Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

I think this right here pretty much says it all when it comes to the significance of humanity. We are wrapped in such a paradox. The earth is everything and yet it is just a pale blue dot. Humanity is everything and yet it is nothing. I use this for Informationalism because I think it shares the spirit of wonder that Informationalism tries to capture. It is with the knowledge that we are this "pale blue dot" that we should feel compelled to drop our petty stereotypes and strive to uncover the vast mystery of the universe in which we live.

Theses of Informationalism

Here I am going to attempt to outline the basic theses of Informationalism to better clarify the direction of my thought as I approach an issue. I hope you readers will find this helpful, as it may be my most important document thus far.

Term: Information- knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc.; factual data.

1. The fundamental problem with materialism is that it does not take into account the influence of information. It is in the ability to record, pass on, and understand information that the advanced manipulation of material circumstances becomes possible.

2. The only way to value a species is by its ability to expand and perpetuate the information it acquires over time. A species that cannot do this must in time be overcome and eliminated by their material circumstances.

3. "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."

-Marx; Theses on Feuerbach II

4. Asymmetric Information leads to social distinction, especially within humanity. Oligopolies of materials and Information are inefficient. Thus a species with asymmetric information is not maximizing its value and risking its existence.

5. Ensuring free distribution and acquisition of Information is the only way to maximize the value of a society. Therefore the goal of a human society must be the freedom of information and the subsidizing of its acquisition in all fields.

6. The laws and structure of society must be formulated and adapted to the practical judgement of acquired Information. Society should be based on conclusions stemming from the best tested Information, and adapt to reflect the consensus of the Information.

7. "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; every citizen can then freely speak, write, and print, subject to responsibility for the abuse of this freedom in the cases is determined by law".

-11th Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (August 1789)

Richard Dawkins - "There is no such thing as a Christian Child"

I thought you all might find this interesting and insightful. I know that Informationalism is not explicitly atheist; my closest examination has led me to conclude that Spinoza-like Pantheism or weak Atheism are probably the best approaches to Informationalism. I posit a simple redefinition of the terms so that Atheism and Pantheism become one.

I feel this movie links up my last post, because it shows the harm that can come from forcing unfounded dogma onto children. I would not even condone labeling a child as a Informationalist child. It is a matter of choice that must be made at an age of consent.

I'm showing this in the hopes that all of you will take an opportunity to take another look at your own faiths; to try and discover where you may be dogmatic. I'm asking, as always, that you consider the benefits of the possibilities that come with Informationalism. Finally, it is my hope that some of you might decide to help pick up the cause, and embrace this progressive philosophy.

Why Our Country Needs Informationalism

I think this article says it all my friends:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070218/ap_on_re_us/evolution_jews

Here is the website: http://www.fixedearth.com/

State Rep. Ben Bridges of Georgia has been affiliated with a memo passed around the political scene which decries Science and attempts to replace it with the Pseudoscience of a man named Marshall Hall. Hall is the President of the "Fair Education Foundation". The name of the organization itself is an example of the disinformation that those frightened of the freedom of information will promote. There is no fair education for this man, there is only the age old attempt of those who fear the future and wish to silence it in the name of piety.
To sum up this ridiculous website promoted by a ridiculous excuse for a representative. It attempts to show the public how the modern model of the universe and evolution are mere products of a "zionist agenda". Of course, one wonders why they chose to lump these two areas of study together specifically. It is because they are both threats to Christianity.
Informationalism wishes to promote the freedom of information. There is no problem with the creation of such information, the problem is that this website parades incorrect information as correct information. By doing this it also engages in disinformation. The result? A deliberate misleading of the public. This website is fraud; it is an example of all that a society without freedom of information can be subjected to.
A final thought. Imagine if a child who knew little about the subject were to stumble upon this website. The influence that it could have upon their ability to think critically would be catastrophic. For the sake of free information and free society we must let it be known that fraud and disinformation cannot be tolerated.

Katrina Summary

The seminar on the situation in New Orleans, especially in the 9^th Ward in Eastern New Orleans, focused on the historical development of the flooding problem and the various paradoxes that contributed to the disaster. The speaker commented on the past makeup in the city, which was more in line with the natural makeup of the land. He then went on to discuss the changes, especially in the last century that led up to the paradox of attempting to safely develop unsafe lands. In the end it was shown that the government played an active role in promoting the unsafe policy, and the lack of communication and planning on the local and national level played a large role in the ensuing disaster.

