Modeling the Post Apocalypse

[wintler2]

.. evidence is that we are doing way too little way too late to switch from fossil fuels to renewables. The evidence is that the banksters are not all sitting in jail cells. The evidence is the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the US supreme court.

The evidence is:

They are all bad news, evidence of what -we- see as systemic dysfunction, but hardly evidence of TPTB. Simple short term self interest in the context of our violent heirarchical civilisation explains them all, sadly.

The 1% are winning man.

? Really? are they? Yes wealth disparity is growing, but so is the tide of unrest that could sweep away their paper wealth in a day, and they know it.

In spite of the efforts of millions and the wishes of 100's of millions.

100s of trillions of wishes would still be immaterial. Millions of active discipline people in Egypt, sure, and they haven't lost yet. Mere thousands in the West have turned out for a few symbolic protests (OWS included), which were great, for symbolic protests, wake me when they start disrupting BAU. I'm sure once things get grim enough then more will protest in the West, get 'policed'/assaulted, subverted, disenchanted and radicalised, and then finally we might be able to start talking about a mass movement.

Again, I agree that the scheming sociopaths are not globe spanning and they are factionalized. This is not to say they do not coordinate when that seems mutually advantageous. I assume that these are networks of people at the top. They know each other. They intermarry. They share philosphies and world views.

Sure, and a greater than average proportion of them cheat and steal and lobby and loot, and we should use any and every tool at our disposal to bring them to justice, partly cos their victims need and deserve it, and partly cos the parasites are a luxury we can no longer afford.

Really our TPTB problems arise not solely or even especially from TPTB themselves, but from our habit of abdicating all of our power to them

Straight question: Why do you think we do that?

Whoa, whole other thread, .. Habit/culture, ignorance of better alternatives, + the payoffs. Its the entry price of the dominant paradigm, you don't get to eat the warlords food without kissing his ring. Why join the warlord? cos my dad did, its what men do (says everyone i know), i haven't ever thought of doing any different. The day it does (prob a day of not enough payoff), i weigh up the average food/pleasure/safety that the warlords soldiers receive and decide its worth it anyway, and go kick some [insert minority here] to feel better. Not till the warlord discards my broken body do i experience (only way we learn) the downside, by when its a little late. Hierarchies work great if you're high enough up one, and we can apparently flip alot of burgers on the dream of reaching the shift managers parking spot.

.

[brainpanhandler]

This is a good conversation. When I get a chance I'll respond.

[brainpanhandler]

Little to nothing is being done societally to prepare for $200/barrel oil and desertification of America's bread basket as examples. What does that tell me about the intentions of the ptb? Anything? Does it tell me they're simply ignorant? Does it tell me they could give two shits about future generations. That'll be their problem? Does it tell me they have a population reduction lihop strategy for putting the brakes on biosphere destruction?

If you assume they have that power and are that coordinated then that is what your model may output. I do not believe they do or are because there is bugger all evidence for it, and i'm appalled by our willingness to deify them.

The evidence is that we are doing way too little way too late to switch from fossil fuels to renewables. The evidence is that the banksters are not all sitting in jail cells. The evidence is the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the US supreme court.

The evidence is:

They are all bad news, evidence of what -we- see as systemic dysfunction, but hardly evidence of TPTB. Simple short term self interest in the context of our violent heirarchical civilisation explains them all, sadly.

I assume you were responding to: "Does it tell me they have a population reduction lihop strategy for putting the brakes on biosphere destruction?" when you said, "If you assume they have that power and are that coordinated then that is what your model may output. I do not believe they do or are because there is bugger all evidence for it, and i'm appalled by our willingness to deify them."

Part of the problem here is that I assume the tptb if and when they work in concert do so out of the public eye ala Jekyll Island.

Forbes magazine founder Bertie Charles Forbes wrote several years later:


Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily riding hundred of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned, lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance. I am not romancing; I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written... The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw up on an unfrequented platform. Off the party set. New York's ubiquitous reporters had been foiled... Nelson (Aldrich) had confided to Henry, Frank, Paul, and Piatt that he was to keep them locked up at Jekyll Island, out of the rest of the world, until they had evolved and compiled a scientific currency system for the United States, the real birth of the present Federal Reserve System, the plan done on Jekyll Island in the conference with Paul, Frank, and Henry... Warburg is the link that binds the Aldrich system and the present system together. He more than any one man has made the system possible as a working reality.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jekyll_Island

So what I'm left with is divining their existence on the basis of the evidence of their actions. It's not like they're ever going to all appear in a national broadcast and announce their existence.

