Vaccine Efficacy

Vaccines are once again being pressed by the news and the government following the recent California law. Normally speaking, the issue shouldn't be important. Like terrorism, infectious disease kills almost no one. Furthermore, almost the entirety of infectious disease damages are caused by a very limited set of diseases, most importantly, the flu. We have been unable to create a vaccine that has any significant impact on these diseases.

American infectious disease death rate is currently about 40 per 100000. In 1940 it was about 300 per 100000. Nearly half of the current deaths from infectious diseases can be attributed to influenza and pneumonia.

From 2000 to 2015, a little over 3000 Americans were killed by terrorists. This calculates out to about .06 deaths per 100000 per year.

4.7 Americans per 100000 die per year due to intentional homicide.

About 815 per 100000 Americans die every year. In 1940 about 1080 per 100000 died.

Thus, the chance that a particular random American will die in a year is about .8%.

This suggests a half life of 85 years. In turn, mean lifetime would end up at 122 years.

This is unreasonably long. Death rates have been reduced below the plausible range by interfering with the age pyramid. America is unsustainably young. In fact, the entire world is unsustainably young.

Our death rate should be 1262 deaths per 100000.

So, with a little background we can return to the actions of the ruling class- the media and the government. On one side of the vaccine debate, we see Narrative A-

Foolish, half religious, conspiracy nuts fail to vaccinate their children, which in turn allows diseases to use those children as vectors through which diseases spread, eventually reaching vulnerable subgroups and causing deaths. The wisdom of the chosen elite is only hampered by controls on the powers of government, while science has firmly solved the issue at hand.

As for Narrative B-

Vaccines are popular among the ruling elite because they are another pathway by which the common man can be vilified. Vaccination is a fundamentally half religious tool, similar to kosher eating or Islamic fasting, which is used to build an in group and an out group.

In other words, the vaccine debate is actually a debate between the wisdom of the ruling class vs the wisdom of first degree related individuals. So... does the government have a case wherein, in its wisdom, its able to force a stupid and dangerous group to give up its beliefs for the greater good?

Such scenarios should exist. The world is filled with individuals, and over half of them are idiots. People are known to build groups around known fallacies, and in many case larges swarms of idiots can gather together to support almost any variable X. 

Specific examples where governments have come into conflict with such groups, for example, violent religious terrorists and cruel, unreasonable, dictatorial foreign powers, do exist.

That said, the above isn't as clear cut as it would seem- such groups don't exist. Not that they are not physically real, but that they are illusions created from the conniving imagination of the elites. To put that in more simplistic terms- for each person killed by terrorism, the American government spends 500 million dollars. The real threat is insignificant compared to the virtual threat.

In other words, the elites create strawmen to wage war upon. What they say is technically correct, but not in the manner that what they say sounds like.

Here we reach the crux of the vaccination debate-

On one side, we have people who do not support or believe in a certain vaccine or group of vaccines. On the other, we have the government.

The government's arguments are predictable. Vaccines are safe and effective. Science is on our side. Measles and Polio prove how great we are.

For the most part, the facts cited are true- Measles and Polio used to be a big deal, and now they aren't. If a person is vaccinated, and then exposed to a disease, he's less likely to catch the disease than a control.

But this doesn't add up to the original statement. Measles and Polio were never very deadly to begin with. Death rates were in a long term declining trend-line before the vaccines became widespread. There is very little evidence to show that measles and polio were driven out by vaccination.

The issue of clean water needs to be addressed here. The elites blamed the polio breakout on our clean drinking water, which is also directly inferable from the science behind vaccines. But, studies have demonstrated that clean water prevents polio, directly conflicting with the establishment narrative.

The historical data isn't favorable towards vaccine. Deaths rates have declined severely in all diseases, not just the ones with vaccines. Furthermore, cliffs should appear a few years after the implementation of widespread vaccination programs. This does not happen at a rate above expected constellation probability.

Setting aside the historical data, an analysis of relevant studies is called for. Here, we see an annoying problem- very few studies address the efficacy of a vaccine on a population. The tests are all done under laboratory conditions, and cannot be translated to real world application.

The idea that a cure would work for an individual but not a group is not unexpected. It is normal in medicine. Diseases adapt. Asymptomatic carriers are worse infection vectors than normal. Immunities wear off. Pathogens have large numbers of unexpected behaviors, not visible in the laboratory. Pathogens kill other pathogens, steal vectors, and starve competition of nutrients. An infection while young can give a strong immunity once old, that a vaccine cannot replicate.

The studies conducted on vaccine efficacy generally take the form of a couple hundred test subjects that are followed for a few months. Studies wherein similar groups with dissimilar vaccination rates are tracked for a sustained period of time and display life expectancy discrepancy, do not exist.

Almost all of the time, when asked for science supporting vaccines, the pro vaccine side points to a series of studies verifying that vaccines are safe. But this runs into two problems-

A- Homeopathy is, generally, safe. No one cares if vaccines are safe, if they're not effective.

B- The studies do not say that vaccines are perfectly safe. In fact, they say vaccines kill over a hundred Americans every year.

So, we ask, is the government really demonstrating its superior intellect? What would it suggest if it were?

We can start with the global warming debate- it's fundamentally identical. The alarmists repeats the wonders of carbon heat trapping, throws out a couple models saying how awesome he is, then says he's peer reviewed by cool people. Or, to put it another way, it also uses the science card.

Here we've reached a larger problem. Science is just a word. Anyone can call anything science. In the past, science was reliable. This is because people didn't trust science. Science didn't have any positive connotations. It was just a word used by a group with a certain ideology and work style. Nowadays, people have learned that science is where the facts come from, so, of course, the propagandists, the advertisers, the manipulative and corrupt, have come for the title. The difference between a modern scientist and an 1800s scientist is as wide as that between an A.D. 200 christian and an A.D. 400 christian.

And then, we start reaching the absurd stances of the government.

Let's imagine that vaccines are effective and global warming is real. Would it be better to trust the government, or would it be better to be wrong about the above?

The elites have opposed genetic modification at every turn.

Regarding plants, the FDA delays almost every new product for at least ten years, and the major news outlets attack GMOs far more often than they support them. Nutrition is far more important than vaccines. Nearly 15% of Americans are on a highly limited food budget. Raising the price of food, is stealing the vegetables from babies.

And, then there's the other half, which the government has almost entirely destroyed- human genetic manipulation. Imagine a world where everyone has over 120 IQ, blue eyes are as common as brown, anxiety, depression, diabetes, etc. have all been eliminated, parents get along better with their children, and etc.

None of those are particularly difficult. All of them are frustrated by the elite's weird religious demands, their faith that humans are perfect as they are and that meaningfully changing the natural order is evil.

The elites have, quite unsuccessfully, opposed cryptography since the earliest computers. Quite contrary to their rhetoric, if we hadn't disobeyed and overpowered the government, the internet wouldn't exist.

The elites support weird economic theories, which basically say they should control everything. The issue there is larger than can be addressed easily, but, at the least their weird anti-trade beliefs, their continuing mercantilist trade deficit theories, and their illogical belief in the efficacy of sanctions are worth mentioning.

Basically, the vaccine debate isn't really about vaccines at all. It's just one part of the larger debate- should the elites be trusted when they press for counterintuitive, self serving duties? Like usual, every position proves every other position. The government asserts that it is wise, because it handled WW2 and the great depression, because it journeyed to space and freed the blacks. And, because it vaccinated the masses.

