My Email to Energy Network company regarding the introduction of a quarterly Meter Reading Fee.
I received your letter informing me that a meter reading fee will apply if a smart meter is not installed, implying that this fee covers an additional cost to your company associated with traditional meters.
In order to establish whether your financial claim reflects a genuine cost, I need additional information:
1. The actual purchase price of the additional “smart meter”.
2. The estimated installation cost of the additional “smart meter”.
3. The expected service-free lifespan of the proposed “smart meter”.
I bring to your attention that the extended scope of information that would be collected by a “smart meter” is owned by me and is subject to licensing. You have not attempted to negotiate a price for this near real-time, energy-lifestyle information to be made available to you. If you will make me an offer, I will be able to determine whether “smart meter” is the right choice for me.
I received your letter informing me that a meter reading fee will apply if a smart meter is not installed, implying that this fee covers an additional cost to your company associated with traditional meters.
In order to establish whether your financial claim reflects a genuine cost, I need additional information:
1. The actual purchase price of the additional “smart meter”.
2. The estimated installation cost of the additional “smart meter”.
3. The expected service-free lifespan of the proposed “smart meter”.
I bring to your attention that the extended scope of information that would be collected by a “smart meter” is owned by me and is subject to licensing. You have not attempted to negotiate a price for this near real-time, energy-lifestyle information to be made available to you. If you will make me an offer, I will be able to determine whether “smart meter” is the right choice for me.
The idea that Feminism can be legitimately used for gender equality is logically analogous to using the label White Power for racial equality.
In every natural category there are both abusers and the abused, and by generalising across the entire category (gender, race, nationality etc) the abusers within those categories get to hide, claim innocence or even victimhood, using those who were abused by them as human shields. Throughout history, there was a tiny elite who exploited everyone, worked men, women and children literally to death, starved entire villages, practiced actual and virtual slavery, but themselves lived in extreme luxury and splendour. It is they who like to generalise over massive demographics to evade accountability for millennia of crimes against humanity. Every nation, religion, culture or tribe, and certainly both genders, have internal abusers of this kind. Regarding historical abuses of women, we should remember that the weakest, the most vulnerable, are always abused the most. The pure mechanics of power rather than any inherent prejudice necessitates that lower class children of all races were universally the biggest historical victims, followed by lower class women, followed by lower class men. But even these divisions are not a good basis for ethical analysis because it requires dynamic discernment (that most people lack) to avoid being tricked into another form of diversion and abuse, weaponised against one another to the benefit of the intergenerational, criminal clans. The only common feature we have, the only basis of fundamental rights, is our humanity, not gender, not race, not age.
Gender-focused politics dehumanises and disempowers, implicitly denying the ultimate foundation of rights - our shared humanity. Gender is not a defensible foundation of rights but a strawman.
Culture is the oldest and most prevalent Conspiracy. Most people just go along with it, never question its rationality, and if anyone in their community expresses doubts about the local culture they are censored, vilified, ostracised, sometimes jailed or even killed. Those who believe that rationality is the deepest commonality for all humans, are the original conspiracy theorists.
Thinking ‘originates’; it does not ‘imitate’. Most people do not think at all; some think occasionally; very few consciously intend to think. Ask yourself whether you are thinking or only imitating the meaning-patterns that are already there, originated by someone else.
Who needs Neuralink to control people when most are already comprehensively controlled. Is Neuralink then just a symbol for the means of mind-control already in use but of which we are unaware of?
Forwarded from Normal (Michael Kowalik)
How to become immune to propaganda and psychological operations
1. Never reuse the new idioms and catch phrases used by the media. Whatever issue is discussed, try to conceptualise it in your own words, be more descriptive rather than accepting the given phrases at face value. It is not essential to express the underlying ideas in the “right way” (there may be no right way), but only differently.
2. When someone else would reuse the media catch phrases, ask them to explain what they mean; they don’t know, your task is only to reveal their ignorance. This is particularly important when engaging with government departments. For example, a public school may appeal to inclusion and diversity. Ask them what they mean by that; what is supposed to be included and is there anything that ought to be excluded, and if anything ought to be excluded then how can you just call it “inclusiveness”, isn’t that misleading?
3. Whenever you come to believe a proposition, profess some value or principle, challenge yourself to mentally defend the opposite view. Consider evidence from both sides of the debate. Playing a daily game of chess against yourself can help you establish this routine.
1. Never reuse the new idioms and catch phrases used by the media. Whatever issue is discussed, try to conceptualise it in your own words, be more descriptive rather than accepting the given phrases at face value. It is not essential to express the underlying ideas in the “right way” (there may be no right way), but only differently.
