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What is law?

"What is comedy ? Is this comedy ? What about this?" - Limmy

Group Intercommunication Formula: n(n − 1)/2

The group intercommunication formula calculates the number of potential communication channels or connections in a network of n nodes.

Key Questions

  • What is law?
  • Who makes law?
  • Did these people make law?

Historical Development

1975: The Mythical Man-Month

Fred Brooks identified that adding more people to a late software project makes it later, partly due to the increasing communication overhead calculated as n(n - 1)/2.

1983: Metcalfe's Law

Robert Metcalfe adapted the formula n(n - 1)/2 to describe the value of telecommunications networks (though the text notes "he stole it from Fred").

2008: Beckstrom's Law

Expanded the concept to: (n(n - 1)/2) * usage * time

2013: Reed's Law

David Reed proposed an alternative formula for the value of networks that support group formation: 2^N − N − 1

Is this just Parkinson's Law(s) at work?

  • Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion
  • Law of Triviality: Organizations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues

The Mythical Man-Month Metcalfe's law Beckstrom's law Beckstrom's Networks Paper Reed's law Parkinson's law Law of triviality

Critique of the Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox: Key Points

  1. Abundance of Stars
    There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the Sun.

  2. Habitability of Planets
    With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets in a circumstellar habitable zone.

  3. Ancient Planets
    Many of these stars—and thus their planets—are much older than the Sun. If Earth-like planets are typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago.

  4. Potential for Interstellar Travel
    Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step humans are investigating now.

  5. Galactic Exploration Timeframe
    Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

  6. The Expectation of Contact
    Since many of the Sun-like stars are billions of years older than the Sun, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations—or at least their probes.

  7. The Great Silence
    However, there is no convincing evidence that this has happened.

The Fermi Paradox: Key Issues

Ancient Planets
This should be 2 points as 3a 3b. 3b is then some may have developed life long ago - intelligence and life are not imutable.

Potential for Interstellar Travel
We dont need travel just radio waves

Galactic Exploration Timeframe
radio waves - a few decades at most

The Expectation of Contact
van hallen belts

The Great Silence
what would you need to have proved.

Winter in Bloom

It is quite clear that empire's collapse. I give it a 50:50 chance that the US Dollar goes to 0 in my lifetime - that is to say, the next 70 years. All empires fail eventually. As a historian once said to a politician, "My dear, we have already established concensus on the matter, now we are just negotiating the time scale".

Even in the 70's the prospect of higher education was crowded with candidates for the same job. So much so many of us Boomers sought alternative routes, filling opportunities our BAs and BSes minimally qualified us, but where there were fewer people skilled in those allied fields. People began to realize a Masters or PHD in Aeronautic Engineering meant being over qualified for any job. Employers wanted to groom their candidates to their ways with internal training, so they could pay them less as an undergrad.

By the 80's a higher degree meant you filled an administrative role rather than the very thing one became educated for doing, and wanted to pursue. If one didn't enter such admin role, the employer, and I mean any employer, simply wouldn't hire you FOR ANYTHING. One couldn't even work in a mail room. At least that was my experience. So the market was very tight through those years for high education slots within a company.

Many went to work for the government as the expansion of bureaus needed very skilled people. So the whole system of advancement by educational attainment was a fairy tale for all but the highest GPAs. People like Steve Jobs, dropped out and started their own businesses. That gave many people hope through the 90's with Silicon Valley scooping up the brightest of those who could learn their way through computers and networking at a visceral level. The same for the pharmaceutical industry.

The rest of us ended up in the service industry, the largest employer out there at widely varying capacities and potentials for advancement. This last recession taught workers that no job was secure, as massive layoffs and downsizing harshly taught. People became disaffected about their employers, hopping from one job to the next to seek the highest pay or benefits without any loyalty at all to any employer.

So really the problem of education and lack of excitement in the workforce was the result of unsolved problems in the workplace being kicked down the stairs from one decade to the next. The folks down at the bottom of the payscale just got the worst of all these poor decisions by employers who no longer cared if the employer succeed or not.

Kiss Chase

Isn't life a completely predictable and recitable account of all our memories?
Well, whether it is or isn't, we don't need to waste time on the consideration.

I want to talk about the law of diminishing returns. You all know what I think about money, so this is going to be a different kind of talk.
This is about the diminishing returns of what Freud calls the superego.

