The Teeter Totter Effect

The Teeter Totter Effect



Introduction


This essay builds upon "Dead Democracy, State of States",  "A Better Tomorrow" and "You're Human Nature, Your Science, and You!".
  1. http://irreni.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-better-tomorrow.html
  2. http://irreni.blogspot.com/2018/06/dead-democracy-state-of-states.html
  3. http://irreni.blogspot.com/2018/06/youre-human-nature-your-science-and-you.html
     
You ever wonder where that word 'teeter-totter' came from? I imagine a couple of dads back in the day having just built one, admiring their handy work while two kids are having fun. Let's call the two dads Hank and Fred.


Hank: "You know, perhaps we should put some handles on that plank. One of those tots is going to fall off."

Fred: "You totter put some handles on that plank. Hee hee. Get it?"

Hank: "That's not a pun. Totter and oughta sound nothing alike, except two syllables. Besides oughta is slang and not a proper word."

Fred: "Well your ass is teetering on the brink of extinction if you don't put those handles on before one of those tots breaks an arm or a leg. The Mrs. will have your hide."

Hank: "Isn't it kinda sad that the only time we use the word 'teetering' is when something is on the brink of extinction? It is a perfectly fine word. Hey, aren't those kids kinda wobbling? Say, teetering even?"

Fred: "Nah, they're not wobbling. They are not even walking."

Hank: "My ass? You don't think my wife wouldn't also tar-and-feather your ass too?"

Fred: "You know they are tots and if we just said they are teetering, which they are not, then we could call this set up a teeter-totter where those are the instructions for use : they totter be teetering."

Hank: "What? That makes no kinda sense. Totter doesn't pun with 'oughta' and you're right, they are not teetering because they are sitting."

Fred: "Done. Teeter-totter it is."

Ha!

Interlude


I always thought the political pendulum for swinging between left-wing and right-wing politics was an insufficient metaphor. Why? Because you can fall off. A teeter-totter, I think, captures the back-and-forth better as using ups-and-downs from each political side's perspective, one side is up when the other is down,  and then there is always the risk that if the speed is too fast then a country lets go of the handles and it is game over. Bonus points;  you can jump right to the idiom, "teetering on the brink of extinction". As in the US government is teeter-tottering between left and right-wing politics today such that the US is teetering on the brink of extinction. See?  You can't do with the pendulum metaphor.

Have we gone extinct? When is a country dead?

In my opinion the country has been dying since the end of Nixon ERA and died in 2008. The US is a zombie country only pretending it is alive in 2018.

Why? Because we cannot even fix the problems we had previously fixed and already have known solutions for.

  1. Glass-Steagall. The financial crisis of 2008 was a direct result of Democrats and Republicans alike repealing the Glass-Steagall act in the 1990s, thus ending separating trading from banking. Ever here anyone talking about repealing the repeal? Nope. Dead country.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_legislation
  2. Interstate banking. Banks being too big to fail was a direct result of Republicans deregulating the banking industry. Specifically allowing banks to operate across state lines. Ever hear anyone talking about repealing the repeal? Nope. Dead country.
  3. Telecommunications Act of 1999. This act deregulated media company ownership. Prior to 1999 only three major media companies could be owned in a single market. A media company included any newspaper, radio station, or TV station. Today news has consolidated to a handful of large media companies owning all of media. Ever hear anyone talking about repealing the repeal? Nope. Dead country.
  4. The Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was implemented as a result of yellow-journalism, for profit media undermining the fourth-estate. News was to be not-for-profit. How has repealing the Fairness Doctrine worked out for us? Click-bait news is how. Ever hear of anyone talking about repealing the repeal? Nope. Dead country.

See a trend here? Previous solutions to solve political problems are no longer doable, yet we have the solutions.  Lots of problems were solved by the US government in the past when this country was still alive. However, today solving these problems is impossible. That's because we're a dead country, the walking dead.


That's why I don't like the pendulum metaphor. At some point a country dies.

Irreni World Scale manages two political teeter-totters:
  1. group wants and identity vs. individual wants and identity
  2. natural course vs. free will course.

