The Wisdom of Crowds

FOOLISH WISDOM
by Bill Bonner

When we took our leave last week, we had just read part one of Mr. James Surowiecki's much-discussed book, The Wisdom of Crowds. It was not as bad as we feared. Mr. Surowiecki seemed to us like a teenager who had just discovered sex. He didn't quite know what to make of it, but he was clearly looking forward to it.

What he had stumbled upon was civilization, the infinite and subtle private arrangements that allow people to get along and make progress, without anyone in particular telling them what to do.

Alone, a man cannot really do much. He is only in his present state of comfort as a result of centuries of tugging by millions of different people. Someone had to figure out how to use fire. Someone realized that you could burn oil. Someone else had to discover iron. Someone, somehow, sometime put the pieces together...and millions of others...to manufacture the modern automobile. Even with access to all the accumulated knowledge of 100 generations, a man alone could never manufacture even a single automobile. There are too many component parts involving too much local knowledge. On his own, he'd be lucky if he could fashion a crude go-kart out of soft wood.

The more elevated a man's situation, the more he relies upon the knowledge, expertise, capital, and goodwill - not only of past generations, but of his neighbors...and many people he has never met. That is how civilization works. Two heads are better than one.

Even - or perhaps especially - the world's greatest and loneliest geniuses realize that their contributions rest largely on the work of others. Newton mentioned that he could only rise so high because he was "standing on the shoulders of giants." Science is cumulative and universal. Newton could draw on work done by foreigners hundreds of years ago. But he used is famous phrase in a letter to a rival, Robert Hooke, who was a dwarf. Science may have marched forward, but Newton's heart was as mischievous - or perhaps as cruel - as any since the Flood.

Mr. Surowiecki seems only dimly aware of what goes on in the human heart. Again, he is like a teenager who just discovered sex. He is so fascinated by the mechanics of it, he has not yet thought about the perverse and cynical possibilities. Yes, groups of people can solve problems. Yes, groups of people can come up with good ideas. Yes, groups of people - drawing on diverse information and insights - can create things that no individual alone could possibly imagine.

And yes, as the author allows, sometimes groups get things wrong. They are often bullied by a single person. They tend to think alike. They are easily distracted. But when people can work together - with no one holding a gun to their head - people have a way of getting along and accomplishing things.

But a group of people working together is not the same as a crowd. And a crowd is not the same as a mob.

A group is merely an aggregation of individuals, each with his own independent opinions and information. A group is also a collection of private individuals, each with his own private goals.

A crowd, on the other hand, comes together and begins to act as one - and soon makes a public spectacle of itself. An army, for example, is a crowd. It acts with one mind. One emotion. For one purpose. In an army, independent thought is discouraged. Deserters are shot. As we have pointed out often, you wouldn't want to go into battle with a free-spirited intellectual at your back; you want a real blockhead with a singleminded goal: to kill the enemy and protect you.

The biggest fear of military leaders is that their army will cease to be a disciplined crowd...and turn into a mob. It will still act as one - with one over-reaching emotion firing up every grunt's heart - but the emotion is likely to be fear...that will destroy the effectiveness of the fighting group.

Groups of investors sometimes turn into crowds. They do so when they all stop thinking independently, and begin to act as one. The crowd may be moved by fear or greed. In either case, it is likely to overreact to news...and overprice its favorite investments.

Mr. Surowiecki notices all these things, more or less. He notes that neither voters nor investors are exactly the rational creatures of academic imagination. He realizes that they are, from time to time, led astray by various influences. Yet, somehow, he fails to notice the key feature of the 'crowd' that separates a healthy, efficient group from a great mob ready to get itself into trouble. Once again, like his New Yorker feature on gold, he has managed to write something that is wise and moronic at the same time. It is wise to notice that two heads are sometimes better than one. It is moronic to fail to notice why.

Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The extermination of the Polish Jews was something that no man could have accomplished on his own. It took the cooperation of thousands - no, probably millions - of people to make it work. Administrators had to do the paperwork. Policemen and soldiers had to round up the victims. Rail workers had to get them to their destination. The prisoners had to be fed (minimally) and housed (badly) before they could be exterminated. Then, the bodies had to be disposed of. This, too, was a remarkable engineering problem...requiring the efforts of hundreds or thousands of people... These people who had to stand on the shoulders of many generations of engineers before them...so they could push a few generations of Jews into open trenches...or burn them in open-air furnaces.

Where was the wisdom of the crowd? Surowiecki doesn't bother to raise the question. Perhaps there was not enough "diversity" in the Nazi ranks, he might suggest. Maybe, the Nazi leadership was not open enough to different points of view, he might say. The Nazis were not "independent" enough, he might add; nor were they allowed to express their "private judgment."

All of these things may be true. But who was going to stop a top SS meeting and suggest that they bring in a gay gypsy or Bantu democrat to give an alternative point of view? Who among them doubted that they did not already have all the judgment, opinions and information they needed?

Likewise, at the peak of the bubble market in tech stocks at the end of the '90s, what investor who had made a fortune on Microsoft and Amazon wondered if needed more diversity in his portfolio?

When the crowd takes up a corrupt wish - to get something for nothing...or to make the world a better place by killing people - the last thing it wants is another point of view. It is already too late for that. The few people who are able to think clearly can only try to get out of the way. If they are in a bubble market - they can easily sell. If they are in a country that has lost its head, they can try to leave. If they are in an army, there is not much they can do at all.

And so we come to the end of Surowiecki's little book and we realize that he missed the whole point. He is still gazing at the sex act as if watching a porno movie. It is engaging, of course, but there's more to it.

Had he merely thought a little harder, he might have found something important: What he is describing as "wise crowds"is really the fluid, unfettered interactions between individuals in a civilized society. In many cities, for example, people drive around with hardly a traffic light or traffic cop anywhere. Yet, most get where they are going without accident. Groups of people - aggregating individual strengths, compensating for individual weakness, composing individuals' knowledge - have always been successful. That is how primitive groups hunted animals larger and fiercer than any one of the hunters. This kind of cooperation is the foundation of civilization, the division of labor, and the accumulation of expertise and knowledge.

Of course, crowds are going to go wrong from time to time. Human nature has not changed. Crowds can be swayed by skilled orators, the popular press and false signals from central bankers. Half-wit mobs can be turned violent by a journeyman demogogue. But where the crowd really goes wrong is where it turns from cooperation to force...when it begins to insist...and build concentration camps. This is where it becomes uncivilized.

Democracy, says Surowiecki, demonstrates the wisdom of the crowd. And yet, it seems to demonstrate the exact opposite. Voters have no independent information. They have no way to make independent judgments. They are easily swayed by the press and rabble-rousing politicians. They are a crowd - not a group of aggregated individuals - from the very beginning. They pass judgment on people they have never met and ideas they can't understand, eventually taking money that doesn't belong to them...and spending it on things that are usually disastrous. Democracy replaces cooperation with force...consensual civilization with the tyranny of the majority...the wise crowd of independent citizens with a mob of voters, with silly slogans on their bumpers and mischief in their hearts.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Quote/Comment: The dearth of anything new under the sun...

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provision against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." -
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798.

I am really getting tired of finding quotes like this. 200+ years old is bad enough, but the precept goes back probably to the time of Hammurabi or prior.

Makes me think humanity is getting more stupid with every generation. Maybe they do need to become slaves. Maybe it's a genetic predisposition to decay into servitude.

It is obvious that humanity isn't being ruled by the finest minds on the planet, so we aren't losing due to an increase in intellect among the political classes.
Doesn't that indicate the inverse?

And Condi Rice makes my point

Not the News: Tragic irony waves strike millions

Oh, the inanity...

http://www.no-treason.com/archives/2005/01/14/greenspan-generates-killer-irony-waves/

Reference

Quote: Classic - Neal Boortz at Texas A&M

Neal Boortz commencement address at Texas A&M...

Neal Boortz is a Texan, lawyer, Texas Aggie, now nationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta. Agree or not you will find his views thought provoking. It would have been particularly entertaining to witness the faculty's reaction.

