Hacking Quora

There is this thought that hacking is cool. So, a question appeared on Quora: Can-Adrian-Lamo-hack-Quora? Adrian, himself, answered the question. So did I, on August 29. This morning, I got a note that the answer was locked as Quora Moderation flagged it as not appropriate. Oh well. So, it is reposted here (and deleted it on Quora).

Ah, a voice of reason? One comment (by Jeremy [note 9/14/15 - this answer is missing]) on Adrian's answer asked why the "cool" response by those who think hacking is of use. But, then, the one retort (Amy [note 9/14/15 - this answer is missing]) said that it is the way to know how something works.

It is worse than sad. A whole generation without ethics? Many of these are U.S. kids for whom we have people putting themselves and their lives on the line minute by minute so that the kids can, essentially, break the law. Give me a break, even if there are not specifics, yet, stated by law, all of this interest very much is unethical and immoral (of a small "i" so as to quiet the harpers).

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One could look at it like this. If I know that my neighbor's house is unlocked, ought I go in and make myself comfortable, eat the food, steal, and what have you? Now, at one point, I would have expected most to say no, you do not have the right, and it's illegal. But, now, these kids are saying yes (make yourself at home). This type of thinking is just that.

Okay, suppose I only go in to "see how his house works" (see the idiocy, yet - the above retort)? Is that okay? Well, not, it's still venturing on the highly unethical. Oh, I know, people seem to have accepted pilfering.

But, to know how it works? We can determine things like that with thought processes. This whole thing is reductionism gone wild. Gosh, thanks logical positivism? But, perhaps, the focus on code (and who can piss further) is the main symptom of the underlying problem which no one seems to be looking at. Ah, so much work to do.

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Now, we can see with the Internet, that it was let out very loosely and without proper forethought. To me, Adrian would do much better if he helped with discussions of just what went bad and where did it go bad along this whole trek of stumbling.

I think that we let the genie out of the bottle, as I sit back and marvel at the idiocy that is driving people daily.

But, not me. I'm not mobile for one thing (had an idiot box for about a week - enough - I'll try again when I have a clear experiment defined). I have never bought from Amazon or any of the big sellers. I do not look at ads (quite a feat to keep the concentration from that dense bit of nothingness). I distinctly remember the chagrin and pit-of-the-stomach feeling when the marketers started their incursion. There are several things that I do daily to keep myself free from the bonds of the internet-way (are birds free?).

Now, there are arses who argue that the web is a commercial, marketing space. Say what? The original motivation was communication and then the collegial interchanges related to real thinking and work. Anymore, I am not sure how things ought to go. That they stink to high heaven is the message that needs to be brought to attention.

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The best thing for me would be to skip around all of the knee-jerk reactions to what is supposedly "cool" and worthy of adulation. I'm a newbie on Quora and will have to filter better.

But, Adrian being asked a question like this is the first thing that ought to raise a flag. The question is anonymous which makes it even more mischievous.

Why, questioner, why would someone respond that they could pull a bit of highway robbery (that is a type of pissing contest you expect from young, immature males) without getting caught? You see, getting caught is the problem? Not the actual ignominious deed?

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Finally, hackers, et al, ought to be aware that some people want to do real stuff via the web and are prevented from doing so by all of the partying that goes on. What all of those partying persons ought to know is that their little bit of glee is supported by all types who patiently put up with their childish antics: those who feed them, those who house them, those who clean up after them, those who bail them out, and those who care for them as they need detox (et al) and medical assistance, and so forth.

Where are the real contributions from this crowd?

Like I said, it is sad that we have kids wanting to follow in this type of footstep. 

Remarks:  Modified: 09/14/2015

09/14/2015 -- 

Multisense Realism

Forward: This is a brief summarization of activity on Quora.

Early on in Quora (after about two weeks as a writer), I answered a question (Aug 8, 2015), in which I used psychether. At the time, I had been using the term for years. So, the following sets the usual tone.

How-do-some-people-give-off-a-tough-vibe-without-even-trying-Did-they-go-through-some-hardship-or-have-unemotional-parents/answer/John-M-Switlik

Finally, the important word is vibes. You see, we warp something (explaining how will require, first, some semblance of sanity on the part of those who carry the so-called best-and-brightest label) that I call psychether in a manner that is analogous to what our friend Albert showed with our matter (as in, our smiling-or-not faces and their attached body) warps space-time. If the questioner is a vibe reader, we want to hear more.

