Will Ness

A perpetual HaskellLanguage newbie/nobody. Started from AutoLisp/C/C++, proceeded to Prolog, Common LISP and Scheme. Expects English(TM) compiler to arrive any time soon making most every programmer obsolete (this is not just DWIM, designers/definers will be the next elite). Then see all the millions of web programmers in the world go jobless. Free LivingWages? for all are inevitable then (AIs, robots, we can't all be hairdressers...).

Wrote a review of Reasoned Schemer on Amazon (with 18 lines of Haskell) which DanielFriedman said had inspired him for his mu-Kanren article. (see Scheme 2013 workshop, http://webyrd.net/scheme-2013/). That about all his academic contribution.

Tweaked primes until 2 : _Y ((3:) . gaps 5 . _U . map (\p-> [p*p, p*p+2*p..])).

Is an anti-Marxist anti-totalitarian-Communism Utopianist, understanding the ideal as anarchistic meritocracy, as in Strugatsky brothers' Noon XXII century's utopian fictional Universe. A "flat" society of equals where everyone is free to pursue their own self-actualization and fulfillment, yet no one find any pleasure in any activities harmful to others because everyone is brought up to be Free and Responsible individuals. A society of free cooperation, without money or police. An Utopia - arrived at naturally, not forced artificially on anyone by force, which is a crime of the fakery that is Marxism/Leninism. An Utopia, which has to be understood as a distant ideal to strive towards, constantly, not to fake it Right Now! even when not yet ready, with cruelty and coercion. No Fake Shortcuts! Patience and perseverance! "Ends" do not justify the "means", "means" end up defining the "ends". For the worse.

Proposes axiomatizing the Ethics of Free World (GoldenRule etc.) as

Civilizations non-conforming to the above should be recognized as alien, and all contact with them should be shut off, except the flow of free information directed at their subjects. All trade should certainly cease, as it enables the tyranny over their subjects' bodies and minds.

The key and ultimate value - TheRightForLife?, blossoming of an individual, full actualization of his full potential. Where it does not contradict the above Laws of Ethics, with Reason/Thinking/Intellect/Creativity a penultimate expression of Human Life (emotions are fine too, as long they do not breach the Ethics Laws, do not make you preach Hate and Lies etc. - cats have feelings too, you know).

Truth exists! No-one is above the fray. To choose your core moral value system is to make your moral choice. "They" make their choice, but you make yours. No-one is above the fray; there is no external judge, only you. Thus when postmodernists tell you "everyone's in their own right" this does not mean absolution for everyone. It does not mean the killer is just as right as the defender; you are the one making a distinction whom to see as defender, and whom as killer. And we may disagree (in fact they do this all the time, usually in the wrong - calling murderers "freedom fighters" and defenders "killers" - IYKWIM). Objective truth exists, it's just that the truth about human societies, being so complex, is usually based in complex observational base, which should be analyzed statistically, assumptions constantly rechecked against the available observational data. BayesianTruth?, kind of. For instance, in the society where honor killings are rampant and accepted as a norm - nay, obligation - in the society where leaving one's religion is punished by mandatory death sentence, those who fight to preserve it are no freedom fighters, by definition. My "freedom" is Freedom of Choice, theirs is freedom from Choice. A certain author wrote about the "unbearable yoke of freedom" in his book about "his struggle" to liberate his people from it. That's no liberty though, right? This is the watershed decision for everyone to make, defining their morals.

Ethics are the core of any society. It's the day-to-day minutiae going on between individuals that makes a given society what it is - like a crystalline structure determines features of a crystal. Values matter - in the extreme. Some societies are autocratic - auto-repressive; there a dictator is frequently a force for good, limiting the repression, allowing for some diversity to be tolerated under his protection which would otherwise be squashed. The key is, how much the Laws of Ethics get violated in a given society's regular day-to-day goings on, its customs and enforced beliefs.

The main societal axes to consider: slave/master society vs. society of discourse. Shame/pride vs. guilt/honor. Amount of conformity demanded of an individual, and amount of coercion placed upon him, vs. levels of diversity and individuality tolerated by a society. Of course where no social cohesion and solidarity exists atomization happens; such a society is ready to be overrun, defenseless. We shall find the broadest base for Free World's cohesion in adherence to the above Core Laws of Ethics.

