Richard Kulisz

Note

As the result of a steward decision taken March 6th, 2006, RichardKulisz has been permanently banned from WikiWikiWeb.

Mr. Kulisz now keeps an active blog: http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/ - a fine place for the RichardKuliszFanClub, full of venomous (but sometimes interesting) rants on humanity, politics, and philosophy.

Yeah, as "permanent" as it gets when several of my friends who are stewards have offered to reverse the ban. I told them not to bother because I despise what Wiki Wiki has become. Had become way before 2006, way before the endless spamwars. It's a cesspit for incestuous groupthinking morons. It used to be that the groupthink was restricted to outright religious worship of WardCunningham. And it definitely was religious worship since you couldn't even satirize said worship. [You also weren't allowed to point out that C2 with its totalitarian communist politico-economic model was bound to fail since it could never scale.] But by the mid-00s the corrosive groupthink had spread like a virus, at least in part due to Ward's utterly moronic decision to legitimize it by having a shadowy group of unaccountable tyrants called "stewards". That's when C2 jumped the shark for me. And I don't think Ward will ever regain my respect for making that pro-tyrannical decision. "Yeah totalitarian communism didn't work, so let's try fascism." Cause it's not like we learned anything from early 20th century European history now, is it? -- RichardKulisz

I'm almost completely self-taught in computer science. Everything I know about design, UI and OS, was all self-taught, without exception. The OS course at university was contemptible. The textbook (AndrewTanenbaum's misnamed OS Concepts) just as bad. I still congratulate myself on the wisdom and prescience of taking one look at that course and running the other way.

My university's comp sci program taught me exactly two things. Basic programming and SmalltalkLanguage. That's it. The Programming Language Paradigms class was interesting but I'd read ProgrammingLanguagesAndParadigmns? the previous term, so it didn't exactly teach me anything.

Oh, another thing I learned at university, probably the most critical thing, is to have utter contempt for university, computer science and programmers in general. A valuable lesson that. -- RichardKulisz

Moved from RightToDissent:

Since I banned Richard and it led to some ranting on this page, I feel somewhat obligated to say something about this. Richard was banned from Meatball for denying us the RightToDissent. After spouting ad hominem attacks for weeks and then declaring 'war' on us, it became too much. Years ago we had a better relationship where we let him speak his mind and we took him seriously, because he was trying to be serious. But now, I'm not sure what he is doing; he is even proud to not read other people's statements with sincerity, integrity, and charity, but rather prefers to brush them off and abuse others. No wiki can function without decorum and mutual respect and sincerity. They are not set up technically to facilitate shouting matches since there is no sanctity of the individual. We are responsible for each other's texts, so we must treat them (and each other) with the respect we wish for ourselves. Like all rights, the RightToDissent must be created first outwards from yourself towards others. Only then in turn do you deserve to have the right yourself. -- SunirShah

You're talking about a topic you simply know nothing about. You don't even know what "dissent" means. -- RK

The right to dissent is about having the freedom to think differently than what is expected or desired. It's often stated as accepting diverse opinions, but that doesn't get to the heart of it in my opinion. The right to dissent really means in democratic practice the freedom to consent, a freedom guaranteed by the architecture of the Internet. The way this works on the Internet is that you are free to create your own environment just the way you want it and everyone else can go suck a lemon. (We say, "It's a Big Internet.")

MeatballWiki exists mostly because we do not like WikiWikiWeb and wanted to do our own thing. MeatballWiki only survives if its membership consents to the practice we have organized (we say you have the RightToLeave). However, when you stated the desire to create a war with us, you rejected your own freedom of consent (the ability to not engage with us if you disagree). Further, by assuming that we would mollycoddle your chirlishness like WikiWikiWeb does, you violated our right to dissent by importing the practice here to there. On MeatballWiki, we outright do not tolerate the games (i.e. bullshit) people play here on WikiWikiWeb. MeatballWiki exists for a professional purpose. If you aren't a professional, please refer to the lemon mentioned above and then suck it.

