Many define intelligence at least partly as the ability to learn from one’s experiences. If I make a mistake and I’m intelligent I should be able to see what I did wrong, adjust, and avoid the problem in the future. That’s fine, but I have a better definition.

I think what’s even more important is the ability to learn from other peoples’ experiences.

You are only one person making mistakes. It would take forever to gather enough experience from just your own life. The true power comes from being able to actively grow by absorbing the experiences of others — even fictional characters — while watching T.V., movies, reading books, and observing the lives of those you meet.

Become that person and make the mistakes they make. See where it gets them and incorporate that knowledge into your collective experience as if it were your own. This gives you the wisdom of many.:

I got bored and scanned my iPhone with Nmap.

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Hmm…a single open TCP port (62078) with tcpwrappers, interesting OS detection results, and a scary TCP sequence prediction finding. More analysis to follow…

1. People who can say “www” really fast.

Saying duhb-ool-you three times in a row should require effort and cause you to go slowly. If it doesn’t, you have special powers and need to be isolated from the rest of us.

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Unopened reddit stories are noticeably more interesting when viewed from a mobile device than from a system with a full display and adequate bandwidth. This is for the same reason that any movie in your DVD collection is less interesting than the same movie playing on TV.

With the mobile reading scenario I know the story might take a long time to load, or that my lame little mobile browser might balk at it — so there’s a decent chance I won’t be able to see it. With the movies, the one on TV is interesting because it’s going away soon.

It’s the same with relationships; your wife is Braveheart in your DVD collection, while the woman in line at the grocery store could very well be Battlefield Earth on cable (with commercials).

I think we are wired to be highly attracted to opportunities that are fleeting or difficult to attain, regardless of quality.

I figured something out just now. When I experience something that provokes my interest or pulls at my emotions, all I can think of is calling a friend to talk about it. I want to appreciate these things with someone. From that I realized that my overall goal was simple:

All I want in life is to have amazing experiences with great people.

All that remains is to define “amazing experiences”. The short answer, I suppose, is that of exploring the world and discovering things. That’s on the intellectual side. On the primal side I suppose it equates to tapping into as many rewarding emotions as possible without being dangerous to others.

If you only had two paragraphs, what would your life’s goal be?

I was just taking a shower and had a frightening idea. With all this talk of the National ID program, and the inclusion of biometric identification into the system, I started thinking about other trends in technology that could impact it.

So the main danger, critics argue, of the National ID system is that as it becomes prolific it will get used for more and more purposes. I think this will include private industry before too long. We already send copies of drivers licenses to do credit checks, for example.

Well imagine what will happen when we understand genetics better — all the way to the point where one could have a test done and a computer could map out the person’s tendencies and weaknesses. We’ve all heard about the fat gene, a propensity for violence, being vulnerable to alcoholism, depression, etc.

Well what if that data were to be stored in people’s files? What if it were to be converted into an individual risk matrix (IRM). So on your card (and in the database) would be everything about you up until that point. Obvious things like age, race, height, weight, etc. But also things like country of origin, who your parents were. What affiliations they had (think semantic web), etc.

Now imagine this information being at the disposal of local law enforcement. They stop the Arab kid down the road and run a “query” on him. Hmm…missing school a lot. He’s been going to the local Mosque quite a bit. Oh, and he’s genetically prone to religious devotion by a margin of 2.6 deviations. And he’s walking out of a hardware store with a bunch of mechanical-looking stuff.

Or how about your insurance agency doing a “query” on you. Credit score, genetic risk factors for suicide, depression, heart disease, current health records, etc. And all this information gets run through an algorithm that decides whether you get a policy and how much you’ll be charged.

Or a local redneck at a bar late at night when the cops show up. Ok, he’s at a bar. His father died in a drunk driving accident, he’s divorced, and he has no ride home. Genetics indicate he’s likely to fight if we attempt to arrest him. Call for backup.

The scary thing is that all of these things could be used for good. Some other ideas that open up once the genetic material is easy to attain and replicate:

college admission, dating sites, ordering brides…

Thoughts?

Most guys know about the nice guy paradox. It’s where they’ve been told since they were young — both by women and by society in general — that women like “nice” guys. And because they’ve been told this over and over, most guys grow up trying this approach only to have reality kick them in the groin.

This bothers guys. A lot. Why would women claim to want someone who will treat them nice, but then repeatedly turn down or mistreat those that give them exactly what they claim to want? Well, I have the answer, and like most major truisms it’s pretty simple:

Women like when guys are nice to them, but only when they don’t have to be.