2. When someone else would reuse the media catch phrases, ask them to explain what they mean; they don’t know, your task is only to reveal their ignorance. This is particularly important when engaging with government departments. For example, a public school may appeal to inclusion and diversity. Ask them what they mean by that; what is supposed to be included and is there anything that ought to be excluded, and if anything ought to be excluded then how can you just call it “inclusiveness”, isn’t that misleading?
3. Whenever you come to believe a proposition, profess some value or principle, challenge yourself to mentally defend the opposite view. Consider evidence from both sides of the debate. Playing a daily game of chess against yourself can help you establish this routine.
An effective method for learning how to ‘think in your own words’ is to play with words, reverse their conceptual order in an established pattern and see what comes out, experiment with Situationist ‘detournament’. For example, Churchill has anecdotally said that “the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with an average voter”; it is then tempting to try ‘the best argument against dictatorship is a five minute conversation with Churchill’. If you drop a line like this without explaining how you derived it, it is bound to make others think too, disrupt their conceptual pattern. Be silly, have fun with language, make jokes, it teaches you how to think.
Join NORMAL
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Free-associations, acting on impulse, acting from emotion or listening to your feelings (“following you heart”), is largely deterministic and therefore liable to hacking. You can free yourself from this liability only if you delay your judgement, never act without reflection (where possible) and evaluate your reasons for action.
A person delivering a profound message is the medium of the message. The medium is always the primary message, which obstructs and displaces the mediated message. Remove the person and strip bare the context and the message speaks for itself, unmediated. For this reason TEXT is the most direct path to the rational mind of the audience.
Your primary function, our primary function as Humans, is not to generate gods and services, but to become a faithful mirror for everything else, not imitate but Reflect the meaning and context, in which falsity has no existence and therefore no reflection.
The following article is very interesting from both moral and psychological perspectives. It establishes an absolute moral dichotomy, portraying anti-vaxxers (used as a slur) as despicable abusers while elevating the vaccine proponent to the status of a martyr. This beautifully sets up the stage for the psychological conflict that follows, between the overt value judgement and the secondary facts: the ‘hero’ was in the media before because two of his child patients fainted following Covid vaccination, and were believed by some to have died (subconsciously imprinting ‘danger of vaccines’) and then the ‘hero’ died suddenly (subconsciously imprinting ‘danger of vaccines’). The result is a moral choice between blindly following the the authority in dehumanising ‘anti-vaxxers’ vs ‘vaccines are dangerous’. The controlled comments are there to emphasise the same choice with likes/dislikes. Then they count the clicks and have a reasonably scientific measure of the general capacity for moral discernment, without letting it be explicitly known what that measure is. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11578455/Wilson-Chin-Gold-Coast-doctor-received-death-threats-anti-vaxxers-dies-suddenly.html
Mail Online
Family doctor who was subject to death threats from anti-vaxxers during the pandemic dies suddenly right before Christmas
A popular family doctor who was subjected to vile abuse and threats by anti-vaxxers for giving Covid jabs to children has died suddenly in Queensland.
“Conspiracy theory” is when little people think under uncertainty. “Smart money” is when the ultra-rich act out what little people think.
Social media is the biggest factory of knowledge in the history of mankind, where users generate “knowledge of the record” for the media companies. Every click or emoticon counts. This is not Your knowledge but Their knowledge; they own the record. The strongest strategic position for the overwhelming majority of people is to exercise your right to silence, become a watcher, and restrict yourself to asking for evidence, making no claims of knowledge. In a modern security state you are born and live out your life as a suspect, subject to continuous “security screening”, and everything you say can be used against you. Unless you are more proficient at discourse than the security apparatus then everything you say will be used against you. Nobody benefits from your kitchen-sink analysis of “what it is all about” or “who is who” or “who controls the world” except those who own the record. Every fool has beliefs, every fool can tell a story, and repeating stories because they resonate with your feeling and limited imagination, or having ‘opinions’ based on same, says a lot about you but nothing about the objective reality. Become a silent watcher, become a question mark for every story. This is your power. This, in most cases is the only thing that makes you special, is the scope of your autonomy. Meanwhile, in the privacy of your thoughts study, doubt yourself, make your decisions quietly. This is how people in the Soviet Union defeated the security state, with the wall of silence.
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The security state, and the mindset of a security officer, is inherently paranoid. It sees extremism in everything except total impotence, prostration and submission, but because paranoia is a pathological state that can never be appeased, its ultimate aim is (unwittingly) total annihiliation of autonomous agency, which amounts to annihilation of consciousness. The greatest insecurity of the security apparatus, the most anxiety provoking stimulus, is SILENCE. It signals to the paranoid security mindset the end of the rope, the end of the record, impotence, a defeat.