Neal Boortz Commencement Address:

I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you'll have enough smoke blown your way today. And you can bet your tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty and administration.
You may not like much of what I have to say, and that's fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.

This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You've heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.

By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn't mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot's license many years ago, he said, 'Here, this is your ticket to learn.' The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn't that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a Liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in. Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast .. including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality:
Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives.

From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will hear "I think." From the Liberals you will hear references to groups --The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate." From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Liberals feel that their favored groups, have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives (and Libertarians, myself among them I might add) think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a libertarian or a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven't developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You're going to actually get a full time job! You're also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn't going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn't want to share in your effort, just your earnings.

Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent. An agent representing a strange and diverse group of people.
An agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child. An agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist ... but who just can't manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market.

Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills ... but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million-dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit.
That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal power to use force, deadly force to accomplish its goals.

You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.

Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can't decrease it's share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.

So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes ... a necessary evil, but dangerous nonetheless ... somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

Now let's address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.

First that favorite buzz word of the media, government and academia: Diversity!

You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever - is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individual's abilities or character, but on a person's identity and status as a member of a group. Yes it's that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individual's integrity, character or other qualifications.
Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on every single time you hear the word "diversity" you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige
of individuality you possess.

We also need to address this thing you seem to have about "rights." We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called "rights" in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.
You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right to a Beemer, for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.

Forget it.

Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are! You have a right to live free, and to the results of your labor. I'll also tell youthat you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, Hillary said so, didn't she? But you cannot receive health care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time - his life - to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that's his choice. You have no "right" to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.

You may also think you have some "right" to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoorsmen (that would be "homeless person" for those of you who don't want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.
The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn't cost anyone else either property or time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.

By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase "less fortunate" a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoorsmen? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll understand why.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is "less fortunate" is to imply that a successful person - one with a job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was "fortunate." The dictionary says that fortunate means "having derived good from an unexpected place." There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.
If the Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of "fortune" or "luck," then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit.

This "success equals luck" idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as "people who have won life's lottery." He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky.

It's not luck, my friends. It's choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled "The Greatest Secret in the World." The lesson? Very simple: "Use wisely your power of choice."
That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, "Look! He did this to me!" than it is to look into a mirror and say, "You S.O.B.! You did this to me!"

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.
Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.
Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy,, the successful, the rich.

Quite a few people have made that mistake.

The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.

Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.

Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: "The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it.' The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more "fair."

You have heard, no doubt, that in the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor ... there's an explanation -- a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor.

Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor in . So, you need to know that under our government's definition of "poor" you can have a $5 million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and $1 million in your checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as "living in poverty." Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening news.
How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income. It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are 'living in poverty."

This isn't exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it?

Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. just remember all this the next time Peter Jennings puffs up and tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.

Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of "poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.

I'm about to be stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my Ph.D. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you'll be unable to deal with life, or the truth. So, get over it.

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

* You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.

* When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for president. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.

* Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the president of the United States. If someone can't deal honestly with you, send them packing.

* Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

* Don't look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

* Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

* Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

* Finally (and aren't you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,
1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.
2. Use wisely your power of choice.
3. Go the extra mile ... drive home in the dark.

Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can.
Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get the hell out of here and never come back.

Class dismissed.

Tscamnami: Don't give money for disaster relief abroad

Do not give money to any aid organization for "tsunami relief". Looks like it ends up feeding and arming tyrants. Oh, and oppressing the workers:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0501,ridgeway3,59863,6.html

Excerpt:
"There's been a tremendous outpouring from the public; all over the world people are giving donations," Nairn continued. "But most of these donations are being channeled through the U.N.agencies or through the big mainstream charities. There's a major problem. Those agencies and charities all have contracts with the Indonesian government, contracts which oblige them to either channel funds through the government or work in concert with the government, which means that government officials and army officers can steal the aid, and there are already indications that this is happening. And even that aid which is not stolen may be used in a way to consolidate military control over the population."
(end of excerpt)

Exception: When France, Germany, Russia, China, or "old Europe" ever experience any significant man-made or natural disaster, I sincerely hope the UN is put fully in charge of administering aid:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/1/9/144633.shtml

F-space super-structure: Ownership

Wealth and Investment are very, very macroscopic structures in F-space, equivalent to, say, a crystal lattice in the physical world. Their components and behavior are influenced by, but cannot be directly extrapolated from, the interactions and behaviors at the level of the F Model. Hence this introduction to the first F-space composites is presented.

