RTFM-6: Social Computing.

Before I begin, I would like to apologize for my brief hiatus, I've been going through some relationship stuff. Even a sentence about myself it too much for this weblog, so onto the meat:

For those of you not taking this class, RTFM stands for Read The Fucking Manual. Although, the class register office seems to be under the illusion that it stands for Research Teams, Fundamentals and Management. I have no idea where they got that from.

So to start things off, I bring you Jim's Postulate of Human Social Systems, which states: given n individuals, as the limit of n approaches the population size, the probability that it contains a member not in a social group approaches H. Statistics show H is approximately equal to 0. In more plain English: Everybody is somebody to someone. It is this fundamental law which governs Social Systems. As people tend to matter to other people they form social groups and interact (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly). Out of these groups, social norms arise (this is the basis for sociology). In the remainder of this article I will attempt illustrate several examples of this.

The first example is Goodwin's Law. The American attorney Mike Goodwin observed that given a long enough internet discussion, eventually someone will make a comparison to Hitler or Nazism in general. As this has generally been accepted as a bad thing, many forums and newsgroups (such as UseNet which can be accessed through Google groups) have responded by recognizing such references as the point at which a discussion has played itself out, and as a result terminated the discussion. Now obviously any intentional reference for the purpose of prematurely ending the discussion will be ignored (called Quirk's exception). The evolution of such a social norm clearly indicates that social computing has reached the point where actual societies are formed by the presence of successful social computing applications (in this case newsgroup).

Often times people will dispute Goodwin's Law on the basis that comparisons to Hitler or Nazism is perfectly acceptable. They will reference cases such as: "Just because he improved the economy doesn't make him a good leader. Even Hitler improved the economy,"(ibid wikipedia). Goodwin's law can be argued as existing specifically for the purpose of stopping just this kind of comparison as the intentional reference to Hitler is a purposeful attempt at biasing the discussion by playing on people's emotional reactions to Hitler and what he has done. Instead, in such cases, Hitler should be substituted with: "Even bad leaders," with possible examples provided as necessary.

So what have we learned? Internet communities are valid communities due to the existence of social norms. But let's look at another social norm.

As most of you probably know I spend allot of time in an IRC chat room on LCIRC.net. This chat room as been affectionately titled #AlbinoBlackSheep (all irc chat rooms start with a #). In my time there I have noticed the emergence of a new social norm. Whenever a user (generally new ones, often referred to as newbies) asks for a person’s age or gender, they are met with either hostility or satire. Apparently over time this community has developed a norm.

The reasons for this norm are overly complex, but suffice to say, a large number of people join the chat room every year for the purposes of either engaging in cybersex, or pretending to and then changing their gender at the last second to make fun of the other person. At first this is either amusing, or ignorable, but over time the number of people entering for this purpose has reached levels where it has become disruptive to the community, resulting in the norm. Now, as it is a social norm and therefore self enforcing, over time the number of users who ask questions (like asl) are immediately attacked reducing the number of occurrences over time. It has embedded itself into the resident culture and making such questions the equivalent of social rape.

This leads me to Jim's Law of Internet Gender: In any sufficiently developed internet community, while acts such as cyber sex continue to be stigmatized, attempts to discern a user’s gender will be met with scorn or satire.

taken from: Wikipedia and Part One of a Three Part Lecture on Social Computing given by Jim Tzenes

To steal from someone else:

The following story is not mine in anyway, and is most probably some sort of a copy write infringement, so by reading further you agree not to sue me... please?