What for you would constitute evidence of their existence? What would they need to be and be able to do to meet your definition? Would a dozen corporations and ten banks essentially owning, controlling and subverting the government suffice? Apparently not. So I'm at a loss to imagine your criteria. "systemic dysfunction" implies the system was set up to do something other than what it is doing. I'd suggest it is doing exactly what it was set up and is maintained to do.

I did write the following in the Define the NWO thread:

whoa, hold on

you guys know you are playing the reification game, right?

who is the the "NWO"? I don't know, but I'm thinking maybe it can be you or me, what with the clusterfuck going on out there right now.

i'm not saying there isn't a shadowy conspiracy out there. i'm saying let's take a deep breath and ignore the boogeyman for a moment or two, to clear our heads

Are there any satisfactory answers in this thread? I mean absence of proof really isn't proof of absence, but the reification fallacy is definitely not helpful as anything other than a thought experiment. I'm also guilty of using the "they" and "them" you-know-who monikers as much as anyone around here I suppose, but that's so I can avoid using NWO.

Who is empowered/disempowered when we assign all knowing, all powerful attributes to they and them? Or are such egregores impotent anyway?

I can fight the enemies I know.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 3&start=30

And stand by that. I'm not wanting to invent bogeymen, the they behind the they. The real tptb.... invisible black hand, blah, blah, blah...

On the other hand I think there is a level of coordination at the top and much of it is probably kept out of public view. And I think that coordination and concentration of power is increasing. Call it intuition.

The 1% are winning man.

? Really? are they? Yes wealth disparity is growing, but so is the tide of unrest that could sweep away their paper wealth in a day, and they know it.

Yes, they are winning. Overwhelmingly so. They almost literally own the government and all it's tools of suppression. If it comes down to it they'll start killing us, directly and en masse if necessary. "Mere thousands in the West have turned out for a few symbolic protests (OWS included), which were great, for symbolic protests, wake me when they start disrupting BAU." is hardly a "tide of unrest" capable of "sweeping away their paper wealth in a day". Not in a day, a month, a year or ten years of hard, determined struggle will power be wrested from their bloody hands. I'm not preaching apathy and surrender. I just want a clear picture of the enemy.

This is the candle I hold in the darkness these days:

To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth—intellectually and emotionally—and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us. - Chris Hedges

They do know it as you say. The evidence of resistance is all around them. The lessons of history are available to them. And I'll bet sophisticated models of the future exist as well. They will circle the wagons and coordinate with the other theys as the pressure on them grows. They will continue to eat each other and consolidate and grow in power.

In spite of the efforts of millions and the wishes of 100's of millions.

100s of trillions of wishes would still be immaterial. Millions of active discipline people in Egypt, sure, and they haven't lost yet. Mere thousands in the West have turned out for a few symbolic protests (OWS included), which were great, for symbolic protests, wake me when they start disrupting BAU. I'm sure once things get grim enough then more will protest in the West, get 'policed'/assaulted, subverted, disenchanted and radicalised, and then finally we might be able to start talking about a mass movement.

That's probably true. I might argue that enough crumbs are allowed to fall off the table to keep the pets from whining.

Again, I agree that the scheming sociopaths are not globe spanning and they are factionalized. This is not to say they do not coordinate when that seems mutually advantageous. I assume that these are networks of people at the top. They know each other. They intermarry. They share philosphies and world views.

Sure, and a greater than average proportion of them cheat and steal and lobby and loot, and we should use any and every tool at our disposal to bring them to justice, partly cos their victims need and deserve it, and partly cos the parasites are a luxury we can no longer afford.

In America there are only two ways that can happen: 1) Using the dysfunctional-stacked-against-us-system that exists, which nonetheless does have a few vestigial power levers we can still use or 2) armed revolution. Armed revolution is absurd, though it could be assymetrically fought for a long time and theoretically triumph in the end. But I can't help but believe that is so far in the future that in terms of something like runaway climate disruption we, or more likely our descendents, will inherit an earth that will take centuries to recover.