Intolerance should not be tolerated - that would mean complicity in harm-making, which would violate the Third Law of Ethics. This entails putting an Iron Wall around the Muslim World, abolishing any and all contact with it - NO TRADE, no exchange students, no nothing. Demand freedom of emigration for those who free themselves from Islam - as the very least. Demand free access for every their subject to full and unfiltered information provided by the Free World to them. When more and more individuals opt out of the self-oppressive cult, demand their fair share of the total land mass for them. Patiently see through the elimination of the dangerous, destructive, regressive, aggressive, self-oppressive, imperialistic force that is the ideology masquerading as religion, Islam - through telling the Truth to its unfortunate subjects. Provide them with ample supplies of food, entertainment and education, rescue any free soul from out there and bomb out of existence any war industries they build. From afar.

"Islam" is understood here as its mainstream fundamentalist coercive variety, demanding the imposition of its supremacist, discriminating, coercive (viz. death to the apostates) Sharia law code on everyone. Individual religious practice is of course an individual's affair and shouldn't be interfered with in any way, as long as it is a matter of free, informed choice.

Democracy - only qualified voters should vote. It is irresponsible to vote on issues where you are non-qualified to judge. All and every issue should be open to a vote at any time, either directly by a person or through their chosen representative - either an individual or a political party. The vote relegated can be revoked at any moment or for any issue. Governments or specific decisions could be overturned every day - no 4 years immunity for those who betray the trust of voters. Oscillation damping is easy: 80% majority is needed during the first 3 months; 65% up to a year; 55% in 2nd; 50%+1 after 4 years. Thus the true will of the people will be known and represented exactly - at any point in time. Instantly, continuously true.

Reason and the scientific method is the way. The criterion is simple - utility and predictive power of a theory. That will guide you in avoiding the chimeras of void imagination.

Marxism - all its political variants to day had been a sham, a false "pretend" pseudo-solution. Deathly coercion is *not* freedom. State ownership is not "sharing". Rigid control of information flow in a society, censorship and punishment for dissent is not freedom of the mind and blossoming of each individual's potential. But the problem of fairness that awoke Marxism is real. To each according to their true contribution to society's well-being, I say. That's where capitalism's been the "least of all evils" as its price-discovery mechanism had been the closest approximation to the true-value discovery. Money has served thus far as a computationally efficient local approximant for the intractable global calculation of true value. But the enlargement tendency overturns that, turning it into state capitalism, with its giant corporations being essentially run as state owned enterprises, through planning etc., instead of true capitalism's emergent behavior through free competition of enterprising free agents. Which is - the planning - just as intractable and unfair - meaning a contribution of individual is appropriated and redistributed by the conglomerate, with heavy preference to the management.

Another problem with money is it forces you to bet, and to cheat, pushing away from the true value yet again. The solution (pretty out there, this one) - total transparency of everyone to everyone (no unsolved crime, ever, with this one). Not Big Brother, but Your Fellow Neighbor - and You Yourself. No More Secrets. Then and only then everything can be tracked and traced, your usage of every item monitored, its provenance known to the System and so a contribution of each of its inventors/designers/makers valuated and "credits" apportioned to them, appropriately. Take for instance a singer, today. Say he signs with a record company, for a sum of money. It is a bet both on his and their part. Say he puts out an unsuccessful record, the company looses. Suddenly after two years it becomes hugely popular, now he loses out on value that he had created (among others). Both outcomes are unfair - and, my theory goes, fair compensation means the best motivation, best for the society's economic well-being. When people aren't compensated fairly, their contribution diminishes. In Soviet Union they used to have a saying, very popular right before its breakup, "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work". Individual productivity was nearly ZERO. So the "credits" would change in value, with time. Money would be replaced with traceable contracts, making everyone a free agent of his free will, sharing in profits and losses of enterprises they would enter and exit freely. It's like being paid in shares of your company, instead of money - but also paying with those shares, and not with money, in each transaction. Which shares could also change in value at any time - reflecting the true value produced by that company. Or something to that effect. This would free up the mobility of productive/inventive individuals greatly. To invent sliced bread is great, but why would it give the grandchildren of the inventor a right to appropriate the fruits of someone else's labor and ingenuity, and how would this be conducive to making society work most efficiently? Thus true value of anything and true contribution of anyone will be known, continuously true at any point in time.

