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Chess players, armored cars, and a dance epidemic
A month ago I published this flash fiction piece titled General Relativity which is a magical realist school bully story. In a month it racked up zero readings, so I’m giving it a selfpromotion link over here. Networks push fake followers, social media is dead.
Jolly Silvers
We have stuff going down over at Medium. It’s actually a tiny little retro-futuro-psychedelick sci-fi punk novel called Jolly Silvers. Check it out.
Becoming undoomed
This is the second follow up on Does Culture Need Humans, originally published as an addendum to the book Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena. In that paper I argued that memes control genes, and since culture is the main force driving the evolution of homo sapiens, it is a quasi-living entity that is also the pinnacle of evolution. Here I am looking at a scenario in which culture changes due to external factors.
I remember being perplexed finding out futurology was actually about determining possible futures. For me all of science and technology seemed to be pretty occupied with the future, so I expected futurology to be about why there are no masses of chimney pot hat wearing bearded men flying around on planes that seem to be made out of sticks and bed linen, since once that was supposed to be the future, or maybe find out what it was those people did who were better than most at foretelling what was to come.
Anyway, here’s an attempt that goes both ways: determine a possible future and a suggest a more efficient approach to determining it. The original thesis is that life creates the reality in which culture created humans, to carry on the project of expansion and taking over the universe, thus the following is also an attempt at cultural futurology. Our thought experiment is a doom scenario with a twist, and it will be presented with a twirl. The premise is the following:
A cosmic event in the Solar System will render the Earth inhabitable. (An asteroid is about to or has already hit a planet or a moon, causing a cascading effect, changing the orbit of planets, maybe a planet was outright blown to pieces for a shower of megaton asteroids, or maybe it’s a black hole moving in at great speed.)
We find out that we have some 10 to 20 years to make an escape.
Aren’t we lucky?
Midday
All we have to do is move all of humanity into space except those who cannot or will not move. Fortunately we have about ten thousand nuclear warheads lying around, which are no longer useful for their original purpose - that is blowing each other up -, but could be excellent for propulsion, putting really huge vessels into orbit. Background radiation and environmental concerns don’t matter as much at this point. There is some time to manufacture some more nuclear bombs, develop more efficient ways of using them, so we could eventually launch tens of thousands of ships into space. We would like to bring some things with us too, not as much as we could though, since people are priority, so no elephants or sculptures.
At the same time we can set up some serious operation on the Moon, build a few mass drivers, start constructing space habitats of the O’Neill cylinder variety - they are spacious tubular constructions that spin to create comfortable artificial gravity inside. Alternatively we could colonize the Moon and somehow move it out of the endangered region. Also we could do both the space habitat and Moon colony.
A planetary evacuation is costly, but then again a couple of decades worth of military spending, infrastructure building and maintenance, carbon dioxide credits have just become available for funding the great project. People need to be informed, prepared and moved into place in en masse. It’s the greatest undertaking of human history and we can cope all of it with our present technical capabilities.
Day One
Well, nobody expected the whole remaining humanity to fly by Voyager 1, but here we are. The new place is small but cosy. We watched the last spaceships leave and the big farewell party. Now we are on our own in space, gravely depressed for the loss we suffered. Most people lost loved ones on Earth, our planet is gone, our home, our country, history, art, and all the holy places too.
It’s a new life, with new rules. No fire outdoors, no shooting, absolutely no wars (unless we wish to go medieval), no cars. No rich or poor, no growth. Asteroid mining for profit, wiring money through light years, megacorporations, colonialist logic make no sense. Return on investment can wait a couple of centuries. It’s not a sci-fi social commentary metaphor with light makeups, it’s a lifeboat, where you don’t want eat one another.
Most aspects of society needs to be balanced and controlled. A number of things that we considered basic until now are no longer accessible in reality, however we can have them in virtual world. In fact we will probably need to matrix ourselves in an organized way to avoid a total mental breakdown of society. Some mercyful artificial intelligence may help us during and after the evacuation, supervising the efficient dissemination of knowledge, keeping up individual psychological composure.
We have now centuries before reaching another star system and with so much time on our hands and for lack of better things to do, humanity may turn to total spiritual rebuilding. Old religions were tied to our planet in so many ways, most of it had to be left behind, now we need to start anew, incorporate actual Earth-shattering events that went down, the human effort and emotions, integrate our new virtual life, and the holy reality our fleet is drags with itself into the cosmos.