Disagreeing with us is not by itself giving up your right to dissent. Many Meatballers disagree with the status quo, including myself. I am hamstrung by many community decisions. However, in a democratic society that is governed by rule of law, the right to dissent is not the right to violate law, rules, or customs, but to disagree during the formation of those laws, rules, or customs. In a recent dispute over using real names, the interlocutor demanded more 'freedom' to violate our rules. However, those rules were decided a long time ago in a FairProcess. Our counter was that to deny our rules was to deny our decision making process, and thus we did not feel that person belonged in our collective since they would be operating outside the mutual covenant that makes the collective function.

You were banned for similar reasons. Because you deny the framework that grants others rights and freedoms, you are stripped from those rights yourself. Quid pro quo. However, we do not deny your right to dissent across the entire Internet. Just within our own space. You can disagree with us from your own space.

The reason why your right to dissent is under duress here is because WikiWikiWeb does not have a functional process to collect, consider, integrate, assess opinions in order to decide on the issues (a FairProcess). Part of that is your own doing by disrupting the collection and consideration of other people's opinions (calling them names, engaging in shouting matches, gratuitous profanity). If you want a fair process, it is up to you to create one and ensure that it succeeds. To do that, you must give up your own voice in order to grant others' their voices. The paradox of leadership is that your job is to be the voice of others; you have none yourself.

I would be impressed if you do this. I did it once here, a long time ago. My strategy was to have to most integrity, listen the hardest, maintain decorum, support the hurt, and focus on fairness.

If you've decided that your RightToDissent is not best exercised by the RightToLeave, then at least start by making something move forward. After four years, so many battles, has anything moved forward? Even your own ego? ... I doubt it. I mean, I left because I wanted to move on, build something beautiful, make a difference in my life, move forward. The right to dissent is fundamentally about the freedom to move forward the way you think is best. It's about avoiding getting yourself stuck in someone else's fly paper. Otherwise life is purgatory. -- SunirShah

You, who don't even know what a foundation term like "capital" means despite hosting a wiki on sociology, dare lecture me about what rights are and what dissent is? I am dissent you f**kwit. Dissent is the reason for my existence. The word and me are one. And you dare lecture me about it?!!

Why don't you just stop harrassing me with your time-wasting useless brain dumps and go back to your own little wiki which you've publicly expressed a desire to have secede from C2? -- RK

All right, I'll leave you be. This is what I summarize from this past few week's interaction with you, and I will AssumeGoodFaith on your part.

Meatball never belonged to c2, so we are not seceding from it. We simply are different, and we are reevaluating our relationship. My understanding of sociology by the textbook is not very strong, as I have only recently begun reading them, so I will not attempt to prove my grits on that account. Intellectual dishonesty is par for the course at the Masters level.

However, I notice that you are using two different versions of word dissent. One is the cultural movement that is so far developed that it has been called the 'New Orthodoxy' by its mindless critics. The other is the process of dissent in general. The RightToDissent that I am familiar with is about process, not about a particular viewpoint, as I am mostly interested in ensuring a functioning process rather than a particular conclusion, per se. With respect to the process, even Conservatives present a dissenting view in Canada, even if it is not as dissenting (in some sort of Hamiltonian distance kind of way, I guess) than your view. A better example, perhaps, may be Falun Gong dissents.

The reason I focus on process is that the wider social movement of Dissent is not relevant here. c2 is populated by programmers, mostly, none of whom make decisions at the level that political theory informs as far as I can tell. What you are talking about is likely very confusing to most of the audience here, who are here rather for a very narrow reason, which is to improve their programming chops. Not many have read anything about what you are talking about on this page, for instance. My own personal interest is tangential and limited to what you have to bear being a university student in his mid-20s. Also w.r.t. Meatball, our professional development goals are to improve our facilitation skills and to build better software to support those initiatives.