Think about that. Most guys exclusively using the “nice” approach are doormats, and many are so because that’s all they can be. They lack the attributes to attract a woman based on pure gravity (physical size/strength/prowess, ambition, sexuality, intelligence, money, etc.). As a result, these guys are essentially forced to grovel in order to attract a mate, which is patently unattractive.

Quite simply, women like powerful men to be nice to them, not feminized pseudo-men. A weak man being nice to a woman is essentially an act of submission, like a beggar bowing his head and calling you sir. Sure, they were respectful to you, but they just asked you for money so it’s not as meaningful as if it came from a peer or superior.

To get the true benefit of “nice” in the way that women enjoy, one has to be able to attract that same woman without being nice, i.e. by the sheer force of masculine character. Only once that foundation of primal respect is in place can the higher-order offerings such as kindness be appreciated. It’s counter-intuitive and it’s unpleasant, but we’re dealing with nature here. Don’t fight the rules. To do so is as pointless as picketing gravity or boycotting inertia.:

The first thing it makes me realize is that we won’t be around for long. Why? Because the ease in which a single person can harm the entire world is going up exponentially. I’m going to name this value, actually (if it doesn’t have one already).

That factor, combined with increasing inequality will yield not just individuals, but entire groups bent on destroying the world. And when you can polymorph a human pathogen that can kill millions with the same ease as creating photo album on your computer, uh…we have a problem.

Doom and gloom. We need something more positive than this. How about this. How about you guys tell me what forces will counter these rogue elements and their ability to inflict massive harm at will.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of memes you should get that way. My favorite definition came from Susan Blackmore, a renowned memetics expert, who says that memes are essentially anything that are copied.

Anyway, check out the concepts of memetics; it’s pretty cool stuff, although I’m not sure I agree with one of her key premises, which says that language was developed not for the benefit of humans, but so that memes could spread more successfully. I disbelieve.

I digress. Today’s task is to introduce this “Memetracker” theme here on the site. When I happen to notice a particular meme I’m going to make a note of it here (if I remember).

So, as my first one: TEH

This is a misspelling of “THE” and it’s been in use for some time online. The interesting thing I’ve been noticing about it, however, is it’s use in elite Internet culture recently — specifically at Reddit and Digg. Here’s a comment from Reddit:

Oh yes I keep forgetting that teh muzlimz is out to get all of us!!!. LULZ. You funny!

I can’t help but wonder if this is linked directly to the now famous, “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.” This type of speech has now become something of a common, humorous way to sarcastically enthusiastic about something.

Anyway, that’s my first meme. Take notice if you see it somewhere.

Resonance has intruiged me since I learned about the concept in high school. For those unfamiliar, it’s “the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency.” Or, to put it another way, it’s the frequency at which something vibrates the most.

I remember one day being at 7-11 getting a Super Big Gulp. I was holding my cup while my buddy was filling his (also a Super Big Gulp) with ice. As the ice fell into his cup a couple of feet away, I could feel my cup vibrating as if it were filling with ice as well. I tried it with a different sized cup and it wasn’t nearly as pronounced. I had just recently learned about resonance, and I was quite impressed.

Anyway, it strikes me that resonance is a lot like understanding. I imagine we’re being exposed to information and knowledge (potential understanding) on a constant basis. The various things we’re exposed to as we move through life are essentially frequencies of experience and knowledge. The real question is whether or not you resonate at those frequencies.

This is especially true when it comes to experiencing things that are alien to you, such as different foods, different customs, and different types of music. Think of gangster rap vs. Motzart. These are very different frequencies indeed. And you’ll usually find that those who can tune to one frequency and be affected by it, are not able to really feel the other.

I think cultures determine what frequencies we oscilate at, and that most are bad at nurturing people who are able to oscilate at many. Most people are like the walkie-talkies from 20 years ago. They had a single crystal in them that did maybe 1 to 3 channels. There were THOUSANDS of other radio signals flying by those radios — so much conversation to be heard — but those old systems could only hear three little channels. And that’s how most of us are.

I think we should try and “understand” as many frequencies as possible. Spicy food. Ice cream.  Yoga. Isolationism. Compassion. 50 Cent. Cheese. Faith. Environmentalism. Salsa dancing. Hunting. Martial arts. Mars Volta. Cooking. Hopelessness.

The more frequencies we can adjust ourselves to resonate at the more we can undertand other people, and the world in general. From those vantage points we can then try and help others resonate at our favorite pitches, and vice versa.: