new log, plus 2 log drafts

content/references/definitions.mkd

@@ -297,3 +297,8 @@
 [秒速5センチメートル]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Centimeters_Per_Second
 [鹿男あをによし]: http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Shikaotoko_Aoniyoshi
 [cat pennies]: http://bash.org/?743428
+[Theory of Instruction]: http://www.adihome.org/store/books?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=13&category_id=1
+[Eugen Drewermann]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Drewermann
+[Philipp von Mala]: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/4865/3
+[Philipp of Mala]: http://www.online-literature.com/honore_de_balzac/1081/
+[Hedwig and the Angry Inch]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedwig_and_the_Angry_Inch_%28film%29

content/references/personal.mkd

@@ -51,3 +51,12 @@
 [gist anthropic]: https://gist.github.com/15d4d930aed8ee3a2fb1
 [Anki time search]: https://beta.ankiweb.net/shared/info/3262774902
 [Anking]: https://github.com/muflax/anking
+
+<!-- books on Dropbox -->
+[ToI book]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tp8hk1iukiu4j1s/theory_of_instruction.pdf
+[DI research]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdu1gnu91bk2l8q/distar.pdf
+[DI war]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9uakc7j5klnz2kn/War%20Against%20the%20Schools%27%20Academic%20Child%20Abuse.pdf
+[DI mill]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x25m0ak7gk5h5fr/Could%20John%20Stuart%20Mill%20Have%20Saved%20Our%20Schools.pdf
+
+<!-- stuff I found elsewhere -->
+[becker mediafire]: http://www.mediafire.com/file/slbq1nx2y0ha2ua/konstanz.zip

content/references/references.mkd

@@ -166,6 +166,9 @@
 [Easy Voice Recorder]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrwq.recorder
 [Crowley Soldier]: http://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox/i/i/eqi01012.html
 [tonometric]: http://tonometric.com/
+[Da wissen Sie mehr als ich!]: http://juergen-becker-kabarettist.de/krempel/da-wissen-sie-mehr-als-ich-2
+[Epiphone Les Paul Studio Deluxe]: http://www.thomann.de/gb/epiphone_les_paul_studio_deluxe_aw.htm
+[Fender Mustang I]: http://www.fender.com/products/mustang/models.php/?prodNo=230001
 
 <!-- onion -->
 [onion horoscope]: http://www.theonion.com/articles/your-horoscopes-week-of-january-10-2012,27001/
@@ -248,6 +251,7 @@
 [Gwern URL]: http://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs
 [Narrowing Circle]: http://www.gwern.net/Notes#the-narrowing-circle
 [Gwern anonymity]: http://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20Anonymity#mistake-2
+[gwern music]: http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics#musical-instruments-are-not-about-music
 
 <!-- Sister Y / antinatalists -->
 [Sister Asymmetry]: http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com/2008/07/austrian-basement-and-beyond.html
@@ -295,6 +299,7 @@
 [Yvain social]: http://squid314.livejournal.com/322213.html
 [Yvain Worst]: http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html
 [Yvain Kol Nidre]: http://squid314.livejournal.com/331223.html
+[Yvain Constance]: http://squid314.livejournal.com/342047.html
 
 <!-- reddit -->
 [reddit lain]: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t0ynr/throwaway_time_whats_your_secret_that_could/c4inqul

content/references/videos.mkd

@@ -98,3 +98,4 @@
 [Die Interimsliebenden]: http://vimeo.com/36592271
 [Heidegger xtra]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSdHoNJu5fU
 [Briain Catholic]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHqOG8p0Lkc
+[Half God]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znIXyFh6dsI

content_daily/log/106.mkd

@@ -1,24 +1,122 @@
 ---
 title: CleverTitles.take(1)
-date: 2012-11-15
-techne: :wip
+date: 2012-11-22
+techne: :done
 episteme: :log
 ---
 
-I've begun some serious work on my own gospel.
+Some stuff about music. (Too busy for good stuff right now. But next log or so should be awesome.)
 
-I started collecting [Sayings][] about 2 years ago, and while I keep on adding to them, they were never meant to be the real meat. As a post-Marcionite, I've always looked up to the father of scripture, Marcion himself, and intend to work in his shadow.
+So merely *stating in public* (or in front of close friends, works either way) that I'm potentially interested in learning an instrument was enough social proof[^proof] to make the rest of me go, "whew, thank gods!, it's finally possible to think these thoughts without feeling vaguely guilty or embarrassed!". I'm sticking to my condition that I won't buy anything before I've successfully designed a decent prototype of a self-teaching course, just so I know I can do it and won't get stuck on day 1, but that's no reason to not already consider *what* to buy. In fact, I already made that decision and I'm just waiting to press the "capitalism, ho!" button.
 
-Marcion's Apostolicon, the first and definitive Christian scripture, consists of ten letters by Paul, plus one - *the* - gospel. I am still struggling with the Apostle (whose Gnostic identity is well-known but rarely understood - don't believe the Catholics one word), so I will focus first on the one person who Marcion and I both *do* know - the Savior.
+[^proof]:
+    <% skip do %>
+    There are other preferences and self-images that I've seen shift that way this year. Dunno if they are important yet, too early to tell. muflax is fickle.
+    <% end %>
 
-I already wrote the first half of a complete gospel in March, but it's more of a cute harmonization of the Christian and Jewish account of Jesus, one that shows that taking *all* the texts into account and thinking outside the Jewish box, yields a coherent narrative without any holes or mysteries left over. (No more details until it is finished.) Still, it focuses primarily not on the Savior, and while potentially a good apocryphal work, it doesn't contain the essential message.
+The obvious first thing to recognize, I think, is that most musicians (like most people in any field) are not just stark-raving mad, but worse, trapped in a really ferocious signaling game. Music quality, it seems to me, is like wine quality - the lowest tier is actually crap, the second tier is excellent, and everything past that is a complete waste of time. Even if there are quality improvements to be had, they are so tiny and inconsequential that they don't justify the price, which is often orders of magnitude higher than the rest.
 
