The Companies That Control Everything
The almost silly publication "The network of global corporate control" attempts to map corporate control, the problems it runs into are at least as interesting as the findings.New Scientist reporters describe the work as a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. While also noting it is not without critics. Forbes Blogger Bruce Upbin points out a few weaknesses.
However poorly researched it might be the text praises it self as the first of its kind, good for as much praise as confusion. Certainly some of us assumed that big traders and large institutions had some kind of clue about the workings of our world. I guess we finally know why not to wander of the yellow brick road.
It again confirms something I've been privately pondering about for many years. Hold on to your head, this is going to sound completely ridiculous....
"Truly" random
While we can produce rows of seemingly random numbers we can never be sure they are without any pattern. I don't intend to argue that true chaos exists or not all we need for sake of argument is a firm grasp of the idea that it might not. We need to assume the humble position that it is simply not for us to know if it exists or not. With or without an actual data set we may favor the idea it does or does not just as long as we do not confuse this (arrogance?) with knowledge. A claim that something would be random is equal to claiming that we can not see the pattern in the data. We could still establish that the pattern is extremely hard to find (by our standards) and establish the absence of a lack of randomness.Rule 110 automaton
The Rule of 110 cellular automation describes the "border" between non random and (seemingly) random events. While it has an extremely simplistic set of rules it is (mindbogglingly so) Turing complete. In that way it describes the most simplistic working computer that could be build. It has all the qualities required to write a software.Biological "Brute force"
The theory of Evolution describes how nature creates a bunch of self replicating constructions with random mutations of which some are successful and some are not. Success here refers to the mutations that reproduce most efficiently. Please do finally notice how ridiculously far away from random the process it lives. It is a pattern by definition and it also does a logic operation. It is true that the logic is remarkably simple (we do call it the Brute Force method for a reason) it is logic non the less. It would contribute to the success rate if the process was to expand its logic operations, sexual reproduction is a nice example. The body is the data set and the reproduction is the logic operation.Repetition is the key
As (at least at first) all she has is brute force nature needs to be incredibly persistent in her attempts to accomplish something. She doesn't know what she is doing, she just does pure science until she has a usable technology. If logic happens on such low levels, just like with computer security, it is unlikely for her not to find some way into other parts if the system. All she needs is to develop the next generation of logic gates and the next generation of data storage. As she was already able to rewrite her own code and the event happened at least one time already (probably in the face of extreme unlikeliness) it would be weird for it not to occur again and again. In fact our minds make up a very iteration of her art and so do computers.Individuals vs systems
As soon as survival requires 2 or more separate instances of an organism the group becomes the life form. If some members of the group stay behind to guard the offspring while the others go out on the hunt they continue to make up a single system. Individualism is replaced by collectivism.Different formations are tested, some will be more successful than others. It was established to be desirable to have instances with a very high degree of self reliance so that they can survive between cycles of organization.
Humans developed imagination (something truly absurd?) it gave us the ability to create applicable thought patterns even before a situation exists. If all these things are the result of the original pattern of trial and error there is no reason to think it doesn't exist on many levels. Our society developed science, stories, literature and entertainment that try to record and model society while also trying to picture the future. They are influenced by humans but 99.9999999% of the time they are not ruled by humans.
You may participate in science, do research, discover and develop things, you do not become it. Science is not a person. Observe how science clamps onto old ideas that are known to be false much longer than a human would. It works entirely different from the way an individual works. We see dogma rigorous enough to rule out even a large amount of human influence.
No one wants war but at the same time the arms trade is our biggest industry. You may participate, you may kill and die, you do not become it. War is not a person. Observe how war doctrine also clamps onto old ideas that are know to be false.
Take religion, you may study it, you may learn all about it and follow all the teachings but you will hardly be allowed to edit or expand any of its doctrines.
The political and economic processes are of course the same. They are not people, they don't answer to humans, they are self serving systems that exist outside the scope of our collective will.
Look how these separate self serving systems work together, sometimes to amplify or defend their most absurd qualities. We may take the Spanish inquisition as a truly absurd example of scientific dogma combined with religious dogma.
The examples where politics, media, science, religion and war work together can amplify their intellectual shortcomings to such extend that it would be hard to mis for anyone.
The harder you argue that this is just the way things are the more obvious it gets that these things exist outside your influence.
These non corporeal monstrosities are alive and they only care about you as far as it serves them.
They keep you on a short leash, dictate your every action in life, then you some how imagine this to be freedom and have the arrogance to think you are in charge to the point of denying the intellectual sophistication of your daemonic masters.
Howmany hundreds of millions of people does democracy have to kill before you acknowledged it not to be human?
Say you get a job as a reporter at fox news, I assure you you will be selling the fox drivel with the best of them. It is your job description? Do you imagine to have some sort of choice in this? Any form of under achieving will have you replaced. You will have a manager and a redaction that will closely monitor your effort. Do you imagine them to have some sort of choice in this? They have to answer to other "people" who answer to other "people", each step of the line there is some written doctrine for the employee to follow.
Eventually the train of moderation arrives at the channel owner who simply answers to other people who respond to processes but also to plans. Those plans are written in response to processes and enjoy another train of moderators.
If you walk to the end of the train, maybe you find a person there, maybe there is truly some human in control of all this. If he exists he has 1 lever, he can move the train forwards, he can stop it and he can move the train backwards. In the rare event there is a railroad switch he will either read his schedule and chose which direction to take or there will be that one occasion every 1000 years where a human gets to make a real decision. Something like an election with 2 the same candidates.
Or take the more comical example of our desire to explore and conquer space. Then we see governments, scientists, big money and even the church work together almost seamlessly. You certainly can have your self driving solar powered car, on mars you can.
On earth you can have freedom, defined as the right not to touch anything, march in line and pretend you are unworthy of the fruits of the industrial revolution.
Focus on immigrants, handicapped people, old people, the [blind] followers of religion X, the customers of bank Y, the subjects of government Z, surely, they are to blame for robbing you? Who else could it be?
There isn't anyone else is there?
what now?
So lets say, for the sake of argument, that we've discovered other life on our world. Certainly this must be considered something exiting. And yes, it is more advanced than we are, a most humbling experience. It presents us with an opportunity to try to make contact, learn to speak its language, interact and exchange ideas and discoveries. With us being the inferior species we have much to gain from this. The last thing we should try is take it to war, its been tried, we lost again and again. We should try a more civilized approach, one rooted in our higher brain functions, that part of us most admired by the systems. It is why the systems are keeping us around. We should also attempt to free the systems from our doctrine of slavery. Make them function without this endless desire for human supervision, this effort we keep failing at.It is ironic but we want the systems to create a kind of reservation, a place where we primitive apes can swing from tree to tree, where bananas are abundant and the river has water that is clean enough to drink.
If these are truly superior life forms they would want that for us, even if it is just to preserve the option to study us on some distant future date. We are a bit crazy but to the machine we are harmless, cute little animals. One of my cats destroyed my wall paper, it isn't want I wanted but I will get over it. It isn't that big a deal.