To Glen and Marcus,
Not so fast gentlemen. You managed to pull apart a few strands using tried
assumptions.
The Alpha is the most conspicuous personality type commonly encountered in
smallish
sample sizes, <10,000 individuals.
Once when lounging about in the grad students lounge a group of nauseating
younger students
barged in and claimed that I was an Alpha male. Then I probably swore and
claimed they were speaking nonsense.
Then another male grad student entered and he was a star football player. They
claimed he was also an Alpha.
That is when he finally spoke up and asked which of us they ranked higher. They
replied the star , of course.
Then he replied that was imbecilic since none of them had ever seen me strike.
They listened close as he explained,
my entire family were freakishly fast and lanky and even my baby brother could
overwhelm him in an arm wrestling contest. He compared us to kicking horses.
I was so drunk that very night it was news to me. He explained that Alphas have
a need to be recognized but there were other
personalities far more dangerous and Alphas avoided them.
He summed up his speech by swearing that he never wanted to ever piss any of us
off. I thought about this only again after being accused of being a pacifist.
My brothers and I all rode nasty motorcycles with awesome Barnette Clutches
before hydraulic assist. Great arm exercise. Besides I had to walk on crutches
for nearly two years and that only added to my inherent grumpiness. Our
varsity boxing team never drew much of an audience during the hippie-era.
So I cause confusion only because I do not fit into any well established
classification system. I bring this up because my experience in life defies
most systems which you are attempting to tease apart. Trump may well be a
Narcissist and deluded in some traditional manner. That only suggests he will
make a mistake and run into someone he has no idea even exists. That would make
for a great mess and possibly a great waste of lives.
There may well be someone within his comfort zone right now that could destroy
him as easily as pushing the send button. Putin is far more than a boogey-man
and his moral compass is largely indecipherable. Trump does not understand that
Hunters are waiting high up in the trees. Trump is just bait for now.
However, this discussion is fascinating, already you are in agreement about the
transitory nature of the Elites and Glen is actually employing a form of shadow
deduction process to determine what they are and are not. This reminds me of
Lenin's attempt to define the bourgeoisie classes He used accusations and
insinuations to expose them and they proclaimed their innocence up to their
executions. Stalin then invented 'the show trial' to extract forced
confessions before execution.
In both cases present and past the accused never willingly admitted their
guilt. Which leads me to ask if they may be possible scape goats serving a
complex social function.
Perhaps I can add two or more defining characteristics, these ephemeral elites
also believe they are speaking the truth and demand that the audience also
believes. This is what I call
"the evangelical personality."
Secondly they also believe that they are never responsible for unforeseen
outcomes. They invent rationalizations after a calamity to exonerate themselves.
"The saintly fool personality"
Third they accuse someone, very publicly, announcing and justifying their
subsequent actions before acting. I guess these observations don't narrow down
the field very much for any of us.
"The righteously angry personality"
I guess the fourth factor is that they never admit they screwed up, ever.
"The good but stupid soldier"
I thought Beta's sucked up to Alphas on a regular basis like cheerleaders.
So now we have 7 characteristics. Not bad for a start. But suspect there are a
lot of amateurs in the grouping.
It reminds me of an old adage, never tell a Slav you will kill him, even in
jest. He will believe you are telling the truth and strike first. They have
different rules.
America casually throws around too many poorly veiled threats.
Trump is a very noisy bleating bait goat right now and he should hold his
tongue for now.
Those Turkish NATO allies are acting like whores cozying up to Russia right
now. The Turks think they can resurrect the Ottoman Empire. I suspect Putin
wishes to erode NATO unity and dismember it totally. Obama created an
uncomfortable noose around Russia. So expect him to shrug it off. Why on earth
are the Syrian peace talks being held in Kazakhstan, since the Turks think they
originally came from that area from their own mythology. Are the Russians going
to sucker Turkey into a provocation so that they reoccupy the Bosphorus again.
The Russians are very good at setting up a fall guy. Besides them who else
can claim to have smashed so many empires.
Glad you guys noticed Frauke Petra, this is the careful way the Skinheads are
moving into legitimacy. She knows exactly what she is doing. A right wing
Germany
will scare Russia more than anything else. Not again I hope. I guess this is
the ugly face of populism.
If the Russians want to dismantle NATO then they should focus on Germany next
which would cripple NATO.
vib
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: January-27-17 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Globalism in the age of populism? .. & Open Source Software
OK, maybe. But I think that type, that can't be "persuaded" [*] based on
low-dimensional similarity and familiarity, has very few members. The real
problem is establishing the similarity and familiarity. H Clinton was not very
good at it. B Clinton was.
And even when confronting an ideologically empowered alpha, it's trivial to
establish similarity and familiarity by adopting alpha traits. You simply slap
them on the back for being alpha. Tell them you're just like they are, that
you will fight as a soldier or a general for what you believe because that's
the way _we_ SHOULD be. Even though you're in opposite corners of the ring,
you can still establish similarity and familiarity with your opponent. In
fact, it's trivially easy to do with alphas. Betas are more difficult.
Regardless, your right that my defined-by-indefiniteness is not adequate to
cover the problem you're raising. Although concreteness is necessary for
recategorizing an "elite" out of the class, it's not sufficient. You have to
actively demonstrate. Perhaps this is why wonky introverts don't make good
politicians, whereas back-slapping morons get elected all the time.
Perhaps the more powerful defining quality of "elites" is the standoffishness,
aloofness, where every smile looks like a smirk, and when you try to pat them
on the back, they recoil in horror. 8^) That's personal for me because I don't
like to be touched. And my dad tried to convince me that when you shake
people's hand, you should _crush_ them ... unless they're female of course.
[sigh] The "elite" use big words and their sentences require parsing.
If that's the case, then it's also a matter of hermeneutics and the occult.
The more work you have to put in to see a return, to understand what's being
said/done, the more likely the author/sender is an "elite". There's a sense
that "elites" wear more/thicker/plaited masks than the regular Joe.
Nice. So we now have 2 properties I can understand: indefiniteness and
hermeneutical. Thanks.
[*] In quotes because actual persuasion to agreement isn't needed. All that's
needed is to begin thinking about the person concretely, not abstractly. You
don't have to agree with Clinton's ideas in order to remove her from the
fictitious "elite".
On 01/27/2017 11:04 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> On CNN, Van Jones has this series "The Messy Truth", where he plays (kind of
> annoyingly) the liberal apologist. There's an interview with some coal
> mining folks from West Virginia talking about why they voted for Trump. One
> of the participants, in an earlier television appearance during the campaign,
> had asked Hillary Clinton about her "We're going to put a lot of coal miners
> out of business" remark. They don't show much of the original
> confrontation, but it wasn't clear if she actually had a chance to answer or
> took the opportunity. All that is shown is that it was awkward. Is there
> any heartfelt and reasoned answer that she could have given that would be
> more compelling than just eating hot dogs and drinking beer? There is type
> of person that can be persuaded based on low-dimensional similarity and
> feelings of familiarity. However, in my experience, there are also a few
> alphas in every blue-collar community like this that are trying to show they
> in charge. This guy picked a fight in that setting because that's his place
> in his world, and it is important that his world stay small.
--
☣ glen
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