and my personal favorite from the same play

i wonder if all the fornicating i am getting is worth all the fornicating i am getting : )

It is better to be smart than stupid.
It is better to be rich than poor.
It is better to good-looking than ugly.
It is better to be charming and socially adept than grating and obnoxious.
It is better to have family, patrons and fans than to be friendless and alone.
It is better to work hard than to slack off.
If you want to hot it big, it is better to be in a time and place where rapid change is happening than in
a time and place where regulations prevent change.
It is better to have the government with you than against you.

We could go on and on. The point is, it has always been this way.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

I don’t suggest you’re not an exceptional person – you are! But you’re certainly not some kind of freak of nature.

thank you.

and i think what you dont realize is that you dont have to be a freak to have the right combination of genetic traits to be more exceptional than someone else.

I remember music because i have no choice. hows that? songs i like, songs i hate, tunes i neer want to hear again, but occisionally i hear them note for note inflection for inflection.

i kind of do the same with most of what i read, but with reading you have more choice. imagine that i remember reams of elevator musak representations of favorite songs. augh

and how i see math and move through that space to get answers? you let me know how you teach that one, cause i cant even get others to understand it even though my representations are not bizarre abstractions but just representations.

for instance, some bizarre abstraction versions, which i cant do, regard 9 as being blue and fuzzy, and each number has qualities.. i just see what might be termed representational graphs and they make up a lanscape in which they define structure.

People excell because it suits them – they work at it – and they make use of their opportunities. I don’t see what’s socialistic about that.

nothing. not one thing at all. but that is not what his premise is. and thats where the difference is.

yes, people can work their butts off and reach their capacity.. no doubt. but the idea here is that there arent people who have aptitudes and things that put them WAY ahead of the game, sometimes without ever needing to be taught (but often not having a direction for it so its not exploited – or its taught out of them, and they use the way that everyone else does).

now in order how to understand how its socialist (marxist) you would have to first know the points of what marx claims reality is.

and marx and todays left claim that there are no differences between races and individuals, and that any difference between them is a product of their environment.

but that is a farcical statement if you understand genetics. every one of us is a new mix of qualities from both lineages of individuals, and like a big sorting machine each new set of combinations are tested… and if they make more then those are tested..

and the best lines do better.

got that last isolated point? Marx and the left want to erase the concept that there is actual merit!!!

and actual merit is not that we are all the same and how we develop is what we choose to do and work at hard…

merit is that some are “better” than others at different things, and this means that depending how you look at it in isolated areas there are winners and there are losers. there are people with better genetics that do better becuase of it, there are people with worse that dont.

healthy populations cant function at a higher level with out a certain functional spread. and marx and the others never care about how things actually work, they only cared about how the believe in a premise as to how they work would move people in a way in which they would forgoe merit and such in how htey choose and manipulate the world around them.

in this way, those who are completely incapable of competing and fairly taking a position by merit, would be out of the game.

and so the smarter, more capable people are turned into oppressors, because if we presume we are all the same, then they cheat.

but if we are all unique individuals and even cripples are important (hawking proves that easy), then all these marxist truths are wrong.

so you ahve a lot of books out there that have ulterior motive in that they are getting you to accept a well thought out false premise that you have no real way to assail unless you do some deep thinging as to the premise and even more importantly where it leads.

so he cleverly clothes his falsehood in a garmet of merit, but accepting it denies that there are special people. which then would deny culling the herd and breeding new socialist man, wouldnt it?

and yes they think this deep and even deeper at the true believer level… thats how far away they are from those that are useful idiots and fodder to a bunch of people so smart that they convinced you that there are no special people, as they themselves fool most of us.

why do you think they go after the smart? because the smart can work out what the others dont or cant, and then tell them the game. but they like the smart that will play that game. and as more people go that way, more would rather be on the winning side, which is how the propaganda shapes which side they join or decide to prostitute for.

gladwell does not tell you what IQ you have to have to do the 10k thing. nor does he tell you that those with higher IQs would need less time.
and there are things that no matter how much time a person has, they will never get it. but there are people that can. (and before someone brings up mensa, they are barely above. they are the short ones in the above 100 game. and they have the most inflated egoes. ergo everyone knows them, and almost no one knows prometheus, mega, and others.)

the 10,000 hours is a false premise… and then one has to ask why promote a obviously false premise? above is part of the result of asking that question in light of “why did the liberal press print and promote a meritocritous promoting book?”. why hasnt the left excoriated him?

hows this since you know music.

if i sing a C into the top of a piano, what happens to the strings inside?

did i ahve to actually sing a high C to get the high C string to move? so its not that hard of an abstraction is it?

thanks for some great converstation. sorry about the time… but am very glad you did take some time!!!! 🙂

I believe Gladwell’s position is essentially meritocratic, not socialistic.