I am never quite sure if you are arguing for dissent here or Dissent in general. These points seem rather confused. Dissenting in a professional discussion forum (my level of expertise and interest) means negotiating a better outcome evaluated against your 'walk away point' and/or BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement). Ultimately, the assumption (re: AssumeGoodFaith) is that you will still work together after the conflicting view is incorporated into a decision. However, if that common goal is not true here, then either the relationship between the factions must be terminated or the frame has to change away from it being a professional association. It's clear that the ongoing larger conflict here is the bobble between these polarities. This conflict has been going on here for five years, which is another reason to give up on it and start something fresh, new, and stridently moving forward.

You have used a lot of heavy polisci terms like calling this place 'communist', but that really doesn't apply, nor is it really understandable by most programmers here. If you consider the original goals of Wiki, it was to facilitate a small group of people from OOSPLA and PLoP (the Hillside group) to build a Pattern language, all of whom had experience in the Smalltalk/OOP world where sharing ownership over the codebase was the best practice. Extreme Programming reiterates those practices as well, if you notice. The point is not that all information belongs to everyone, simply that everyone on the team has equal access to the collective property. The team, however, controls access to its membership. This paradigm has broken down now that the sense of team has dissolved post-XP, when the team leaders vacated, and Wiki is busy attracting people based on its reputation rather than its social network. The structure of the medium, as you have noticed and you criticize w.r.t 'neowiki' (?), insufficiently matches the current social structure. Hence, there are egregious conflicts.

Several solutions present themselves. As you suggest, you can create a new medium. Neowiki presumably reflects the political direction you would like to take Wiki. Alternatively, as Helmut suggests, you can return to the old social model, which is something I would have preferred. However, I recently realized that no one, not even Ward, wants to do this, which is why I give up and want to walk away, since I don't understand nor care for the new model. Another option is to shut down the site, either as a FishBowl or just offline it. I'm mildly in favour of taking it off the 'net, as there is a responsibility to preserve the integrity of older contributor's reputations. Another option is to change the structure of the medium, probably moving closer to something like a more traditional programming discussion site in one direction or Neowiki in the other. Another option is to devolve Wiki into an 'experiment' in seeing whether or not the people here can resolve the conflicts socially (impossible), and I think is totally irresponsible given how many people's reputations are going to be destroyed in the process. MetaBaby at least was upfront about its purpose. A final option, the status quo, is that superficial technical conflicts are patched over with small technical patches, but the underlying social infrastructure continues to decentralized as contributors devolve into individuals contending for control (rather than working together towards a common goal). That social model is probably what you prefer and would support with Neowiki as a better medium, given your comments of that. In that environment, a serious discussion about the RightToDissent would be more valid, I think, since the adversarialness would disrupt a constructive process of dissent. In the 'professional team' frame that probably most of your interlocutors work within, however, the RightToDissent seems ridiculous since it would be a 'firable' offence in a business setting. Consequently, they do not really have any idea how to respond.

I don't pretend to be right here. This is only my best guess as to what is driving the conflict. Good luck, everyone. -- SunirShah

This is freaking AMAZING http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore

Some people have said that abusing certain people doesn't convince third parties that my position is correct nor does it make me look good. As if I cared about being convincing or popular. I care about having fun.

Given this, with respect to having fun there are two types of people:

Naturally, this excludes the whole class of people who just aren't fun to deal with. The people that are fun to abuse are those who do any two of the following three:

So for example, someone who doesn't refer to, acknowledge, rebut or counter anything of what they're putatively responding to. Such a one clearly hasn't paid attention to what they read.

And a further example, someone who writes something absurd (obviously contrary to reality), internally inconsistent, meaningless or gibberish. Such a one clearly hasn't paid attention to what they wrote.

And finally, someone who doesn't sign personal opinions, violates social norms, is hateful and abusive, and so on. Such a person clearly hasn't paid attention to their milieu.

I tolerate gross and excessive violations of any one of those three, or mild violations of two of them. So for example, I couldn't care less if you try to abuse me so long as your responses are logical and deal with what I'm talking about. In this way, I'm far more flexible than a great many other people. But I'm far, far less flexible to people who don't demonstrate any brain activity.

