TDDPirate’s Ideas

Those days there is a commotion in Israel due to a speech by Yair Lapid, the new Finance Minister, about Riki Cohen who earns 20 thousand NIS a month but cannot make ends meet due to various expenses of living in Israel.

Several Israelis do not reach income of 20 thousand NIS a month. Some of them nevertheless manage to make ends meet but their monthly savings are not enough to buy an apartment at reasonable time. Others do not succeed in making ends meet.

I propose that instead of being angry at Yair Lapid for his failure to know the situation of the lower socioeconomic classes in Israel - each one is to think, check and inquire what really prevents him from making 20 thousand NIS a month.

Usually the reason is a low-paying profession, and the blocking factor is the absence of ability to convert to another, better paying profession. But there are several other blocking factors, and it would be a swell idea if someone is to run a survey so that we’ll know why most Israelis cannot make 20 thousand NIS a month.

Several possible reasons:

• No funds or time for vocational change course, or the course is held in a place which requires 3 hours commutation from home to course and back each day.
• During high school years, I could not study, and after army service, while I can study, there is no time or appropriate organization.
• The rabbi or ADMO”R forbade me from studying “secular studies” lest I sin and deviate from the way of the Holy Torah.
• I am screwed because I am an Arab.
• There is a good job in my profession but there is no reasonable public transportation from my home to the workplace, and I cannot move to live near the workplace.
• My vocation is important for the community but due to some reason has a low pay (examples: primary school teacher, social worker, nurse, caregiver).
• I have children who need to be taken care of but the regular work hours in my vocation are crazy so I cannot work in my well-paying profession.
• I have a disability which causes employers not to want to give me a job even though I can do it well.
• I have a medical problem which prevents me from working.

All this - under the assumption that we are speaking about industrious people, who want to honorably support themselves, rather than be parasites living off at the public expense. This assumption is correct for most people, but we still need to filter out the parasites.

After the Connecticut elementary school massacre, there’ll be several calls for repealing the constitutional right to bear arms.

This article points out several aspects of this issue.  I do not have answers, yet.

On one hand, the right to bear arms is important for making it more difficult for an oppressive government to gain power.  On the other hand, this right is abused by insane people, who then commit massacres.  Common criminals are not part of the equation, because a group of armed criminals can always be countered by a bigger group of equally armed law abiding citizens.

One aspect, which seems to be overlooked by both sides of the argument, is the impact of technological advances.  Technological advances mean that arms are no longer the only means by which people and governments can hurt other people.  Such advances can be heavy armory (cannons, tanks, even A-bombs), cyberspace warfare (breaking into computers and cloud accounts, hacking one’s reputation in social networks), advanced radioactive/chemical/biological poisons, “smart dust” programmed to damage people it encounters, and nominally non-lethal weapons such as tasers.

Another aspect is the practicality of enforcing any bans on weapons.  The 3D printing technology will eventually make it impossible to control the spread of advanced weapons by controlling their points of manufacture.

The constitutional right to bear such advanced arms is not as clear-cut.  Neither is it clear whether constitutionally protected arms are effective against the new weapons.

I wonder if there is any research about the placebo effect itself.
Research questions:

1. Under which circumstances, will the placebo effect be stronger?
2. Which personality traits make someone more susceptible to the placebo effect?
3. Is there correlation among hypnotizability (ability to get hypnotized) and susceptibility to the placebo effect?

In a regime, in which people are supposed to be self-reliant and to take responsibility over their lives, insurance companies have a critical role.  A responsible person would pay premiums so that any calamity, which he cannot handle by himself, will be handled instead by the insurance company.  So that the person would not become burden on the public.

Unfortunately, in pseudo-capitalistic oligrachic regimes, insurance companies tend to emphasize their profits over security for the insured.  So a strong mechanism to keep them honest is needed.  The following proposal addresses this issue.

A proposal for billionaires who wish to contribute to the community without supporting parasites:

Start a foundation which helps insured people, who were screwed by the insurance companies.
The foundation will work as follows.

1. The insured will provide documents - the insurance policy, all documents he gave the insurance company to get the insurance money due to the event insured against, and documents attesting to the fact that the insurance company rejected his claim due to unjustified reason.
2. The foundation will check the documents and verify that everything is correct.
3. If all is correct, the foundation will pay the insured the money that the insurance company was supposed to pay him. The insured will sign a commitment to reimburse the foundation any monies he gets from the insurance company due to compromise, court proceedings, or thanks to a manager’s golden heart.
4. The foundation will sue in the insured’s name the insurance company and bring to the court its heavy guns (high caliber lawyers).

The billionaire’s donation is needed for running capital and to cover claims in which the court found for the insurance company.

