Do we have a barrier between us and other people?

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olympiadis
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11 Jul 2014, 8:01 pm

LOL, that's very typical, and similar in mechanism to what I've experienced throughout my life.
NTs do expect us to lie to them, and when we tell the truth there is trouble.

In a world of memes, the truth is not needed, wanted, or even acceptable.
My own observations suggest that what serves the hive best are crafted deceptions.

What you first describe as two forms of human life has been described by others as:
system intelligence vs individual intelligence.

It's kind of like schooling vs non-schooling.

The idea reminds me of a nature documentary video I watched where a school of fish was swimming in a circular manner for security while predators picked them off until every last fish out of hundreds was eaten.

This certain schooling behavior was originally evolved to solve some problem with survival, yet obviously causes other problems which the predators took advantage of rather quickly.
I think this serves to show the un-sustainability feature present in system intelligence.



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11 Jul 2014, 10:13 pm

Yes, I have always been told that it seemed to them that I had walls around me. People have said that I need to trust others in order to become closer or connected to them. I never understood what they meant. Even when I perceived that I had connections with someone later I find out that I did not. I thought someone was my best friend for 10 years and then later found out that I was not considered there best friend. In fact they did not even perceive me as a close friend at all. I'm now in my 40's and have no friends.


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Transyl
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12 Jul 2014, 7:44 pm

For me friends are always friends. Can't tell if most people feel that way. Many old friends ignore me on Facebook. That or they say one thing then don't respond after. I tell myself to not take it personally. That it's common behavior online. Which does seem to be the case. But I don't get it. Why are people not friendly online? Online is easier for me than real life. Yet they have no interest in talking to me online. Even now that I live thousands of miles away.

Another thing is a friend online was mentioning there old friends and didn't include me. Now this would be less hurtful had we literally not just had a conversation before he did this. Maybe he was talking about a certain group of friends... or it was because we didn't hang out more... at any rate, it felt like a slap in the face. :(

Olympiadis. If you don't mind me asking has your understanding of the hive mind and binary logic gates helped you? Or just in general how has it affected your life?

I ask because I've been feeling a bit better after reading it. Yet it is a lot to wrap my head around. I sort of knew it before you told me but you made it a lot more clear. It's kind of freeing. Though it opens up other questions.



olympiadis
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12 Jul 2014, 7:58 pm

Transyl wrote:
Olympiadis. If you don't mind me asking has your understanding of the hive mind and binary logic gates helped you? Or just in general how has it affected your life?


Well it is preferable to not knowing or just plain being confused, but overall I can't say that it helps much. Realization of such mechanisms and the nature of what is out there is a source of anxiety and fear.
In some ways it solidifies the wall between myself and NTs which naturally creates more friction.
NTs don't want to talk about or have any association to the idea of the hive mind because they feel it personally insulting and degrading to be thought of in that way. It's a hierarchy thing for them.

If autistics were the majority and we came up with a name of a medical condition to describe susceptibility to hosting the hive mind, and we told an NT that they have it, then there would be a huge rejection/denial. That's actually part of the nature of the hive mind, - a protection from invalidation.

So, I can't say that it does a lot of good. It sure doesn't serve to help one assimilate into the majority of NTs. History suggests that emulation and mimicry are more successful when one is a minority.


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Transyl
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12 Jul 2014, 11:56 pm

The thing about the hive mind is that autistics may not be locked into it. However, because of a natural instinct towards emulation, the hive mind could still inhibit our happiness and free thought. The system does not bind us yet we can bind ourselves to the system. Although we do not integrate we are still contaminated and limited by it's values and ideals. Like let's say it's a hive mind notion that one needs to have marriage to be happy. An autistic may have greater ability to defy this concept. But an autistic still lives in a world dominated by the hive mind. With it's ideas exploding off every word and image it births. Yet to realize the hive mind, to understand it, means that the hive mind loses a great deal of it's power.

