Daniel Schmachtenberger and global coordination

This post is a collection of quotes from Daniel Schmachtenberger on an episode of the Your Undivided Attention podcast (hosted by the Center for Humane Technology) in 2024 titled A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger. The episode can be found at this link. There are 2 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "When we talk about what the catastrophic risk landscape is, that's the landscape. The metacrisis is how do we solve all of that and recognizing that our problem solving mechanisms haven't even been able to solve the problems we've had for the last many years let alone prevent these things. And so the central orienting question, its like the U.N. has 17 sustainable development goals, there's really one that must supersede them all which is develop the capacity for global coordination that can solve global problems. If you get that one, you get all of the other ones. If you don't get that one, you don't get any of the other ones." (28:45)

2. "What is a post-internet, post-social media, post-info singularity fourth estate that creates an adequately educated citizenry? That's thinking about the way that our social technologies, our social systems have to upgrade themselves in the presence of the tech that obsoleted the way they did work. But we can also see, and we can give examples of this, how the new tech also makes possible new things that weren't possible before." (45:34)

George Orwell and free speech

This post is a collection of quotes from George Orwell (1903-1950) about free speech. There are 7 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "And so the game continues. The logical end is a régime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and every dissentient of any importance is in jail. Of course, such a régime will be fascism." (Spilling the Spanish Beans, New English Weekly, 1937)

2. "It is almost impossible to think without talking... Take away freedom of speech and the creative faculties dry up." (As I Please, 1944)

3. "Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." (Freedom of the Press, 1945)

4. "To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment." (Animal Farm, 1945)

5. "The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea of discipline versus individualism. The issue of truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background." (The Prevention of Literature, 1946)

6. "Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for 24 hours a day under the eyes of the police in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed." (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949)

7. "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." (Original preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography, 1953 posthumous)

Allan Bloom and reason

This post is a collection of quotes from philosopher Allan Bloom (1930-1992) about reason. There are 3 quotes listed below.

1. "Only the search back to the origins of one's ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them all, can liberate us." (Giants and Dwarfs, 1990)

2. "There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is not truth about them." (Giants and Dwarfs, 1990)

3. "The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others of consideration." (Closing of the American Mind, 1987)

Umberto Eco and information

This post is a collection of quotes from writer Umberto Eco (1932-2016) about information. There are 4 quotes listed below.

1. "After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopaedia." (Language and Lunacy, 1998)

2. "We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay." (The Name of the Rose, 1980)

3. "The problem with the internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate." (AZQuotes.com)

4."Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks... Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications." (Travels in Hyperreality, 1986)

Collection of quotes about museums

This post is a collection of quotes about museums. There are 3 quotes listed below.

1. "The purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display objects of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the study and education of the public." (Wikipedia: Museum, 3.30.24 UTC 09:15)

2. "[The word 'museum'] is originally from the Ancient Greek Moυσεῖov... which denotes a place or temple dedicated to the muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), and hence was a building set apart for study and the arts." (Wikipedia: Museum, 3.30.24 UTC 09:15)

3. "Ancient Greeks and Romans collected and displayed art and objects but perceived museums differently from modern day views. In the classical period the museums were the temples and their precincts which houses collections of votive offerings." (Wikipedia: Museum, 3.30.24 UTC 09:15)

List of Boards of Canada albums and EPs

This post is a list of Boards of Canada albums and EPs as of April 2nd, 2024. There are 4 albums (bold) and 5 EPs listed below chronologically. Source: Wikipedia

• Twoism (1995)
• Hi Scores (1996)
• Aquarius (1998)
• Music Has the Right to Children (1998)
• In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (2000)
• Geogaddi (2002)
• The Campfire Headphase (2005)
• Trans Canada Highway (2006)
• Tomorrow's Harvest (2013)

Collection of notes about information: 3.26.24 - 3.30.24

This post is a collection of notes I wrote between 3.26.24 and 3.30.24. Many quotes are slightly revised from the original version for grammar and suitability. There are 21 quotes listed below chronologically. Relevant links: Information blogging guidelines (IBG), Belief analysis, Information as an optimization problem (IAAOP)

1. "I see IBG as a network of directories to organize the world's information." (3.26.24)