Freud’s superego is the moral component of the psyche, representing our internalized societal values and standards—learned from parents and culture[1][2][3][5]. It drives us to behave in ways that are seen as morally right, judges our actions, and can be a source of inner pride or guilt[1][2]. This “inner critic” mediates how we see ourselves and shapes our actions with rules, ideals, and prohibitions.

What image do we have of ourselves as we go through life, built on those around us, on the actions we take in response to society’s norms?

Take the playground—some kids play together in groups, gaining fun and validation from interactions between egos, while others go about it alone.
Take the clubs—some adults go to nightclubs together, as couples or in groups, all seeking a meaningful interaction between superegos, whether "band to people" (B2P) or "person to person" (P2P).

So where does the kiss chase come in?

My observation lies between the playground and the club.

Kiss chase, in the playground, was the desire of young girls’ superegos to chase their crushes—a social game reflecting early internalization of norms around attraction and pursuit.
By adulthood, particularly in nightlife, the roles are often reversed or complicated: social expectations demand the male become the pursuer, while both parties navigate a complex web of desires, image, and internalized rules.

At this point, GEOHOT's lyrics resonate:

So stop fawning, start yawning, and hit the floor just to dance
Fuck your hand and avoid the romance.
Withhold the dick, supply and demand
Flip the tables and make her beg to get in your pants.

So what of it? The Hegelian dialectic must exist in some form, right?
But if so, why lie about it? Why deny yourself the truth just because the superego wants it?

What's your name, can we fuck, you while out with your dick
While subconsciously the lady knows she's runnin this shit

I just want the truth.

and arise from sordid ashes
to come answering the call
I am crying from a bunker
that the truth can save us all

In the end, the dynamic between desire, societal rules, and personal truth is always at play. The superego, shaped through years of internalized expectations, acts both as a guide and a constraint, often diminishing the returns of genuine interaction as we become more aware of, and more beholden to, the codes we’ve inherited and the games we play.

The Exploiters and The Exploited

Chapter VII (excerpt)

A wedge of light fell across her face. He saw the firm, sensual mouth in sharp outline. Then she leaned back a little, and he saw only a suggestion of its shape and the dark lines of her lowered lashes.

Haven't I?—he thought. Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else for two years? . . . He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he had never allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be said within his own mind. Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying it to her. . . . Since the first time I saw you . . . Nothing but your body, that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me, if . . . Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every conference you thought so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed . . . You trusted me, didn't you? To recognize your greatness? To think of you as you deserved—as if you were a man?

. . . Don't you suppose I know how much I've betrayed? The only bright encounter of my life—the only person I respected—the best businessman I know—my ally—my partner in a desperate battle . . .

The lowest of all desires—as my answer to the highest I've met . . .

Do you know what I am? I thought of it, because it should have been unthinkable. For that degrading need, which should never touch you, I have never wanted anyone but you . . . I hadn't known what it was like, to want it, until I saw you for the first time. I had thought: Not I, I couldn't be broken by it . . . Since then . . . for two years . . . with not a moment's respite . . . Do you know what it's like, to want it? Would you wish to hear what I thought when I looked at you . . . when I lay awake at night . . . when I heard your voice over a telephone wire . . . when I worked, but could not drive it away?

. . . To bring you down to things you can't conceive—and to know that it's I who have done it. To reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure, to see you need it, to see you asking me for it, to see your wonderful spirit dependent upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as you face the world with your clean, proud strength—then to see you, in my bed, submitting to any infamous whim I may devise, to any act which I'll perform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation . . . I want you—and may I be damned for it! . . .

She was reading the papers, leaning back in the darkness—he saw the reflection of the fire touching her hair, moving to her shoulder, down her arm, to the naked skin of her wrist.

. . . Do you know what I'm thinking now, in this moment? . . .

Your gray suit and your open collar . . . you look so young, so austere, so sure of yourself . . . What would you be like if I knocked your head back, if I threw you down in that formal suit of yours, if I raised your skirt—

She glanced up at him. He looked down at the papers on his desk.

  • in politics
  • 1 min read

☺ US Election Result

I didnt even stay up to watch the show ...
I just went to bed and dreampt of flying away.

Whatever happends, remember these parties are both controlled by the same hands. - JS (08-10-2020)

☺ Qubes OS

If you are wondering what operating system to run in 2024 onwards it can only be one.
i3 ontop of the fastest way to run any/many operating systems thanks to the XEN kernel, alongside some very practical security tools!

QUBES OS