Day Zero
In our cultural futurology thought experiment we now return to the day we find out about the impending doom. Are we better than dinosaurs?
As the news breaks, people realize they don’t really need to keep saving for their pension or pay mortgage. Shortly all stores of value go to zero, stocks, gold, money. General loss of focus and motivation follows. Some panic, some say they were right all along and then panic. Kingdoms fall, all power is lost. Now we are trying to save ourselves, while the whole society is racing down the slope of regression towards disintegration. Some systems, disciplined factions manage keep their act together and evacuate, losing a lot of time and life in the process, for a fraction of effect, meaning serious risk to their actual survival.
Even though societies may have various contingency plans, everyday operation includes the repression of the thoughts of doom and rightly so. Liberal democratic capitalism too is based on the repression of the fact that all turns to dust within an undefined period of time - emphasis on undefined. We need to distort our view of the future in order to be operational.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
What do we do now? You are a leader of your country in live video conference with your colleagues. The news is not out yet and you have two choices. One we call Suppression, the other Unity.
In the Suppression scenario we apparently decide on not letting the news of impending doom go public. The population is kept in ignorance, all available resources are channeled to the evacuation project, all work done behind the veil, until everything is prepared for a full disclosure. Benefits of this approach are: disorder avoided, stress delayed, with tolerable level of efficiency. Downsides are: depriving people of the knowledge is depriving them of pride of being part of the effort, resulting in tension, and the possible burden of those who could have been saved while mankind was kept asleep. The single biggest obstacle to overcome is suppression itself, not only because it eats into your resources, but because what you do involves masses of workers, heavy lifting and numerous nuclear detonations.
How about Unification? You decide to go ahead with the full disclosure. Tell people something like this: “Look, we have a hundred and fifteen months to leave the Earth. It’s terrible news but we can make it. We will work together and try to save every single person. The worst we can do is panic. So we need to carry on with life as if nothing happened. Which will be hard since everything is lost and nothing has value anymore. Only survival has real value, so right now we introduce a new global currency: evacuation karma coin or spacebuck (any odd name will suffice) which will be backed by the effort that goes into saving humanity. You might turn out to be too old, dead or otherwise unfit to leave when the time comes, but with the evacuation karma coin you will be able to save your family or anyone you choose. Learn something that will be useful off the planet, help and encourage your fellow men.”
Quite a sound bite there. We hope we didn’t misjudge mass psychology and the efficiency we gained by openness will not be negated by the insanity and anarchy induced by stress. Also we expect our newly invented emergency currency to soak up fleeing capital preventing total financial meltdown, even better: we use the momentum to turn from growth to post-scarcity.
Now, whether Suppression or Unity would produce better results is up for discussion. As a closure, for such an event I’m offering an opinion and a slogan. Whatever the decision will be, we should choose wisely what we try preserve from the Old World, lest we end up holding on to something in vain. And then our slogan shall be: We are no dinosaurs!
The Death of a Superposition
This text is a follow up on my paper Does Culture Need Humans, originally published as an addendum to the book Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena. In that paper I argued that memes control genes, and since culture is the main force driving the evolution of homo sapiens, it is a quasi-living entity that is also the pinnacle of evolution. In this paper I would like to go on exploring and expanding this concept by adding the emergence of reality and consciousness.
Common sense likes to keep track of current high tech. In the beginning things worked due to the will of gods. Later on, in the industrial age people saw all complex mechanisms as clockwork. Nowadays, in the age of information, everything seems to work like computers. So now let’s say living cells are quantum computers. Right away we should note that quantum computers are the proposed new frontier of computing, that are to use quantum bits instead of transistors, should they come true, could be excellently weaponized to break encryption and do other things too. Cells, on the other hand, cannot do that, but they reproduce and repair themselves, working their way around in their environment. We better put it in a mildly different way: cells are the original quantum computers. They do compute and they do lots of quantum stuff. They can see the light, wavelengths of it, even harvest it, they also can sense the magnetosphere of our planet, work magic with enzymes, exchange information. Cellular life has a intimate relationship with the quantum world, which it knows a lot more than we do.
Life’s mode of operation, its measurements, and relationship to the quantum world gives rise to the reality we know, and even though consciousness doesn’t seem to create the Universe, life may have a lot more to do with the midscale reality of the world we live in. Up to this point, we are moving along the lines of Robert Lanza’s biocentric universe theory, and go a bit further: it’s about the accumulation, complexity, and evolution of information. It’s a culture-centric universe. Here, natural selection is not even a tool, it’s finding anything worth salvaging in death. It’s not enough to survive, you need to be safe, and the universe is not safe.