2. "The advantage of communicating in IBG is that it's adding to an organized, stable, lasting structure whereas other media is ever-changing and replaced by new material at the top (news feeds, TV channels, phones, social media). This is the type of media we need for the future: organized, clear, run by individuals and gets away from 'likes', algorithms and popularity... It doesn't need RSS or any technology other than links and HTML. It's super simple: build a directory network of IBG pages." (3.26.27)

3. "I am a collector at heart and collecting is the key to our problems of communication and information. Organizing is necessary for any advanced collector." (3.27.24)

4. "This is also related to the metacrisis. All problems are wrapped up into one. It's all a big miscommunication. It's all a big trust problem." (3.27.24)

5. "What does the IBG network look like? Who uses it? Who makes it? Is it effective towards addressing misinformation or making things worse? Is it good for communication compared to Twitter, Facebook, RSS and Nostr?" (3.27.24)

6. "Directories and lists are arguably better for discovery than a search engine. Discovery is one of the benefits of organizing." (3.28.24)

7. "Normal literature, writing and books are not the answer. Not podcasts or the news or a social media website. We need a new way of writing and displaying information." (3.28.24)

8. "I'm imagining my idealized IBG website. It would be 100% the best IAAOP pages for every chunk. All the chunks organized the optimal way." (3.28.24)

9. "It's all about organizing the world's information, communication and beliefs. It all overlaps and is not separate." (3.28.24)

10. "We really gotta work towards getting humanity's communication away from social media. People should log their information, beliefs and opinions in an organized network and leave it at that. A feed is too crazy and makes everything so much more temporary. It's like waves crashing down on a sandcastle. The future of communication should be like a static directory. We also need to get away from the popularity contest, likes, shares and subscribers." (3.28.24)

11. "Imagine everyone producing information and analyzing information is using IBG and there's a huge network. Academics, governments, organizations, experts, think tanks, activists, they're all adding to the IBG network. And they're curating lists but there's also people who specialize in curation. It appears as a mess, but then a curator will try to clean it up for a specific topic." (3.28.24)

12. "The question is would this be useful for addressing misinformation? On the face of it, it looks like no. A mess would be the opposite of organized. I think belief analysis has to play a role. Belief analysis is a form of IBG. The curators would be the key. And using belief analysis has to be applied to all misinformation. I just think that standardizing information to be clear is good, not bad." (3.28.24)

13. "The IBG network would be a mixture of clarity and chaos alternating." (3.28.24)

14. "I just see IBG as a way to organize the world's information and beliefs. Misinformation could spread, but I'm not sure. I mean, would it be better than what we have now? The point is being clear and organized." (3.28.24)

15. "It's easier to see IBG as a single directory made by one person... The network of IBG lovers is too unclear. How would a person use it? To discover and explore the organized world of information? I think most IBG websites would be standalone, not too linked to the IBG network." (3.28.24)

16. "Maybe I should be thinking more in terms of what science has become. It's not an organized network and IBG probably won't achieve an organized network either, although it's designed in a way that could via directories and lists. It's a style, a method of clearness." (3.29.24)

17. "IBG is a new medium. Collecting and organizing is key to humanity's communication problems. The curators play a central role in IBG's success toward organizing the world's knowledge, information and beliefs." (3.29.24)

18. "IBG is like the 'academic standard' for the future but for clarity, not academic / scientific rigor. It's a communication standard. It's an art movement. It's a political movement. The goal is to advance the human intellectual project and a large part of it is making the world more transparent and clear. IBG is a catalyst for this, along with belief analysis." (3.29.24)

19. "Clarity is the selling point of IBG. To make a world where all knowledge is transparent. This is how we address misinformation also. Standards for clarity is what's missing in the world, allowing misinformation to grow and deceive people. Misinformation thrives in a world where excessive and unclear mediums dominate, where commentary dominates over information." (3.29.24)

20. "The question is how can we promote a style of clarity? We need a standard or a role model for clarity." (3.29.24)

21. "My focus now is on why IBG is good. And belief analysis. And what role they could play in the future of humanity. IBG won't be a centralized thing, but more like a method like the scientific method. Importantly, it's a mechanism to promote clarity, or a role model. We're tired of information hidden in paragraphs and long essays. We want clear information and transparency. The next frontier is making the obscure and difficult knowledge transparent and clear. Contests of IAAOP. IBG directories and networks curated by individuals. Organized knowledge. Belief analysis for improving communication of opinions." (3.30.24)

License: CC BY-SA 4.0