-Some of my logs and tweets already included little pieces from the gospel, and the first iteration includes them all. It's still woefully incomplete, not even at the level of the twin's collection of sayings, but at least it overcomes the barrier of not even *having* a gospel. Now I can add to it from time to time.
+Fortunately, I'm not interested in using music to impress my peers (that's what Twitter is for), so I can ignore all that status crap, get the reasonably priced good stuff (subsidized by the clueless[^clue]) and just have fun instead, knowing that all popular difficulty and time estimates are vastly exaggerated (because music teachers don't teach (see above) and most music skill is irrelevant for making and enjoying music).
 
-As a deliberate ideological move, I'll change and revert some common terminology. Some word choices and framings might seem idiosyncratic or forced, but are meant to illustrate the point of a parable more clearly. The text is meant to be retold to every generation, and as such, there can never be a canon in either tone, frame or content. I have added commentaries in the footnotes, but those should not be taken as definitive or as belonging to the text itself. I have not yet added chapter titles or any numbering scheme. The text is still too much in flux for that.
+[^clue]:
+    <% skip do %>
+    The same thing happens with video games, of course. Fanboys buy expensive crap, the rest of us waits a year or two, or stays a tier behind, and gets solid games fully patched and modded at reasonable prices. Positional goods don't have to suck!
+    <% end %>
 
-More importantly, I have re-mythologized the narrative, stripping it of all historical frames. It can be argued that this is not strictly necessary, if the mythological context is apparent enough, but I'll push all historical references into the apocryphal stories. Additionally, I've undone the Catholic merger of Jesus. Generally speaking, I try to be consistent with names, and if there are two names, I mean two different people. I'm not denying all syncretic readings, nor do I think that some people *can* be easily separated, but there is the opposite problem of, as the old dope fiend said, "interpret[ing] every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul".
+Still, this incentive structure means you can't actually listen to professional musicians (or those who cosplay professional musicians) for the same reason you can't ask bureaucrats what a good level of government regulation is. So instead I read people who are always worth reading, regardless of discipline: hackers, poor[^poor] hobbyists and insight nerds. But before I get there, let's pick the instrument first.
 
-A lot of talk about one measly chapter. [Here it is][The Message].
+[^inde]:
+    <% skip do %>
+    This problem of perverse incentives is of course independent from whatever the actual right answer is. If your justifications are crap, being right counts for very little.
+    <% end %>
+
+[^poor]:
+    <% skip do %>
+    "Poor" isn't so much about "rich people suck" or anything, but simply the inherent constraint of having very limited resources. Without constraints there is no creativity. But I have to admit that this is also partially an ideological point for me: I *strongly* value democratization of art just for its own sake. Anything that lowers barriers of entry, degrades elitist standards and just gets people experimenting is a *huge* plus.
+    <% end %>
+    
+As [gwern has correctly observed][gwern music], instrument popularity is.. peculiar, and if I just follow the mainstream, I'll learn piano, hate every minute of it and maybe mildly impress someone at a dinner party one day. (I've never been at a dinner party. I think I'd hate myself otherwise.) So instead, I sampled a *lot* of possible instruments, compared pros and cons, and finally settled on the electric guitar, which is obviously extremely popular, but I think for good reasons besides "duh rock star!". Important criteria for me:
+
+- It should be fairly universal. Even though I intend to learn many instruments eventually, I expect to do most of my learning (mostly of theory and basic skills) on the first, so it should be compatible with many genres.
+- It should (also) work alone. Not many bazoon solos these days, nor do I have a bunch of amateur musicians in my closet to form a band with. (If you *do* have people nearby to start a band with, you can of course relax this criterion.)
+- It should have a strong kinetic component. Integrating this aspect better is one major reason for this whole endeavor, so if I just end up typing on a keyboard again, I'd consider it a failure.[^fail]
+- It should be reasonably small and portable. I don't have a big mansion, or even a car. That pretty much rules out a drum set or piano.
+- Electric would be great. Digital processing and recording makes everything so much easier. This would also make (fairly) silent practice possible, which would be a very neat thing to have.
+
+[^fail]:
+    That doesn't mean there won't be *any* analytical parts or that I'll be immune to gear porn. Heck, just setting up the low-latency kernel to do some good editing on sounds like a lot of fun! But none of that should be be *necessary*. "Three chords and the truth" exists for a reason.
+
+So what does that leave us? Pretty much all common string instruments and not much else. Way back when I was still young and full of dreams, when books were still made out of paper and dragons roamed the earth (I think, it's been like 10 years, who remembers stuff that long ago anyway?), I wanted to learn the violin. It has always been my first love, but with its reputation for having a steep learning curve, I never dared to try. Now, a decade later, without fear, I did. And what I saw was a price tag, and seeing it I thought, lol, come back in 2015 or so when I have enough monies.
+
+That leaves only the eletric guitar or bass, and as they are pretty much equivalent in all things except personal taste, I picked the guitar. After some research and scratching together of money, I settled on an [Epiphone Les Paul Studio Deluxe][] (in white), specifically because I like the look (Stratos always look... off), Epiphone has a great reputation and that's pretty much the best choice for the budget and long-term skill range.
+
+Next I looked into amps, i.e. the stuff that makes the noise. Maybe I'm biased, being a software person, but I don't get the fascination with oldschool analog tech at all. It's clumsy, expensive and just a lot of crap you have to keep around. So instead of buying a tube amp and tons of effect pedals and what not, I thought, why even use an amp *at all*? I mean, you really only need a signal converter and a big speaker. Everything else you oughta be able to do in software, right?
+
+So I looked around and eventually found some communities that don't think that MATH IS EVIL!![^apo] and just talk about this stuff honestly. Given current tech, yes, software amps/effects are really damn good, and the remaining differences are mostly explained by analog stuff having come first with its hard to replicate glitches, and now you have to fight the status quo. The main problem, besides recreating various effects, is to get low latencies both in the converter and the (increasingly computationally demanding) effect stack. 
+
+[^apo]:
+    Let me also apologize to all materialists who I may have disagreed with (or trolled) over the years. After reading one too many "ur math will nevr be as good as real tubez" discussions about hardware vs. software amplifiers, and just sighing, dudes, it's *physics*, not *magic*, it's just waveforms, stop with your nostalgic crap about ancient equipment that you only like because it came first, after that, I got the pain.
+
+    I'm so sorry. I have at times been anti-reductionist. I was so, so wrong. I'm sorry.
+
+While it's possible to get a good soundcard and then just run everything else on your laptop, I finally settled on the [Fender Mustang I][] as a semi-hardware solution. Going completely DIY doesn't actually save me any money because I'd still a new soundcard and pre-amp, and I don't want to fight with latency issues just yet. Also, the Mustang I has USB output, which is awesome. It really is the cheapest good option, although I definitely want to extend the software side later.
+
+Then just throw in some minor additional equipment I need, comes out to almost exactly 400 eurons. More than I hoped for, but not obscenely so. I'll be homeless soon enough anyway, gotta enjoy my time until then...
 