In other words, the elites have created a narrative. Each element doesn't look all that important, each element creates a feel good story that only a Nazi, a monster or a bigot could oppose, but together they form an unassailable wall.

Generally speaking, anti-vaccination is met with confusion, the issue draws up a sort of Pascal's wager, since vaccines aren't particularly expensive, and they can't cause too much harm, given that death rates are already unreasonably low. And no matter how much theorycrafting says that vaccines don't work, that isn't much relief to a parent who failed to vaccinate and then watched a child die to measles. On the other hand, if a parent does vaccinate, and the child still dies, at least the relief of having done what was possible exists. Instinctively, vaccines are hard to attack.

The popular version of deaths by preventable cause is 48.2%. However, smoking, drinking alcohol, obesity- government can't prevent these things. The relevant rate is closer to 8.4%. In other words, infectious agents (3.1%)+ toxins (2.3%)+ traffic accidents (1.8%)+ firearms (1.2%).

The elites rely on the typical christian defense- Without their religion people will turn to sin, immorality and decadence, so it's evil to even analyze what they say.

However, these threats cause very little impact on most people's lives. We're already living as long as the human body is capable of. Further extension of lifespan through reduced deaths, is about as credible as further increases in profit due to a company's third round of downsizing.

The main reason why people die is aging. The second biggest reason is that they don't value their life enough (and thus take drugs, to include alcohol and cigarettes, overeat, participate in dangerous sports/other entertainment, etc.)

If vaccines really were safe and effective they wouldn't need a gigantic propaganda apparatus to function. Antibiotics do just fine without blackmailing people into submission, without weekly news stories about how great they are, etc. The same can be said of clean drinking water, toilets, nutritious food, protection from nature, avoiding contaminants, etc.

Vaccines are on the side of health insurance, doctors and organic food. They rely on the elites to force it upon the masses, through law and lies, and are not independently sought out through their own merit.

It's currently impossible to prove the vaccine debate one way or the other. It cannot be proven that vaccines are ineffectual, because that would be proving a counterfactual.

However effective vaccines are, they can't do much, because life expectancy does not vary sufficiently between countries. Infectious disease is complicated enough, that any activity can be accounted for using any number of alternate movers, such as sanitation, pollution, nutrition and evolution.

That said, the pro-vaccine side isn't positing simply that vaccines are beneficial. They claim that vaccines are the end all be all of healthcare, and that only non-compliance prevents the complete elimination of disease.

Vaccine compliance is around 98%. Like racists, terrorists and mass killers, the group in question has nowhere near the power required to achieve all the evil deeds attributed to them. Vaccines cannot fail due to people raising philosophical objections, because almost no one does. This is the Trotsky defense from animal farm.

The programs never reach their supposed potential, and in turn, the proponents call for ever more power with which to suppress their enemies.

The Human Body is No Longer Self Sufficient

Scenario A-

Person X decides to have a child, knowing that the child will be born severely crippled. Person X finds this to be desirable because the child will now be utterly dependent upon Person X, who will use this as leverage to control the child throughout its life.

Can this be condoned?

Scenario B-

Person X decides to have a child, knowing that the child will be born with an illness. The illness is sure to kill the child within eight years of birth.

Can this be condoned?

Scenario C-

Person X decides to have a child, knowing that the Earth is so polluted that no more crops can be grown, and currently stored food will run out within 8 years.

Can this be condoned?

In other words, is it okay to create humans that are given no options, or very few options with which to live their lives?

I would answer that clearly, this is not acceptable.

Humans have an innate fear of death. Once given life, they cannot reject it easily. In addition, humans have an innate preference for their own well being, and will put others through considerable trouble for their own sake, especially when the alternative is death or a near equivalent.

Therefore, a human who can do nothing but suffer and then die, or a human who can only obtain resources through a life of theft, should not be created.

Humans are naturally empathetic. Even from a more psychopathic outlook, humans at a low enough standard of living are heavy anti-utility objects. In other words, at a low enough standard of living, others will sacrifice their well being willingly, as a moral necessity. This too does not imply that the target should be considered a positive loci of utility. It is closer to a form of blackmail.

In explanation-

Scenario D-

Person X creates five million people in the depths of space, granting them just enough air/gravity/etc. that they somehow, just barely survive. In response, an interstellar civilization builds all of these people a planet.

Can this be condoned?

If our latest Person X was allowed to continue as he pleased, he's now offloaded some 90% of the cost of reproducing onto others. This gives him a huge competitive advantage. Suddenly, he has almost complete control over who gets to live in the next generation, and on the sole basis that he's willing and able to manipulate his competitors with threats of leaving innocents to a fate of natural torture.

Even if we assume that no one is actually directly hurt as a result of Person X's actions, and that the civilization would have made some new planets anyway, we can see that Person X has managed to override the decision making of his competitors with his own, without demonstrating in any significant manner the superiority of his direction.

As such, it should be clear, when creating sentient beings, the tools necessary to achieving that entity's will should also be supplied. Anything less is slavery, blackmail or torture.

Throughout history, this logical necessity has been largely ignored.

There are two primary reasons. The first is that it implies the killing of babies, which humans find naturally repulsive. This is an instinctual response built by evolution for evolution's own purposes.

The second is slightly more complicated, and will be broken down further into two pieces-

A- Throughout history, morality has been treated in a generally Darwinian, or rather, tribal manner. In other words, negative utility effects created through invasion of foreign territories was not included.

B- Given A, the human body represented a valuable asset. Occasionally wars could be won using metal, or horses, or stones, or some other limited resource. However, normally speaking, a war was won using the human body. Nothing else was as finely controlled, as agile, as energetic, as enduring or as powerful as a human. The energy generated through eating, the control granted through the brain, the mobility of the legs, the leverage of the arms- these creations of evolution were difficult to compete with. Even in those cases where machines replaced the arms, or where animals replaced the legs, it was almost always the case that arms and legs were still scarce, since they were needed to control the machines or the animals.

Winning in war was essential. Invading foreign territories netted new resources. And even if you didn't want a war at the moment, everyone else was eyeing your territories.

Essentially, humans evolved to see children and other humans as an asset, to continue having children even in the face of famine and plague, because humans were necessary to winning wars, and even if there were too many, they could easily and profitably be consumed in warfare.

In other words, so long as wars could be won with infantry, we could not produce more human bodies than we could employ effectively.

Thus, anyone with an operable human body, was easily leveraged for profit.

Note that while the female body was not of equivalent military worth, it had the obvious advantage of creating male bodies. Throughout most of history, this was considered the female's main worth, and they were kept pregnant.

Men were raised to be zerglings, and women were the hatcheries. It was simple, primitive, easy and barbaric.

However, around 60 years ago, somewhere between 1957 and 1960, everything changed. The age of profitable warfare was brought to an end, by the ultimate weapon of mutually assured destruction.

An age of peace began between nuclear powers. Slowly, people came to realize how savage and evil warfare is. As a moral awakening, it remains, in many way, inadequate. However, at the least, very few wish to return to the era, to the policies, that characterize this segment of history. And, at the least, we want to believe that we're better people than the ones before us.

By abandoning the previous glorification of warfare, we dismissed the people's honor. Humans could no longer justify themselves merely through patriotism. Honor was abandoned.

However, humans are innately competitive. We create rankings. We rank. We try to surpass the neighbors. Previously, patriotism, faith, proving yourself as a loyal member of the tribe- this was the ranking system. But, as warfare regressed, so too did our hostility towards outsiders. In turn, we abandoned our admiration of insiders.

To replace this we needed a new ranking system.