Hugely dependent on the underlying properties of the mindParticle properties it is composed of, as well as the mindParticles it is adjacent to or being entangled with (being subject to mindLeptons and mindForceCarriers both in proximity and at huge distances, it is not subject to the law of inverse squares in terms of strength of effect as per the as yet unmentioned entangledment effect).

I will analyse what drives investment decisions, motivations, "intuition", and observations in F-space in the near future.

Observation 0 - Personal possession of external physical articles, and recognition of those articles (from beads to acres of land), i.e. "private ownership" is a field constant in F-space across all levels of human existance (starting with me) . It is directly related to another, more funjdamental field constant (with no abbreviation) mentioned in an earlier F Model entry (The F Model: The first conceptual hadron, decay resulting in 1 Action mindForceCarrier, "Position O" ). There are anecdotal exceptions. These will be solved for using F-string theory. Without the private ownership constant, or if the constant had a different value, F-space characteristics would be different. In fact, F-space would possibly not even exist at all. The private ownership field constant will be referred to as PO. It is also possible to consider that PO isn't a field, but a mindForceCarrier particle. We'll see.

Observation 1 - PO either affects or is affected by heavy mindParticles (it may be a reciprocal relationship) whereby the PO field is warped by mindAntiParticles (like envy and distribution), or mindParticles are anihilated by contact with an oppositely-charged PO field. In other words, PO fields tend to enlarge and attract other PO field generators.

F Model: Taxonomy

Generation 1 mindQuarks and mindAnti-Quark hadrons

The left side of the "and" conjunction are complete generation 1 hadrons with neutral Brite and Spin (their component mindQuarks and mindLeptons cancel or balance each other out to create a 3rd stable mindParticle).

mindAnti-Quarks and mindAnti-Leptons bond to form equally massive, stable, oppositely Brite and Spin charged hadrons (right side of the "and" conjunction).

Note that collision of these handron and anti-hadron pairs in high-energy environments results in annihilation. Annihilation artifacts are currently undefined but may result in a very unstable super-massic generation 3 mindParticle like Revolution or Genocide.

The hadron/antiHadron pairs so far identified include:
respect and envy
enjoyment and distaste
attraction and repulsion
lust and asexuality
avarice and altruism
distribution and acquisition (give and take)
support and resistance
appreciation and entitlement
honesty and deception

Love and hate are too easy to (mistakenly, in my opinion) place into this simple grid, and they unbalance the equations. I believe both love and hate are too heavy to be generation 1 mindQuarks/mindAnti-Quark hadron pairs, and are therefor generation 2 or generation 3 hadrons composed of several mindQuarks and mindLeptons each. Brite and Spin are currently undefined.

The F Model: The first conceptual hadron, decay resulting in 1 Action mindForceCarrier

This is the first macroscopic F Model sovereignty supersymmetry hadron (mindQuark), or possibly the first documented mindForceCarrier particle. I haven't finished designing or documenting the sovereignty supersymmetry taxonomy yet, so I'm not sure.
It is how I think, and I hope, approach life daily. Note again that this F Model is my attempt to apply a valid mathematical model for a different (sub-atomic) system to my own mind and experience (humanity) using similes and metaphors.

Now, the description and definition of the hadron:

Position 0 is a philosophical constant, akin to the speed of light (c). Without that constant at its present value, I am existing in a different conceptual universe.

The first 4 mindParticles listed (1-4 inclusive) are realizations and intentions that should collide with desire (another mindQuark, I think) and result in mindParticle decay resulting in the release of 1 to 4 Action mindParticles with positive Brite charge.

