by Dale Everett | Feb 26, 2009 |
The human body is said to be constructed of a few dollars worth of common chemicals, though I’m not sure what the point of saying this is. A blank DVD costs about a quarter in bulk these days, but you could pay thousands of dollars for one that has the bits on the surface rearranged in a preferred way. The software is what makes it valuable. Patterns are what matter.
In a universe equivalent to a blank DVD, the occasional emergence of a pattern more likely to persist dominated the chaos surrounding it and gradually led to the emergence of yet more complex patterns. It’s almost as if the universe itself is making choices, choices that sometimes seem correct and sometimes seem wrong, but it simply seems like a matter of time before it makes the right choices, the ones that move order forward. This is why I occasionally and reluctantly use the word “pantheist” to describe my views.
The human body was constructed over billions of years of natural selection, and of all the parts of the human body, the brain is the organ that stands out. The brain itself is a microcosm, a pattern which like the universe itself, makes choices and enhances the order of its own pattern through the process of learning and responding to the results of those choices, good or bad. Every other part of the human body seems to exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that this one organ can continue making choices, for preserving what we think of as consciousness. I’ve often discussed my predictions about the human race preserving what matters about us, our consciousness, in a superior and more persistent manner such as through some really advanced computer system. Such an advance would allow us to extend our personal lives dramatically; almost indefinitely.
(Read on…)
by Dale Everett | Feb 25, 2009 |
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I’m attaching scans of the concepts sketches from when I was designing the anarchy boogeyman. The idea was for him to represent this concept of anarchy that was so scary because it was just very different that what we’d been indoctrinated into. That’s why his parts are all mixed up. He’s gold and black to represent the colors of market anarchy. That’s why he has spots. They’re easy to draw and an easy way to add the black.
I was following a formula for cuteness that I’d read about for cartoon characters. You give them big, wide-set eyes and make them pudgy with short limbs. When I did that at first, he looked way too much like Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarepants, so to make him distinctively different, I rounded his head. You can see the progression in the concept sketch.
The boogeyman is not a penis!
(Click to see concept sketches)
by Dale Everett | Feb 24, 2009 |
And accordingly, Liberty Equals Life.
Our will is what defines us as living. It’s what makes us critically different from dead inanimate objects, e.g. a rock has no will of it’s own. To the extent that you take away or restrict a person’s will and expression of self, you’re killing that person. I’ve been talking about slavery in very cold and hard terms, and if I communicated my views well, then you probably find it rather depressing. Well I don’t mean to be. Unfortunately, there’s just no delicate way to tell someone a hard truth like that. Fortunately, knowledge is power and you have to know the truth before you can deal with it.
The gay rights movement was onto something with the slogan “Silence Equals Death”. To be threatened with punishment for fully living your life as your innate will would have you live it is akin to being suffocated. Perhaps that sense of suffocation is simply more overt amongst gay and lesbian people by virtue of having a non-typical internal will more at odds with societal standards. In that sense, it can be seen as a gift, in the same way that sensitivity to pain was likely a beneficial mutation for some of the earliest creatures to evolve nervous systems for reacting to dangers in their environment. It’s why the coming out process is such a relief and so empowering. It’s like being alive and gulping in deep breaths after feeling suffocated.
by Dale Everett | Feb 19, 2009 |
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New Hampshire’s slogan is “Live Free or Die”. It’s on all the license plates along with the image of the Old Man of the Mountain. Or rather, it shows the Old Man before he fell off the mountain side. Is his spirit still alive or is our freedom gone with him? Is the slogan just empty rhetoric now? I guess it’s up to us to demonstrate to the contrary.
by Dale Everett | Feb 14, 2009 |
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Darwin’s birthday was actually the twelfth.
by Dale Everett | Feb 12, 2009 |
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Minarchy, or what I like to call the absurd belief that evil is necessary, has got to be one of the most irrational mythologies mankind has ever concocted. For many, it’s a brief step on the way toward fully rejecting statism, but I can’t understand how anyone spends any substantial amount of time there.
I’m hoping to expand this post later, but I’m tired.