The 1960's were, generally speaking, boom years. Employment was easy. Work was available. Everyone could find someone to pay him for his actions. This, was a consequence of a larger trend-line reaching all the way to the 1700s and a short term catalyst, the general destruction caused by world war 2.

Jobs posed a convenient solution. Everyone had them. They contained a clear hierarchy. They were sustainable.

For 30 years the American economy continued expanding the job pool. Simultaneously, population grew rapidly. America assumed that anyone with a functional human body could make himself rich, and for the most part the facts did not pose a contradiction.

In 1990, the jobs peaked. Americans blamed the lazy youngsters, they blamed the ignorant, the emotional, the greedy and the selfish, they assumed it could be solved.

The solutions they desired were implemented. College graduation rates climbed, government financial engineering exploded, government job programs expanded- America created the modern three prong system of education, financial engineering and nationalization.

The result was laughable.

After all, the problem wasn't that sinners weren't doing their part, and needed to be educated and disciplined. It was that the elites were automating all of the jobs.

Work, is basically the art of redistributing painful things to those most able to bear the weight. Jobs are simply a particularly servile form of work.

On any particular issue, a human will admit that eliminating a job is a good thing. The utility is obvious.

However, as jobs began declining in availability, the moral fabric of America was threatened once again. Just as the nuclear bomb destroyed Christ, and opened up a new era of sex and science, robots are destroying the concepts of responsibility and productivity.

As of now, these forces are still the fringe. Although labor force participation is falling rapidly, is has not yet fallen so far as to bring about significant change to the average person.

However, there is no reason to believe that the fall will end. None of the answers are working. None come even close to working. Simultaneously, the catalysts are accelerating.

Meanwhile, children continued to be mass produced at a geometric rate.

Without anything to kill them, population is doubling roughly every fifty years. In itself, this is clearly unsustainable. At that rate we'll fill everything reachable under the speed of light within 8000 years.

Of course, obviously, we cannot sustain current population growth for 8000 years. Earth will run out of space, the sun will run out of energy, etc.

The point is, the human body is not innately self sufficient. The total employable population is limited.

That said, the physical maximum of employment is not equal to the maximum efficient use of employment, and here is where automation enters the picture.

We cannot yet rely heavily on lights out factories. However, to efficiently employ farmland, only one farmer is needed for around 7 million dollars worth of farmland. One worker on a drillship is needed for 6 million dollars worth of oil drilling equipment. One worker in a textile mill requires about fifty thousand dollars worth of machinery. An employee at a major game studio requires around 2 million dollars in capital. An employee in a hospital requires about thirteen thousand dollars in capital goods.

In comparison the average net worth of an American is around 300000. The median net worth of an American is around 45000.

Some jobs still exist. Obviously. Most people are still employed.

However, most critical jobs require large amounts of capital. In most cases the shortfall of capital goods eclipses the value of the worker. We cannot leverage a larger population to obtain more oil. We cannot leverage a larger population to farm more food. It's mathematically impossible. Even for jobs such as those in a textile mill, or a hospital, the capital costs are cripplingly high-

This is because the above figures only work correctly assuming all capital is geared towards production, a logical impossibility. In reality, humans need houses (100000 dollars) cars (30000 dollars) and other capital goods for their own use. About half of our net worth is locked away in consumer goods. In addition, the economy cannot be freely retooled to completely ignore goods that do not provide much in the way of employment per unit of capital. In other words, to give everyone jobs at textile mills, our asset allocation would have to be about 1/6th textiles. Hospitals would need about 1/25 of our asset allocation.

Construction work is largely done using labor. It's a major source of jobs.

Once oil, electricity, food, housing, clothes, health and entertainment are addressed, that basically covers what people want and need. Of course, education exists, but I don't care because it's a sham. Of course, education is another major source of capital free jobs.

It's easier to be capital free when you don't actually do anything. That's why jobs in government intensive industries produce so many jobs at such a low cost, explaining healthcare and education.

This basically leaves manufacturing and construction as a source of rational work. However, there is no reason to believe that those won't change. Even if they don't, they only encompass a certain percent of our asset allocation, so we still reach a shortfall.

Other jobs, such as waiters, retail sales and gardeners exist, but they're non-essential. As such, as capital increases in productivity, such jobs will be pushed to the wayside. Furthermore, they'll be increasingly competed for. Finally, they're just fundamentally not worth doing.

In other words, labor is losing its role as a limiting reactant. It has already lost functionality in most fields. This is unique within history. Evolution has not prepared us for this reality, nor has culture, which was also evolved, though not in the biological sense.

Different actions will lead to different results. What I expect to happen is the blind stupid path- population growth continues geometrically. Fake jobs are created to employ all these useless people. The economy becomes increasingly nationalized, until it all collapses in a new round of war and famine.

We could, theoretically, allow the poor to starve. The rich could sit back and laugh at the stupid cattle and their unending sex. However, practically speaking, this can't happen, because the poor will vote and riot, and the rich will sympathize with them even if they don't. Even if the rich were willing and able, this scenario is still not optimal, since it involves starving millions of people to death, and likely involves imprisoning and/or slaughtering them to keep them under control until then. And, the slaughter is likely to never end, as new people lose their jobs or their fortune but continue to have children.

The alternative is birth licensing. Or, in other words, redefinition of the human body. We can't live like hunter-gatherers in the modern age. Everything is already owned, and we'd lose 98% of our productivity if we went back. So why do we expect people to make do just because they have arms and legs?

Parents should be required to provide adequate capital to their children.

In the modern age, capital can easily produce a return of 5%. A human can live off 7000 dollars a year with no difficulty. In other words, 140000 dollars is an adequate replacement for a job.

Of course, very few Americans own 140000 dollars, much less the 280000 they would need if they wanted to maintain their own living standards. A direct imposition of a 140000 dollar requirement per child, would effectively wipe the 99% from the gene pool.

This is neither necessary nor desirable. It is within our powers to give everyone in America 300000 dollars.

It is not necessarily within our powers to do so immediately. That isn't an issue. The government would immediately owe everyone 300000 dollars, and the recipient can immediately have a child. The debt would then be transferred to the child.

Of course this program would require scaling back the omnipotent rights of a parent over a child. Children should be allowed to own their own assets, free from parental meddling. Upon birth, money would be transferred, where it would be kept in sequester until the child claimed it.

As to the standard required to claim the assets, I would wait for the child to ask for the money, or until the age of 10. The money wouldn't be released immediately, but once the trigger is met, would be given over the next ten years.

While the assets are in government holding, the government would invest it, targeting a normal and safe return through some sort of government ETF. The interest would be added directly to the related asset pool.

So, where will this money come from?

We could redirect it from government waste, AKA, the vast majority of what we currently spend on the military, the education system, bankers, healthcare and the police. In addition we can end social security (and no one will have to live in deprivation since... they're getting 300000 dollars.), welfare (see above), and... basically everything. One 300000 dollar payment would replace our entire welfare system, all of our fake jobs, everything. The government would be left with a military comparable to what every other nation in the world gets by with, those few police who aren't chasing traffic offenders and drug addicts, a mail delivery network, some roads, anything it spends on research, and a large number of minor programs that don't really cost anything anyway.

The government already spends about 20000 dollars per person per year. Assuming 2/3rds of its spending were redirected, it would take 23 years to give everyone 300000 dollars. In the end, rich and poor alike benefit, compared to the current system (where taxation isn't cut by 2/3rds in 20 years), or the basic alternative (where the rich and poor fight it out on the streets)

We could also sell government assets. Since these are already publicly owned, no one has any special claim. It's already "the people's" wealth.