0) Not only is my life mine, and not only will I make that clear in thought and word to myself, but every day, I will intend to ensure the stability and increase the impact of my personal freedom.

1) Every day, I will consider a position or concept, true or false, that proves my own freedom of thought.
2) Every day, I will speak at least one truth to myself, that I belong to no-one but myself.
3) Every day, I will speak the true counterpart of self-ownership to myself, that nobody owes me a living.
4) Every day, I will speak at least one truth to someone else, asserting that by virtue of nature and inherent sentience, no man can own another, nor validly impose his own requirements or desires upon another man.

5) Every day, I will converse with someone else, making clear the importance of actions 1-4 above.
6) Every day, I will listen to others who may express truths about individual sovereignty, enjoin and learn from them so that action 5 is more effective every time I perform it.
7) Every day, I will note a violation of individual sovereignty by men whose intent is irrelevant, and resist it.
8) Every day, I will seek to increase the effectiveness of my resistance to violations of individual sovereignty.

This is a generation 1 or common hadron mindParticle, at least in F-space. Sometimes they are thoughts, sometimes they are actions, and sometimes they are both (like the particle/wave duality of photons).

Distraction - Kofi Anan saved by the lifeguard's whistle

The "Oil for Food" corruption scandal involving my son.
Sudan and the massacre of millions on my watch and in my backyard.
Cowardly flight from Iraq, and no assistance in the upcoming vote.
My consistent history of talk, inaction, graft, complicity, and coddling of tyrants "who I can do business with".

As Secretarty General of the UN, I would like to thank the Almighty for this tsunami, and the 300,000 reasons people are looking at me like I am somebody important and honorable again.

Amen.

Distraction - The rising cost of crude oil is wonderful

Right now, this very moment, light sweet crude has a spot price of...$43.33 per barrel. That's down from a recent high of over $54.00 per barrel, and it is only a temporary dip. Due to the downward pressure on the dollar against many other currencies, but more importantly commodities, oil will become more expensive. It will be a long, steady climb upwards, punctuated with significant spikes and smaller corrective dips. And it will never traverse $40.00 again. That's my prediction. Let's see how good I am at seeing into the future, eh?

Frankly, I want oil to get expensive. Really expensive. I want it to go to $50, $75, $150, $200 per barrel. I want insurgents to blow up those pipelines, and I want lines around the block at gas stations. Why? One simple reason: I want the market to replace oil as a means of energy storage and power generation, and the only way that is going to happen is to make it too damned expensive to burn.

I want it to go the way of slavery, nazism, and the Clinton presidency. I want it to ooze into history as yet another example of false economy, which it most certainly is. It has served its purpose. It served America well for all of the last 100 years or so. Let the damn stuff retire already. We've hit peak production during this decade. It is now becomming more scarce and more expensive to extract. And there are no new petrochemical molecules being built.

Excellent.

It's time to let a new idea, a new business (or range of businesses), arise from the ashes of burning oil.
I hope the decentralization of power generation and consumption exceeds the stunning dash we see in computing. Fire up the Krell reactors even, and think good thoughts.

I want the cultures and nations currently being fed by it to dwindle, starve, and die off like the flesh-eating, egg-ejecting-while squatting dinosaurs they are. I wait breathlessly for the inevitable rise of the fuel cell, ever more efficient batteries and solar generators, and the economic viability of riding my horse to the 7-11 to get groceries.

Hell, internal combustion works with LPG, vegetable oil, and even vodka, so it's not like we'll do without motocycles or cars. They'll just burn different stuff. Or not burn stuff at all.

Screw oil.

End Transmission.

