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Chaotic Descent
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So I'm sick of my usual internet haunts, which I've had forever. The forum I'm on is pretty uninterested in anything that's not related to entertainment.
but since I'm pretty incompetent, I want to take baby steps.
I've lately been hooked on TED.com (conference on technology, entertainment, and design, but tends to have a big focus on proactive and philanthropic projects)
wikipedia is decent. I think I actually only learned about that place a year ago.
I'm interested in psychology (developmental,sociology,mental health), society (infrastructure!), sustainability (technology tree; and basic starting technologies), technology (did intro coding. and who doesn't love robots?), art (visual, tradeskill (very interested in sculpture and casting, as well as architecture), writing/stories (especially for education/psychology/social purposes), and other (music)), biology (I want to learn about soil! that seems really important for life on the surface.)
but since I'm pretty incompetent, I want to take baby steps.
I've lately been hooked on TED.com (conference on technology, entertainment, and design, but tends to have a big focus on proactive and philanthropic projects)
wikipedia is decent. I think I actually only learned about that place a year ago.
I'm interested in psychology (developmental,sociology,mental health), society (infrastructure!), sustainability (technology tree; and basic starting technologies), technology (did intro coding. and who doesn't love robots?), art (visual, tradeskill (very interested in sculpture and casting, as well as architecture), writing/stories (especially for education/psychology/social purposes), and other (music)), biology (I want to learn about soil! that seems really important for life on the surface.)
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and man oh man is the environment section scary. I'd like something environmental that has some kind of verification for all the claims articles make, because I'm sick of the two extremes of "all life is going to end!" and "nothing seriously bad will happen."
hm. not much else there... nothing on proactive stuff... I just HAPPENED to stumble upon an article about netbooks in the geek section, which mentions my buddy Nicholas Negroponte who gave a lecture at TED about the great project mentioned in the article to build cheap, durable laptops for children in third world countries.
You know, we might not all need laptops that powerful, but having our desktops in more portable and energy-efficient forms certainly is a good thing. I also notice that used laptops seem to cost the same as new netbooks. I wonder when I can get something used for less than $300.
... oh dear god. the article is talking about computers where all the processing power is online and it's transmitted?? Does no one see a PROBLEM with the increased radio signals?? We don't have ENOUGH kids getting brain cancer from constant cell-phone use?? Man, sometimes these innovators just don't think. As if the pollution in cities from cars wasn't bad enough, now we have to make the radio pollution worse. WTF.
You know what else I'd like? A new discussion system that maps out different points of discussion like branches of a tree, that way people can clearly see the shape of a discussion rather than just a few obvious aspects such as "on/off topic" and "flaming". When's the last time we kept score of rational debate and facts? I'd love to see one of those tree branches end in "disproven" with all posts that attempt to resurrect the point without anything new to contribute being deleted.
I don't mean that we need to impose some kind of overbearing system. I mean a system needs to be developed that people feel they can naturally use. Do you notice the different ways in which people use current forum systems to reply? Quoting, for example. Some people break up the quoted posts into their paragraphs and reply in between the paragraphs. Do you think someone ENFORCED that system, or did it just come about? The quote feature is right there. Imagine if the tree system were a new way of writing? Instead of paragraphs and sentences, you'd have trees.
The web really needs to get organized.
See, that's the kind of thing I want to either read about, or discuss if there aren't any articles on it already. and you can't just do that anywhere. you need to go somewhere where people of those interests gather for that kind of thing. and... I don't know how to find that.
It does have a discussion system that's decently tree-like. You should check that out and see how it compares with your ideal.
where's this "discussion system"? I can't find anything on that site. blog??
uhg. it's like browsing bloody 4chan or something... it's just open brain, start pouring internet in.
I want something a little more "things that make ya go hmmm". TED may be random, but at least there's a fair bit of inspiring talk and interesting stuff. Sure, you still get the occasional guy with an agenda "yeah, climate change is a myth. the data's all there."
Hell, I get more from sites like disinfo.com , realitysandwich.com (a little odd, with mysticism crap) , and technoccult.com (which seems to be turning into renegadefuturist.com )
one of these days... I'm just gonna... I dunno. stop. stop wasting time with the world, and I'm going to map it out. What the hell is it with the Western world and breaking everything down and compartmentalizing it? When was the last time you saw a diagram that covers more than one topic and the relationships between the two or more topics? Everyone over hear's wearing microscopes on their eyes.
Here is the problem. You can have great depth or great breadth.
If you are a generalist (and the world needs them) then you'll end up getting shot down by the narrow viewed specialists at every turn.
When it comes down to it we all turn to the depth when 'shit hits the fan' in the assumption they are the best person for the job. Whilst they are the most informed on their little piece of pie - they are far from the most informed about all the interactions and implications looking after that will have. But how will you ever convince people to change the belief to 'big picture' generalists being the most qualified to comment and advise?
Beneath each link there's a link labeled, "comment" or "X comments."
I think I was talking in an educational context, and maybe uh... I dunno. doing... stuff?
I find this world really schizophrenic. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. There's no connection. I'm lost, and instead of a map, the only help I get is people telling me to read the history books of one village or another. It's just madness!
I'm looking at political stuff on some of these sites... net neutrality and whatever... and I haven't paid attention to that shit in years, and even then I've never actively shown support for anything. and there are SO MANY THINGS wrong in the world that I'd show my support for if it didn't mean every single day having to show up at a bloody rally. I really shouldn't have to be active to show support for every single political stance I have.
and how about the discussion behind it? net neutrality is nothing new. it's been discussed before. why isn't the issue being handled by debaters, with the results being translated into something understandable for the courts?