This is where I think the knowledge could make me happier. No, I probably won't be any better at life. But I may be more able to cope and be happy with the life I have. By realizing it's okay to be happy in whatever can make me happy. As long as it doesn't hurt other people. I don't have to live by the quality of life standards that are forced on the rest of the world. Things like "without a lot of friends you're nobody" or "if you can't do all the things I can do you're broken and worthless."



olympiadis
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13 Jul 2014, 12:05 am

Transyl wrote:
The thing about the hive mind is that autistics may not be locked into it. However, because of a natural instinct towards emulation, the hive mind could still inhibit our happiness and free thought. The system does not bind us yet we can bind ourselves to the system. Although we do not integrate we are still contaminated and limited by it's values and ideals. Like let's say it's a hive mind notion that one needs to have marriage to be happy. An autistic may have greater ability to defy this concept. But an autistic still lives in a world dominated by the hive mind. With it's ideas exploding off every word and image it births. Yet to realize the hive mind, to understand it, means that the hive mind loses a great deal of it's power.


You seem to understand perfectly. We are contaminated. The least functional of us are the least contaminated. I am very contaminated, and I'm not so happy about that.



RetroGamer87
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13 Jul 2014, 5:07 am

Transyl wrote:
The thing about the hive mind is that autistics may not be locked into it. However, because of a natural instinct towards emulation, the hive mind could still inhibit our happiness and free thought. The system does not bind us yet we can bind ourselves to the system. Although we do not integrate we are still contaminated and limited by it's values and ideals.


Oh gods this is true!

Transyl wrote:
Like let's say it's a hive mind notion that one needs to have marriage to be happy.


Yeah, that sounds like one of those NTs that got lodged in my head (might still be a fun thing to try though). Another cause of internal conflict, I used to be lazy and I liked it that way but lately I've gotten this idea from NTs that I should "make something of myself". This has caused massive internal conflict, resulted in long arguments with myself and turned me into to an anxious, guilt ridden Buridan's ass.

Transyl wrote:
By realizing it's okay to be happy in whatever can make me happy.


Yeah... Maybe I should permit myself to be happy before I accomplish a long series of sisyphean goals.

If I could be happier, I don't know if that would give me enough energy to accomplish my goals or if it would make it so that I don't have to anymore.



olympiadis
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13 Jul 2014, 9:19 am

Though not impossible, it is difficult to justify motivation to produce something that is just likely to be taken and abused by an evil self-serving system of egos.

I'm currently doing a lot of volunteer work to help animals and shelters, and particularly some stray cats that used to have homes but have been abandoned by their ego/money obsessed owners.


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RetroGamer87
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13 Jul 2014, 11:06 am

Yeah, those egos are pretty evil. I mean, a while ago I signed up for this inspirational quote of the day email thing. I thought it would just be a bit of fun. It's free, it only takes 30 seconds a day to read, what could be the harm? What I found was something more insidious. > 90% of the quotes boiled down to "work harder and you will be rewarded". There's memes to make people work harder and harder. In many fields, eight hours a day isn't good enough anymore. When I was a kid I asked "why are some people rich?" The answer came back "because they work hard". This confused me then and now.

I mean, say Joe Sixpack works 40 hours every week and gets paid $50,000 a year. The top execs at his company get paid a hundred times as much. They get $5,000,000 a year. Do they work longer hours than Joe? Yes. Are their hours a hundred times longer than Joe's? No. There a not 4,000 hours in one week. I don't think it's humanly possible to work hard enough to justify millions of dollars per year. Certainly not billions. So if the exacs work double the hours and get paid one hundred times as much, where does the money come from? It must mean Joe and his fellow workers, while getting paid $50,000 a year, are producing say, $100,000 a year of goods for the company. This is a simplified example but you get the idea.

But not all the companies products are going to execs. I mean, it's not as though the whole company belongs to Richard R Rich. The company belongs to shareholders. What isn't paid to the workers is paid in dividends. Now here's the thing. I'm on a pension and I've had people complain at me. They say they work hard, pay taxes and then the tax money goes to me, who didn't earn it. But, how is that any different from Joe Sixpack working hard, and then half what he produces goes to a shareholder who didn't earn it. Just because a hundred years ago they needed some start up capitol. A hundred years ago they sold shares in the then new company but these shares have paid for themselves many times over, they've each been bought and sold many times. Their original owners are long dead. So why must the company pay off a debt that has already been paid to someone who has already died?