For what it's worth, this puts a lot of your comments into perspective for me. I'd often wondered about it. -- TimLesher

I believe in reciprocity but I also believe in forgiveness. If someone provides 3 star content (1 star in each of the 3 categories I outlined) then I will invariably provide them with 3 star content as well. If they produce merely 2 star content (1 gross violation of the three categories above) then I will still provide greater than 2 star content (anything from 2.5 to 3). If they provide 1 star content then I will produce greater than 1 star content back. If they provide 0 star content, then I have a problem because nothing I do can ever make me write below 1.5 star content.

Nothing short of the most dire of circumstances can make me not pay attention to what I'm writing. That's one star right there, guaranteed. And very little (I would say almost nothing but you have a knack for producing trolls that I've learned to ignore, Dave) can make me not pay attention to what I'm reading. Since I'm not a cretin unlike the vast majority of the population and since I never turn my brain off, unlike the overwhelming majority of the population, the only avenue open to me in order to deliberately degrade the content I produce is to make it hateful. And that's exactly what I do.

If other people feel free to abuse me by inflicting their stupidity upon me, I feel quite free to inflict my hatred right back at them. That's reciprocity. Or put another way; I'm here to have fun and not to be a martyr. I'm not here to sacrifice my time and effort for the sake of others' stupidity. -- RK

Psychological deconstruction of various wikizens:

I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or insulted. -- AnonymousOnPurpose

That you're out of the list? So far your psychotype falls into the 'boringly normal' category, but that's more by default than by certainty. So does Elizabeth's. -- RK

Nice observation: 

     "The 'Ozzie and Harriet' style family is not the traditional family: it is the early
     form of the modern family, which is now changing into the late modern family. In the
     nineteenth century, as the industrial revolution began, it became common for one parent
     to leave home and go to work in a factory or an office. Now, both parents leave home
     to go to work." - http://www.preservenet.com/

I've decided to treat ml blah blah tsoft as a vandal and doing away any edits I see of his.

Yahoo messenger account: interaction_designer_on_wiki@yahoo.ca (though don't send email because I won't log into that account)

Costin not welcome on this page.

From DestructiveAbstraction where Costin repeatedly deleted the following response to his AdHominem attack:

Yea verily, it is a mark of pride to suck Dijkstra's cock. What the hell have you accomplished in your life Costin? And please don't confuse your personal contributions to the world with the company you work for, again. Oh, and Costin, if you want to delete this response to your AdHominem, again, why don't you delete your provocation? That's what someone who isn't a sociopath would do.

But then Costin, you are a psychopath and not a mere sociopath. CriticsAreYourBestFriends is just some bullshit why people should take your abuse as I've known since the first time I read that unbelievable appalling crap. And of course, criticism should never, ever apply to you. Why? Because in your mind you've got feelings while other people don't so CriticsAreYourBestFriends applies to them but certainly not when actual feelings are getting hurt (ie, yours).

The difference between you and me is something you won't ever be able to understand even after it's explained to you. Empathy isn't something you can really conceive, only something you may possess, and you don't possess it. So if I'm raking someone over the coals then I know they suffer and I want them to suffer, whereas you just don't care and are incapable of caring. So every time you accuse me of being a sociopath or a psychopath, it's just so completely laughable. But then, you make a career out of projecting your negative traits unto others.

(And when Doug observed that you seem much nicer and friendlier in RL than you do on Wiki, I wanted to laugh and laugh because glib charm is one of the traits of a psychopath and you managed to pick just the right photo to show off.)

Your psychopathy also explains why you defended BlueYonder? so viciously and also why you can't understand why he got banned (re: "a few commas"). You see yourself in his actions so you can sympathize with him. But you aren't capable of empathy so you can't empathize with EarleMartin or the newcomers that got banned (Earle could and he correctly stated that they wouldn't care). You're in the same boat blue yonder was in and you made this obvious when you demanded to know whether you'd be banned next. Not only are you a psychopath, but you know there's something deeply wrong with you. -- RK

Quotes:

BertrandRussell: What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires - desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

- Yep. I took one look at this idea of Bertrand's and knew it was right! -- LeonBambrick

But... oh, never mind.