 ---
+
+First drawing:
+
+<%= image("draw_1.jpg", "Drawing 1") %>
+
+So I said "I'ma do a daily drawing of anything, whatever" and then I sat there when the Beeminder deadline rolled around, thinking, uh, ok past-me, how *exactly* did you think this would actually go?
+
+Then I remembered: the problem is mostly psychological. "I suck so much, I shouldn't even try". The first half may be true, but that's exactly why I *should* try. There's no way from here to there without going through 10k sucky sketches. So present-me, stop the whining, signed, future-me.
+
+As I said, I'll post a weekly snapshot, although those will be tied to logs and so might not be *published* on a strictly weekly basis. (That does not relax the deadline, however.) I'm deliberately keeping it low-tech, quick and at "no erasing ever". I also stole ze frank's "finishing stamp" idea - whenever I'm unsure if I should continue or not, I'll just say "fuck it!", sign the thing and then it's officially *done*. No further revision allowed.
+
+And yes, it's Grumpy Cat. <3
+
+---
+
+<% skip do %>
+Lastly, an interesting observation about Popes, unfortunately mostly for those who speak German. I'll try to translate, but it does involve puns and I'll only transcribe a short section.
+
+Yvain recently covered the [Council of Constance][Yvain Constance] from the non-Catholic side. I highly recommend that you also check out Jürgen Becker's show [Da wissen Sie mehr als ich!][] ([COUGH COUGH][becker mediafire]) in which he also talks about the Council, but from a sympathetic position. (Note that they do not substantially disagree on any matter of fact!)
+
+Money quote about:
+
+> Man muss sich das mal vorstellen! Der Huss forderte die Abschaffung des Papsttums. Gut, heute könnense das bringen, aber damals hatte man drei Stück! Und die waren alle poppenmunter!
+>
+> Einmal hat man einen Franzosen zum Papst ernannt. Als der dann Papst war, hat der gesagt, "Ich zieh aber nicht nach Rom! Hier in Frankreich hab ich bessre Frauen!". Da hat der sich einfach in Avignon ein Bordell gebaut nach dem Motto: "Der Vatikan is da wo Vati kann.".
+>
+> Ja, und dann haben die sich in Rom halt noch nen Papst gemacht! Da hattense zwei! Das wolltense dann nich, da habense beide abgesetzt, einen neuen ernannt, da hattense drei! Denn die anderen, die blieben einfach. Das war die Dreifaltigkeit des Jobwunders. Der Beruf Papst wurde populär. Deswegen heißt das in England immer noch "pope", ne. Das fanden aber viele beschissen, und deswegen nannte man das "Schizma".
+>
+> Ja, und das sollte in Konstanz beseitigt werden. "Schizma" heißt drei Päpste, greifen wir uns mal einen der drei Päpste raus: Baldassarre Cossa, ein ehemaliger Seeräuber, ging als Johannes XXIII. nach Konstanz. Auch ihm wurde der Prozess gemacht, aber die Anklagepunkte waren bemerkenswert. Man warf ihm vor, seine kirchliche Karriere durch Ämterkauf gemacht zu haben, durch Geschäfte zu unerhörten Reichtum gekommen zu sein, er habe seinen Vorgänger vergiftet um selber Papst zu werden, des weiteren Ehebruch mit seiner Schwägerin, Unzucht, ja sogar Sodomie!, er habe Kirchengut verschleudert, und das schlimmste, er glaube gar nicht an Gott!
+>
+> Er hat sich also wie ein gewöhnlicher, durchschnittlicher Papst seiner Zeit verhalten.
+>
+> Aber, man wollte ihn ja offensichtlich loswerden. Er wurde dann auch verurteilt, aber nicht zum Tode, nein nein, so schlimm war das dann alles auch wieder nicht. Man hat ihn in den Kerker gesperrt und zwar zusammen mit Johannes Huss. Man stelle sich mal vor Papst Johannes Paul II. zusammen in einer Zelle mit [Eugen Drewermann][]! Das is aber auch gemein, ne? Allerdings wurde Baldassarre Cossa dann wieder freigelassen nach kurzer Zeit, während Johannes Huss, der das alles angefangen hatte, was man ihm scheinheilig vorwarf, dann auf dem Scheiterhaufen verbrannt wurde als Ketzer.
+>
+> Ja, so wurden in diesem historischen Augenblick die Weichen gestellt, während unser heißblütiger [Philipp von Mala][] mit der Kraft seiner Liebe die glühenden Wonnen luxuriösester Lustbarkeiten *from the top of the pop* für Otto-Normal-Geistliche erschwinglich zu koitieren dabei war, da machten die Führungskräfte der Firma Kirche in Konstanz den riesengroßen Fehler die Feinde des Papsttums und des Zölibats, sprich die Feinde der freien Liebe und sexuellen Revolution, die Reformer und Protestanten, *nicht* durch liberalen Gruppensex zu integrieren. Denn das Verbrennen der Moralapostel auf dem Scheiterhaufen war eine ungewollte PR-Aktion für das zukünftige Konkurrenzunternehmen, quasi Rauchzeichen eines sich heranbildenden Protestantismus.
+
+Rough translation, trying to capture the flow and keeping the puns intact whenever possible:
+
+> Imagine this! Huss demanded the dissolution of the Papacy. Ok, you can say stuff like this today, but back then they had three of them! And all of them were alive and well!
+>
+> For one, they nominated a Frenchman. When he became Pope, he said, "I'm not gonna move to Rome! I have better women here in France!". So he just build himself a brothel in Avignon, based on the idea that "the Vatican is where Vati [Daddy] can [as in, can get it up]".
+>
+> Well, so they made a new Pope in Rome. Now there were two! They didn't like that very much, so they removed both from office, nominated a new one, now there were three! The other two just stayed. That was the trinity of the job miracle. The occupation Pope became popular, which is why in England they still call it "pope". Many thought that was pretty shit, so they called it the "Schism". [Yeah, that works better in German.]
+>
+> Ok, so Constance was supposed to clean up this mess. "Schism" means three Popes. Let's have a look at one of them: Baldassarre Cossa, a former pirate, who went to Constanz as John XXIII. They prosecuted him too, but the charges were remarkable. He was accused of getting ahead in his church career through the buying of offices, of becoming filthy rich by dubious methods, of poisoning his predecessor so he could become Pope himself, of adultery with his cousin, incest, even sodomy!, of selling church property, and worst of all, of not even believing in God!
+>
+> In other words, he acted like a typical, average Pope of his time.
+>
+> But they obviously wanted to get rid of him, so they sentenced him, no, not to death, it wasn't that bad after all. They put him in prison, but get this, together with Jan Huss. Imagine Pope John Paul II. together in one cell with [Eugen Drewermann][] [a vocal church critic and reformer]! Now that's mean! Regardless, Baldassarre Cossa was eventually set free, while Jan Huss, who was hypocritically accused of starting the whole mess, was burned at the stake for heresy.
+>
+> And so in this historical moment the course was set that while our hot-blooded [Philipp of Mala][] was busy copulating down the price of those delightful and rapturous pleasures so that these luxuries could become affordable for your average cleric, that the administration of Church Inc. made the gigantic mistake in Constance *not* to integrate the enemies of Papacy and celibacy, that is the enemies of free love and the sexual revolution - reformers and Protestants - to *not* integrate them through liberal use of group sex. This way, the burning of moralizers at the stake became an unintended publicity campaign for the upcoming competition, basically a smoke signal for the developing Protestantism.
+
+I think this illustrates the difference in attitude and why [donatism][] is so incredibly dangerous. For the first time we have a *pirate Pope*, badass supreme, *and you filthy Protestants complain about it*.
+
+Sigh.
+<% end %>