"There is a deaf boy who is walking home on train tracks... in china. On second thought, maybe he's retarded, I mean why else would he be walking on train tracks when he can't hear anything, doesn't make allot of sense. Any way, he's walking along the train tracks and sure enough a train is coming up behind him. Now there is an old wise Chinese man who lives up in a tower doing calculations. He's so old and he's been up there so long that no one knows if he's even alive. Well, obviously he is alive, or this wouldn't be much of a story. So any way he's up in this ivory tower doing his calculations and he's got papers everywhere from all his inventions and such. This old man of course sees the little boy coming along and sees the train baring down on him. Maybe the boy's a hundred yards away; maybe the train's four miles. For some reason he knows the boy's deaf, I'm not sure why, I didn't make this story up. So any way, he sees the kid and the train and he starts doing calculations. He starts working out all the numbers on a sheet of paper, train velocity and whatever. About thirty meters from the tower the old man finishes his calculations, and realizes that the boy will die ten meters from the tower. He then folds up the paper into an airplane and tosses it out the windows without any regards and goes back to work. Eleven meters from the tower the boy sees the paper airplane (he's deaf not blind) and jumps off the tracks to catch it, thus avoiding certain doom."

There is a moral in that story somewhere. Look through it a couple times before reading onwards, I'll wait.


…Probably something to do with inadvertently saving lives and things about the nicer things in life. Very wise stuff. Maybe it would have helped if I had told you that it was the old man's intention to save the boy's life with the paper airplane. Of course I didn't. In fact, I went so far as to suggest otherwise, because I wanted you to see a moral in that story. It isn't a wise story, and neither am I.

The title of this entry is "To steal from someone else," but if you think its the story I'm stealing you're wrong again. What I am stealing is Socrates theory "true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." I wanted to plainly illustrate how a story can give the appearance of wisdom without actually having any. How people are willing to read the wisdom into the story. Maybe what I am saying is: it isn't the intellectual that is sharing their wisdom with you; it is your own wisdom coming out.

Someone once said "Good artist copy, great artists steal." Apparently the same holds true for philosophers.


From: The Second Coming of Jim by Jim Tzenes

The half baked drivel that pours from my mind.

When the world ends, and by the world I mean our society, and gives way to one of a million utopias, I like to think it will be the darker emotions that go last. It won't be love, happiness and satisfaction which hold out against the progressivism of society from brutal emotional content to rational intellectualism. No, those will be the first ones to go. Instead it will be the more savage human emotions which have withstood the test of time. Those that have fought against what is "proper" and "right" for years will have built themselves tough outer shells. They will weather the storm as the more pleasant emotions are swept away in the tide.

I am convinced Love will go first. And why not? It is merely a fledgling among the emotions, invented by Jane Austin only two hundred two years ago. And it has already begun to remove itself from society. Divorce rates on the rise (fifty percent in America), younger and more rash people getting together and experiencing it far too early to understand what it is, even the understanding and dissection of the human brain by MRI's and CatScans. It won't be long before we can quantify it, bottle it up, and sell it with a shiny logo. Bye your love potions, only a dollar ninety five at Osco. Of course they'll be intended for personal use but it is obvious what they'll really be used for.

Next will be happiness. Unlike love which shrivels up and dies, happiness will go out with a bang. With work getting easier and free time getting longer, people will devote more and more of the latter to happiness. There in lies the problem. You can have too much of a good thing, and happiness is something that is easy to over do. Too much one way, or too much another and it becomes repetitive, boring. Oh sure it will stick around for a while as there are a plethora of things to entertain ourselves with, but once the amount of time we spend trying to entertain overcomes the amount of resources left, only boredom will be left.

At some point righteousness will follow. I do not mean the sort of righteousness that you find in a southern baptist or papal bull, but rather the kind you get where people defend right from wrong. Its own death can already be seen in the jail houses of America. No it won't be intolerance or some bizarre system which brings it down, but rather moral relativism. Seeing both sides of the equation. When the criminals become just as much victims as those they hurt. It starts with rehabilitation. We stopped killing our criminals so we try to reeducated them, bring them back into the fold. Instead of the rapist we blame the incestuous father. Instead of the murderer we blame the neglectent mother. And when black and white finally fade from our site, the grey that surrounds us will be absolute. Like a picture that has been blurred too much.

And what will be left?

Wrath, Lust, Greed, Pride, and the sort. People will probably think its the end of the world. And it will be, but not because these emotions are dominating our lives. No, it will be because they will be our last bastions of hope against the coming utopian ideals. The last rallying point for the malcontents and nonconformists. When society is the pressure point, angst becomes a form of rebellion. Those who fight will be the teenagers to societies parental advice.