The F Model: Emotional quarks, leptons, and force carriers

This is Dick Freely's emotional/rational mind Rosetta Stone attempt, The F Model.
It contains 3 fundamental thought particle types, with each particle type divided into 3 catagories (or "generations"), each determined by frequency of observationand assumed to be related to robustness. This is a unified model that asserts three main components of "mind", genereally classified as "mindPariticles" (note capitalization and spelling):

1) mindQuarks - Perception of reality (sensory input, template construction and matching)
2) mindLetpons - Abstract thought (deductive and inferencial reasoning)
3) mindForceCarriers - Emotion (love, hate, fear)

The 3 generations, or catagories of frequency of observation, rank from most robust and demonstrable in terms of frequency, to most fleeting and most rarely observed but most influencial:

1) Brite - strong, conscious mindQuarks, mindLeptons, and mindForceCarriers (mind particles)
2) Spin - subconscious or non-acknolwedged but very effective and "unstable" mind particles
3) Ghost - assumed subconscious tracks or pathways of previous mind particles of Brite or Spin level (very significant, very influential, but thought processes occupy or traverse the Ghost generation like a train on tracks, unaware of any other option unless a collision with a Brite or Spin mindParticle takes place).

This model does not attempt to address the actual nature of the mind, nor does it solve whether or not each mindParticle is indivisible, or "fundamental" in nature - That will be a task for Freely-string theory, which may come later, if I ease off the sauce a bit.

Each mindParticle also has a corresponding anti-mindParticle of equal influence. For example Rage's anti-particle is Ecstacy (anti-rage). The actual make-up of these particular aggregates will be addressed in the near future.

Next, I will diagram the mindParticle/generation matrix in order to demonstrate how actual thought experiences are expressible and provable in terms of combination and decay using only the F Model (again with deference to the upcoming F-sting theory to solve certain exceptions or minor inconsistencies).

It is my assertion these symmetries extend out past the individual mind to groups of arbitrary size, and explain significant portions of human behaviour including "bizzare" phenomena like memes and mass psychosis.

Introducing the F Model

I'll say right now that I hate invisible shit. Viruses, gamma rays, gods and emotions all give me a case of the screaming bullshits. I doubt their nature, even given incontrovertible evidence of their existance. I have a hard enough time beliving things I can see with my own eyes (like cheering crowds greeting Clinton in Arkansas), let alone things nobody can see but I get told about (like cheering crowds greeting Clinton in Thailand). I would have kicked Pasteur's ass right into the street where he would have stumbled backwards over the Pope whom I had previously thumped if I were prone to violence and a lot older than I am now. But that's me. I accept the invisible now, even if I find it distasteful, or even aggravating.

Probably the worst offender is emotions.

People have emotional motivations for what they do. We "feel" it was the right thing to do, or we "felt" out of control. Sometimes the emotions are in turn driven by physical reality (like fear of a predator), sometimes they are responses to other emotions (like guilt being a side effect of a combination of love betrayal). It can be a very recursive relationship, and it easily defies objective measure. Most of my problems can be tied to lack of a consistent reference continuum where I could lay out at least a semi-complete map of other's emotions and derive some sort of equivalent to my own. It's hard to tell what a buffalo is thinking if you are a bee. Buffalo's don't fly, and bees weren't hunted and skinned to act as habitats for indiginous humanity. At least, not as far as the current interpretation of the archaeological record indicates.

So, let's start by trying to identify the universe of emotions in Freely-space, since that is where I exist. Maybe I can understand you if I first take the step to make it possible, if not easy, to understand me. Tightly curled up around myself, I present a simple particle of loathsome, boring humanity to you. One dimentional, two if I'm lucky. But maybe I'm composed of 3, 6, even 11 emotional dimentions. I'll try to construct a consistent and complete (enough) model representing me to explain everything I observe about myself. I will then try to communicate it to you. I'll call the result the F Model, because Freely starts with "F".

Unfortunately, to have any chance of success at all, I have to make all sorts of assumptions about your rational faculties, because that is what I have to rely upon to reconstruct the metaphors and similies that I will use. I will paint mental pictures about my thoughts with the intention that those pictures will successfully be teleported to you mind and reconstructed into something closely resembling my original thoughts. Please, no ion storms, this part is dangerous.

I have to assume your faculties operate in a simlar way to mine, and that given similar inputs, will output similar results. I have some experimental and anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion, but it is by no means convincing, at least to me. But I'll assume it, and try to solve for this "X" where your rational mental faculties are a finite constant. If you are a omnipotent, or a Democrat, my solution will be incorrect due to extreme divergence on opposite ends of the value spectrum. But if you are omnipotent, you'd know that already. If you are a Democrat, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about and never will, so go play nicely in the corner with a razor blade a triple dose of Ketamine.