The city of New Orleans in the 18^th and early 19^th century was centered largely on the banks of the Mississippi river. This is because, when the river floods, the heavier material falls first onto the banks and creates natural dunes. The rest of the area was a naturally bounded by Lake Pontchartrain to the North and Lake Borgne to the East. The area that became East New Orleans was also swampland, so for a time, the city’s growth was checked.

However, the city obviously had planned to grow, and so decided expansion and drainage of the swampland in coordination with development would be the best strategy to take. They undertook the paradox that the speaker referred to as making unsafe land safe. The swamp land was drained, causing the dried up soil to compress and sink below sea level. It was then placed behind levees for protection that were only designed to withstand category 3 Hurricanes.

The danger was realized, and the city was sued for failing to adequately maintain the pump systems to keep the water out. However, the development of East New Orleans continued until an economic slump brought it to a standstill. The city sat relatively silently on the national scene until Hurricane Katrina.

The area that had been swamp land which was developed quickly flooded as it was already under sea level. It should be noted that the area built on the natural dunes was spared a large amount of the destruction. The levees could not withstand a category 4 Hurricane, and so they broke. Since the levees were made in one large wall, a single breech caused the water to pool in the area below sea level and then become stuck, prolonging the flooding. This was also combined with failure to communication between the national and local level of government.

The results were that thousands were killed, billions of dollars in damage was suffered, and thousands of people were left homeless and forced to move outside of the city. All of this could have been avoided with proper planning. New Orleans had planned for growth but had not taken into account the natural limits of the growth of the city. Also, the failure in communication on the national and local level led to confusion in the area of exactly what needed or should be done to keep the residents safe in and unsafe area. The disaster was foreseeable and yet was ignored due to a one track focus on growth, which in the end was thwarted by inadequate plan for disaster. The speaker then suggested some ideas to prevent this in the future such as: not resettling Eastern New Orleans, putting up levees with multiple walls, and making the levees capable of withstanding category 5 Hurricanes. It is overall an example of the dangers that come with asymmetric information.

Sprawl and Sustainability

This post is dedicated to the ideology behind a favorite blog of mine called, A Green Earth. In this post I will talk about Urban Sprawl and environmental sustainability, it will be connected with Informationalism by its focus upon teachers. Most everyone is aware of the critical role that teachers play in the realm of information. Here I will show how helping them advances informationalism, improves urban life, and helps the environment.

It has been incorporated into common knowledge for quite some time that a large pool of labor is critical to a wealthy society. It provides the basis for competitive industry and is the powerhouse behind a market economy. City, State, and National governments recognize this in the United States and claim to make the welfare of the labor force a primary concern. At the same time on the city level, where most city planning takes place, the planners vow to fight sprawl and some pledge to advance the concept of sustainable planning.

However, it appears at all levels the externalities of these workers’ wages are not taken into account. Failing to pay a wage that makes it viable to live comfortably in the city has many negative consequences. If the wages are extremely low, the workers must live in slums with high crime rates and health issues. Also, if the wages are raised but not adequately enough for all, then there is greater incentive for the workers to reside outside the city. This situation contributes to sprawl, which results in a longer commute and greater energy consumption. Also, if the residence is outside the city or county, revenue paid out to the workers is lost on the local economy. So, despite the universal acknowledgement of the value of workers, their low wages make fighting sprawl more difficult and detract from the local economy. Yet it does not seem to be a factor in planning.

Many city planners in the 21^st century have come to regard the idea of sustainability as essentially good. As always, since humans are so fond of dualisms, the “good” of sustainability finds its antithesis in sprawl. Both of these are fairly loaded terms, and so it is essential to provide a clear and concise definition of the two in order to avoid conceptual ambiguity and understand the nature of the labor paradox.

Sprawl can best be understood as the result of the expansion of an urban area into the less developed countryside having little or no controlled land use policy. Inadequate pay for workers contributes to sprawl by creating car dependent communities due to distance from any industrial or business zone, low-density housing communities, as well as the presence of many strip mall areas. Sprawl causes inefficiency in resource allocation in the urban area and makes city more difficult for planners or organize once the pattern has been set. Sprawl not only leads to inefficiency, but over time the marginal cost of living in the area so exceeds the marginal benefit that the city runs a high risk of having market failure due to an exodus from the area, thus putting these workers out of the job.

Sustainability, on the other side of the duality, is the product of careful planning. However, the concept itself is separated by schools such as new urbanism, which also seeks to fight sprawl, by its incorporation of ecological systems in the planning calculations. Sustainable planning seeks to take into account the amount of human population an area can hold while maintaining adequate resources for the planned future. This means not only reversing the tendencies of sprawl, but also managing resource allocations of goods such as: water, petroleum, electricity, food, and land. The goal of sustainability is to ensure that the resources are allocated efficiently enough in the present so they are not completely consumed or unequally diminished for future generations.