Federal oil, coal, mineral and gas reservoirs could be worth over a hundred trillion, potentially sufficient on their own to pay off everyone in one go. It's unlikely a buyer could come up with the cash to buy all that in one go, but just opening the land to leasing would provide a major income stream until they sell. The government owns around a third of America's landmass.

It could also raise trillions by selling its gold, by selling most of its offices, by selling dams, lakes, rails, by selling debt owed to the government and other assets. Individually each item doesn't add up to much, but together its a significant, if difficult to ascertain, net worth.

Blender Tutorial- Proxy Physics: Mesh Deform and Cloth Physics

Mesh Deform:

Proxy Physics:

Getting Blender to do certain things is... not intuitive. Generally speaking, I use two separate meshes for rendering and physics. To link them, I use a an additional mesh a an inbetween.

IE-

Physics Mesh -> Transformation Mesh -> Render Mesh

To connect each mesh together, I use the Mesh Deform Modifier.

The Mesh Deform modifier ignores non generative modifiers on the target mesh. However, the target mesh can be changed after the binding is complete.

The target mesh is greyed out, and no longer responds to clicking. However, a little python can resolve this. IE, bpy.context.object.modifiers['MeshDeform'].object = bpy.data.objects['Insert_New_Target_Name_Here']

Note that the new and old target mesh must have the same vertices with the same index. Typically speaking, this means the binding target must be a copy of the true target.

This method allows this workflow:

Copy Transformation Mesh -> Apply all modifiers on the copy -> Bind Render Mesh to Transformation Mesh -> Switch Mesh Target from the copy to the original

Okay, so why would you want to do this? There are many reasons, but the most common one is that often, the physics mesh looks different than the Render mesh. Placing a solidify modifier, followed by a displace modifier, and other modifiers as needed, allows the transformation mesh to be shaped to encompass the render mesh.

Another useful thing to note- Adding or deleting faces and edges has no effect on vertex index. Thus, unwanted faces can be removed. If a vertex isn't wanted during binding, simply leave it "floating" unconnected to any face or edge.

This is particularly important regarding Physics -> Transformation binding, when the physics mesh contains large amounts of "strange" faces. When creating the physics mesh, use a special material and mark all "strange" faces. During binding, delete all "strange" faces. What do I mean by "strange"? Normally anything not manifold, except boundaries.

A useful note- Make sure not to accidentally delete a vertex while deleting edges and faces.

A useful note- If you have a solidify modifier on a mesh and its copy, you can delete any number of faces or edges before applying the modifier, and the vertex indexes, will still match.

Normally, my Transformation Mesh, is, originally, a copy of my physics mesh. It has all the same vertices in all the same locations. This allows a certain trick to, under almost all circumstances, successfully bind the Transformation Mesh to the Physics Mesh. This trick can also be accomplished by using shrinkwrap to align vertices.

The workflow is:

Give Physics Mesh a Solidify modifier followed by a displace modifier.

Copy Physics Mesh

Remove unwanted faces from copy.

Apply all modifiers to copy.

Bind Transformation Mesh to Copy

Switch Bind to Original

Solidify and Mesh Deform are a match made in heaven. In particular, the solidify modifier is the key to using mesh deform with non manifold topology, as is the case in most cloth physics simulations.

Cloth Physics:

Resuming Simulation:

To resume a simulation, from the middle of a simulation, my procedure is:

Free Bake

Place the timeline on the desired frame.

Hide Cloth Physics modifier

Unhide Cloth Physics modifier

Enable Disk Cache

Go to the folder containing the generated results. Rename the folder. Remember the original name.

Place the timeline on the initial frame.

Copy the contents from the renamed folder to a new folder with the same name as the original folder. (You can simply rename the folder back to its original name, but I've accidentally deleted my simulation results by doing so.)

Disable Disk Cache

Using Shape Keys:

A physics simulation will always judge the mesh using the first frame of the simulation. Sometimes, the desired initial position of the mesh is different from the desired judgement position. For instance, imagine a belt, that is supposed to cling to a character's waist.

If I wanted to achieve this I would-

Create a circle. Extrude, move negative on Z axis

Create a shape key. Select it.

Select top and bottom edge loops. Set pivot points to individual origins. Scale until the edges are inside the collision (character's) mesh.

Create two vertex groups- Root, and All

Assign all vertices to All

Add modifier- Vertex Weight Mix

Vertex Group A = Root

Vertex Group B = All

Mix Mode = Add

Mix Set = All

Set Frame to 3

Insert Keyframe: Unhide Vertex Weight Mix Modifier

Set Frame to 4

Insert Keyframe: Hide Vertex Weight Mix Modifier

Set Frame to 2

Insert Keyframe: Shapekey value 0

Set Frame to 1

Insert Keyframe: Shapekey value 1

Add Cloth Physics Modifier. Enable Pinning. Set Pinning group to Root

Using Hyper Cubes:

A hyper cube, in this instance refers to a certain shape, wherein additional faces are added to the interior of a cubelike object to aid in physics simulation. Hyper cubes are generally used when it becomes necessary to simulate rigid objects with cloth physics. Blender has a good rigid object simulator, but it is not ideal for rigid objects attached to non-rigid objects. For instance, a pendant on a necklace.

Some of my meshes contain large quantities of hyper cubes. Rather than placing each face manually it became imperative to generate them quickly.

My procedure is as follows-

Duplicate physics mesh

Select all edges. Mark Sharp. Deselect all.

For each cubelike, select one face.

Set pivot points to individual origins. Scale to -1

Assign Selected to Vertex Group

Leave edit mode, Add Edge Split modifier, apply

Reenter edit mode, use edge selection mode

Select Vertex Group

scale to -1

select all, remove doubles

Select top and bottom faces, delete

Select All

Set face material to Material B (To a distinct material)

Join duplicate with original

Select All

Remove Doubles

If desired, create 2 copies instead of 1. For each cubelike on the copy, select one of the faces connected to the face you first selected, then follow the procedure as above. This will create a perfect symmetric hypercube.

Using the Wireframe Modifier to create strings:

Converting one dimensional vertex lines into three dimensional objects can be frustratingly difficult. There are a number of methods, but, the Wireframe modifier offers several advantages over the others- One vertex is equal to one edge loop, the displacement is even, and, above all, it's fast.

However, the Wireframe Modifier refuses to cooperate without a face. Our savior is the Ngon.

The procedure is as follows.

Select a vertex connected to only one edge (IE, the first or last vertex)
Select similar, use amount of connecting edges
Extrude. Do not move the extruded vertices. Add the new vertices to vertex group "Head"
Select All
Extrude. Move all extruded vertices in direction X for 100
Assign Extruded vertices to vertex group "Extra"
Deselect vertex group "Head"
Dissolve selected vertices
Exit edit mode, add Wireframe Modifier
Set Thickness to 0.001
Disable Even Thickness
Enable Boundary
Add Modifier, Mask
Set Vertex group to "Head", Inverse
Add Modifier, Smooth
Add Modifier, Displace

Adjust Smooth and Displace until desired results emerge.
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Keynes, Einstein and Maxwell

People like using "wise quotes". Certain phrases are repeated continuously, each time with the user expressing a self satisfied look, like he'd really nailed his argument into place, and was oh so intelligent.

Often, the actual people who said the line are far more intelligent than the people who repeat it. As such, the lines, used as the author did, are often much more sensible than their common usage.