I don’t suggest you’re not an exceptional person – you are! But you’re certainly not some kind of freak of nature. You remember music because it suits your cognitive capacity and pleasure center to do so. I’m exactly the same – my fellow singers find it extraordinary how quickly I learn and remember new music. They could do it too, if they wanted to and if it pleased their bodies and brains to do so. Not everyone is built that way. But our capacities to learn, remember, and perform are les differentiated than one might think.

People excell because it suits them – they work at it – and they make use of their opportunities. I don’t see what’s socialistic about that.

I wish I had more time to write about this.

if we are all the same and interchangeable then there is no problem to exterminate half the population. as you lose nothing other than volume, not ability.

by accepting gladwell, you not longer worry about the infirm that might have become reimans, or hawking.. you dont need to worry about the jews killed who might be einstien, bhor, wiggenstein, and tons and tons of others… because their talent is just 10k hours.

it neutralizes any argument that anyone (except leaders), are imporaant enough to keep around.

see team hoyt… maybe now you will get that the spastic quadrepelegic might not follow his formulea.

he relies on you not realizing the differennces around you beacause the base level of competency to live is low…

so a purge of scientists and taletnted artists and musicisians are ok… because it only takes you 250 weeks to produce more of them just as good and not poisoned by capitalism, individualism, etc.

but tell me..

where do all teh inventions come from that are new and not incremental variations

why couldnt russia make their own weapons rather than steal the stuff and be great at copying but never can innovate (other than ak47.. but if you look that was a person who was an exception in their system).

with all that china now has and can do.. why isnt there this huge flood of invetnions?

where is the earth shattering art and music

look back ad the most indicualistic times. and you will find the renaisance, you will find the industrial revolution.. the progress of art…

its that easy to refute gladwell..

but he is wrong…

the purpose of gladwells book is to promote communist equality, that we are all the same and that there is no such thing as talent all you need is time and everyone can be einstien. (a bit sarcastic but its illustrative).

by his book you could work in the morning as an accountant, a brain surgeon in the after noon, and a nuclear scientist in the evening and still be a michilin quality chef. all it takes is 40,000 hrs

it will only take one 13 year or so to do all that and be an expert in each and every one.

does that sound right to you?

thats how silly his book is, but how the leftists eat it up because its pretends to confirm tabular rasa.

your not better than me, all you did was study.

and now every idiot is equal to a genius because he can discount the genius by saying he is nothing special.

however i will point out something. IQ is REAL. its not a product of environment. look at it this way. a balloon can only be inflated so far. no amount of environment will change that point. you can fill it up with air, but you cant take a small baloon and fill it beyond its capacity. can you? (and we even use pop as a euphimism for when the brain has too much 🙂 )

under tabular rasa, i can win a scientific argument with a incompetent more than i can win with a competent scientist. global warming is being promoted by incompetent scientists mostly.

its the ONLY way to get an alternative side to something that is empirical. the person has to be so bad, that they can come up with bad conclusions and believe they are good!

then, because of argument by authority, they get equal standing next to the very competent guy. worse, the incompetent has an easier time, as the competent guy is tied down by facts, and things that the incompetent cant even see.

fascinating reads do not equate to validity.

which is how this all works. their stuff is MORE facsinatign because its not valid.

we readily accept that a person is tone deaf. how many years of study by a tone deaf person will make them an expert at tuning a piano by hand wihtout a machine? according to these guys 10k hours.

how many years of study witll make someone an expert on painting and art in full color, if they are color blind? 10k hours according to these guys.

of course mild schizophrenia will also not matter, since they too can be like niels bor, if they only had the right environment and 10k hours to kill rather than working.

i work with researchers. they respect me a lot. why? because i am less educated but vastly more talented than them. (and they are slowly turning away from socialism. why? beacuse when you see real talent, then you know thsi game is a farce)

i often have performance characteristics leaning towards rain man, but wihout the social or physical situation. play me some bars of music, and i can recite the rest of it or sing the song. when in high school the geeks would get around trying to find old 45 albums and then see if they could stump me. we would sit for hours.. and htey would play a bit, and i would sing the rest. they tried the 50s.. no problem.. 60s even easier.. 70s, and 80s too (but those were cds).. then they went to the 30s and 40s.. one tried to give me one song that was 900 years old.

