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QuoteSo what is the Game of Life? It's different than most other computer games, but believed to be the most-programmed computer game ever. So what makes it different than the normal game? Well, you don't quite 'play' it for starts. You set it up, and then the rules take over and you watch it go. It is actually a 'cellular automaton' with applications that reach beyond java applets. The game was popularized by Martin Gardner's 'Mathematical Games' column in the October 1970 publication of Scientific American.

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2001-02/cellular-automata/index.html

The simulation of all simulations, it shows us not just natural selection but evolution of complexity in action.

#26

-xian / Mouse Utopia

Last post by prime - Nov 18, 2025, 06:27 AM

QuoteIn the late 1960s, US scientist John B Calhoun created a 'Mouse Utopia' – an artificial environment which provided what he regarded as the perfect breeding conditions. To everyone's amazement, and without any signs of disease or hardship; after a few months of rapid population growth, the mouse colony ceased to reproduce at all; and soon became extinct – every single mouse dying within three years.

The idea is that mice depend upon a very high death rate (mostly from predation) to filter-out new and harmful genetic mutations which spontaneously arise each generation. When nearly all of each mouse generation survives and breeds, then the harmful mutations rapidly build-up to produce genetically unfit mice who lack desire to breed, and who neglect their young.

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2017/03/mouse-utopia-and-human-extinction.html

Why a morality of "good to the good, and good to the bad" promotes bad until it takes over. We are dying of mutation load in the West because Semitic religion and liberalism are based in self-pity and promote the survival of the defective.

Quote"It is a common theme of moralists of many creeds, that man is born with an imperfect nature. He has lofty aspirations, but there is a weakness in his disposition that incapacitates him from carrying his nobler purposes into effect. He sees that some particular course of action is his duty, and should be his delight; but his inclinations are fickle and base, and do not conform to his better judgment. The whole moral nature of man is tainted with sin, which prevents him from doing the things he knows to be right.

"I venture to offer an explanation of this apparent anomaly which seems perfectly satisfactory from a scientific point of view. It is neither more nor less than that the development of our nature, under Darwin's law of Natural Selection, has not yet overtaken the development of our religious civilisation. Man was barbarous but yesterday, and therefore it is not to be expected that the natural aptitudes of his race should already have become moulded into accordance with his very recent advance. We men of the present centuries are like animals suddenly transplanted among new conditions of climate and of food; our instincts fail us under the altered circumstances.

"My theory is confirmed by the fact that the members of old civilisations are far less sensible than those newly converted from barbarism, of their nature being inadequate to their moral needs. The conscience of a Negro is aghast at his own wild impulsive nature, and is easily stirred by a preacher; but it is scarcely possible to ruffle the self-complacency of a steady-going Chinaman.

"The sense of Original Sin would show, according to my theory, not that man was fallen from a high estate, but that he was rapidly rising from a low one. It would therefore confirm the conclusion that has been arrived at by every independent line of ethnological research, that our forefathers were utter savages . . . and that after myriads of years of barbarism our race has but very recently grown to be civilised and religious."

https://galton.org/books/memories/chapter-XXI.html

#27

books / Re: Book Club

Last post by prime - Nov 18, 2025, 06:23 AM

7. "Excellent Women," by Barbara Pym
https://archive.org/details/excellentwomen1952pymb/page/n7/mode/2up

#28

notions / Re: School shooters

Last post by prime - Nov 18, 2025, 06:03 AM

Also see our school shooters and spree killers archive:
https://www.corrupt.org/archive/

#29

motion / Re: Pipe Smoking

Last post by prime - Nov 18, 2025, 05:46 AM

Today brought a welcome return of the University Flake: a strong but slow-burning, flavorful blend. A Virginia/Burley mix, it has plenty of strength and as is the way with Burley blends, tends to hit hard and then induce slow relaxation. The strength of the UK flake -- fire cured Burley and Virginia -- is that it balances the broader flavor of the Burley with sweetness, resulting in a mixture of tastes that is never quite uniform, allowing it to have a protean indefinability. On top of that, someone poured a fruit flavor (identified as "plum" but close to "grape") which loses its excesses very quickly and gives the blend a slight spin and somewhat covers its strong scent. Wish they sold it by the pound!

#30

notions / Anarcho-Tyranny

Last post by prime - Nov 18, 2025, 05:34 AM

QuoteProbably no other society has failed as dismally as the United States in the late 20th century to meet the basic test of any civilization: to enforce simple order and protect the lives and property of its members. History knows of many societies that have succumbed to anarchy when the central government proved unable to control warlords, rebels, and marauding invaders. But anarchy is not quite the problem here.

In the United States today, the government performs many of its functions more or less effectively. The mail is delivered (sometimes); the population, or at least part of it, is counted (sort of); and taxes are collected (you bet). You can accuse the federal leviathan of many things—corruption, incompetence, waste, bureaucratic strangulation—but mere anarchy, the lack of effective government, is not one of them. Yet at the same time, the state does not perform effectively or justly its basic duty of enforcing order and punishing criminals, and in this respect its failures do bring the country, or important parts of it, close to a state of anarchy. But that semblance of anarchy is coupled with many of the characteristics of tyranny, under which innocent and law-abiding citizens are punished by the state or suffer gross violations of their rights and liberty at the hands of the state. The result is what seems to be the first society in history in which elements of both anarchy and tyranny pertain at the same time and seem to be closely connected with each other and to constitute, more or less, opposite sides of the same coin.

This condition, which in some of my columns I have called "anarcho-tyranny," is essentially a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites: the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety. And, it is characteristic of anarcho-tyranny that it not only fails to punish criminals and enforce legitimate order but also criminalizes the innocent.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/view/anarcho-tyranny-u-s-a-7/

Weaponized incompetence. It benefits from an inscrutable system:

QuoteAny group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness -- and that is not the nature of a human group.
This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. Similarly "laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

https://jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

This type of chaotic rule also fits with the character of those who seek power for its own sake:

QuoteThe tyrant, who is the most unjust of people, is also the unhappiest. The tyrant is constantly overcome by lawless desires which lead him to commit all manner of heinous act. His soul is full of disorder and regret, and is incapable of doing what it truly desires. The life of the political tyrant is even more wretched than that of the private tyrant, first, because the political tyrant is in a better position to feed his desires, and, second, because he is everywhere surrounded and watched by his enemies, and becomes at first their prisoner and at last their victim.

https://neelburton.com/2016/07/26/plato-on-democracy-tyranny-and-the-ideal-state/

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