content_daily/log/107.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+title: Loveless
+date: 2012-11-22
+techne: :wip
+episteme: :log
+---
+
+Ok, let's unroll the meta-levels I'm currently involved in.
+
+- meta-0 (object level): I want to use a specific skill (e.g. play a song, read a book, pass an exam).
+- meta-1: This involves learning certain generalized skills (e.g. guitar / music theory, Japanese, cryptography).
+- meta-2: I need to figure out how to efficiently learn this skills without hating all of existence with the intense loathing of a thousand Grumpy Cats.
+- meta-3: To do that, I need to solve the problem of (self-)education. Fortunately, the theoretic work has been mostly done already, so I just need to master and modify it, in the sense that scientists figured out mechanics, but I still need to become an engineer to use it, so to speak.
+- meta-4: I need to retain, analyze and discuss this theoretical stuff.
+- meta-5: This mental digestion process should be efficient too.
+
+So m-0 to m-2 are pretty obvious. m-3 is the [Theory of Instruction][], which I'll talk about a lot later. m-4 involves a lot of writing, talking, Anki notes and experimental course design. m-5 is time management, Anki scheduling experiments and the like. (The whole problem is of course somewhat fractal and has self-similar sub-problems.)
+
+For now I did some m-5 work, and I'll just quote my own comment from the last log:
+
+> Anki 2 has two phases, learning mode and normal mode. (I think it took that idea from Supermemo.)
+>
+> During learning mode, cards have very short intervals (by default: 1min, then 10min) and you're expected to make mistakes, so failing a card doesn't count towards its leech limit. Afterwards you move on to (typically) a 1d interval and then progress exponentially, at roughly 2.5^n. If you fail here, the card is put back in learning mode. The ease factor (2.5 +/- 1.0 or so, adjusted based on scores) determines the target retention rate, normally 90%.
+> 
+> This seems roughly analogous the way DI does it. In DI, a new lesson has a high answer rate (>10/min) and you move on once you're pretty sure the student got it, at around 70-80% correct responses. A lesson is fairly short, like  5-10min, rarely >20min. Reviewing of old facts happens mostly through future lessons that build on them.
+>
+> This would suggest to me a lot of short steps in the learning phase and then a high retention rate (>=90%) afterwards (because you are expected to really know everything then, so mistakes should be rare). However, we aren't quite sure about this and the specific research on this seems weak to me,  and doesn't really factor in long-term factors like reviews not being fun enough. (Note also that the DI research Owen cites is for very few but quite difficult facts and not long-term.)
+>
+> Luckily, I'm currently learning 3 languages, so I'm just going to run an experiment. (Yeah, bitch! Empiricism!) I have lots of data about Anki's default setting of 1min, 10min and 90%, so I'll use three new settings:
+>
+> 1. 1min, 1min, 2min, 2min, 5min, 10min, 70%
+> 2. 1min, 1min, 2min, 2min, 5min, 10min, 90%
+> 3. 1min, 10min, 70%
+>
+> (Note that intervals in learning mode are upper bounds and are ignored if no other cards are available.)
+>
+> I've assigned them randomly (muflax can into double-blind!) and will run the experiment for at least a month (unless I run into serious problems). The interesting outcomes are number of reviews (fewer is better) and average time per card (lower is better). I'll also look at the achieved retention rate, but note that for mature cards, this will always be close to the target rate by design. Still, it is possible for cards to be too easy compared to the rate before the exponential growth can push them away, so if you overshoot drastically, you can often lower the target rate (and thus review numbers) without sacrificing retention.
+
+I actually used slightly different settings, but with the same general design. I assigned them blindly to French / Latin / Japanese and will comment on results as I notice them. (Prediction: "many steps, low rate" works best. That's also my best guess what DI would recommend, but why speculate when you can just try?)
+
+That's enough for m-5 for now. (Omega appreciates the high level of meta here, but thinks I should try hanging out with something remotely object-level from time to time.) Let's go to m-4...
+
+---
+
+So [Theory of Instruction][]. Where do I start...
+
+Maybe with a bunch of books (all scanned PDFs; I talked to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it thinks sharing them is fine because this stuff is really awesome and sadly underrated):
+
+- [Theory of Instruction][ToI book] itself, the dry, somewhat confusing theoretical tome about how teaching people stuff is essentially a solved problem. (Please don't start here. Probably the only ones who like this book beyond its content are its authors. The stuff in it is pretty great, though.)
+
+Direct Instruction (DI) is the implementation of it for (mostly K-8 schools) schools by the same people. ToI focuses primarily on the theoretical underpinning of any effective instruction, while other DI material deals with practical constrains (like designing courses that very competent teachers can use vs. ones all teachers can use) and other modifications.
+- [Research on Direct Instruction][DI research], a great summary of the empirical evidence for all of this and how DI is *the only theory in the entire history of education* that has *any serious empirical evidence whatsoever*. I'm not even exaggerating here. This is literally the state of affairs. Education is *that* bad a field. When Hanson says that "education is not about learning", I can only reply, "no shit Sherlock". Despite knowing a lot of dedicated, competent and very passionate teachers (hi mom!), I think that historically speaking, when we look back at the 19th and 20th century, *schools* will be considered one of the worst institutions ever, on all levels.
+- Hey, wasn't that little rant against schools fun? Want *a lot more* of it, with actual facts to back it up, and a good general introduction to the DI approach? Read [War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse][DI war]!
+
+Isn't that title cute? I used to think that DI folks are a bit too evangelical in their language and would benefit from, you know, talking less like Richard Dawkins and more like Neil deGrasse Tyson. But then I read all their stuff and how horrible everyone else is and all the shit they've gone through, and honestly, I get the hate now. At some point the principle of charity stops working and you need to put some heads on spikes, metaphorically speaking.
