and oppositional. And our poor evolved brain seems likely to defend against any incursion by concepts that are unrelated to reproductive fitness. Lucky and strange that such mishmashes of adaptations and instincts could converge upon the tenet of rational thought. That doing the right things for the right reasons is more effective and powerful than any shortcut of knee-jerk reactions. Relating to the universe directly, instead of through a veil of abstracted adaptation.