In this case, I'm not so much concerned with arguing against the (original intent) so much as the (mainline message).

That said, I'll introduce our wonderful Keynes quote:
"In the long run we are all dead"

Time is dimensional. This is required to make basic tenets of morality work. Consider murder- A man aims and shoots a gun at a random person in a crowd with no justification.

How does this work?

There's no frame of time in which he killed his victim. Also, there is a gap between the frames where he was applying force to the trigger, when the bullet left the gun, and when the bullet hit its target.

The common idea that time dilates morality, would mean that, between two shooters, the one who shot at people further away from him, is better than the one that shoots at people closer to him. It would mean that someone who salts anti-personnel mines in a forest is better than someone who opens fire on a crowd.

Furthermore, if time dilates, then distance should also dilate, because the two concepts are congruent. As such, a person who shoots his neighbors is worse than someone who fires some sort of awesome laser weapon into a crowd of aliens in another galaxy.

If the universe is going to end from entropy some day and a new universe is going to be born in the distant future, and some mechanism can be used to predict and influence the new universe from our current universe, and if that new universe is going to give birth to an Earth like planet, it is unimaginable that hurting people on that "new Earth" would be somehow more acceptable than doing the same on "current Earth".

Morality should not contain arbitrary delineations. As such, it is absurd to think that morality would dilate over time.

With this said, when would morality, or at least the calculations that are used to apply morality, dilate?

The answer is- data and processing power.

Now we've reached a standard that makes sense. Between shooting someone right in front of you, and shooting bullets into a thicket, obviously the thicket is the more non-violent choice. All actions must be taken under a backdrop of information scarcity, and so, utility calculations must account for "fog of war".

Processing power is similar though different. Even if we have sufficient data, that doesn't make it usable, or worth using. Sometimes, we can't reach the correct answer. Other times, we could, but it isn't worth it. Everyone should take a look at Bayesian probability, and incorporate its key concepts into their systems. However, actually drawing up a Bayesian tree should only happen in the most extreme cases.

Time and information tend to be directly correlated.

However, this is not (fundamental law) so much as a (common flow).

There are times when we have more information about the far future than the near future. For instance, imagine a game where red or blue marbles are randomly added to a pool each turn. On turn three, what is the standard deviation of the ratio of blue to red marbles?

In turn, consider the standard deviation on turn 1000.

This phenomena is frequent. The close and the far become "reality" whilst "darkness" lies in between.

To dismiss the far, and concern ourselves with the between instead, is absurd.

At times, far data is as reliable, or sufficiently reliable, that trade offs can be made between far and near. For instance, it's a decent bet that if you keep a stock of gold bars around, it'll benefit you someday. If you instead take the money and eat some restaurant food, that will also benefit you. Sometimes, gold markets crash. But, sometimes restaurants make their customers sick. There is no choice that entirely avoids risk. The data has to be weighed, and prioritized.

Of course, economics is the same. Expanding the money supply increases market noise. Government spending increases market noise. Taxes also increase market noise. Note that not all taxes, or spending programs, or currency issuances,  are the same. Issuing 5 trillion dollars into Ron Paul's bank account would probably result in less market noise than issuing a million into Paul Krugman's. A citizen's dividend (with equal funding) would cause less noise than Social Security. Every time the tax code is made more complicated with weird rules, exceptions and social engineering schemes it generates more noise. A simple tax that took 90% of all owned currency every year, would, assuming none of the proceeds were spent, generate less noise than our current tax code. (basically, a system wherein every year, dollars cease to be called dollars and are instead called dimes, pennies tenth pennies, etc.)

Because government is in constant flux, and because it's hard to tell how a program will operate after implementation, it's difficult to determine how much noise a given program will produce.

However, since noise is a fundamental element, work cannot be achieved without it.

This leads into a severe flaw of mainstream economics-

Consider Maxwell's demon.

The thought experiment began as an attack on the second law of thermodynamics, and it was one of the most interesting lines of attack. After significant effort (continuing into the modern day) scientists finally proved why, Maxwell's demon cannot exist within Newtonian physics.

The important element of their solution was that, for information to exist within our world, it required physical backing- aka, acquiring the vectors of a molecule requires payment, both in energy and entropy.

Under these principles, we can build a "demonic engine" that builds and releases pressure from a chamber, by opening and closing a door, and thus produces more energy than is used to open and close the door. This is made possible, because information can be transmuted into and from energy.

Mainstream theories consistently try to prove things in overly abstract "clean rooms". For the most part, I do not disagree with the idea that spending more during a recession will reduce the severity of the recession, or that moderate inflation will encourage more work to be done, etc.

The problem here, is that the economists are cheating. They are becoming Maxwell's demon. It is easy to come up with a program that improves the economy when you receive free information which you can then feed into the economy.

Without any information input a contracyclic spending program will still reduce the frequency of recessions. This is because-

If you flip one coin, the chance that you will get a tails is 50%

If you flip two coins, that chance of two tails is 25%

75% of the time you will not get two tails.

50% of the time you will get 1 heads and one tails. IE, either the government will be stimulating the economy, or the economy will be booming.

On the face of it, stimulus will avoid recessions.

However, a particularly disastrous scenario is prepared-

Stimulating the boom instead of the bust.

The problem is, this is just shuffling costs into a larger pool. As a result, a few long drawn out depressions replace many six month "soft periods".

Now, most economists would assert that working without any information at all is unrealistic.

I disagree, on a simple basis-

If any investor bought at the start of booms, and the sold when busts began, he'd be far richer than Warren Buffet. If any investor bought whenever a boom was going to continue, and sold whenever a bust was going to continue, he'd be similarly rich. Even now, economists argue whether we're in a boom or bust. It is obvious, that, determining whether the market is currently in a boom or a bust is impossible.

Even if someone did have the skill set necessary, that still does not mean he would be working for the federal reserve. Or that he would be a professor from Harvard. Or etc. Before the government can state that it knows something, it would have to have some method by which it can identify people with special skills.

I agree that, economists do not have to be speculators to be taken seriously. Mises never attempted to make himself rich. Nor did Adam Smith.

However, economists must be careful that they do not attribute to themselves (or worse, the general public) skills that would make them top class speculators.

In other words, much of what Keynesians use to "prove" that government can make us richer by managing our wealth, merely proves that god almighty could make us richer by managing our wealth. Not that an arbitrary or democratic bureaucracy can make us richer.

Which in turn asserts a particular axiom-

No government program will ever be implemented in the manner described by theoreticians.

This axiom is consistently true because, the theories it is applied to exclude three critical factors-
The incompetency of bureaucrats, the stupidity of crowds and the incredible complexity of problems existing in the real world.

Anthropomorphism, Redistribution and Jobs

This universe is not object oriented.

There is no distinction between cause and effect.
There is no distinction between supply and demand.
There is no distinction between past and future.
There is no gap between one life and another.
There is no gap between life and non-life.

Humans are object oriented. Reality is not.

Anthropomorphism is the underlying cause of much of this world's nonsense. People continually try to drag structures into their personal reality, in the process, distorting them.

Thus do we get religion, demand economics, effort worship, justice, etc.

Goods are heterogeneous. One good cannot be transmuted  into another. Goods are inequal. Money is not some sort of alchemical stone that turn X into Y. As such, you cannot feed the hungry by redistributing money from the rich. You cannot house the homeless by redistributing money from the rich.

In order to house someone, what is required, is a house. In order to feed someone, what is required, is food. This is true for every need- money is merely an overlay.