+
+But don't worry, most of the book isn't actually polemical, but instead a good summary of the historical background of DI and their attitude to learning.
+- So maybe you read this and wonder, ok, how *does* this stuff work? ToI isn't an easy read and you don't want to open a school just yet, but could I maybe get a general summary of the methodology? That's where [Could John Stuart Mill Have Saved Our Schools?][DI mill] comes in. (Yes, Mill as in the utilitarianism guy.)
+
+Turns out that after Zig and his crew developed their Theory of Instruction, they discovered that some of their principles had already been invented, but not in the field of education, but logic! Mill's System of Logic was his attempt to formalize induction, and as it happens, induction is pretty much what learning *is*. Without necessarily intending to, Mill stumbles on most of the fundamental principles of correct education and then dismisses them as unimportant. (D'oh! Seriously, you fucked up meta-ethics, and now this? Not cool, dude.)
+
+The book gives a bit of a historical background and then presents Mill's five principles and how they relate to education. The whole thing is a great introduction to the basic approach, in the same way that `F = m*a` is the core of Newtonian mechanics, but there's a lot of meat beyond it. Still, it's probably the best first step right now to getting what DI is about, specifically.
+
+<% skip do %>
+Now with that out of the way, let me say one thing. I'm not a great promoter and not particularly interested in the job either. I don't have the energy or drive to be a cheerleader for ideas, even really awesome ideas that I support 100%. I did try that for a bit some time ago, including with SRS, which is a much simpler thing to get across (and also supported by tons of evidence etc.), and even then people often don't use it. It breaks my heart to try to convince someone to be more awesome and get rejected for really stupid reasons, and honestly, I don't care anymore. I'm having enough fun in my own life already, and if the rest of the world prefers to suck, that's no longer my problem.
+
+Because of that, I won't go out of my way to exhaustively present ToI in the easiest possible terms. *I'm* already sold on it, and with those books, most of the material is available to you too. I'll gladly discuss all of this to death, and heck, the logs will feature a lot of it. But I'm not in the outreach business.
+<% end %>
+
+---
+
+Having said all of this, let's get started with ToI!
+
+Before I get into what I've been doing so far, maybe I should not expect you to have read at least the [Mill book][DI mill] and give you a tl;dr instead. So here it is:
+
+> If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught.
+
+That's the mantra of DI. The idea is this: students, like everything else in the universe, are *lawful* things. Given a certain environment with certain stimuli, they will react to them in entirely lawful and predictable ways. In the case of education, given an explanation, a student will always arrive at an interpretation that is logically compatible with that evidence (and follows certain priors, including simplicity).
+
+Here's the problem: often *multiple* interpretations are compatible and only one is *intended*.
+
+Imagine I want to teach you the Japanese word "murasaki". I show you a picture of a purple car and say, "This is 'murasaki'.". Now you could arrive at multiple meanings: maybe "murasaki" means "car", maybe it means "picture", or even "picture of a car", or any number of things. But I wanted you to learn "purple"! So how do we fix this?
+
+By giving you carefully constructed evidence that *logically rules out all but one interpretation*. We call that "faultless communication".
+
+But how do I do that? There are multiple principles we can use, and in our example, the easiest is this: after the first picture, I show you a second picture, this time of the same car but in *green*, and I say, "This is *not* 'murasaki'.".
+
+If a positive and negative example of what we want to teach differ in only one single property, this property must logically be the sole reason we treat these examples differently. And now the student will learn just fine.
+
+The most important mistake of failed instruction is that it is logically ambiguous - the student can pick up wrong interpretations, those are rarely found out early through tests, and further understanding becomes impossible. If all communication is unambiguous, learning is *guaranteed* and extremely efficient. (And yes, they have the evidence to back this claim up.)
+
+The general principle is that the learner generalizes based on *sameness* of features and *only* based on sameness of features. Most of ToI can actually be derived a priori just from these assumptions. (Again, yes, lots of testable predictions have been made and all have been successful. This is not the whole "Kant re-deriving the status quo from first principles" disaster all over again, don't worry.)
+
+---
+
+<% skip do %>
+Alright, education solved! That was easy. Next we're gonna solve psychology! Just shoot all psychologists, legalize all drugs, abolish all regulations beyond "if you say you sell X, your product has to actually contain X", outlaw patents, stop all government subsidies to any health care that isn't currently performed by nurses, done.
+
+Ok, just kiddin', those guys are way too entrenched, you'll have to go all Mao on their asses and cultural-revolutionize them out of office, maybe a good idea to read up on "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia" and incentive structures while you're at it..
+<% end %>
+
+Ok ok, just kiddin' again, got a bit carried away there with the rhetoric. Back to ToI.
+
+---
+
+<% skip do %>
+I was typing in my bed when I saw a spider slip under my door and walk across the room. I caught it and considered whether I should let it stay. It's winter, I thought, and there is little food around, so it wouldn't be useful to me, so I decided to throw it away. I had to use the bathroom anyway, so I threw it into the toilet, and as I saw it fighting against the current, trying not to drown, I wondered. If I had never seen humans hunt or talk, I would judge them just as much as agents as this spider.
+
+I am not sure if this says more about humans, spiders or my empathy[^emp]. But I don't think I would pass the Voight-Kampff test.
+<% end %>
+
+---
+