From these definitions it is clear that not addressing the issue of the labor force is contradictory to good planning and to sustainability, as it promotes sprawl and inefficient utilization of natural resources. For example, in one of the areas known for the worst sprawl, Charlotte North Carolina, a first year teacher with a bachelor degree is paid $28,510 by the state (Salary, 2007). It is difficult for the teachers, since it takes an average of $35,000 dollars to meet the basic needs of a family of four (Glasmeier, 2008). Common sense would lead one to deduce that the teacher would not locate themselves in a city with a higher cost of living.

The negative affects of this policy are also supported in a paper published by Rèmy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee where they defined the efficiency of cities based upon labor productivity. In their study of 23 French cities they found that the success of the city was defined by the relative size of its labor market, which was determined by, “…the size of the city; the average potential job-home distance (sprawl); and the average speed at which journey to work takes place” (Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee, 1998 ). These last two are specifically the problems that face the city as a result of their inadequate payment of the labor force. The paper concludes specifically that, the city’s productivity is determined by the aforementioned factors, and that this labor pool is determined by, “…its sprawl and of the speed at which trips to the cities are made”, (Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee, 1998 ).

It should also be noted that the increased distance from the job denotes a greater reliability on automobiles. These automobiles add further crowding to the already busy city streets and have spiraling negative consequences for the city system. Thus, it is clear that it is not possible to confront sprawl or sustainable planning without addressing the wages of workers. The wages must be raised to a level that makes it possible and then beneficial for workers to live in areas relatively close to their schools. The economic loss incurred by keeping the wages of the labor force low ultimately outweighs the state funds saved in the process.

References

Glasmeier, Amy K (2006), An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003, Routledge, 2006.

Beatly; Manning (1997), The Ecology of Place, Washington DC: Island Press, 1997.

“Charlotte-Mecklenburgh Schools 2006-2007 Salary Schedule for Teachers” (2006), http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/departments/HR/compensation.asp, accessed February 2, 2007.

Rèmy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee (1998), “Sprawl, Speed, and the Efficiency of Cities”, Paris, France: Obervatoire de l’Economic et des Institution Locals.

Why We've Been Failing in Iraq "A Final Informationalist's Word for the time before I Move onto More Pressing Issues e.g. the Environment"


The critics of the Iraq war have become far more numerous than the supporters that were present in March of 2003. The current discontent among the public and on Capitol Hill are at levels not seen since Vietnam. The President's new plan to send more troops has been met with huge amounts of resistance, and his decision to accelerate the plan can be viewed as a complete disregard for legislative authority. In short, Bush has become almost autocratic towards Iraq because it is his last option. Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States, however, it would be an even greater disaster for George W. Bush.

So after tens of thousands of lives and a trillion dollars, why haven't things come together?


I've already outlined a plan to get us out of Iraq if we wish to stay inside. However, I fear that the American public no longer wants to dedicate the manpower or the money to try and fix the situation in Iraq. What's worse, despite the extreme weath of the builders of this war based on disinformation, their wealth is certainly not enough to bring stability to the country.


Why has Bush's vision failed?

The Bush Administration has suffered from ethnocentrism in the Iraq disaster. The toll of this ethnocentrism has been catastrophic. They are laboring under the ethnocentric assumption that every knows of and wants representative democracy. They feel that once people are allowed this "freedom" then little Americas will pop up everywhere, and they'll all be greatful that we showed them the light.

The truth, however, is more sobering. People have to be educated to live in a representative democracy. Tolerance and equality and representation are far from instincts, they are acquired disciplines. This is what makes Informationalism so important. The sharing of Information is the only way we can discover the things that work towards the progress of our species; it is the only thing that can keep us from giving into our infantile impulses and eventually destroying ourselves and those around us.

The Bush Administration has thrust democracy on Iraq without the education. Representative Democracy in a culture that has not yet accepted the tolerance of different opinions and the stipulations of majority rule as well as fear of the tyranny of that majority is useless. It is doomed to failure. It is the same mistake made in post-colonial Africa.

What must be done?

The people must be empowered. However, you cannot empower them with the vote if you do not first empower their mind. To empower their mind you must ensure that their mind and body are sound, which means they must not be wanting for food or water or the various basic resources that humans in chaotic situations must struggle in terror to acquire.

This returns us to Informationalism. Education. The Iraqi people cannot be "forced to be free" in the words of Rousseau. They must be taught to be free. In order to be taught to be free they must have a time and a place to learn. We are not providing that, and all the prime minister wants is the guns to settle the dispute once and for all.