Thus our original quantum computer has an attitude. It has no measurement problem. Nature hates superposition, its life depends on collapsing the wave function and creating that one living universe out of the fog of multiverse. It’s not even an interpretation, just a reading of Schrödinger’s cat: this is where the underlying mathematical beauty of the universe begins, with the creation and production of information. Information as in something which stands for something else. Who reads then?
When probable impossibilities meet
As per the original thesis culture moves like a ghost in front of life. It starts slow, but on the wave of complexity eventually rides in the perfect tool for the goal: a network of a hundred billion quantum computers, a creature with the conscious brain. After eons of working out symbiosis, social species, protocultural memes, culture is no longer a shadow below the waves, it can really start to live in its own body, which is language, moving freely as the pure software of the quantum brain.
The first living cell is a really persistent improbability (not ruling out creation by a momentary Boltzmann-God) it grows exponentially, since from the very first moment it wants to take over the world. Consciousness on the other hand has a lot on its plate, doesn’t really feel efficient and most of the time it doesn’t seem to be bothered with total universal domination.
We are high functioning primates that are not completely fit for survival were it not for integrating some multi-dimensional factors around and inside ourselves. Consciousness is strange, because is not us. It partly feels alien, partly unreal. Much of it we sometimes call social construct, though society is just as much a construct of culture as are humans. Some of it seems to be simulation, which would bring us back to life creating our reality (and the fear that it might not be real enough for us to complete our mission).
Consciousness is the mark on our forehead. It is easy to get lost in the mirror hall of hard problems, harder to enjoy the journey inside culture. The good news is, even though we are moving against the flow of the Big Bang and do not know yet how it will work out, we always control more of the Universe, than we think.

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Does Culture need Humans?
Abstract: The pinnacle of evolution is culture which guides the evolution of humanity, by ruling genes through memes. The following text was published in what was to be Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena and ended up as the Hungarian version of the same. Translation by the author.
If there's anything harder to accept than humans are descended from apes, is that we are descendants of apes and we are not the pinnacle of evolution. The assertion that on the top of the evolutionary tree we find culture, is peculiar not only because it de-biologizes the Darwinian system to some extent, but also works really well with the extremely biologized interpretation of memetics.
The insides of a coat
The phenomenon, which scientific terminology calls culture - and common language would rather use the word civilization - is key to human existence. This existence means the whole infrastructure of survival, from drinking water supply system down to individual level: that while on colder climate an animal grows thicker fur, man puts on a thick coat. The genetic answer expressed in fur was replaced with a complex object, composed of the technology manufacturing textiles with various qualities, patterns of construction, logistics, fashionable colours and brands. Coats created by culture are not only the result of their own evolution, they go beyond natural body covers in their space of application and their information/genetic background. Is it a real possibility, that humans were tailored to fit this coat, (or to be more general) this hyperevolutionary environment?
The fact that within human inheritance culture is of the most importance was pointed out by the father of immunology, Nobel-laureate Sir Peter Medawar. In his lectures titled The Future of Man we see vivid memories of the rise and fall of Nazism: Medawar states the primacy of culture, and warns of the reckless overuse of notions based on genetic analogies and the pseudo-scientific biologization of human beings.
"The conception I have just outlined is, I think, a liberating conception. It means that we can jettison all reasoning based upon the idea that changes in society happen in the style and under the pressures of ordinary genetic evolution; abandon any idea that the direction of social change is governed by laws other than laws which have at some time been the subject of human decisions or acts of mind. That competition between one man and another is a necessary part of the texture of society; that societies are organisms which grow and must inevitably die; that division of labour within a society is akin to what we can see in colonies of insects; that the laws of genetics have an overriding authority; that social evolution has a direction forcibly imposed upon it by agencies beyond man’s control—all these are biological judgments; but, I do assure you, bad judgments based upon a bad biology." (Medawar, 1959)
Our question now is how one of the latest theories of cultural evolution, memetics relates to the above mentioned bad judgments.