content_daily/log/108.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+---
+title: Boy or girl?!
+date: 2012-11-20
+techne: :wip
+episteme: :log
+---
+
+I've begun some serious work on my own gospel.
+
+I started collecting [Sayings][] about 2 years ago, and while I keep on adding to them, they were never meant to be the real meat. As a post-Marcionite, I've always looked up to the curator of scripture, Marcion himself, and work only in his shadow.
+
+While Marcion did not write the first scripture himself, he was the first to notice its corruption and hijacking by the growing Catholic church. He attempted to reconstruct what he thought was the real message before it was twisted to fit into Jewish scripture. Marcion's Apostolicon consists of ten letters by Paul, plus one - *the* - gospel, likely also written by the Tarsian. Since I first learned of Marcion's work, I instantly recognized myself as his direct intellectual descendant, working from a similar position and with the same goal and interpretation.
+
+I already wrote the first half of a complete gospel in March, but it's more of a cute harmonization of the Christian and Jewish account of Jesus, one that shows that taking *all* the texts into account and thinking outside the Jewish box, can yield a coherent narrative without any holes or mysteries left over. (No more details until it is finished.) Still, it focuses primarily not on the Savior, and while potentially a good apocryphal work, it doesn't contain the essential message or should be taken too seriously. Mistaking the allegorical framework for the content is precisely the mistake I want to exercize from the Catholic text.
+
+Initially I thought I could skip the Apostle for now while I was still struggling with his impact and focus first on the one person I thought I *did* know - the Savior. The more I read, however, the more I realized that those two cannot be disentangled and that the well-known Gnostic identity of the Apostle as Simon Magus must be taken into account, not just while reading Catholic letters that try to minimize his impact, but even in the gospel itself. There is no Savior apart from Simon.
+
+If one were to take a fictionalist approach to the scripture, that is to assume that, excluding maybe a few historical allusions here and there, they are works of *fiction*, and this is the approach that most atheist scholars take (and which, in turn, must make them mythicists, if they actually thought about it for a few minutes), then it follows that the origin scripture is forever lost to us. We may be able to reconstruct roughly back to Marcion's work around 130AD and no further. The evidence has simply been lost to time. One may speculate, as RMP and others frequently do, and all kinds of plausible explanations might be found, but closure is impossible.
+
+But if one were to take Marcion at his word - and I always, maybe irrationally, felt the same whenever I look at the text - that is an allegorical path to the Father, then one ought to be able to repair it. I do not know if this is in fact true - I am deeply ambiguous about it - but that need not stop us from doing it anyway!
+
+Marcion correctly observed that the existing Catholic scripture had been heavily judaized and that the message of the original text, whatever it may have been, is entirely incompatible with this Demiurge and his insane laws, and so scripture must be stripped of all Jewish content. Unfortunately, Marcion did not see that *Paul himself* is a judaized interpolation and must be equally reconstructed. This is no easy task.
+
+The Gospel of Mark is the most famous Marcionite (in fact, post-Marcionite, as it was likely written by his followers and he did not originally know it[^mark]) attempt to do just that, but in a very subversive way. It does not just present in allegorical form the meaning of the Apostle and Savior (who, as I said, can't be separated), but it uses the OT as raw material for it. This means, however, that we must not make the mistake of assuming Mark as anywhere close to the original text. It is a new allegory, meant for a very different audience.
+
+Like Marcion, we could try to stick to the Gospel of Luke, or rather the earlier forms still directly available to him then before Polycarp wrote our current version. But then we would, in a sense, make the same mistake as with Mark: the original text was already an allegory about Simon! If we just revert past Paul and reconstruct the Simonian narrative, we'd still deal with an allegorically obfuscated text!
+
+It is quite clear that there was a man who called himself Simon and who talked about the Father. The Simonians, postmodernists that they were, used his own life as an allegorical account of the path. They included unrelated aspects too - inside jokes and subtle trolls -, but we can ignore those. We need not chain ourselves further to the Samarian (or Tarsian or Nazarene); we can start anew.
+
+Some of my logs and tweets already included little pieces of this gospel and the first iteration was supposed to include them all. Yet whenever I attempted to weave them together, or even just to start with an existing gospel and rewrite it, it always felt impoverished and disjunct, compared to the beautiful mess in our NT. I cannot help but see the Trolly Spirit directly at work, preserving to this day just enough of this glorious discord to make all those layers and intricate battles apparent, and that any attempt to remove them is to sin against it.
+
+If anything, we must overcome Marcion, embrace the true Apostle and make the text even less clear! We must seek out obfuscation, contradict ourselves and add subtext upon subtext. When there are enough fingers attached to wise men and moons they're pointing to, maybe for once someone will look at the process that motivated the wise men in the first place. He who has ears, let him hear!
+