RobertAntonWilson: What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one? What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbors that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him? What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children? What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned him? And he took another child who obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors? What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes? What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even in the suburbs? Such a man would clearly be a paranoid schizophrenic... with homicidal tendencies.

Source: The Illuminatus!

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- TheodoreRoosevelt?

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life." -- TheodoreRoosevelt?

Am I an anarchist or not? Like Feral Faun and others, I have shuffled by counterposing "anarchy" and "anarchism." Even if the distinction catches on, what to call the respective parties? This is what I suggest. Let the anarchy-ists call themselves anarchs, a word whose first known appearance - in Milton's Paradise Lost! - antedates anarchist by nine years. It's better because, like the corresponding distinction of monarch from monarchist, it designates not what we believe but what we are, insofar as our power permits: powers unto ourselves. -- BobBlack?

Projects:

I trust you won't mind if I begin a list of Richard's project writings here. -- DougMerritt

Messages:

Recently you quoted someone, and I can't find the page. It was something like "I don't believe in relativism; I don't believe it's ok to say 'I prefer tea while you prefer genocide'", or something similar. Where did you say that? Or failing that, who said that? I want to record it. -- Doug

Costin quoted it on TheAdjunct on SupportDenmark?; 

 I am not a relativist; I do not say "I like my coffee with milk and you like it without;
 I am in favor of kindness and you prefer concentration camps" -- Isaiah Berlin
Ah, no wonder I couldn't find it. Thanks. -- Doug

I would think you would find something to like in this: http://home.earthlink.net/~mrob/pub//civilostages.html

:-) -- Doug 

 Stage  Data  Defined by Studied by          Mathematics  Education
 0  10**7  neocortex  Anthropology, Genetics     (none)  (none)
 1  10**9  language  Anthropology, Linguistics   proof  mentor 
 2  10**11  writing  Archaeology                 axiomatic method  library
 3  10**17  printing  History                    standardized symbols  textbooks, public school
 4  10**25  computers  Sociology?                experiment self-taught specialists
The whole column for mathematics is BS. The evolution of mathematics corresponds to nothing else as far as I'm aware. Except for computers enabling experimental mathematics. And WTF is "standardized symbols" even supposed to mean? It certainly wasn't something important. Not like mathematical logic which deserves its own chapter separate from experimental mathematics.

Also, the base for the "data" column (ie, 10**7) is more or less arbitrary.

Otherwise this is vaguely interesting. Not terribly insightful but interesting. I mean whoever woulda guessed that libraries came about with writing? Or that communications technologies evolve and that they force the evolution of learning and teaching. Yawn. -- RK

You missed what I considered to be the point of it (in regards to bringing it to your attention): the mildly amusing (which is not to say "untrue", just amusing in our context) part of it, that the highest level listed, at 10^25, is "self-taught specialists", as explicitly above and beyond the 10^17 level of "textbooks, public school" - as an autodidact, I expected that to catch your attention, but perhaps you were focusing on the gestalt, rather than those details. I wouldn't expect a simple Yawn from something that is complementary to oneself. -- Doug

Well, I noted it but thought it self-evident. I mean, doesn't everyone think that self-teaching is the pinnacle of learning? And well, I'm not that desperate for reassurance. :p -- RK

Of course you're not desperate for reassurance, else you wouldn't expose yourself right and left to potential criticism as you do. Quite obviously, fawning for the sake of reassurance is not where you're coming from.

On the other hand, NO, it is not true that "everyone thinks that self-teaching is the pinnacle of learning"!

I'm actually kind of astonished that you think that people think so. I mean, yes, it's true (IMNHO), if taken far enough (and in full-disclosure, remember we're in the midst of a multi-year discussion about what "taking it far enough" may mean), and obviously you think so too - but do most people think so? Hell no! -- Doug

Well, I didn't mean any Joe off the street, I meant well here. Don't most people here at least grudgingly acknowledge that self-teaching is equal to formal teaching?