The dispute will never be settled with guns. Force does not make right. Perhaps blood must be spilled to begin the process, but it can never be completed with blood. It must be completed with minds.


I would encourage all of you who read this blog to tell all those that you know that education is the way out of Iraq. Write your congressperson or letters to your newspaper editor and let the voice of reason be heard. Somebody has to speak for these people, for today they cannot speak for themselves. They are hungry, they are thirsty, they are afraid, and our country has helped to create this situation. If it is as Lao Tzu said, and the way for a large nation to master a small one is to be humble, then let us be humble to the people of Iraq. Let us lift them up and not trample them down with our forced government. Let us build schools and not close them, let us open minds and not shut them. We are in a race against time! Information is the way out of Iraq. Before you can free a body, you must free the mind.

Parts of Informatonalist Plan Informally Considered


I outlined in an earlier post my plan for getting out of Iraq if we were not going to begin an immediate phased withdrawal. It is pleasing to me to notice that some of the international figures of political authority are considering elements from the plan I presented.

1. I commented on the first, which was that unrestricted warfare against the militias was needed. The Bush Administration and the Iraqi prime minister have set out to do just that. However, I do not believe the commitment of the prime minister is genuine, as he appears to just be using this operation as an excuse for an ethnic cleansing of the Sunni. If that part of my plan is to be adopted, the United States must take a more independent approach of dealing with the Shi'a death squads. They are the power base of the Shi'a Prime Minister, and he will not undermine his own power base.


Now, however a more recent development has taken place involving the government of Saudi Arabia. Here is the link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16656642/

The Saudi government is talking about sending troops into Iraq, because like I said, the Shi'a dominated government is not going to be able to quell the violence, as its supporters are instigators of the violence. This begins to follow the part of my plan that calls for the phased withdrawal of US troops and their replacement with UN peacekeepers and help from the Arab League.


This is for any of you that are skeptical, as you should be, of the benefits of Informationalism. From this basic paradigm I have derived systems for solutions that even world leaders are only beginning to grasp. This is because the former systems of reasoning that these men use are pragmatic only within their own ideological realm. As I have shown earlier, many of the men making this policy don't even know the history of the region. They are a product of education systems that have rendered them almost incapable of reasoning beyond axioms that Informationalism shows to be ineffective and counterproductive to the continuation of the species.

The combinaton of the Historicism of Informationalism, its Holistic approach, and the primacy of Information within the paradigm appear to me to offer results where others cannot. If we work to free the Information, we can work our way out of many a mishap.

I will not attempt to hold secrets, my intent here is to persuade the reader to begin to adopt the perspective and the paradigm of Informationalism. Unlike many causes however, I will allow the results of this perspective to speak for themselves.

President Bush's New Plan and Informationalism

Here's an article I've been reading about the situation.

I have been perusing several articles dealing with George Bush's new plan for stability in Iraq. First of all I would like to say that I watched the speech, though not when he originally gave it, and I felt a degree of hopelessness in the air that I felt was unnecessary. President Bush has seen his doctrines fail to the point that his party has lost power, and his "new" strategy appears not new at all. Let me point out some of the key features, then I shall comment on their relationship to Informationalism and the plan I outlined only two posts ago.

1. The increase of troops by 21, 500 mostly in the Baghdad area.

2. A set of benchmarks for the Iraqis to achieve soverign security by November 2007.

3. Unrestricted warfare against the militias.

So what are we Informationalists to make of this plan?
I will first focus on what I feel is good in the plan. I have said earlier that unless we withdraw completely we must be willing to commence unrestricted warfare against the militias. I only suggested we needed an increase in troops, or the devotion of our current troops to special operations and border security.

That about does it for the good, now for the ineffective.

The benchmarks for the government do not seem to be a good idea. The government has failed to meet benchmarks in the past. The Iraqi government is headed by a man whose power base is in the Shi'a militas. He is currently using this position to commence unrestricted warfare only upon the Sunnis, and this amounts to ethnic cleansing.

I said we needed a troop increase, or we had to devote the other troops to special operations against militia leaders. This plan does not offer enough troops and does not seek special operations or swift operations. History teaches us that such an operation would need to be only days in length, with troops then securing the freed areas. This operation is planned to be long and drawn out, thus it will only generate resentment and fail.

Bush is now in such disfavor that he cannot address the main problem. Iraq's infrastructure is still devistated. People without jobs, food, water, or money will turn to anyone that will give it to them. This just happens to be the militias. They are suspicious of occupying forces and the Iraqi government, and they have right to be. If we launch another destructive operation that is sure to harm innocent civilians, we will only generate more hate.