USA is facing the serious problems of runaway public debt, overstretched army, and especially political machinery which is unable to effectively deal with the above problems.

Some countries and empires, at this stage of their evolution, got to be led by a strongman (dictator).  The dictator was either someone who rose inside them or someone who invaded the country (like Genghis Khan’s invasion of China).

In today’s world, the primary means of invasion is economic/political rather than by army force.  Army actions are now blocked by the existence of the devastating nuclear option, and by public opinion.  Soldiers, after all, are part of the public, and won’t fight unless there is enough public opinion backing war.

How would USA get out of the present crisis?

At 1985, Israel was going to have an economic collapse, of the kind that leads to dictatorship.  There were calls for a strongman to come to power and put matters to order.  Somehow, enough people of power were persuaded that something must be done and a new economic order was put in place and since then the economic situation improved in a big way (I am not sure that Dafny Leef and her cohorts would agree with me).

I do not see indications for such a political consensus in USA. What would then be a possible route to improvement in USA?  The two-party system is notoriously bad at allowing real leaders to rise to the top.  They must have all kinds of irrelevant qualifications, the inevitable skeletons must be well hidden in closets, they must be good looking and not be obese.  They must be excellent orators as well, and not start their adult career in an unacceptable profession (Ronald Reagan withstanding).

There is, however, another route to power in USA.  One makes a lot of money and leverages it for power in big Wall Street banks and other investment institutions.  That person (man or woman) would then be able to pull the strings behind the stage and push for the right kind of political changes.

A difficulty exists.  That person’s route to richness and power needs to leave him/her free of any commitments to take care of his/her Wall Street colleagues.  So that person would not be obligated to cater to Wall Street’s special interests.

Of course, since such a person would not gain power by democratic means, it is impossible to have an assurance that he/she would in fact operate for the good of the public rather than for any group of special interests. For such an assurance, the political process needs to work properly - and this failure is the underlying cause behind the present problems.

George Soros, anyone?

A better and safer alternative would be a massive educational process, which educate the populace about political processes, how they function, how they are supposed to function, how to wisely choose leaders, how to properly balance relatively minor improprieties vs. major leadership and management failures, how to tell legitimate criticism apart from propaganda by special interest groups, whose interests are damaged by a good leader’s efforts.

The following is a service which telephone service providers (both landline and cellular) ought to provide their clients.

Whenever A calls B and leaves him a message “Please call me back”, it should be possible for A to optionally specify that the callback will be charged to him rather than to B.

Eventually, people will avoid calling back unknown numbers unless they are marked as “please call me back at my expense”.

This practice will eventually put out of business all fraudulent businesses, which thrive on getting people to call back numbers with very high rates.

Technical implementation should be relatively simple.

Whenever A sets the option to charge him for callbacks, the service provider will issue a random and for one-time use number, which B will use to call A back at A’s expense.

In Kenya, FGM (female circumcision) is an extremely important part of one’s group identity (MGM - male circumcision - as well):

• http://www.bluegecko.org/kenya/tribes/kikuyu/circumcision.htm
• http://www.glpinc.org/Classroom%20Activities/Kenya%20Articles/What%20is%20Kenyan%20Culture.htm

In the wake of the German male circumcision ban, the question is asked, why must Jews consider male circumcision (the ritual practiced since the Hashmonite era, rather than the milder ritual practiced before then) to be such an important part of national identity, that attempts to ban it are regarded as antisemitism, rather than as progress to an enlightened world, in which no baby or child gets mutilated due to religious reasons and is free to choose whether to get mutilated once he or she reaches age of 18.

For me, the frightening thing is that Jews use very similar arguments to justify male circumcision, as Kenyans use to justify FGM. Without assuming that one culture or religion is The True One while the others are false ones, both Kenyans and Jews are equally guilty of cruelty to babies and children.

Kenyan cultural change - search for alternatives to FGM as part of group identity: http://www.womenaid.org/press/info/fgm/fgm-kenya.htm.  When will Jews start looking for a way to disassociate national identity from practices which irreversibly harm babies or children?

קרן רמון הכריזה על תחרות בין הצעות לפרויקטים פורצי דרך, שישפיעו תוך 5 שנים על חייהם של לפחות 5 מיליון ישראלים.

עולים בדעתי ארבעה רעיונות כאלה, שחלקם דורשים כיפוף חוקים כדי להכנס למסגרת התחרות.

• תצוגה חזותית של אותות דיבור - ישפיע על חייהם של כ-7000 ישראלים חרשים, כיפוף הכללים הדרוש הוא לקבל פרויקט שישפיע על לפחות מיליון חרשים מכל העולם.
• חפירת מנהרות עמוק באדמה וחיים בהן, כדי לפנות מקום לחיות בר וצמחיה על פני כדור הארץ. יאפשר לישראל לקלוט עוד מיליון יהודים ויותר בלי שתהיה צפיפות בלתי נסבלת. הפרויקט ידרוש יותר מ-5 שנים כדי לגרום לשינוי משמעותי.
• שינוי חברתי כך שיהיה מעמד חברתי גבוה יותר למי שיש לו יותר מיומנויות שעוזרות לשרוד ולהתאושש מאסון טבע או מעשה ידי אדם, במקום למי שמפגין יותר צריכה ראוותנית. קורסי הכשרה לכל הציבור ימומנו על ידי חברות הביטוח שמוכרות ביטוחים נגד האסונות למיניהם. ישפיע על כלל האוכלוסיה.
• בתי מחסה לחתולי רחוב - לא רעיון שלי. ישפיע על כל מי שיש חתולי רחוב באזור מגוריו וזה כמעט כולנו.

הפרס הוא קורס באוניברסיטת הסינגולריטי.

אני מתלבט. האם להגיש הצעה אחת? האם להגיש את כל ההצעות שהן רעיונות שלי? האם בכלל להגיש הצעה? האם לא תהיה בעיית נגישות בקורס או בביצוע הפרויקט הזוכה לאחר מכן?

The Ramon Foundation announced a contest among proposals for breakthrough projects, which will affect the lives of at least million Israelis within 5 years.
I have in mind four such ideas, part of which require some rules to be bent in order to be admissible to the competition.

• Visual representation of speech signals - will affect the lives of about 7000 Israeli Deaf persons, the needed rule bending will be to accept a project which will affect the lives of at least million Deaf persons from all over the world.
• Digging tunnels deep in Earth and living in them, to free room for wild animals and vegetations on Earth surface. Will enable Israel to absorb another million Jews and more without incurring unbearable congestion. The project will need more than 5 years to cause a meaningful change.
• Social change so that high social status will be granted to whomever has more survival and disaster recovery after natural disaster or human-made disaster, instead to whomever demonstrating conspicuous consumption. Training courses for the entire populace will be financed by insurance companies which sell insurances against the various disasters. Will affect the entire population.
• Hostels for feral cats - not my idea. Will affect anyone whose neighborhood has feral cats and this is almost all of us.

The prize is a course in the Singularity University.

I am agonizing over it. To submit one proposal? To submit proposals for all my ideas? To submit a proposal at all? Won’t there be an accessibility problem in the course or in subsequent execution of the winning project?

The following subject caused me to feel like a prophet who came before his time.  Some time after the upheavals in Israel started, I tried to interest several people in my economic ideas (links appear below).  I even joined a promising Facebook group of people, who want to preserve the sanity of economics in Israel.

However, it turned out that the leaders of that Facebook group have their own agenda, which is incompatible with discussions of novel economic ideas.  As a consequence, they asked me to stop posting there, and I left the group.  So I decided to just summarize links in a blog article and just refer any comers to it.

The subject of sane economics has been interesting me for several years.  Actually, it was the reason why I started to write this blog on May 2004.  As time passed, I switched to writing about other topics.  However, now, due to the upheavals in countries like Israel, USA, or England, it is necessary to develop a new way of thinking about economics.

I would like to solve problems like the following (in no particular order of importance):

1. Environmental pollution due to over-consumerism.
2. Joblessness in USA and several European countries (happily not a serious problem in Israel, at the moment).
3. Cost of living for the middle and lower classes (a problem in Israel).
4. Feeling of youths that no matter how much you try, you won’t be able to get ahead in life.

Following are links to relevant articles:

• Description of the problem.
• Buckminster Fuller defined the wealth of a person as the length of time he can survive without income.  I looked for a citation, but didn’t find one.  See Wikipedia article about Buckminster Fuller.
  I think that the keyword for finding people, who think along similar lines as me, is “Buckminster Fuller”.
• My thoughts about definition of wealth
• Another point of view
• Exploiting the welfare system to reorganize the economy and solve the problem of the need for makework to combat unemployment.
• Tangential to this discussion
• My proposal for another way to compete over social status, in lieu of conspicuous consumption
• Also other people complain about the problem of makework

Delatura is Latin for information (well, according to Google Translate FWIW).
Delaturomedicine is my proposed name for a proposed new branch of medicine.

What is common to nuclei, neurons, the immune system and the digestive system?
All those systems store information which causes the body to change its behavior.

Nuclei store information in their DNA.  There are also various chemicals which bind to the DNA strands and which modify the degree in which the genes express themselves and affect the cellular behavior.