By today the meme concept has become a part of common vernacular, since despite its abstract nature it grasps the phenomena of high speed communication of the information age excellently. Memetics started its life as a playful interdisciplinary application of Darwinian logic. As the father of the concept Richard Dawkins, himself an admirer of Medawar, puts it:
"I am an enthousiastic Darwinian, but, I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene. Â The gene will enter my thesis as an analogy, nothing more. What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators." (Dawkins, 1986)
It's immediately apparent that the only way to avoid - despite Medawar's warning - the direct and aggressive genetization of culture if we the analogy of genes "only" on the basis of replication. The way of memetics from here on seems to be taking a path to being a information theory burdened by phobias, while in public conscience, which tends to handle the abstractions of analogies most economically, remains view of the direct genetic operation of culture, including misconceptions like memes are alive, because they replicate like viruses - while viruses are not viewed as living organisms precisely because of their dependence on a host for replication.
Domesticated replicators
Having not much to lose, at this point we take the liberty of meddling with Dawkins' concept and come out with a brutalized interpretation - slightly akin to the commonly held concept - , and see where it takes us if we view memes as simply cultural genes.
First of all, we need to take into account, that if we look at a DNA sequence we don't see any genes, since genes are abstract entities, sections defined by their function. Memes can be defined the same way - the efficient performance of their function and their cooperative benefit of which give them resistance against entropy. This also means, what we think of as a meme, encloses those not readily transparent details carrying psychological functions, which are the actual cultural genes.
If memes are a the part of cultural DNA, culture is literally alive, an informational organism, the environment of which consist of creatures capable of communication. We are now beyond the approach that sees culture as a construct invented by man to be able to fully convert his superb and energy expensive brain to actual survival. The viewpoint that culture is a secondary, artificial environment also changes: our connection to this environment is based on mutual benefit.
Multicellular organism is more than a bunch of cells. Evolution of cooperation requires adaptation by taking up communication, along with the differentiation of inner and outer environment, that is the definition of the borders of culture.
Biological adaptation to the circumstances of cooperation means that humans evolved adapting to culture moving ahead of them: by the way of memes culture forced the persistence of qualities keeping it alive, like the decrease of aggression, the drive for increasing efficiency of communication and other social capabilities. Thus being adapted to the symbiosis with culture means our origins are to be found in both monkeys and a cooperative informational organism - though we need to keep in mind that the above mentioned monkey is already a product of adaptation to culture to high-degree, since the evolution of information as a non-trivial direction for adaptation follows life all the way.
To put it another way: memes are primary and genes follow memes. The potential for the survival and reproduction of a cat (more specifically a modern internet connected cat) is directly proportional to the memetic potential of its eccentric, funny, or cute appearance. An even better example would be homing pigeons whose genes are expressed in superior navigation abilities, for which they had been domesticated to serve as a channel of - sometimes vital - communication.
Game theory views cooperative evolutionary solutions as an ethological question, instinctive reactions to external circumstances, and while it's role in evolution is acknowledged, it would hardly view culture - be it either an abstract or an actual living entity - as a sovereign, non-genetic part of evolution. Thus our present train of thought certainly appears to fall on the esoteric side, however to its defence we can say that even if it genetizes a bit here and there, the integration of culture within evolution is not one sided, and also doesn't go against Medawar's warning, being based on the priority of culture.
The future of human face
Let us introduce some questions to our suggested new life form.
Can man have a direct influence on culture? Our limits conform the laws of reproduction of memes, and the survival of the culture. What makes it even harder is that the function and consequences carried by the memes are presently not exactly known. Memetic complexes that have deeper influence on culture, such as ideologies (particularly failed ideologies) are considered to be very important by humans. The historical knowledge of the average person usully far more exceeds their knowledge of natural sciences - also in the general sense knowledge of history and identity are considered to be cultural knowledge.
A unique group of these memetic complexes are religions, the vital function of which is balancing hyperevolutionary pressure and human biological existence, serving as an interface, enabling the human evolutionary needs to appear in culture, in coordination with the political goal of collective survival.
How long does culture live? Does it get old? Can it break a leg? We have ample information about disappearance, disintegration, or fragmentation of cultures. We mostly describe their fate in biological metaphors. Culture and all known cultures can be seen as self-correcting scalable network immune to human tampering, however it could be the case that Nazism was not be the last example of a culture viewing human destruction as necessary, having been poisoned by memes of scientific origin.
Is there culture without humans? From the viewpoint of culture humans can be replaced by the any life form having the appropriate qualities. Even though potential sentient life in the universe would not necessarily have a humanoid form - in case of a contact we'd find a lot of social functions, mechanisms, and values that would look human to us.