Really our TPTB problems arise not solely or even especially from TPTB themselves, but from our habit of abdicating all of our power to them

Straight question: Why do you think we do that?

Whoa, whole other thread, .. Habit/culture, ignorance of better alternatives, + the payoffs. Its the entry price of the dominant paradigm, you don't get to eat the warlords food without kissing his ring. Why join the warlord? cos my dad did, its what men do (says everyone i know), i haven't ever thought of doing any different. The day it does (prob a day of not enough payoff), i weigh up the average food/pleasure/safety that the warlords soldiers receive and decide its worth it anyway, and go kick some [insert minority here] to feel better. Not till the warlord discards my broken body do i experience (only way we learn) the downside, by when its a little late. Hierarchies work great if you're high enough up one, and we can apparently flip alot of burgers on the dream of reaching the shift managers parking spot.

.

In addition to, "Habit/culture, ignorance of better alternatives, + the payoffs", I would add propaganda, psyops, meme management... essentially mass brainwashing, which preceded, coexists with and reinforces "Habit/culture, ignorance of better alternatives". And that arguably is a coordinated effort of the people who own the media. To some extent it's on autopilot, but the plane still needs to be watched and attended to.

My father gets his information about the world largely from FOX news. No shit. It's really sort of fascinating to talk with him at times. More like study him. What makes him tick. etc. I'm convinced he's representative of at least a third of the adult population of the US.

The other day he was upset that the death of Hugo Chavez was getting so much coverage. I explained why I thought that was so; 1) Venezuela is sitting on the second largest pool of oil in the world 2) we're in the same hemisphere 3) Chavez has successfully resisted all our efforts at unseating him, inlcuding a cia created coup attempt and 4) It's great ratings. Half the country is happy to see what they believe to be an evil, south American military/socialist dictator dead and perhaps another quarter of the country is mourning the death of a socialist champion of the people that had the courage to thumb his nose at the empire.

Not quite in so many words, but that was the gist.

The conversation devolved to the point where I had to ask him, "So what you're saying is that we have a right to commit mass murder for material gain?" ie... sieze Venezuela's oil and kill anyone that tries to stop us. He answered yes, we have that right. Good grief. The man's been brainwashed and there is no getting through to him. I threatened to go to his church and stand up before the entire congregation and ask if the US had a right to commit mass murder for material gain. He said they would all agree that we had a right to invade Venezuela, steal their oil and kill anyone who tried to stop us. He might be right. I asked him what Jesus would do? Would jesus condone mass murder for material gain? He asked me what I knew of the bible? I said I knew enough about Jesus that I was pretty sure he would not have sanctioned mass murder for material gain and that I seemed recall that one of the ten commendments was Thou Shall Not Kill. Then I threatened to talk to his pastor about this.

I may follow through on the talking to his pastor.

[wintler2]

..
Part of the problem here is that I assume the tptb if and when they work in concert do so out of the public eye ala Jekyll Island.
..
So what I'm left with is divining their existence on the basis of the evidence of their actions. It's not like they're ever going to all appear in a national broadcast and announce their existence.

Agreed.

What for you would constitute evidence of their existence? What would they need to be and be able to do to meet your definition?

Coordination rather than competition. And to the extent that exists (eg. Coalition of the Willing to invade, Neoliberalism via 'free trade' agreements), then TPTB do exist, but in those cases it is much more useful to use the proper names rather than a cover-all nebulous acronym. Otherwise it is impossible to build coherent movements to fight them; ignorance is not our friend.

Would a dozen corporations and ten banks essentially owning, controlling and subverting the government suffice?

You jump the shark friend; those corporations only prosper thanks to the collaboration of many millions of employees, customers and voters. Without them continuing to buy the economic rationalist 'jam tomorrow' con, accepting the advertisers hype at face value, corporations and banks are mere words on paper (their assets included). We give them our dollars to buy privilege, & our daily dollar endorsement empowers them.

Apparently not. So I'm at a loss to imagine your criteria. "systemic dysfunction" implies the system was set up to do something other than what it is doing. I'd suggest it is doing exactly what it was set up and is maintained to do.