+And so I realized, I needed not a new proclamation of the message, but an entirely different work, one capable of reflecting the true author of confusion. I considered merging all traditions into one gospel, or using elaborate annotation (even footnotes to footnotes), but then I thought, ideally the text would be a dialog between all those strands, would give the Marcionite, the Simonian and the Gnostic their first fair hearing, and so we really need more gospels written from these perspectives, including the Devil's own version that they read down in Hell, but even that would not be sufficient, not even to replicate the delightful state of interwoven connections I see in the text, for nothing short of all of the tradition would be capable of representing the tradition.
+
+And yet, there is only a simple message, a mere pointer to an alien God.
+
+...what? No, it's not done or anything. This is a practice log. Come back in a decade!
+
+[^mark]:
+    <% skip do %>
+    To be specific, to the best of my (still very immature) knowledge, it went something like this:
+
+    People surrounding Simon Magus (not his real name; none of those are), who was simultaneously an influential mystic (think Crowley) and self-similar fractal of the Son, collected allegories, sayings and juicy stories about him. (You heard the one about the whore he rescued, right?) They were sympathetic to him, but it's not clear to me if they were followers or just people he hang out with. (Again, think Crowley.)
+
+    These stories eventually leaked, how I do not know, and became popular among Gnostics. Eventually, they were co-opted by the early form of the Catholic church, who also sought to appease various Jewish (and similar) groups and so re-wrote them through an OT lens. Letters were written and attributed to "Paul". It's unclear if Paul is a sanitized version of Simon entirely, or a real dude who who may have written prototypes of these letters and just absorbed / stole these ideas and later their narratives (and so takes on more of Simon over time).
+
+    Some of these narratives are collected into what is called Ur-Lukas, i.e. proto-Luke, a much shorter version of our Luke. Mostly it contains two parts: a collection of parables by Simon and primarily about the Father, later modified to be about Yahveh, and an allegory about Simon's life and mystical role in the form of the Passion narrative. (With several inside jokes and layers I won't go into here.) It is possible that they were originally explicitly about Simon/Paul instead of Jesus and that this was changed by the Catholics, or that they always used an additional layer of "the Savior" / "the Healer" (Jesus/Joshua) and it was clear to Simonians that this meant Simon. Regardless, all of this happened some time around 70-120 AD.
+
+    Around 120-130, Marcion joins the Church (or just becomes active) and decides to get serious. He studies the text, but likely due to contact with a Simonian source (possibly a close friend), he soon realizes the interpolation. He takes Ur-Lukas and restores much of the original meaning. Together with the most trustworthy 10 letters, he publishes the Apostolikon, the first Christian canon.
+
+    Shit hits the fan. Polycarp edits Marcion's gospel, restores all the Catholic interpolations and downplays Paul by contrasting him with Peter (who the Jews prefer anyway). He publishes his trollogy of Luke/Acts/Pastorals largely as we know it today. Later an unknown author uses these texts to write Matthew, mostly as an even more pro-Jewish side and to counter various anti-Catholic heresies and conspiracy theories. (For example, it explicitly rebukes the story in the Toledot Yeshu that Jesus body was stolen.) It's possible that Matthew predates Polycarp instead, but that does not significantly affect the outcome. They were probably written in parallel and went through several (internal and external) iterations anyway. (Polycarp definitely published a big new edition later in his life, and Luke/Acts to this day has two major source traditions, reflecting those two editions.)
+
+    At the same time, Marcionites publish their own counter-troll in the form of the proto-gospel of Mark. (Even the name is a pun on Marcion.) It accepts the OT framing, but subverts it deeply, pushing a Marcionite agenda. Soon an independent apocalypse is added, following the Bar Kokhba revolt, and something very close to our gospel of Mark is complete around 130-140. The troll is so subtle that to this day official canon has a pro-Marcionite gospel and most people don't notice. (Just as most don't notice that at least half the time, "Paul" sounds an awful lot like a Gnostic. Uuh... look behind you, a three-personed godhead!)
+
+    Lots of people "discover" new Pauline letters and other material, including gospels, poems and childhood narratives, some of which makes it into the canon. At least a decade or two later, a bunch of cranky Gnostics in a land far, far away violently throw text at each other until one of the most confusing and beautiful works in all history is created - the gospel of John. A lot later, Jewish scribes write Revelation as a fairly explicit allegory about various church conflicts and Nero, and every time a new faction gains power in the Catholic church, they slightly edit or select the texts in their favor.
+
+    Finally, non-Christian Jews, puzzled by this mess, collect their own version in what later becomes the Toledot Yeshu and general Jewish tradition, which is very fascinating because it uses a completely different historical narrative a whole century earlier and *it's the only version the Babylonian tradition ever knew*. Additionally, it has some very juicy alternative takes on the whole synoptic narrative. I like to imagine a Simonian or Marcionite insider "explained" all of this to some confused Jewish scribes, using every opportunity to troll Matthew and Catholic doctrine.
+
+    Thus, Jesus.
+
+    (For what it's worth, and I've only just barely skimmed the existing literature, but the development of the Buddhist canon looks pretty similar. A good case can be made, if you're sympathetic to the instrumental goals of the orthodox elites, to not ever let anyone actually, you know, *read* your scripture, especially not your own priests and monks. It never ends well, and soon you have to deal with those troublesome Gnostics and their troll forum accounts.)
+    <% end %>
+
+
+

