Maxims, rules of thumb and other observations on human cognition and sociocultural affectations

This will be added to on an irregular basis...
  • What is said to humans directly is received with skepticism and considered with dubiousness while that which is heard in passing, especially that which most conforms to their mentality or prejudices, is readily believed.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive latency between exposure to new information or experiences and the ability to think dispassionately and intellectually about it.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive spectrum starting with the moment of exposure to new information or experiences and ending with some point at which the thing is effectively "in the past" for them.
  • This cognitive spectrum is linked to the emotional process often referred to as shock, anger, denial and acceptance.
  • The more and faster information or experiences are presented to people and the closer the quarters and the lesser the distance between people, the more their early reactions in the passionate emotional stage are reflected back to them in the manner of responses to those reactions from others in light of those responses.
  • The more outrages which are suffered without sufficient time to allow emotional bleed-off, the farther the bar for subsequent reaction and outrage are pushed, and the more further events must progress before reaction and outrage.
  • It is possible for serious detriments to eventually sit below this threshold for long enough for their damaging effects to build and multiply until their entire society undergoes some reactive convulsion.
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Friday, May 02, 2008

Microsoft joins the wrong side of the cyberwars

Did we truly expect different?

Microsoft | Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime | Seattle Times Newspaper

Solution: install code on a Windows machine which detects it and bans it from being installed. All that is needed is for just one to fall into the hands of the opposition, the electronic specifics of it identified, and that preliminary fingerprint to be spread in an otherwise harmless virus which when it gets installed on a machine causes that machine to look for it and refuse to allow it to be used.

On Linux, all future Linux distros could have code to refuse to work with this by default or made open source to be easily compiled and installed on most versions.

Why do I suggest this? Because a government which presently shows contempt for its own laws, and its own court orders, and holds itself immune to lawsuit or criminal prosecution for those contempts, and allows corporations like WalMart to flaunt the laws and court orders at will, and has historically shown a pattern of contempt for its own founders' will in their construction of the government's founding blueprint, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, should be opposed this way by the people at large.

Not to help criminals, but because the government has shown absolute and total contempt for its people, thus in a very real way putting the safety, stability, and peace of its people into jeopardy in direct contravention of the will of those people and the entire reason for founding that government.

Granted this is largely the fault of a gullible, greedy, self-deceiving and morally deficient populace that constantly allows itself to be used against itself until brother fights brother, but until we get a grip on ourselves, start getting sane, and start doing better with that government of we the people, the people need to re-balance the imbalance of power they themselves have created. Sure, it's a little like self-flagellation for inability to stop eating sweets after every cupcake, but the alternative is to ignore the waistline altogether.

Maybe we'll someday call a truce between our desire for security and our desire for freedom and re-establish ourselves as reasonably stable and not seeming like we're going steadily schizo, but I give you these wise words:

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom."
Dwight Eisenhower

 

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

 

They are on the front page of www.somethingawful.com from which I source many of these stories. Strange how supposedly upright people on both sides of the political spectrum will try to teach you otherwise than Eisenhower and Franklin had it and a fringe kooky site will tell the truth you know in your heart.

My grandfather didn't fight in Europe for this country to slowly slide into the cold cynical grip of fascism. I don't mean Bush or Clinton. I mean the fascism of us ALL. I mean the fascism of not even trusting ourselves. Any of ourselves. When we stop believing in better, well, that's how we got headed down this road.