Notice that I mention Einstein's work as that has been a motivation all along. Of course, the phenomenon of psychether involves a lot more than human interaction.

One of the things I started to do on Quora was sync with my blog posts. As I was doing this work, I did a search on the term and found that there had been other uses. A musical group used this as a title for a CD plus there was at least one userid of this name. So, I did this post, psychether, on Aug 11, 2015. The post shows an image from mid-1990s entry in a database that used the term in relation to my research. This is to establish the precedence though the term itself does not do more than suggest something about the operational aspects.

--- On MR ---

Later on Quora, I ran across the concept of Multisense Realism (MR) while browsing questions. The concept and thoughts struck a chord. Because of theme resonated with psychetheral issues, I answered the question. The question was formulated in the fall of 2012; my answer was last Friday, Sep 4, 2015).

      Does-MR-Help-Explain-Consciousness/answer/John-M-Switlik

Now, taking this further, there is a website plus a Facebook page for MR.

       multisenserealism.com/
       www.facebook.com/solitropy

Finally, having run across this work, I began to pull together my thoughts. One thing that the MR questioner noted was that people could find usefulness for and apply his concept without going all the way to spirituality or metaphysics (my interpretation).  

--- Space-time++ ---

So, I will now do a brief look at my recent musings in this regard. Of course, a lot of my work bordered on metaphysics. However, I spent my career working in geometry, meaning that I touched all the time the mathematics related to differential geometry. In the back of my mind, I was ruminating on early work which goes back decades and how all of this relates.

My original thrust had several motivations which I will get to eventually. Given that I was working alone, except for occasional discussion with some peers (to be named), the sole criterion was my own understanding. But, science has to be public to be. And, public is more than the fact of a special interest group.

Of late, it had occurred to me to take another step. I had already addressed some of this thought in either/or terms. There are several posts along this line, but they come from a claim that harmonizes Anselm and Pascal (Blaise, if you would) with the modern views. In my mind, I might add. You see, some supposed smart folks are being idiotic. One side calls the other blind while the blind call their accusers delusional.

Too, people are running after larger and larger experiments. Sheesh. Let's just use the whole planet as a laboratory. Wait, has that not already happened?

So, of late, I have been thinking that all we need is one little addition that would answer all sorts of questions. Too, we could have some type of reasonable response that is obvious (hence, scientific). But, what is that?

We'll get there, but let's use a reminder from the early days of computer evolution. We had a stage where we had 2 1/2 dimensions as we were not quite ready to handle 3D? Actually, in the 2G to 3G wars in telecom, we had something similar.

So, we'll talk ST++, as in space-time plus-plus. What is this? There are rules about how one goes about this type of thing. But, I'm going to appeal to von Neumann when he said that we don't have to understand mathematics, we just get used to it. As in, if it works, why have to explain? But, human nature wants to tear things apart.

MR brought in a more wholistic approach. There have been others. Lots. So, I will look further at this. Too, though, I will be going back to work beyond harping at people. I have been blogging about truth engineering since 2007. I first wrote up the discipline in 2000 and have slowly been working things (alone).

During this time, I have calmed myself with Faraday's work. That is, he was an early experimenter who helped get theoretics settled. Michael was about 40 years older than James Clerk Maxwell, for example. Why does the analogy having a tie in with electromagnetics? Look at MR's approach.

Too, this work is being done in a autodidact mode.

---

So, I have become convinced that an operational approach is now suitable to bring forth. There are many analogs from computing: closures, extensions, etc.

I had hoped that the internet would be amenable to gathering the data. And, that may be a more viable thought now than before, except there is so much noise now. Fortunately, a lot of my work dealt with reducing this type of interference.

My next step will be to look at MR further; too, I want to document all of the different views that I have run across over the years. At the same time, I will work on firming up my hypotheses (several) sufficiently that they could be discussed.

Remarks:   Modified: 09/07/2015

09/07/2015 --

Varieties

For now, a collection of links:

• Peter_Sloterdijk - Man and machine will merge. That is his message. Well, we need to pay some attention to him, for a bit. 
• Joan_Didion - looking back: Slouching_Towards_Bethlehem (Scriptor Press). 
• Deep learning and machine intelligence  
• Our mathematical universe (my earlier post) 
• ...

Remarks:   Modified: 09/10/2015

09/10/2015 --