Are you talking about the whole planet, or just the US? If the latter i'll take your word for it, never been there & wouldn't know. But what is the evidence for 'set up & maintained' in S.America, China, or Vietnam? Many countries have managed to walk their own path despite hosting US embassies.

I did write the following in the Define the NWO thread:

whoa, hold on
you guys know you are playing the reification game, right?
who is the the "NWO"? I don't know, but I'm thinking maybe it can be you or me, what with the clusterfuck going on out there right now. i'm not saying there isn't a shadowy conspiracy out there. i'm saying let's take a deep breath and ignore the boogeyman for a moment or two, to clear our heads

Are there any satisfactory answers in this thread? I mean absence of proof really isn't proof of absence, but the reification fallacy is definitely not helpful as anything other than a thought experiment. I'm also guilty of using the "they" and "them" you-know-who monikers as much as anyone around here I suppose, but that's so I can avoid using NWO.

Who is empowered/disempowered when we assign all knowing, all powerful attributes to they and them? Or are such egregores impotent anyway?
I can fight the enemies I know.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 3&start=30

And stand by that. I'm not wanting to invent bogeymen, the they behind the they. The real tptb.... invisible black hand, blah, blah, blah...

On the other hand I think there is a level of coordination at the top and much of it is probably kept out of public view. And I think that coordination and concentration of power is increasing. Call it intuition.

Wealth/economic power is becoming more concentrated, but is ultimately in decline because there is less stuff (resources, real wealth) to buy. The political power of western neoliberal elites seems in decline too, see stasis in WTO & NATO, declining popularity of free market dogma in S.America, EU, Aus, (never caught on in asia outside US client states S.Korea & Japan). And centralised power as a whole must decline due to ongoing and unavoidable triage at the periphery.

The 1% are winning man.

? Really? are they? Yes wealth disparity is growing, but so is the tide of unrest that could sweep away their paper wealth in a day, and they know it.

Yes, they are winning. Overwhelmingly so. They almost literally own the government and all it's tools of suppression.

US govt maybe. In my country (australia) the evidence is much less clear, current Labour minority govt exists only with 1 Greens + 3 (all rural) Independants support. It ain't pretty, not nearly good enough for me & they'll prob lose next federal election, but many good things have been achieved nonetheless. Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Iceland, these too seem to have at least semifunctional democracies going in good directions. I'm truly sorry if it seems hopeless from where you are, but it doesn't from here.

If it comes down to it they'll start killing us, directly and en masse if necessary.

Most elites wouldn't know how, and there aren't nearly enough of them anyway, they would be swamped. And they know it, which is why they're throwing everything into keeping the Jam Tomorrow show on the road.

"Mere thousands in the West have turned out for a few symbolic protests (OWS included), which were great, for symbolic protests, wake me when they start disrupting BAU." is hardly a "tide of unrest" capable of "sweeping away their paper wealth in a day". Not in a day, a month, a year or ten years of hard, determined struggle will power be wrested from their bloody hands.

The USSR fell when pay checks failed, shops emptied and everybody realised that nobody supported it any more. That day arrived in North Africa last year (via bread prices), and is closer in the West than we think. I think its really time to prepare for whats next, which is mixed chaos and reaching for order and civility and peace.

I'm not preaching apathy and surrender. I just want a clear picture of the enemy.

I know, forgive me if my initial rant threw a bit of that shadow.

This is the candle I hold in the darkness these days:

To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth—intellectually and emotionally—and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us. - Chris Hedges

They do know it as you say. The evidence of resistance is all around them. The lessons of history are available to them. And I'll bet sophisticated models of the future exist as well. They will circle the wagons and coordinate with the other theys as the pressure on them grows. They will continue to eat each other and consolidate and grow in power.

Agreed, that is the natural thing for that mindset to do. But I believe their very success at growthist violence will be their fatal flaw in a time of energy descent. Without tangible wealth to distribute to his soldiers, the warlord ends up as the very next course.

.. I might argue that enough crumbs are allowed to fall off the table to keep the pets from whining.

[/quote]
Yes, thats how we got this far, but there are less crumbs and many more expectant pets. I yearn for the day when us pets realise our currently existing and inalienable freedom.

.. more later.

