frustrated with isms

I just updated the theme because it hurts my eyes. but the reason Im typing this out is because my brain is spinning in circles.
I cant tell who draws forth more ire from my neurons, the hippies with their liberal philosophical bullshit without any sense of reality, or the capitalists with their indoctrinated philosophical bullshit without any sense of reality.

In the past Ive repeatedly referred to two simplified assumptions most people agree to without realizing the logical failing, namely that We want everybody to start off life from a fair position with equal potential, and We want to ensure "more" for our own offspring, whether that more is easier paths, more options, greater flexibility isnt important, the point stands. If you can't see the logical fallacy when these two goals are presented side by side I will probably have difficulty understanding your perception of reality and thus communicating with you.

In my simplified mind, the hippies pursue the first goal and the capitalists pursue the second. The 'best answer' to try and appease the base desires of humans most likely lies with a not quite middle path, of constantly improving the world such that you ensure people move towards equal opportunity at birth, and ensure your offspring more opportunity by opening up the full spectrum, and both the hippies and the capitalists like to say that they are driving towards that goal. Unfortunately, this probably cannot be the case.

Not to say that two people going in opposite directions cannot be aiming for the same goal, Im not sure what the shape of our universe is, and depending on your orientation and spacial skills walking around a globe to meet at the other side is a potential way to meet in the middle. But we as a society have issues with this. When we approach issues from opposite sides we usually attempt to pull the other side towards us in the process. As a simplified metaphor Im envisioning people on two boats approaching an iceberg and crashing into it because they cant agree to split to the left and right simultaneously. Not that it is easy or even possible to go in opposite directions to reach the same goal in all cases, just throwing out the caveat before trashing the method that it would be possible in an ideal world for both philosophical camps to end up helping the world achieve humane goals without utilizing the same course.

But back to the point. I say probably because nobody actually does solid analysis of these things, but also because every situation is unique. Most people will admit that capitalism does a good job of allocating resources towards human desires, but most people intrinsically know that human desires on a micro scale do not align with human desires on the macro scale. On the same note that capitalism fails to allocate properly towards real goals beyond the day to day elements of staying alive and sane, most people intrinsically know that the hippie ideals will generally be ousted to the practicalities of interacting with the real world. This isnt to say that a hippie commune cannot exist or that a socialist nation cannot exist, but that competitively, their goals and path to attain happiness tend to be counter to the competitive human nature on a smaller scale, or more reasonably, in an attempt to give everybody the same resources opportunities or stuff they fail to satisfy the requirement that their equality beats the baseline opportunity of an outside system.

Getting a little rambly, had somewhere to go with this, and will continue my rant later, but GAH needed to vent on a friday afternoon.

so I write myself a lot of memos

and sometimes I feel like Im davinci writing in his notebooks full of ideas for inventions that future generations will look at and say I was way ahead of my time, and sometimes I feel like Ted Kaczynski rambling away musings about the abusive higher powers and how they have wronged me and how I can manage to eek out a life on this blue sphere.

only time will tell. when we die we leave behind nothing but other people's judgements on our memory. but whatever at that point youre gone ... so ... whatever ... not to say Im going crazy or anything, but just ... meh

obviously I didnt go back and publish the unfinished posts

rant: credit scores.

I just heard somebody on a news program, obviously talking about personal financial responsibility/success, say that they thought it was a shame that you have to pay to see your credit score, but that at least you can see your credit history and if you can clean that up your score should get better. and another commentator made the comment wouldnt it be great if the government could give you that number.

my eyes went red with rage.

My first thought was, no, it would be great if there wasnt an artificial monopoly in the space of credit scores and if another company could come in and create a score that more accurately predicted the rate of defaults.

My next thought, was, why does anybody think that the government should be involved with lending money to the general populace.

My next thought was, why does our government operate at a significant deficit. and then I just closed my eyes, wrote a few sentences and got back to work. Let the world work its magic.

I have an assload of old unfinished posts

so, at some point, there may be a flurry of random not polished not complete statements just to clear out the edit posts page.

I was planning on writing a tirade about fiat money and the world economy and things, but I will let it ruminate.

progess

lets assume we have exponential growth, and that as we grow we put safegaurds in place as we realize flaws and risks associated with our growth. growth drives growth. safegaurds are behind by some time, lets ignore that most safegaurds are legislative and thus naturally wouldnt be able to keep up as bottlenecks clog. Even permitting that there will still be a lag of time between preventing catastrophe.

this is something Ive thought much about, and yet another things Ive just determined is a risk we have to live with for progress. at some point risks arise, and there is no ideal way to mitigate them. so we live with it. its funny.

side by side comparison of facebook to google. thought it would be at least mildly interesting to think about since with buzz google is now trying to link in all their services which compete directly with facebooks features.

facebook photo albums, versus picassa

facebook events versus google calendar

facebook news feed versus buzz

facebook notes versus blogspot

facebook chat versus gchat

facebook has applications, but the internet has better applications, and google owns search. ... not to mention that google has app engine http://code.google.com/appengine/

now, facebook has a more tightly integrated set of features, but google has an advantage in that it obviously leads as a mail and search giant.

what does facebook do that gives it the advantage. What aspects of the social network are better? what aspects of the search giant are better

had more to write up about this, but ended there and dont mind it as is.

incompatible systems

my(old) new interest area,

interaction between incompatible systems (e.g. men women, various cultures, various political systems, various political parties), what makes some destroy one another while others tend to subjugate one another while others strike up a balance that entertains new entrants and others balance but destroy new entrants.

still interested in this topic, but need to find a route for thinking about it framing it, such that similarities can be drawn across diverse subject matter