People like to criticize these emotions, but I think of them as our last chance at salvation, before the eternal hell of the utopian idealists. To me, every utopia is a dystopia, and every emotion precious.

taken from: The Colorful Imagery of the Apocalypse, by Jim Tzenes

For kicks:

Normally I hate online quizzes, and absolutely refuse to participate. However, as today is a day of introspection, I bring you this particular quiz:

You scored as Satanism. Your beliefs most closely resemble those of Satanism! Before you scream, do a bit of research on it. To be a Satanist, you don't actually have to believe in Satan. Satanism generally focuses upon the spiritual advancement of the self, rather than upon submission to a deity or a set of moral codes. Do some research if you immediately think of the satanic cult stereotype. Your beliefs may also resemble those of earth-based religions such as paganism. Satanism 88% Agnosticism 79% Atheism 54% Buddhism 54% Islam 50% Paganism 38% Judaism 38% Hinduism 17% Christianity 4% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

One Hundred Words or Less.

I was talking to one of my friends today and for some reason I used the phrase "whatever happened to that?" Its the kind of thing I expect to hear from my grandfather. Like "whatever happened to those old fashion record players?"
And then it hit me. We are dinosaurs in our own time. Society has just gotten ahead of itself. One of these days you are going to be walking down the street and go up to an atm and then BAM rectal thermometer up the ass. You Won't even know what happened.

The Fourteen Year Old's Enlightened Perspective.

I do not normally include such short and commentary things, so do not think of this as a sign of things to come. While this was written in response to what an anonymous other had said, I would ask you not to view it as an attack (though, it probably comes on stronger than I intended) on him. It is merely my opinions on religion which I find hard, at best, to express.

I don't think you do know why it exists (or I believe you wouldn't be lamenting its need). I think you believe it exists to fulfill other people's meaningless lives, but not your own. Combining narcissism and arrogance into a truly astounding package of sociopathism.

For reference it is called the 14 year olds perspective because that is around the age when young children grow up and realize that Santa isn't real (not that they don't figure this out before, but rather this is the age they accept it), and as a result push all of religion away and declare it an evil on society. They reference things like the crusades and inquisition without stopping to think how modern religion is no where close to what it was at those times and is no more to blame for it than I am for slavery, because I quote Tomas Jefferson.

Religion, since you ask, is the amorphous social structure which fills in the needs of our society. It brings hope because there are no social structures in place to bring hope. It takes care of the poor because the current charitable social structures are inadequate given the size of our poor community. It preaches against vice, because besides legal enforcement there is little in the way of social taboo against such things (at least where I am from). When Rome fell it took the role as government. Religion is the social structure of community organization allowing it to fit itself into society in any way society demands of it. When houses need to be built church drives rise to the occasion. When crime is intolerable it is Synagogues which organizes neighborhood watches. When racism came to height it was the mosques which protected their followers.

Religion is the ideal social structure, able to support society in any way needed. The philosophies and faith which you look down upon are nothing short of the glue that holds religion together, that make it such a powerful social structure. Any occasional determent it causes to modern society (and note once again today's religion is not the religion of the crusades) must be dealt with the understanding of how important religion truly is. I no more blame Islam for the suicide bombers than I blame trees for eco-terrorists. Anyone can claim to do things in the name of one god or another, it doesn't mean its religion that is to blame.

taken from comments on: "What Early Genesis Reveals" by Christopher Gorton. Comments by Jim Tzenes

Fear.

I got my first fake ID when I was thirteen. Back then it was just for cigarettes (only nineteen), but every time I walked into the store I was scared out of my wits. For those of you who don't know I was about six feet when I was twelve. I don't think my height was the convincing factor for the men behind the local bodega, I think he just wanted to make money off me. I tried to compensate for my fear. I'd talk to the guy behind the counter; try to strike up a repertoire... or something. Still, every time I could feel the heat on my face of his scrutinizing look. By then it was already too late, I had crossed the Rubicon.