People say corporations are evil. As in they do evil things. I think the very concept of a corporation is evil. I'm not in favour of communism (unless maybe it involves post-scarcity economics). Communism is a flawed system too. I've heard people say "it would've worked if they didn't have Stalin in charge". No. The system itself was flawed. Some of my favourite electronics were manufactured by corporations. Mass production has it's benefits (though I'm waiting for the age of customization where I design my own stuff and then it's made to order). But I like the idea of companies. I just think there must be a better way to generate capital that what we use. I mean, Playstation vs Xbox? You may prefer one or the other but under communism there would only be one console (made by the state) and with no competition it wouldn't be nearly as good as what you get with two competing brands. The state would just say "good enough" and then we'd never get beyond the NES. Competition can produce better products but in a way it can produce worse products. I mean, look at Apple. Their rivals are the PC and the Android phone. How do they compete? Do they improve their products or to they improve their marketing to make their products look better without actually making them better? Sometimes instead of an arms race to make the best product you get an arms race to make the best ad. The hive drones flock to the brand with the best marketing campaign and this encourages that company and their competitors to focus more on marketing than making a better device because they want to repeat what worked last time.

But getting back to memetics, I mean, we've got this meme that you're nobody unless you work eight or more hours per day. Eight hours in the past but lately it seems like twelve or more is becoming more common. Now for a while i had this crazy conspiracy that the rich guys were controlling our media to condition people to work harder so they could become more rich. They'd have all these aesops in the media about the importance of hard work and even if you work hard you should work even harder (job and uni at the same time? Nuttiest idea I ever heard) and you should work overtime and be loyal to the company and yada yada yada. I thought even when people were complaining about a company damaging the environment that was to distract them from how they overwork their employees. Or this idea that Asia has a cruel work ethic (not necessarily untrue) was to distract us from how the Western work ethic, is getting almost as bad. So that was my conspiracy theory. Not anymore.

I used to think the rich guys were using memetic engineering on us. Wrong. There is no memetic engineering. People don't control memes, memes control people. The rich and poor alike are under the same control. They are all ruled by the memes. Memes are the dominant form of life on Planet Earth.
/wall



olympiadis
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13 Jul 2014, 7:17 pm

RetroGamer87 wrote:
People don't control memes, memes control people. The rich and poor alike are under the same control. They are all ruled by the memes. Memes are the dominant form of life on Planet Earth.
/wall


YES! that's it.
Some people do try to control memes but in doing so they are serving other memes. There is a sick symbiosis between ego and meme. Humans are hosts for both.

How about this?
I recently saw an internet meme that seems to be very popular, especially in the business consulting arena. It says:
"What doesn't serve you weakens you"

Substitute "weakens" with kills or diminishes for other versions.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and this kind of thinking sickens me, - weakens me (lol).
Serving our own egos is what kills us inside, - the real us.
Ego is completely fabricated and imaginary. In most cases the individual person is responsible for fabricating only a small percentage of their own ego. Most of it is borrowed, and much of it is from people who's bodies died long ago.

Corporations are like breeding grounds for memetics. Evolving processes that actually solve real problems and don't create new problems are weeded out because they eliminate the need for people's jobs. Corporations like to grow, and to do that you need only create more problems.
Most jobs out there don't solve anything real at all. They are simply embedded support systems for memes.
The nature of self-organizing is an increase in complexity.
We respond to serve this monster by creating more money and more debt.



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13 Jul 2014, 9:35 pm

I really like reading what you guys think. I had never put into words what you have been able to... But I agree completely! So what is religion? More memes?


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olympiadis
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13 Jul 2014, 9:44 pm

nyxjord wrote:
I really like reading what you guys think. I had never put into words what you have been able to... But I agree completely! So what is religion? More memes?


Yep, with a great many very obvious immune systems.
Believe in one thing only.
Spread that belief.
If you don't think certain things, then punishment.
Eliminate other beliefs or thoughts.
Primarily self-esteem/ego based reward/punishment system.
Instructions for assigning dichotomies and hierarchies.

That's not to say you can't be religious or a believer without being controlled by memetics, but clearly most are.