[elfismiles]

I know ... I'm a broken record:

Surfing the SEAS Synth Environ Anal Sim
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=32452

Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_ ... imulations

Purdue University's Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS, is currently being used by Homeland Security and the US Defense Department to simulate crises on the US mainland.[1] SEAS "enables researchers and organizations to try out their models or techniques in a publicly known, realistically detailed environment."[2] It "is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence. [...] The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models are the most highly developed and complex of the 62 available to JFCOM-J9. Each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people."[1]

SEAS was developed to help Fortune 500 companies with strategic planning. Then it was used to help "recruiting commanders to strategize ways to improve recruiting potential soldiers". In 2004 SEAS was evaluated for its ability to help simulate "the non-kinetic aspects of combat, things like the diplomatic, economic, political, infrastructure and social issues".[3]

Sentient World Simulation is the name given to the current vision of making SEAS a "continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action."[4]

Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=956

The system allows for terra scale datasets with granularity of results down to one node (individual). It has a physics engine for tracking any number of people (or other elements) in virtual cities or spaces. It can correlate any amount of social, economic, political, environmental or other data with the behavior of groups or individuals on the ground. The U.S. Government, and some of the most powerful corporations on the planet are using the SEAS system.

Via: The Register:
http://www.theregister.com/2007/06/23/s ... print.html

Perhaps your real life is so rich you don’t have time for another.

Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.

“SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”.

SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.

SEAS can display regional results for public opinion polls, distribution of retail outlets in urban areas, and the level of unorganization of local economies, which may point to potential areas of civil unrest

Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.

“The idea is to generate alternative futures with outcomes based on interactions between multiple sides,” said Purdue University professor Alok Chaturvedi, co-author of the SWS concept paper.

Chaturvedi directs Purdue’s laboratories for Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS – the platform underlying SWS. Chaturvedi also makes a commercial version of SEAS available through his company, Simulex, Inc (http://www.simulexinc.com).

SEAS users can visualise the nodes and scenarios in text boxes and graphs, or as icons set against geographical maps.

Corporations can use SEAS to test the market for new products, said Chaturvedi. Simulex lists the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among its private sector clients.

The US government appears to be Simulex’s number one customer, however. And Chaturvedi has received millions of dollars in grants from the military and the National Science Foundation to develop SEAS.

Chaturvedi is now pitching SWS to DARPA (http://www.darpa.mil) and discussing it with officials at the US Department of Homeland Security (http://www.dhs.gov), where he said the idea has been well received, despite the thorny privacy issues for US citizens.

…

Alok Chaturvedi wants SWS to match every person on the planet, one-to-one.

Right now, the 62 simulated nations in SEAS depict humans as composites, at a 100-to-1 ratio.

One organisation has achieved a one-to-one level of granularity for its simulations, according to Chaturvedi: the US Army, which is using SEAS to identify potential recruits.

Chaturvedi insists his goal for SWS is to have a depersonalised likeness for each individual, rather than an immediately identifiable duplicate. If your town census records your birthdate, job title, and whether you own a dog, SWS will generate what Chaturvedi calls a “like someone” with the same stats, but not the same name.

Of course, government agencies and corporations can add to SWS whatever personally-identifiable information they choose from their own databases, and for their own purposes.

And with consumers already giving up their personal information regularly to websites such as MySpace and Twitter, it is not a stretch to imagine SWS doing the same thing.

“There may be hooks through which individuals may voluntarily contribute information to SWS,” Chaturvedi said.

EDIT to add the below and bold the above...

Speculations on time starting back up/google glass
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=36151

... specifically, Psynapz's contribution re:

Brilliantly conveyed, 82 my friend.

Apologies for the dookie in the Jagermeister here, but I just read this the other day:

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about
http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google ... ing-about/

[wintler2]

I know ... I'm a broken record:

Surfing the SEAS Synth Environ Anal Sim
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=32452
..
+ google glasses

Sweet Jesus, thanks for link. Looks like Simulex don't do retail; if a public spirited hacker should drift past one day, it'd be lovely to get some of their models out in public domain. Maybe not the Afghanistan one, it seems a little buggy.

I see these models as threats on two fronts: first as to any advantage they give to the deatheaters, such as tailoring their army recruitment cons, and second as to any essentially automated behaviour they generate in their adherents, ie. US DHS assumes rioting and so militarises city.