Next, I'll start identifying the fundamental particles that seem to manifest in Freely-space and how they are explained in the F Model (unless something more interesting happens and I get distracted).

My opinion means nothing

My first piece of advice is to disregard anything I say from now on. Ignore it, forget about it, explain it away, chalk it up to a fragment of under-done potato, pretend it didn't happen, figure out some way of making it go away. It's going to be boring and stupid, innacurate, poorly spelled, sweat-stained and it's going to leave something green stuck right between your front teeth to embarass you at parties and stop you from getting to first base with that cute honey over there in the heels.

I don't have anything original to say, nor will I say it very well. I am a clumsy speaker and an uninspired writer. The only things I am worse at are dancing and doing as I'm told, so nothing good will come from your hanging around here and picking up my bad habits. Find a nice group of people who say things that make you comfortable. Go to a church or a political party office and volunteer. Go take a few credits at some college or university. Do something enjoyable with your time, don't waste the few infinitesimal moments of existance you have goofing off around here with me; it's the equivalent of smoking behind the gym. I don't have a real job, I don't vote, I drink whisky, and I use bad language. What the hell kind of future could I possibly expect? What possible good could you expect to come from hanging around me? None, I tell you now. Zip. So adios, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

You still here? Shit man, some people just can't take a hint. Look, this isn't going to be fun, any more than learning that there was no such thing as Santa was fun. Remember how you felt when you found out? You want to relieve that? Shit I sure don't. I didn't enjoy it the first or subsequent times that kind of revelation happened to me. Having your worldview challenged is one thing. Having to cannibalistically eat it alive yourself is something else.

That is the sort of godamn party you are crashing here. Don't RSVP, just go instead to one of those nice people's get-togethers where everybody stands in a circle and congratulates each other raw for having the good sense to be part of that particular circle. And they have a pleassant, conforming explanation for everything. It might be right wing conspiracies, or God's will, or alien abductions, but everyone will nod their heads in supportive affirmation. I'm here to tell you, you can't make a circle with an individual, and that's all I have to offer: Just Me. Kumbaya, assholes. The fact that you're just you, and maybe we're both outside that vigorously-rubbing nice folk circle over there, is why I even bother.

And I make no apologies for being so rude. I simply don't respect most people. And I am so exceptionally disgusted with a percentage of that majority that I'd like to see them on the moon, sans NASA gear. This group includes anyone who would consider voting Democrat under any circumstances, most people who vote Republican, and in fact, voters, period.

I don't like conformists, especially the ones that pretend to not conform. Whether they be "artists" living off their parents or government grants, "outsider public servants", anti-WTO "anarchists", or ACT UP shock trooper insecurity posers. It's just too damned easy to be part of a true-believer mob with nothing but feelings, passion, and bullshit to buck up your convictions. I can't stand lying, and lying to yourself about who you are and why you are motivated to do something is about the most repulsive thing I have experienced. And it leads to the harder stuff: Lying to family, lying to friends, collegues, acquaintences, and concentric circles outward until you lie to the whole fucking world, and you don't even know it. And that ends up in genocide. So know thyself, or fuck right off post haste. Again, my warning about the door and your ass.

I also don't like quiet people. They scare me. I've yet to hear an evening news report where the guy with the fridge full of human eyes is described as a "loud and gregarious neighbor". So I'm more comfortable in the company of a street preacher than a monk, and I have a lot more respect for the loud nuts than the quiet ones, even if their deductive reasoning powers are those of a bug. I think the First Amendment to the Constitution probably had people like me in mind: If you muzzle them, they'll eventually break the bonds and eat your baby. Let 'em bark their heads off so normal people can just walk by and be annoyed at the howling nutcase and let their kids throw fruit at 'em.

Are you still here? All right, but I warned you. Grab something to drink. I recommend scotch.
Or two scotches. Or both.