RetroGamer87
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14 Jul 2014, 4:09 am

olympiadis wrote:
How about this?
I recently saw an internet meme that seems to be very popular, especially in the business consulting arena. It says:
"What doesn't serve you weakens you"
Yeah, it's typical for the drones to think in false dichotomies (if you can call it thinking). They don't acknowledge that the vast majority of things and people are not personally out to help or harm them. It sounds like a phrase spouted by one of the alpha drones.
olympiadis wrote:
Serving our own egos is what kills us inside, - the real us.
That sounds about right. Sometimes I feel like I'm falling into that trap. I shouldn't judge my self worth based on my job or my relationship status.
olympiadis wrote:
Corporations are like breeding grounds for memetics. Evolving processes that actually solve real problems and don't create new problems are weeded out because they eliminate the need for people's jobs. Corporations like to grow, and to do that you need only create more problems.
Yeah, they make employees work overtime but they don't care if they spend long hours doing work that is inefficient. The boss hands out senseless make-work and then it takes all day and half the night to complete it. If an employee stays on 'till midnight and doesn't question how meaning his make-work is that's a sign that he's a loyal employee. It's work longer, not smarter. Be loyal to the disloyal boss.

Another example. Labour unions campaign against the introduction of more modern machinery. They don't want to get their work done in half the time because they get paid by the hour. Besides which employers, if they introduced modernized machinery would just fire half the workers, not reduce their hours.

We have more and more automation but has our workload been reduced like in The Jetsons? No. I've heard we're going from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. This is one of the most infuriating memes of all. Service economy? Most of the service work is meaningless make-work.

Instead of measuring how many people are unemployed we should be measuring how many people are actually doing something useful in their jobs. I mean, often on the news they'll announce some new construction project and they'll say "it will create 500 jobs". Creating 500 jobs is only worth while if the building itself is actually needed for some useful purpose. And it doesn't create jobs, it just regives jobs to the same construction workers who were on the last construction project (and think how many buildings you've seen needlessly rebuilt to keep them in work).
olympiadis wrote:
Most jobs out there don't solve anything real at all. They are simply embedded support systems for memes.
All these people doing make-work jobs and then they complain about me not working full time. They say I'm not being useful. Would they think I'm more useful if I did a purposeless but difficult job? They say I'm wasting the tax payers money. If I flew a billion dollar bomber in a purposeless war, wouldn't that be wasting a greater amount of money? There are many hard working people who waste far more money than I do browsing the web most of the day.
olympiadis wrote:
The nature of self-organizing is an increase in complexity.
What is it they say? The buerocracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy? Is that a joke or is it true? Both. It's a true joke.
olympiadis wrote:
nyxjord wrote:
So what is religion? More memes?
Yep, with a great many very obvious immune systems.
Believe in one thing only.
Spread that belief.
If you don't think certain things, then punishment.
Eliminate other beliefs or thoughts.
Primarily self-esteem/ego based reward/punishment system.
Instructions for assigning dichotomies and hierarchies.
And if I could add, they have systems to ignore the parts of the Bible that don't gell with modern ideas. Execution for trivial crimes? Ignored by modern Christians. How to sell your daughter into slavery? Ignored by modern Christians. Bits of the Bible that say other Gods exist? Ignored by modern Christians.

Christians ignore much of biblical morality then they say the Bible should be in schools to teach kids morality because they claim it's the basis of modern law when they themselves don't follow biblical law.

I even got into an argument with a Christian who said his morality was superior because it was objective and unchanging. I asked him why he didn't follow kosher dietary restrictions and he said it was because Paul found it convenient to drop those so it would be easier for him to convert the bacon eating gentiles. Then he went back to saying his morality was unchanging.

Their morality changes with every century and every time they say it was always this way. The ignore the parts of the Bible where completely different systems of morality are written very plainly. It's a good thing their morality changes because we wouldn't want to live under the laws of Leviticus. It's no surprise that they change because memes are subject to evolution and in evolution what can't change will die.

Another religious immune system? Most people have a need to socialize but if the church is their social life, they will find it hard to leave. The benefits they get from socializing they will ascribe to religion. These drones have a hard time socializing with anyone not in the same sub culture anyway.