if i heard it, i have it. end of story.

i remember almost every paper or textbook i ever read. sometimes to the page number. i can go back and often see the pages (though for some reason i cant read the words, but can remember the content).

this is why my stuff is different. i remember all those tiny articles and facts. every one of them. and i can hold hundreds at once in my head as i try to juggle a solution.

neo has seen some of my photography, and she has seen a photo realist portrait i did (that was stolen). i can produce art in whatever style you like.. or mash them up. I just helped an author rise up and we just collaborated on a horror story that has sold in 2 countries and they are peddling it more. he is now knocking off a television treatment for me…

its actually a curse. it reminds me of an erie or creepy comic story.. about some special elves. if you collect the right thing for them, and go to their cave, you can call them up. but, there is a catch. they want to be kept busy, they are so bored. and so in the story the man or readers cant work out the implication of it, and so it is a surprise. he gets the stuff, and the elves appear, and he is their master. they explain the rules to him now. he has to find things for the to do, and they will return when done to ask him for more, if they ask three times, and he has nothing, they will anger and tear him apart. so he asks for a castle, and they bild it, riches and they bring it.

well thats the curse. i have to keep busy all the time. i only sleep about 4-5 hours a day… so my days are 20 hours long… more than 4 extra hours a day others dont have.

and there is so much more. which is why i was a ginea pig as a child…

my son is a mathemetician, but he and i are very different. he is always frustrated with me. i see math more abstractly than he does, he sees it more concretely. he can do the formuleas better than me, and explain how he got there. i just spit out the same answer and describe landscapes i fly through. he tells me that you cant do that. 🙂

for me its not synethesia like another famous mathemitician, its just visual and constructed, as i abstract to the extreem.

and thats something else. how many hours to develop the skills of someone who gets answers through synethesia, or other sensory domain mixes?

i was a prodigy as a child… its more than just practice. and others whoc ant do it want to be thought as equal.

collectivism means we are all the same, and that book seeks to make us all the same.

you want to know the deep down real reason people like socialism?

they have been made incompetent and ineffective, and ahve lost all the knowlege from culture and family that would have made schooling an augmentaion of life, not the whole cloth itself.

so they deep down know that they cant function. and the major difference between these two thigns is that in capitalism, you have no one else to blame for your station than yourself.

you are the reason you are where you are.

and the fact that its hard is not a conspiracy against you. its life in a world in which you compete or die (or dont have future versions to compete).

in socialism. nothing is your fault. you can be as incompetent as you want because everything is the falt of other things.

[edited by neo-neocon for length]

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com

I have not been to his site in a while. Seems he’s kind of building a rock star status for himself these days.

I am trying to be shorter, but sometimes a line clicks and this whole thing comes out. i am also usually at work, so i only have bout fifteen mins, to get that idea out, and then back to stuff i have to do. thats all straight out one shot no looking back.

then i get the mixed reviews and no matter what i do, someones unhappy. and then i hear otis redding in my head. and if i am short and leave it at that, everyone would think i was nuts. but if i add the lyrics.

Look like nothing’s gonna change.
Ev’rything still remains the same.
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do,
so I guess I’ll remain the same, yes.

and thats what ends up happening. sigh.

thanks E, i am never (rarely?) upset over honest criticism.

and thanks for the comment br549. I really dont want to flood, but your very correct, the question is the trigger that unlocks the information. very astute of you. otherwise i dont think of these things much (conciously).

I really do want to be shorter (more concise). though i am honored that you find what i write interesting. i am trying to be and i am trying to have a good angle, though like roshomon, which view is the right one? most of the time i notice people dont actually see things deeply. or if they do they tend to all walk the same route. sometimes they say things that they dont even understand the meaning of, origin of, etc.

i am completely unfamiliar with Barnett. but that doesnt surprise me since i dont read or follow anything in that think tank area (though if anyone is offering such employment…. 🙂 maybe i missed another calling). though i am sure that i have read stuff.

do you follow that stuff much? any recomendations for a decent read on the net? its like i always have to feed the beast or else i get bored. so i read alot, think a lot, etc.

thanks for all the comments!!

The scenario he painted above puts him directly on a level with people in global / military think tanks who sit around and imagine these things, like Thomas P.M. Barnett – who I have lost all respect for since I heard him state that Obama is a genius and probably the smartest president we’ve ever had.

Christ, Barnett, brown nose much?