On a completely different topic, I'd really like to continue that discussion about object identity, especially what you think the different issues were and what philosophy has to say about it. I learned moral philosophy and metaphysics from discussion, I haven't had the opportunity with objects / substances.

My attitude towards philosophy (corpus of) is very ambivalent. What I've seen of it is a mixed bag of very fine thinking and extremely well thought out total crap. That's not what turns me off though. What turns me off is the engineering approach they take to very deep problems. Too much engineering, too little insight. -- RK

Regarding providing references, I completely understand that it's a pain, but I've often wished that you would provide them, when you're referring to some source, since naturally I might want to read some of the things that you make sound interesting that I've previously overlooked. -- Doug

I just don't have the stamina to dig them up. It's something I'd pretty much only do as a favour to someone I know would appreciate it. RL in this case. -- RK

What's to study? You can take the answer to be 'no'. :) I know a few concepts of derivatives and that's it. Keep in mind that I wouldn't be interested in how the market functions per se but only in how its functioning can provide insight into other resource allocation problems. Those problems would include resource allocation among computer users and of course how resource allocation should work.

I'm not in favour of commodities trading though. Too much trade is pure speculation. But I can't help thinking that you could do a lot to moralize commodities traders by judicious use of taxes. Tax transactions, tax shipping distance, tax pollution, tax energy and resource consumption, tax child labour and miserable pay, tax non-unionism, tax capital itself, tax a thousand other things. -- RK

That's pretty much what I have gradually come to infer your position to be. So, well, the problem is that, I'm not so sure that that position is tenable. As I understand things overall, moralizing economics is quite on par with moralizing physics - morally admirable, but quite literally unworkable, since the underlying subject is not susceptible to moralization.

Now, I may be wrong, but I believe there is evidence that I am right; every dictator who has ever been in power has attempted to force his will upon economics, and in some subset of those histories, that meant moralization, but so far as I know, economics has behaved quite like physics: like a force of nature that has its own laws and rules and is not susceptible to force of will nor moralization.

I could imagine that you might have a counter-argument, but I suspect it would be a complicated one, wherein cause and effect become much less proximal and much more distal. Still, as you know, I always want to learn more, so if it's more than wishful thinking, I'd like to know. -- Doug

See, near as I can figure out, moralizing economics has worked numerous times. The problem is there are always people around who want to act in an immoral manner. And unfortunately, they're the ones in power. The Austrian town of Worgl implemented negative interest currency (a regular simple tax on all capital) and it boomed in the middle of the great depression. It worked and it was shut down precisely because it worked (threatened the existence of the Central Bank). The people in power don't really have any incentive to moralize economics and so they only do so in those places small enough that the people in power don't have that much power. I'm thinking of Cuba as an example since Castro doesn't have that much power on the island. -- RK

Zoomable continuous input could be used to implement a zoomable seek bar for WinAmp. Could also be used to implement continuous trees (where the links are continuous).

The idea is quite simple. You decrease granularity of the continuous input (eg, seek bar) during every second of non-movement (to a predetermined minimum of 1 second for a song). And you increase it during every second of movement (to a predetermined maximum of 110% of the length of the song).

In order to prevent jumping around of the input control (eg, the little seek widget in Winamp) you decouple the boundaries of the seek bar from the boundaries of the object's contents. So the beginning of the seek bar is not the beginning of the song, nor is the end of the seek bar the end of the song.

Of course, you compensate for this by providing continuous feedback about what the beginning and end of the seek bar mean in terms of the contents. That just means that at the beginning of the seek bar you've got a little display showing 4:10 when that point corresponds to 4 minutes, 10 seconds into a song. The same way that over the seek widget you have a display that says what timepoint it's at (or there would be one if the makers of Winamp were competent).

RichardKuliszFanClub, RichardKuliszBaitersAnonymous

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