content_gospel/gospel.mkd

@@ -5,36 +5,29 @@ techne: :wip
 episteme: :inspired
 ---
 
-Jesus ordered him, "Don't tell anyone what has happened here, or else health will stop being a 
-costly signal." -Luke 5:14 #hansoniantheology
 
-Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they are immune to moral basilisks and shall inherit the kingdom 
-by default.
+
+Jesus ordered him, "Don't tell anyone what has happened here, or else health will stop being a costly signal." -Luke 5:14 #hansoniantheology
+
+Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they are immune to moral basilisks and shall inherit the kingdom by default.
 
 There is no such thing as independence; only degrees of control. #rationalw40k
 
-Jesus said, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, so I can create perverse social 
-incentives to keep sinning, lulz.
+Jesus said, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, so I can create perverse social incentives to keep sinning, lulz.
 
 
 Jesus said, if you want to be perfect, go, date someone beneath you, make that nerd's day. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord, who is dated by and dates all.
 
-Do not eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden because it is a Schelling point and 
-will allow Death to find you. #hideyosins
+Do not eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden because it is a Schelling point and will allow Death to find you. #hideyosins
 
-Dear apologists: next time someone says "the Jews expected a triumphant messiah, not Jesus", I want 
-you to bring up countersignaling.
+Dear apologists: next time someone says "the Jews expected a triumphant messiah, not Jesus", I want you to bring up countersignaling.
 
-See also Mark 5:1-20, in which Jesus rebukes a demonic attempt to hijack his decision-making 
-through average utilitarianism.
+See also Mark 5:1-20, in which Jesus rebukes a demonic attempt to hijack his decision-making through average utilitarianism.
 
-The disciples of Bayes came to Him, saying, "Why do we update, but your disciples do not update?" 
-Jesus said, "Can the agent update as long as Omega is with them? The days will come when Omega is 
-gone, and then they will update. The lazy hacker does not write new programs for new ideas. No, they reuse the legacy code until it breaks."
+The disciples of Bayes came to Him, saying, "Why do we update, but your disciples do not update?" Jesus said, "Can the agent update as long as Omega is with them? The days will come when Omega is gone, and then they will update. The lazy hacker does not write new programs for new ideas. No, they reuse the legacy code until it breaks."
 
 "Why do you worry about batteries? See how the trolls of the forums troll, how they flourish, yet they do not reason or care. If that is how God supplies the trolls of the forums, who are here today and banned tomorrow, will He not much more supply you? Your bored Father knows that you need them. Seek first His entertainment, and all these things will be given to you as well.
 
-The women hurried from the tomb. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Do not be afraid. 
-Go and tell my brothers, 'first lol'".
+The women hurried from the tomb. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers, 'first lol'".
 
 The heathen abandons God when bad things happen to good people. The Catholic only abandons Him when lame things happen to awesome people.