That neurons store information is obvious.

The immune system learns its opponents - germs and viruses - and prepares the appropriate antibodies to fight them.  We learned to teach not only our youths’ neurons but also their immune systems.  Those courses of study are known as vaccinations.

The digestive system also learns how to digest new kinds of foodstuffs.  All of us are experienced with the slightly upset stomach when we eat unfamiliar foods or unfamiliar mixtures of foods.  This is because our digestive system does not know yet how to cope with the unfamiliar mixtures which pass through it.

Information is passed between various body systems by means of neuronal signals and hormones.
Some medicines operate by signalling body subsystems like hormones.

The analogy to machines, such as cars and cellphones, with embedded microcontrollers with firmware and writeable memory is obvious.

What happens if something goes wrong with the information stored in those systems?
If genes have mutations, we suffer from various genetic ailments and from cancer.
If neurons malfunction, the effects range from loss of consciousness to mental illnesses to various impairments of bodily functioning.
If the immune system malfunctions, we are either vulnerable to diseases or our antibodies attack our own bodies.
I do not know what happens when the digestive system stores the wrong information.

How are those malfunctions fixed?  Gene therapy.  Hormones.  Electrical stimulations.  Maybe the more successful among alternative medicine practitioners succeed because they stumble by chance upon procedures, which happen to reprogram information-carrying systems in our bodies.

The analogy to reprogramming a buggy cellphone by reflashing its firmware is obvious.

דלאטורורפואה

דלאטורה זו מילה לטינית שפרושה מידע (לפחות לפי Google Translate עד כמה שזה שווה). דלאטורורפואה זה השם שאני מציע לענף חדש ברפואה.

מה משותף לגרעיני תאים, נאורונים, המערכת החיסונית ומערכת העיכול? כל המערכות האלה מאחסנות מידע שגורם לגוף לשנות את התנהגותו.

גרעיני תאים מאחסנים מידע ב-DNA שלהם. יש גם כל מיני כימיקלים שנקשרים לשרשראות ה-DNA ומשנים את המידה שבה הגנים מבטאים את עצמם ומשפיעים על התנהגות התא.

מן המפורסמות שהנאורונים מאחסנים מידע.

המערכת החיסונית לומדת את האוייבים שלה - חיידקים ונגיפים - ומכינה את הנוגדנים המתאימים למלחמה בהם. למדנו ללמד לא רק את הנאורונים של הצעירים שלנו אלא גם את המערכות החיסוניות שלהם. קורסים לימודיים אלה ידועים בתור זריקות חיסון.

גם מערכת העיכול לומדת איך לעכל סוגי מזון חדשים. כלונו התנסינו בכאבי הבטן הנגרמים על ידי אכילת מזונות לא מוכרים או תערובות לא רגילות של חומרי מזון. כאבי הבטן נובעים מהעובדה שמערכת העיכול שלנו עדיין אינה יודעת איך להתמודד עם התערובות הלא מוכרות שעוברות דרכה.

מידע עובר בין מערכות גוף שונות על ידי אותות חשמליים העוברים דרך נאורונים וכן על ידי הורמונים. כמה תרופות פועלות על ידי איתות למערכות גוף, כמו הורמונים.

האנלוגיה למכונות, כמו מכוניות וטלפונים סלולריים, שיש בהם מעבדים משובצים עם קושחה וזכרון שניתן לכתיבה, הינה מובנת מאליה.

נשאלת השאלה מה קורה אם משהו משתבש עם המידע המאוחסן במערכות אלה? אם יש מוטאציות בגנים, אנו סובלים ממחלות גנטיות שונות וגם מסרטן. אם נאורונים אינם מתפקדים כהלכה, ההשפעה נעה בין אובדן הכרה למחלות נפש לשיבושים של תפקודי גוף שונים. אם המערכת החיסונית אינה מתפקדת כהלכה, אנו מאבדים את החסינות נגד מחלות, או שלחלופין הנוגדנים שלנו תוקפים את תאי הגוף שלנו.

לא ידוע לי מה קורה כשמערכת העיכול מאחסנת את המידע הלא נכון.

איך מתקנים תקלות כאלה? תרפיית גנים. הורמונים. גירוי חשמלי. ייתכן שהמרפאים האלטרנטיביים היותר מצליחים - מצליחים כי במקרה עלו על שיטות טיפול, שבמקרה מתכנתות מחדש בצורה נכונה מערכות גוף שמאחסנות מידע.

האנלוגיה לתיקון טלפון סלולרי מקולקל על ידי צריבה מחדש של הקושחה שלו - מובנת מאליה.