Since it seems Bush is only barely going to get enough money to fund the operation, it is ludacris to think that congress will give him the money to go towards such a massive reconstruction effort.

In short, my Informationalist friends, this plan will only destroy more infrastructure and harm more civilians. It will increase violence in the short term, and then lessen it until we decide to abate, then it will return again. This plan, thus, is more of the same.

The End or the Means?

I have started to read a book called "The Conquest of Happiness" by the famous 20th century British philosopher Bertrand Russell. With the first few pages I have obtained some bits of Information that my readers might find useful. The reading has also left me with some interesting questions I must ask myself.

I seek here to talk about Ends and Means in Informationalism. It is a long standing popular debate within philosophy about the importance of Ends and Means. I am sure you are all familiar with the famous quote by the Italian political theorist Machiavelli who said that, "The ends justify the means". There have been some claims that this was a mistranslation, but the overall idea is still spelled out in his work "The Prince".

The famous German metaphysicist Immanuel Kant believed that individuals should treat other human beings as ends in themselves and not just means to an end. Philosophy has long troubled itself over what ends should be chosen and what the best means are to those ends. In fact, that is the central theme in philosophy. This skepticism about ends and means is what separates it from the modern day business mentality, which knows the ends, and simply debates the means.

I shall discuss a bit about what Bertrand Russell has said, and then give some of my own thoughts on its relationship to Informationalism.

Russell says in the opening of his book that, "The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undo emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it" (Russell 22). To simplify, it seems that people of living circumstances that are not unusually psychologically agitating at a glance, have been exposed over time in their past to unnatural circumstances which have twisted their mental health.

This does not seem surprising, as the simple construction of modern civilization seems well beyond the state humans have lived in throughout most of their existence. Adaptation to this new environment on a biological level is bound to have its drawbacks; this idea is similar to the idea of "The Shadow" advanced by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

Russell speaks primarily about 4 kinds of character stereotypes: The guilty sinner, the narcissist, the megalomaniac, and the hedonist.

The guilty sinner is an individual who has been instilled with an impossible moral code, something comparable to the puritan moral code, which causes him to feel himself a lowly creature never deserving of love. It is no doubt that this morality would lead to a sense of unhappiness and perhaps nihilism.

The narcissist is an individual who wishes to be loved by all, and to be seen as charming. They are wrapped up in love with themselves. This love leads to treating people as means instead of ends, and overall unhappiness with a vanity that can never be satisfied.

The megalomaniac is similar to the narcissist, but his end is power, power for its own sake, and not for the sake of accomplishing something else. This complex simply leads to the desire for more power, an impossible amount of power, which will also ensure the individual is never happy.

Finally the hedonist chooses to indulge in simple pleasures. They escape their own discontent by indulging in quick fix habits such as drugs to forget their own displeasure. However, the displeasure returns as the drug wears off, and so it must be taken again to forget the added displeasure of the burden of this knowledge.

Perhaps some of you have noticed that all 4 of these are recursive systems? It is also not unusual to find individuals who shift between these modes of character.

So Russell seems to suggest that one should practice an activity for its own sake. One should treat the activity as an end in itself. For example, one should play basketball not to win the NBA championship, but because they enjoy playing basketball. We practice martial arts not for the belt, but for the sake of the art and its enjoyment. Russell suggests that this is the only way to ensure happiness.

How does this relate to Informationalism?

We've been discussing means and ends. So how does this concept apply to Informationalism?

Informationalism is a means, and not an end. I have stated that we should acquire and freely distribute Information for its own sake. It is true, perhaps and end could be to ensure the survival of the species. It is also true that I think that Informationalism is the best way to ensure that this end is met. However, this is not necessarily the "end" of Informationalism.

Regardless of whether or not we are Informationalists, we could still be wiped out at any time. As I just stated, Informationalism just ensures we are doing all we can to make sure that this does not happen. It is also, therefore, the only way to ensure that we continue to have any means or ends to explore at all. It thus appears, as I have said before, that the preservation of the species is the ultimate end if there could ever be such a thing.

Informationalism itself, once again, is a means, it is an activity. Acquiring more knowledge about the world is an art that can be practiced, the same as basketball or martial arts. As one practices, one can become more adept at this art. We do it, however, not as an obsession with the ultimate end that we may never reach, but for the activity itself. Informationalism gives the individual the opportunity to grow outside the confines of systems that narcissistically claim to be able to explain everything. To join it is, as always, a choice.

Take yourself all the way back to Socrates: What do you really think that you know?