We've already discussed at length in the previous essays the group versus individual balance. What we have not talked about is the natural versus free will balance.

Natural Course Versus Free Will Course Teeter-Totter


We do not have to be held captive by our innate nature. This is what kills me about people like Jordan Peterson who go around espousing that our nature is our fate. No, just stop it. Steven Pinker in his book, "The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature" explains nature as morality is a fallacy. Yet both the left and right borrow from nature as morality when it suits the various agendas. The right will claim nature is moral imperative with gay marriage, it homosexuality violates natural law. The right will then claim nurture when it comes to monogamy: men must be trained to ignore their promiscuous nature. The left will claim nature with homosexuality being natural, but then claim nurture with respect to parenting, good parenting can overcome our nature.

Does nature define our morals? What's important? Absolutely not, of course. As Pinker points out, violence is in our nature but our desired course is that your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. You kill somebody you go to jail even though a fit of rage to kill someone is in some peoples nature.

We can never escape our nature,  but we can manage it. That's the fulcrum. The sad state of affairs in 2018 is that for all the science and engineering that goes into new technology every single day, absolutely none of it is being invested in balancing our natural course and desired, free will course.

The US today, and all governments world-wide, are suffering from technology's irresponsibility. Irreni World Scale is primarily a feat of engineering because I'm an engineer. The MGO is a technical innovation to manage our natural inclination to use bureaucracy. The right to individual currency is feat of engineering to manage greed where Silicon Valley is stuck in a negative feedback loop of our natural greed feeding technical innovation. Time to get off that train.


Irreni World Scale uses technical innovation to build a teeter-totter that balances natural course versus desired course. Yes, greed is who we are. Yes, bureaucracy is who we are. Yes, favoring sociopaths leaders is who we are. Yes, male and female is who we are.

But who do we want to be?

Defining ourselves from pure thought is free will. Putting a stake in the ground and saying we can be more than our nature is to be human. However,  we are nature so one purpose of education and technology is to use them to manage nature so as to achieve our free will ends. And given we do not yet understand our nature then scientific experiments are built into Irreni in order to validate education and technology uses meet the desired ends using a technical design starting at a small scale  and then scaling out.

If Irreni World Scale feels weird to you that's because it is.


Did you know that homosexuality has only ever been found to be accepted by one culture that we know of? This is why us anti-theists say religion co-opts morality, not originate it. If every culture in existence has rejected homosexuality  then no religion can lay claim to originating the claim homosexuality is wrong. Same goes with murder, marriage and so on.

The point here is that Irreni World Scale will feel weird precisely for the same reason that homosexuality feels weird to heterosexuals: it is not natural to them. Managing our nature so as to achieve our abstract free-will ends is not going to feel natural. Bringing society up-to-speed using MGOs is not natural because bureaucracy is. So of course it is going to feel weird to replace bureaucracy.

We have two choices, either we accept the fact that life is going to continue to increase feeling weird as we continue on an expanded free will path, or we stagnate on our natural fate. The primary society failures today are based upon natural fate stagnation: greed and bureaucracy. We have no plan to manage greed and bureaucracy, yet.

Irreni World Scale has a plan and it feels weird for it.

Can such a society of MGOs exist if we feel out of place naturally?

This is the teeter-totter fulcrum of natural course versus free-will course. You are human nature. We need to find a balance of feeling our natural course and also living our ideals of free-will. Managing this balance is going to require hundreds-of-years of experiments that balances enough natural course while advancing our free will course simultaneously.




From the 1800s to the early 1900s our parents lived a life not of work and leisure, but of sacrifice for the next generation.  Well, what are we doing? Irreni World Scale continues this journey of making a better tomorrow for our children. So yes, there will be some sacrifice of every generation via personal responsibility and the work  of governing to manage society. But, unlike with those early American generations,  we can also provide ourselves a Wonderful(tm) fulfilling life! How cool is that!


Let's get cracking!

Voluntarily Reject Demagoguery!

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!



 







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