The amount of houses available is dependent on numerous factors. Many factors are unknown. In fact, most are unknown. Money is a system that allows efficient distribution of resources within largely unknown and unknowable environments.

The market is efficient.

Not in the logical sense- obviously, some level of supersentience could come up with a superior distribution.

The market is, in the end, just a name, given to whatever technology happens to be most efficient.

Thus, under any condition wherein market failure will arise, all other mechanisms will also fail.

Thus, all houses will be usefully employed. If a house appears not to be usefully employed, this merely demonstrates a failure of measurement. The house is usefully employed.

A house will, if worthwhile, be produced.

In turn, the market, automatically produces and sells houses. The only reasonable route of attack, is to say-

"We can cause people to make more houses than they otherwise would have."

or

"We can cause people to make more poor friendly uses of the houses."

Both ignore the obvious issue that- if the market has found a better use for the house than housing the homeless, or if the market has found a better use for its land than a housing project- that path has higher utility. It's utterly self destructive to cut off your high end projects to achieve your low end projects.

Setting that aside, the attempt still will not succeed.

This is because, it is very rare for the market to prioritize something above food, housing and transportation. It doesn't. If something can be used to produce one of these items, that is how it will be used.

Furthermore, the rich are not capable of outbidding the poor.

A homeseeker can pay well above the actual value of the house, while the speculator must make a profit on his purchase. Similarly, rich people are limited in number, and require maximum productivity on their property. Even if they own multiple properties, they must keep the properties occupied, on any margin.

The market is highly attuned to need. Someone who needs something more, will almost assuredly outbid someone who is merely richer.

As such, the amount of houses available is near the maximum imposed by resource constraints. As such, attempting to redistribute in order to improve housing, is futile. The more poor people money is given to, the more housing prices will rise.

This is the same dynamic that can be seen in education right now- first we sent everyone to high school. The project failed laughably- high school degrees lost all value, and college became the new standard for job seekers. Of course, popular opinion just started trying to churn out college degrees, but that's failing in the exact same way.

Education is not, and has never been, a limiting reactant. The amount of jobs available will not change, regardless of how much education there is.

Food comes from farms. Their yields are maintained through use of fertilizer and other resources. And, importantly, the food is worthless until it is moved from farm to consumer, a process that is often more difficult than creating the food to begin with.

Food is heterogeneous. Apples are not corn. At times, the best way to feed the most people, is to throw away apples to free up resources for use with corn. Waste is a part of efficiency.

As such-
Money owned by rich people is different than money owned by poor people.

And more to the point-
No two goods are identical.

Thus-
Nothing is fungible.

In order to transform one property, all other properties must also be transformed. Popular redistribution schemes only work logically, because their authors, basically, are changing one angle of a triangle without changing the other two.

In other words, redistribution doesn't work because it attempts to redistribute toxic mortgage bond swaps into physical houses. In the end, the price of houses rises, the price of debt bond hedge funds falls, and the physical reality approaches ground state.

Trade deficits are mathematical artifact. They have little relevance to the structures they are invoked to affect.

Simply, in any trade, both sides benefit. When a mutually beneficial deal is detected, it is executed. IE- If a person buys X from a foreigner, and pays in dollars, then the market advances. The foreigner cannot just turn around and demand, say, the buyer's house. No matter how many dollars the foreigner owns, prices will respond accordingly and the market will avoid any regression.

As such, dollars will circulate until the market arrives at an ideal ground state. It is irrelevant who owns the dollars in the end. Forcing additional trades will just pull away from the ground state. Worst of all, the market will just push back towards the ground state, rendering the effort futile.

Only two mechanisms can close a trade deficit- Tax imports or subsidize exports. Any alternative is either futile, or an obfuscated variation of the above.

Jobs are not productivity.

People want jobs mainly for respect and security.
Average income from, say, running a start up, or investing in a corporation, or inventing a machine, etc- is much higher than any field of work. As such, money, per se, isn't what is desired.

Entertainment is an important element of why people try to obtain jobs. However, jobs are not as entertaining as say, video games. Or sports. Or clubs. Etc. If the only issues were money and entertainment, jobs wouldn't exist.

Jobs only grant respect because they are scarce. If everyone had a job, no one would notice that a particular person had a job.

Respect is zero sum. Rather, respect is a ranking ladder- X>Y>Z. To be respected, means, that your desires outweigh those of others beneath you.

Jobs only grant security because they are scarce.

Jobs fundamentally give only security from other humans. A job will not cure you of disease. It will not protect you from lightning. It will not slow aging. Rather, it actually reduces your defenses against natural agents.

A job gives you several forms of security-

People who respect you. One job leads to another. And, from a liver transplant to getting a new law passed, connections are powerful.

A steady income. This should not be confused with a steady flow of resources. Income is the ability to outbid other humans, and is, therefore, zero sum.

A place in society. Homeless people constantly find themselves accosted, not simply by lack of resources, but a hostile law code designed to locate and destroy them. It isn't uncommon for people to single out outsiders and act against them. The defense, is to not stand out. This is, fundamentally, a security through obscurity mechanism, and thus, zero-sum. Someone has to be the one who most stands out.

Taking into account what a job is, what it means, and why people want it- It is logically impossible for everyone to have a job.

Of course, it would be easy to give everyone something and just call what they're given a job. But, this will just result in treadmilling.

Stock Picking, Capitalism and Communism

Rather frequently, some writer/article/person calls stock picking gambling. Connotatively, gambling like in a casino, where you inevitably lose.

This is wrong, and, furthermore, must be wrong for capitalism to work.

Namely- what is an entrepreneur?

There's only so many ways to make money. Most entrepreneurs aren't coming up with any particularly new ideas. They're just people opening another pizza place, building a gas station, or some similar concept.

And, of course, the stock market is filled with unproven ideas. It's just as possible to invest in someone else's new idea as your own.

More to the point, there are enough stocks that, whatever great idea you have, you can normally find overlap and invest in someone else already executing it.

Human labor isn't that valuable. The economy is mostly built around capital flows.

As such, there is no distinguishable difference between investor and founder. What an idea needs before execution or expansion, is trust. Money. The rich are rich, not because they have thick arms and sharp eyes, but because of return on investment.

It is, at this point, not logically impossible to create a world wherein any investment is as good as any other. However, doing so makes an utter mockery of human intelligence or diversity. In turn, a simple government organization, stripped of distracting emotions and controlled by a widespread group invulnerable to the weaknesses of the individual, would invest better than any competition.

If the world were like people accuse it of, it would imply that we should switch to communism. It's absurd to assign wealth based on some sort of accident of history. If everything were distributed based on ancient coin flips, and the wealthy had no merit to their property, and the rich were instead just living it up using return on investment without sentient control of their property, that system could not be reasonably condoned.

A system of morality should work equally regardless of dimensionality. If an almighty being created the universe in this exact shape two seconds ago, or if it came to this over millions of years, their should be no moral difference.

If wealth was distributed by ancient coin flips, there would be no moral difference if all the money were collected and redistributed by coin flip. Going from State A to equivalent State B should not have moral implications. Since A is a random distribution and B is a random distribution, the two are not distinguishable. As such, anything that applies in B should apply in A.

Reality isn't like these people say it is. No mathematical model, no hedge system, no broad index, is capable of modeling the market with the speed and accuracy provided by the full power of human sentience. And of course, people are different. Some can beat the market, some can't.