From the second I approached the door I'd feel a sudden pain in my chest, right around where I figured my heart might be. The kind of feeling you get right before a test you know you haven't studied enough for. My strategy was always right in right out. No fooling around; no pretending to look at things I wasn't going to buy. No suspicious behavior. I think I failed every time. There was always something. A new guy behind the desk. A white man chatting with the clerk. Is he a cop? Maybe just the owner. Just as bad either way. Wait, pretend you're interested in skittles? or charge right in and give your spiel. What year was I born in again? '79? Chirst, what if he notices the expiration date is wrong? Or swipes it. By the time I was done worrying I had already made my purchase and was blocks away.

It never got easier either. By the time I was fifteen my ID hit twenty one and I moved up to beer and liquor. I've had a sordid relationship with harder drugs, but liquor was always the preferred alternative.

I hope my mother doesn't read that last sentence. Too late now. No point worrying, just have to push on. Get it out and go.

In retrospect it seems as if those first three years really prepared my for the later trials of grubby liquor stores and sleazy men behind their counters. I'm willing to bet that more than one of them pegged my for underage right off the bat and charged my extra. I would have gladly paid the price to reduce the fear. In all fairness it wasn't entirely unwarranted. In the seven or so years I used a fake I only got caught once, but that was more than enough. It was like the avalanche that had been chasing me my whole life finally catching up with me. For someone who will risk life and limb in a bar brawl, my friends find this characterization of my fears very amusing.

Two hundred and seventeen more days before I will finally reach twenty one. With the end in sight, ever trip to the liquor store brings forth the question: When its all over and done, will I still feel this pain? this fear? or will it finally be laid to rest?

Taken from: The fears of Jim Tzenes

Freakonomics: Uncommon sense at four dollars a gallon.


Everyone has been griping about oil prices (I don't own a car, but I know people who do), and the recent tragedy down in the Gulf of Mexico people are worried its going to rise higher. I've heard numbers as high as $4 a gallon. This recent crisis has caused President Bush to release oil from the strategic reserve. Don't sound too relieved. It will still probably get that high. One of the constant lessons I harp on is how common sense is little more than a lie we tell to placate ourselves.

For a second, lets talk about cell phones. My father always said that people had accidents while talking on a cell phone are just people who can't do two things at once. Of course when New York banned handheld phones he just picked up a headset. A $5 investment and now he's inside of the law. A law that makes no sense. Lets ignore for a second that studies show that less than 6% of distracted driving is due to cell phones [1], and concentrate on why hands free cell phones are ok.

The logic would seem that if you're using one hand to use a cell phone then the other hand is busy and that's your distraction. Which is why we ban people from driving with only one hand. Well maybe the act of holding the cell phone is a distraction. Which is why we don't let people driving hold anything in their other hand. Or maybe, just maybe now, the number of accidents relating to cell phones is equally likely between hand-held and those with an ear piece (taken from Fatal Analysis Reporting System). Which would mean the real distraction is talking on the phone. With cell service spotty and conversations grabbled by poor communication, its not a reach. Freakonomics 1, Common Sense 0.

But back to gas prices. Not many people realize that gas price is only about 50% dependent on petroleum (crude oil). So common sense says that one petroleum doubles gas prices should go up by 50%, and if you look at prices for both from July 2003 - July 2005, it would look like you were right [2] [3]. Numbers lie, its a plain fact, they disguise their content, and prices are no different. Direct your attention to October of 2003. Gas prices were on the rise, and crude oil for some reason was falling. Weird. But that's not the only inconsistency. From May 2004 to September 2004 crude oil went from $40 to $55, a 37% increase, and gas prices... stayed the same? It looks like there is some other force at work here. In fact the difference is the refineries of great America, in their capitalist endeavors are making money off of you. The same refineries that were hit in the recent hurricane. See, crude oil needs to be refined, and refineries need to make money, the refineries that are shut down because of the hurricane. So don't count on the strategic reserve to bail you out.

take from: a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, NYMEX Light Sweet Crude prices, the U.S. Department of Energy, and The Statistics of Common Sense by Jim Tzenes