Ownership is a phantom. You only own what you create. To "own" what you force someone else to give to you, through their desperation to make a daily wage, is ... low. Harmful, and hurtful to them. Do No Harm, and do not hurt anyone - ever. Today it is enabled through the immediacy of money, enabling cheating and betting. With trackable contracts, fairness is guaranteed.

The principle of SeparationOfConcerns should be applied to ownership. You initiate a new production complex with your previously accrued true-value (a.k.a. today as "capital"). Fine, your portion in the value it produces initially will be high. It will diminish with time as more people add their true contribution into this production complex. That you've initiated it once, gives you no right to appropriate their contributions, today. You shall get back on your capital investment only the true measure of your true contribution - there will be no cheating your employees off of their true value that they create.

Of course when someone creates a loss of value, it shall be debited from their balance. The RightForLife? is still sacred; no-one shall be charged for what is necessary for life - air to breathe, water to drink, basic food, clothes & lodgings. No-one shall be withheld any education either, in fact providing the best education for everyone would be one of the ultimate values for such a society, as an expression of RightToThink? Law of Ethics, one of its Core Values. Medical care shall be equal for all. No life-saving treatment can be withheld from anybody, only their balance shall be debited. You never know, a person might create an enormous value later in their life and so their balance will become positive. But until then, they won't be alloted any luxuries; and of course their negative balance will be known to all, providing a powerful incentive for the owing party to "pay it back" to the Transparent/True society. Some "pocket money" credit allowance may be provided for everyone just for their sake of being alive, also for various handicaps, if society so chooses (votes on). When a person feels better or is cured of their handicap, it is immediately known to the System/everyone and the special allowance is automatically discontinued. A budget would not consist of fixed sums allocation, but of setting up the criteria to be upheld and goals reached. Day-to-day reports on society-wide balance status would be produced, giving a society a chance to suggest changes to requirements, or emission of new credit into the system (devaluing previous contributions of everyone, obviously), etc. All this will obviously need much Super Computing Power, and much more.

No Revolutions! Revolution is violent forceful coercion. Want to live by "new" rules?, then live by them! - you yourself and your friends. If it is indeed more efficient, you and your enterprise will be successful. Do what you want, on the inside. Don't force anyone in or out. At the very most, secede. Freedom!

Crimes against Thought: it is to Lie and to spread Lies intentionally. Destruction/filtration/distortion of information - making it harder for anyone to Think and Choose for Themselves. You can't form an informed rational opinion about something if you do not have all objective information about it - and that is the most heinous form of MindControl. Which is the ultimate ThoughtCrime against the Society of Free and Responsible Individuals. George Orwell has said (in his preface to Animal Farm): "If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilization means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth." Note: not just "anything", but "anything [they believe] to be the truth".

Truth/Deception/Perception-distortion is surely one of the major issues for the humans to tackle right now. One way would be TruthNet?/TrustNet? (cf. imhonet), where we'd exchange "trusts", just like today we exchange "likes" on various social networks (and of course it's only natural to care for "likes" only from those whom we trust, and share outlooks on major issues). Trusts would be retractable, verifiable; anyone who'd be found out to have breached the trust they were given - by intentional lying - would of course loose their assigned trusts. This system would naturally be merged with the direct/relegatable voting system described above. Verifyable trust system would let us see in exact quantitative terms the societal split on various issues, the evidentiary support base for every major opinion in a given society would be open to re-examination by everyone (exciting news! - compare this: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute , a ground-breaking Gerald Jay Sussman's lecture on Oct 27, 2011 !! (i.e. TheArtOfPropagator?)). Every opinion we individually hold could be traced by the system to its initial introduction to us, and thus the system would help us to continuously track the correctness of our assumptions and conclusions. That would, again, entail total transparency of individual to the system, just like for the discovery of true value of everything.

Pages I wrote on:

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