Based on all this what is the future would we like to see? Humans avoiding obsolescence would be a nice thing, and the ability to coexist in culture with non-human - probably artificial - intelligence, and before that acquiring the ability to coexist in a culture with other humans.
by Viktor Papdi-Pécskői
Mickey Arrows got a pack
the oligarch (illustration)
_
service announcement in Hungarian
Már kapható az Internetes mémek és jelenségek enciklopédiája elektromos kiadása a nagyobb magyar webes könyváruházakban! Csuda érdekes, bölcsészeknek és egyéb marketingosoknak ötelező. Kattintjék!
IMJE@Libri - IMJE@Bookline - IMJE@LĂra - IMJE@eKönyv
dinner doodle

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Published an ebook. It’s in Hungarian, Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena. Out on iBookstore.
Publikáltunk egy ebookot Internetes mĂ©mek Ă©s jelensĂ©gek enciklopĂ©diája cĂmmel. Az iBookstore-on kaphatĂł.
On June 9, 1999, Robert Casmirin was hit by a bird on the corner of Trinity square. It was noon, a summer shower was about to move in, and the swallows were flying low. Swallows may dive at a speed of two hundred miles per hour, thus when Mr. Casmirin turned the corner, reading his favourite paper, unknowingly stepping into the flight trajectory of an extremely fast bird, he took a hard hit on the forehead. He fell. R.C.: - I was working at the local smoked salty sticks factory, managing exports. Smoked salty sticks were huge wherever there was a population of programmers, so business was spinning in high gear. That day I just stepped out for lunch, reading my Plains Post. I was to look up the latest on my Pustefix stocks, when I saw a piece about Barbara DeMinek, heiress of the great Gustav DeMinek - my mother was a great fan -, was found dead drowned in bone broth. I took a turn at the former Officers Club, now a shoe shop and I was hit. And that's it. Next thing: I'm on a hospital bed. Mr. Casmirin fell, but was able to get up. He walked across to a confectionery shop where he collapsed. Mme. Jana Kohutova, former shop assistant: - It still haunts me. The man came in with a dead bird on his face. Blood dripping on his clothes. It was a mess. His eyes were closed. He asked for a banana ice cream and then passed out. Radoslav Flip M.D., Sussmeier University Clinic: - The patient was brought in unconscious. We found a dead swallow, with its beak embedded two centimeters above his supraorbital. The bone was breached but the  the dura mater was intact. There was no infection, so after a week he was handed over to neurology of Rumceix County Hospital. After the incident Mr. Casmirin found himself having a set of skills, ordinary humans do not posess. R.C.: - I'm like a satellite. I see things from above. It's as if the sky was a huge mirror and you could zoom in and see stuff reflecting on it. Can see though roofs and the earth too. It was really interesting for a few weeks, after that it was tiring. Mr. Casmirin was soon hired by the army, putting his newfound talents to work, however he decided to quit. R.C.: - Did a lot of tests. It was fucking boring, I was about to be killed by boredom, I couldn't take it. After developing serious mental symptoms Mr. Casmirin was admitted to the Miroslav Padanov Hospital for People with Extraordinary Abilities (MPHPEA), better known by its colloquial name as the Mental Hospital of Superheroes. The following story is a personal account of Mr. R. C. on the events surrounding the attempt at the rehabilitation of a small group of MPHPEA patients, forming a rock group and the unexpected presence of the highly wanted EA criminal known as Superactor, leading to the destruction of the town formerly known as Botlinek. Please beware that the board consisting of Prof. Sissy Fuss (MPHPEA), Dr. Kipling Padanov (MPHPEA) Prof. Paolo Grucek, Dr. Leroy Mohaude (EAEIO), Prof.Kng. Trifon Slown has approved this text with the minority report suggesting that even though Mr. Casmirin has the most thorough view on the tragic events, his identity could not be fully confirmed as long as the Superactor is on the loose.
Our agent Mr M.R. just did this, it’s a novel Todd Pangram actually considered writing, may be he still does.
Paper is prohibited. Guy is caught attempting to buy a roll of ancient hand tissue paper and is deported to a country called Literature. Finds a job as a detective and tries to find a person misteriously gone missing from the Shakespeare Scientific Center, where hundreds of monkeys are typing under supervision, day and night.
Etymology
fluxion +‎ -ist
Noun
fluxionist ‎(plural fluxionists)
One skilled in fluxions.(Can we find and add a quotation of Berkeley to this entry?)
source: Wiktionary
2. Rest of the Owl’s POD design label. Go see, rightaway.
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save the planet with vintage fighter jets
how lovely
Interesting Story - Laura Muntz Lyall.
print is king