A more severe case of the same thing is some denominations such as the Mormons or Amish or others. If they leave the church they can never see their friends and family again. The Amish say their rumspringa gives them the choice to live or stay. It's not much of a choice if they ever want to see their families again. Not to mention that they will be ill equipped to earn a living in the outside world after years of isolation (earning a living can be a confounding task even for us heretics in a world designed to make everything more inefficient and values hard work over smart work). If they stay on the farm, they may have a hard life but not a confusing one. No need to choose and rechoose their career.

Why did the Christian meme kill other religions? Compare with the old pagan religions. The pagans say "the gods are immortal. You are not". Then Paul comes along and says "you can have everlasting life". The drones liked this reward so much they didn't even ask for proof. In the old religions, the only reward they got was a successful harvest (maybe) and assurance that the sun god would rise the next day.

Another immune defense of religion is God of the gaps. Nowadays most religious people will not claim that the sun is the sun god anymore. Their unchanging religion must change to keep up with scientific discoveries. Even Christians once thought natural phenomena was the direct action of God. Now they think it's just part of a system he set up a long time ago. But the gaps never go away completely because as any good scientist knows, the more questions you answer the more new questions you create. Your modern day Christian is more sophisticated than your medieval Christian so he has gaps they never even thought of in the middle ages. They say the gaps for God are shrinking. They're not. They're growing. The more we discover about science the more we discover we don't know.

Related to that is that if you pray for something, God will grant it for you but don't pray for a million dollars because "that would be selfish". The real reason is because when they don't get a million dollars they'll notice so instead they're asked to pray for something less tangible like happiness or help for people who live thousands of miles away.

Religion truly is a form of life. You have different denominations of Christianity but they all share a common ancestor, Proto-Christianity. That descended from Judaism and is cousin to Islam. Judaism may be distantly related to the old pagan religions. What we observe here is speciation. Just like in carbon based life one species may be the ancestor to many.



Transyl
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14 Jul 2014, 5:27 am

olympiadis wrote:
You seem to understand perfectly. We are contaminated. The least functional of us are the least contaminated. I am very contaminated, and I'm not so happy about that.

I would think my hive mind contamination is low. Perhaps more accurately, my ability to emulate or integrate the software is low. I'm also what I'd consider, at least on a relative scale, low functioning. So for me your theory seems to fit.

RetroGamer87 wrote:
If I could be happier, I don't know if that would give me enough energy to accomplish my goals or if it would make it so that I don't have to anymore.

The hive mind is naturally against happiness because happiness rests on simplicity. A simple person has few needs. As a result they will do less to feed the system. But happiness also requires a sense of connection and doing what feels right to you. Like Olympiadis helping the animals. We all have something important to us. Because of that I don't think you'd run out of goals.

nyxjord wrote:
I really like reading what you guys think. I had never put into words what you have been able to... But I agree completely! So what is religion? More memes?

Olympiadis and RetroGamer87 gave a really detailed answer. Religion is a meme and is corruptible. People do try to focus on the positive. Like when I was Christian I thought I was trying to get everyone to heaven. That was the way I viewed it. Rather than the fact I was telling people they have hell waiting for them if they didn't convert. Memes set you on a certain mindset that makes you do their bidding without seeing the potential harm in it.

Now my beliefs are different because they are not bound to a religion. Faith without religion can remain pure. You can believe in love without secretly giving cause for war. You can hope for all to be happy without demanding they be like you.



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14 Jul 2014, 9:04 pm

Transyl wrote:
We all have something important to us. Because of that I don't think you'd run out of goals

Kind of. If I sever my connection with the hive and stop trying to impress them, one of my goals is to buy more consumer electronics and video games. That's why I'm not completely anticorporate. Some of my favourite stuff is made by corporations.



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14 Jul 2014, 10:07 pm

RetroGamer87 wrote:
Kind of. If I sever my connection with the hive and stop trying to impress them, one of my goals is to buy more consumer electronics and video games. That's why I'm not completely anticorporate. Some of my favourite stuff is made by corporations.

Pretty similar to me. When I had extra money it mostly went to Blu-rays. The amount I've given towards movies and shows is pretty substantial. While I do like certain corporations (Disney, Sony, etc.) I see it more as supporting art and artists. Any media form is a form of art which makes it valuable. You never know what movie or game can end up meaning a great deal to someone.