But, at the end of the day, someone has to beat the market. Without this genius investor, the market's movements would all descend into noise. In the end, everyone who doesn't beat the market, is just entrusting their money to the people who think they can beat the market, and mirroring their moves. In other words, no matter how many weird investing programs you unleash on the market, they are incapable of coming to their own judgments. Computers simply lack that degree of intelligence (as do other forms of automated thought, like hedge funds and ETFs). Instead, they copy, and therefore magnify the sounds of a few market movers. AKA, stock pickers.

The Precipice of Divinity

What is Divinity?

For the moment, I will use this definition- That which is both valid and correct.

Valid and correct also appears to need defining. I'll use:
Valid- Properly meets conditions necessary for existential reality. A valid source code would properly compile when used. A valid business model would generate a profit when executed. Hence, the concept is similar to those of existence, size and power. Perhaps the closest relative is "effective".

Correct- Contains no errors. Is not wrong. However,  correctness, in this case, stands above the simpler concept that is negation of negatives. A more precise definitions would be- Fully applies all criteria announced within declaration, reality axis and theory.

Wait- I just used three more ill-defined terms. Declaration, Reality Axis and Theory need further definition. To start with:

Reality Axis- Red truth. A reality axis is a set of data wherein, all elements necessitate all other elements. 3+3=6. I think therefore I am. A object is within my view, therefore a object exists. A reality axis exists along a line of organized data, such that all logical imperatives maintain consistency. Reality axes are avatars of consistency. Logic is merely a side effect of their presence. Anything that opposes them is contradictory.

Declaration- Gold truth. Declarations stand in a realm above even reality axes. Declarations create reality axes. To understand the necessity of a force above logic contemplate the simplest formatting of reality- one dimensional space. Rather, a number line.

Any universe can, through some sequence of mathematical transformations be converted upward or downward in element and dimension. To put this another way- Any Turing complete model can simulate any other Turing complete model. As a corollary, it is impossible to distinguish which Turing complete model underlies a particular system from the interior of the system.

As such, any universe can, somehow, be transposed as a single number.

However, here is where simple logic falls to absurdity- source code is, essentially, just a number. A compiler takes a number, and produces executable code. The strange element is this- two compilers can take the same number and produce two separate valid programs. The same number can be valid under multiple compilers. In fact, within the domain of all possible compilers, any number can be compiled into any executable.

So, in turn- not only can any universe be transposed to a single number, but, because the locations of numbers within logical space is arbitrary, they can in fact, all be transposed to the same number.

In other words:

All universes are equivalent.

The statement immediately above is absurd.

It is not illogical, nor is it contradictory.

Absurdities are untrue, but not because of any logical framework. Absurdities arise from the existence of declarations. Absurdities are that which defy the highest truth from which this universe was created.

Conversely, declarations are original truth. Facts without basis. Evidence cannot be collected for or against declarations. Declarations must exist before meaning can be ascribed to reality. Existence itself is a side effect of declarations.

Morality, life, consciousness, existence, logic, and meaning are all directly imposed upon nothing through this world's one true miracle.

Not creation. That's easy, since 0 equals 1. Nor birth and growth, consequences of mere physical law. The highest truth is a miracle that stands far above a petty act by an all mighty being or the shallow consequences of some unlikely event. Those who ask why we exist miss a much higher question-

What does it matter?

The base state is not one of meaning, but of nihilism. Most data is neither right nor wrong, but simply arbitrary. If I were to place any list of binary sequences in some separate desolate universe, no one would care. Regardless of how the numbers line up, they're all just junk data.

But, if that same data is read, if it is interpreted, if it is infused with a soul, it can become anything.

Declarations are vast, and as such, wondrous and terrifying. All reality is rooted within this highest truth. But, it is rare that we can interact directly with declarations.

Below the reality axis stands the third truth- Theory. The blue truth.

All three truths are true. however, they are different modes of truth, and importantly, different priorities of truth. Red truth is true so long as it does not contradict gold truth, and no two red truths contradict each other. Gold truth is the ultimate truth, and can be neither opposed nor denied. Blue truth lacks these constraints, and is true in all cases wherein it does not contradict the two higher truths.

To understand, consider this problem-

Choose the best answer:
You throw a ball over a wall. A moment later, an identical ball returns from the unseen recesses behind the wall.

A- Another wall exists behind the first wall. Your ball bounced back after crossing out of sight.
B- A person exists behind the wall. After the ball entered on his side, he caught it and threw it back.
C- Another ball, identical to your own, was put into motion for unrelated reasons, and arrived on your side of the wall shortly after your ball left your line of sight.
D- The ball, shortly after leaving your field of vision, decided to reverse course and return to you.


Occam's razor would probably say A, perhaps B. But, Occam's razor is merely a tool, not a logically valid principle of nature. As such, C and D are in no way inferior to A and B. The question above should, upon sufficient review, descend towards senselessness. As all answers correctly fit the ascribed scenario, none are particularly superior.

This is why we turn to theories to understand reality- All four events happened.

Theories interact with each other, and create ever branching narratives. If, after you receive the ball you travel to the other side of the wall and determine that it contains open grass as far as the eye can see, each narrative evolves. The person who returned the ball left afterwords. The wall that the ball bounced off of was demolished. After the second ball flew over the wall, the first was vaporized.

Of course, while all theories are true so long as they maintain consistency with declaration and reality axis, some theories are more useful than others. It is important to distinguish between useful and wrong. Obviously, useful theories have their uses, and thus demand greater attention than useless theories, but neither is particularly more true than its neighbor.

Divinity is therefore a concept that connects two distinct concepts. It is the intersection of righteousness and power. It is morality applied.

To be divine, you must not simply be correct, but be able to implement that nature. Justice is justice not simply because it is good, but because it is victorious.

Divinity is then, good that is victorious over evil.

This precipice, which combines two distinct forces can be placed at the pinnacle of morality. To aspire towards divinity, is to aspire towards the Platonic ideal underlying your own existence.

However, the two forces, while not contradictory at a base level, are, on an applied level, inconsistent.

For good to triumph over evil, that requires that good be stronger than evil.

However, strength is not morality. It is not directly related to morality. Logically speaking, evil is stronger, simply because it has more options available to it.

To understand, imagine this entity- A self replicating machine, that expands in an outward sphere at nearly the speed of light. Effectively, a logic bomb, irresistible by any means and faster than any competitor.

In terms of shear power, this entity is by far the highest. A search for power, will, in all probability, eventually approach this ideal being.

Another interesting example of this phenomena can be found in Conway's game of life. Being a game with complexity on the scale of our universe, the deeper rules are unclear. However, some ideas have been hinted at, or, even if we can't determine how, have been determined to be true. Two relevant conclusions are:

True life can exist with Conway's game. Full intelligence can be achieved within the simulation. In a sufficiently large random field, full intelligence would emerge with near certain probability.

However, it is extremely unlikely that full intelligence would be the best model with which to "win" Conway's game of life. Any life created in a random field would almost certainly be annihilated by far more powerful (and less vulnerable) non-life processes. A major cause of this exists in the emergent "speed of light" within Conway's game. A tile can only effect the tile adjacent to it. Thus, any signal can only move at one tile per cycle. In practice, the maximum speed falls further, since only certain patterns can maintain their existence over multiple cycles, and none of them simply move in a direction.

Reflecting these patterns or otherwise catching them is complicated. In turn, these processes take time. To "see" an object, a pattern must be released, intercept the target, and return to the originator. The maximum speed of this process is significantly below half the maximum speed allowable. However, other alternative patterns, incapable of "vision" can move faster. In turn, non-life can easily kill life before life can bring to bear any of its unique attributes to defend itself.