It shouldn't BE about who shows up and makes the most noise to counteract a squad of high paid lawyers or whatever.
Seriously, where's the discussion forum where I can say something like that and people will be interested in the topic? because a help forum like this one isn't the place to get an actual discussion on that.
Ok.
I agree on the left and right - but how do you connect them? And consider that there are 50 million hands (or more) waving about almost entirely independently. Some kind of overseer, analysing and compacting and always right? I guess if such a thing could exist it would be the internet.
What I was saying is that in almost every situation in which we look immediately for guidence - we go to the specialist. The guy who does not know/care about the broad consequences, or causes, as much as he does about his little segment of the knowledge base - which he defends rigorously against all the less informed on the topic - even though they may well have valid points in a general sense....
You think I'm being snarky, but I'm really not. Go and read a book. Or go outside and do something productive or entertaining. Spending all day pissing around on the internet is a stupid waste of time.
Sorry. That's not my world. I'm lost out there.
How is reading a physical book any different than reading an electronic book? (as far as being "a stupid waste of time")
You don't! That's reality. In the summation of all human knowledge there is no ultimate Truth or Wisdom to be found. All you can do is map and judge it in the context of your own biases, assumptions, and knowledge.
While I agree that you should get out in the world and do something (why do you think you're lost out there?) I disagree that there's any inherent advantage of physical information over electronic information.
I just took a look and they seem to have found a kind of middle ground now.
Was that a rhetorical question? I think that was rhetorical.
I dunno... I think I'm still far away from that path. It's not clear to me.
Hrmmmm. That really depends on what you're looking for. Have you read any books on Cybernetics? Systems theory? (Which Cybernetics is an aspect of) Godel, Escher, Bach? Any Bateson?
I'll let you do your own research, but all of those topics/books/authors cover interdisciplinary, high-level thinking. They're also extremely dense subjects that can turn your mind into mush. You could probably spend a lifetime studying systems theory.
This. There are plenty of inter-disciplinary books out there, you just have to find them. And no, the vast majority of them are not on-line.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/
But thank you for the site. That is the most awesome one yet. (I'm looking at all the sites mentioned in this thread, BTW.)
I'm actually hoping one of these sites will help me find my way towards things like "GTFO the internet". I know it's kind of crazy but... I don't get any positive feedback from anything else.
Thinking about people with destructive habits (gambling, substance abuse, eating disorders, violence and crime) and when you see documentaries about them, it's always so heartbreaking. The majority of them go back to the old behavior as soon as their let free. They have nothing else. Their treatment did not help them gain the skills to build the supports. Everyone's got reasons for doing what they do. (I watched a program about teenage girls with anorexia. the treatment center was dismally pathetic. Nobody knew what the hell they were doing.)
I already listed a bunch of things I was interested in.
Although... I suppose the only one that requires "inter-disciplinary" stuff is the one I'm currently inspired to attempt: some prop crafting based on 3D models. Crafting though, is pretty broad.
I've been searching the internet using "cosplay" as a search keyword, but it's really hard to find good beginner overviews for materials and methods.
I have very little experience or knowledge in any of it. I do have very basic and broad knowledge and experience. I've done basic woodworking ages ago, but know nothing of material types or techniques. I've been TRYING to get good general knowledge of things like plastics. I'm relatively sure that that's my best bet, other than possibly wood under very specific circumstances.
And it's all #$%&ing moot because it ends at step 1. My plan was 1) get 3D model. unwrap it. 2) print it and do papercraft. 3) modify it somehow; either by 3a) casting with rigid papercraft and carving/sanding & building it up, or 3b) applying material to the papercraft surface and sculpting. I suppose 3a would get me something closer to the original, allowing me to smooth out the polys, but would be more difficult and time-consuming. Still, I'd aim for that.
The problem is that, while apparently the models are in 3DStudioMax format, and the programming libraries should be all set up to easily accomplish the task, I'm not that adept at programming. (I took an intro coding class which helped tremendously, but I still stumble on basics sometimes like setting up compilers.)
Content. What is available electronically pales in comparison to what you can find in regular old dead tree format. Also, books are higher resolution - so if you are reading a lot of things, it's easier on the eyes. It's also way easier to do research and make notes with physical books than electronic ones, although sometimes it can seem a little onerous.
Go and start reading some philosophy. Or history. Hell, go and learn another language -- you can do that through books AND the internet. If you want to do something physical, you won't be able to get that on the web, you have to go out and move around in the real world to do that.
Try going to a park, or a library. The internet is just so insular sometimes, it can be easy to lose sight of how meaningless so much of the shit on it really is. Go and better yourself.
Just to clarify - you are comparing your use of the internet with an eating disorder?
As for the specialist selection point.... we tend to go with 'popular (scientific) opinion'/ weight of evidence. Of course we are all hopelessly incapable of delving deep enough into topics with which we are only vaguely familiar to assess sources etc to discover how accurate said evidence is, without a massive amount of research and learning which means we tend to defer to the people who've already done it ...
Leading us right back where we started, looking for the guy who knows lots to tell us the important bits. But the important bits may ormay not be what he tells us, and without an equally deep knowledge how are we to know?
Bigthink.com is sort of like TED.com, might be worth checking out.
Also, I find that good old Wikipedia, and specifically the "Random Page" button, is great for wasting some time. If you just want to learn about SOMETHING, and don't really care what, it's a nice use of time.
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