In this way, the search for validity draws us away from the search for correctness. If we try too hard to win, we will merely become the winner. It is the sheerest joke to win a war by adopting the culture and beliefs of your enemy. In turn, it is important to remember always to seek not to become the winner, but to triumph over evil.

Many people are called "highly successful people". However, only those who can truly stand by their beliefs and enact the world they desire deserve this title. Despite the numerous lists tallying the rich and famous, most of these people are mere shells, not deserving our respect.

If the rich were more than mere sailors, letting the winds of nature throw them about, certain signs would exist. Indeed, certain rich individuals show traits approaching divinity. However, the overall tide is different.

Existential threats are fought with budgets in the millions. Research is a paltry portion of gdp. Investment spending displays an incredibly short time preference, practically ignoring flows only five years distant.

Low level causes of suffering such as human frailty, lack of basic resources, poorly executed government and violent neighbor are barely addressed. These problems all have solutions. The 2045 Initiative has a realistic plan to replace the human body with a more reliable carrier. Escape Dynamics is working on a space launch system that would, for the near future, end scarcity for the vast majority of natural materials. The rich spend billions on lobbying and political advertising. Either they're totally incompetent, or they, to a significant degree, they control the government. Given this control, it should be within their power to implement obvious improvements, such as reductions in corruption, simplicity enhancements, regulations that regulate at lower, more theoretical levels (replacing regulations that say "use this motor in this machine" with "use a motor which produces pollution less than or equal to this motor")

However, despite the hundreds of billionaires in this world, for the most part, the world's most significant undertakings are being funded with the barest scraps of our wealth. This simple failure to act is the greatest indictment against the world's elites, and requires no further explanation to see that, whether it's a rich banker, a high ranking politician or a popular actor, no indication of morality may be found at that level.

So, what do these people lack?

They are petty. They care about minor issues, and execute those issues adeptly.

For the vast majority of humanity, this pettiness is among our greatest sins. Given that humanity is evil, this source is heartening. In the short term, pettiness is a source of strength, but in the long term, it undermines and eliminates.

Thus, in the quest for divinity we must be patient. Our enemies are not. In a scale of five, ten or a hundred years, they are nearly impervious. But, almost none of them are taking actions to secure their legacy after death, or even to prepare for its proper defense in the next decade. Year by year, it is possible to tap the deepest flows of history to direct them towards a better path.

As such, the greatest threat to divinity, a path walked with time and patience, is degeneracy.

There is very little anyone can do to become stronger. Act carefully, with patience and reason, and victory can be achieved. No amount of effort, nor intellect, nor knowledge will overcome enemies that have all three and in much greater quantities.

In civilization type games an interesting dynamic exists when enough opponents are present-

Whatever starting position you have, another opponent has a better position. Any resource you have, an opponent has more. Whatever events occur, an opponent has better. Whatever advantages you have, an opponent has more applicable advantages. In short, even if the game is balanced, given 1 player and 9 computer opponents, if the player plays on level with the computer he only has a 1 in 10 chance of winning.

Real life is much worse. Even if your IQ is high, even if you study meticulously and start a business, there are billions of humans in the world, and tens of millions of them are trying all the same schemes.

To make matters worse, humans are, essentially, input output networks. We are naturally drawn into our own worlds.

To put it simply- Who is more likely to support IP law? Someone who works at a major film studio or someone who works at a car dealership?

Who is more likely to believe in the Marxist dynamic where all real work is done at the ground level? A speculator or an auto worker?

Who is more likely to believe that government intervention is important for a proper economy? A federal reserve chairman or a computer programmer?

To a degree, our beliefs change our experiences. Anarchists try not to be policemen. However, the reverse is also the truth, and inevitably so.

After all, one experience precludes another. If you spend all your time contemplating how to make your tile factory succeed, eventually you'll grow to see tile sales as justice and closed factories as miasma. Even if people buy your tiles at gunpoint, and even when the factories are shut down because people are putting in carpets instead.

When you play a civilization game and choose to play as a slave holding, war-mongering and tyrannical faction, victory comes with an interesting knowledge, that the story ends in tragedy. It is hard to believe that your faction would turn around after the game ended.

Because of this dynamic, the intuitive plan of "Choose a valid solution. An about face to the correct solution can be made after I've defeated all my opponents." isn't reliable.

As such, to find divinity we must not only identify the path to power, but the path that leads beyond power. We must understand this higher path, and revere it.

This higher path is... complicated. The simplest version of the answer is, to live fully. To fully appreciate the meaning of the universe.

This universe exists within certain field of reality. If an intelligence falls too low, it will descend below the universe. To put this concept more simply, a dust mote cannot comprehend the weight of a tear.

However, a sufficiently high intelligence will rise above the universe. To understand this, contemplate a man in solitary confinement. Now, give him a book, and raise his intelligence. Eventually the book will seem to him to be entirely frivolous. Eventually, it may as well be another stone in the wall for all of its data content. Similarly, as his intelligence continues to expand, cell mates become sheep, and eventually even the bulwarks of mathematical logic come crashing down in sheer boredom.

With sufficient intelligence, the universe itself is just one giant prison.

The upper limit isn't that hard to reach, but it's also not as low as it seems on first glance. To put it simply- the most interesting thing in the universe right now is humans, and humans are becoming more interesting.

Being the only sober person in a room full of drunks is torturous. But, we are still far from the fundamental limits.

What is lacking isn't sheer intellect.

Even into the future, what, for a low intelligence, is meaningful, is frivolous to a higher intellect. For instance, a flower can spend its entire life savoring sunlight, rain and good soil. It's a weak experience, but also, one that doesn't interfere with a human living beside it.

Similarly, we should not attempt merely to force intellects higher, but to be closer to gardeners, who fill the world with flowers.

IE, we must expand in all directions, as far as there is desire. Only then, can we fully appreciate what we have declared.

Not all experiences are good. We are not simply collectors searching for rare items.

In turn, it is important to understand what makes something worthwhile. Worth having. Worth existing. Worth acknowledging.

The simplest answer to that is- freedom.

However, once again we encounter a weakly defined term:

Freedom is not simply a lack of enemies. It is not simply power. It is not simply choices. It is much more similar to honesty- or rather, the ability to express the truth.

In itself, pain is not evil. Nor despair or hate, nor loss and grief. Rather, the purest form of evil is sacrilege. Of course, that term is also poorly defined so:

Sacrilege is the expression of that which contradicts declaration.

it is the fumi-e of fundamental reality. It is to lie about fundamental reality. Sacrilege is the scream of nature twisted against itself.

To glorify suffering, to be servile towards monsters, to throw away treasures, that is sacrilege.

Then, in turn- Desire is the expression of the truth of the world.

Just as it is sacrilege to oppose declaration, declarations are the source of all that is sacred.

Thus, the future we should seek is this-

A girl in a field of flowers.

A simple fractal. That is the answer we should seek- that, all things should reach their highest level, that the world should exist in beautiful harmony, that, the purpose of our actions is neither A nor B, but that all elements are themselves an expression of our purpose.

In essence, we seek to build a temple to the purest truth.

In contemplating this highest reality, we will never simply create it within our minds. It would hardly be the ultimate truth in the universe if something as feeble as the brain could hold it so easily. However, we know this- that it is beautiful.

For, beauty is the highest acknowledgment of expression. It is the ephemeral jewel that adorns that which is sacred.

As such, divinity is found where there is power and beauty.