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I mean, you can also just let the data go. "nothing, chaos" is pretty simple. I don't believe being able to search my chatlogs from 2005 would make my life simp

I mean, you can also just let the data go. "nothing, chaos" is pretty simple. I don't believe being able to search my chatlogs from 2005 would make my life simpler, or better. Some people are natural archivists and love that second-brain stuff though, and this is a pretty sweet example :). One area I strongly relate to Karlicoss is how bad it is getting data out of my bank; as a regular non-institutional customer I don't get API access, so I have to download a PDF manually every month and run it through some script to parse out the line items.

sokoloff 6y ago
I have friends who have died and for whom I’ve lost our chat logs (some back from the AIM days). I also carelessly lost my home dir from college with my thesis and thesis code/data in it. (Tar, gzip, ftp in ascii mode, don’t check for months.) Is my life meaningfully worse for those losses? No, not really. Have there been several times when it would have been better (even just temporary happiness/comfort) if I had access to the data? Definitely yes.
rektide 6y ago
Oh sure, you can opt to be an animal. You can opt to not gather your intellect, intelligence, to avoid trying to understand who you are, what you do, what you are, as you go about your time online. You can easily- we all easily- avoid reflection, understanding, coherence. Like animals. It's uncivil, the very definition of unbecoming: eternally forgetful. I don't even mind this low path! Sure! Be nothing! Remember nothing! Scatter your essence everywhere, collect & distill nothing! Fine. I don't oppose your choice to eternally disperse yourselves, to harvest & focus & observe nothing. Exist only in the now, for eternity. It's your right, as much as I think it is below you, less than what you probably ought merit yourself. What is just repulsive as heck, just dejected & pathetic, is that there are no alternatives. Except this work. Except what karlicoss is doing. The entire world lets itself be nothing, be zero, like you advocate, just sands of time. Karlicoss is focused on being a human, one with conscientiousness. Seemingly, to me, the entire rest of humanity lets all their data be trapped, contained in hostile corporate networks, under phones that don't give us access to our own data, existing on networks where we have no rights. Let it go is the only option available to nine nines, 99.9999999%. There are probably 7 people in this 7.5 billion person world doing anything at all like this, not letting it go. I'm sorry humanity, it's not your fault: you keep getting dealt a shit, ultra-consumerist crap un-personal computing hand, just getting shorter & shorter ends. But at some point, revolt, working, taking the effort, becoming a Karlicoss, opting to care, is the only sane, sensible option. I keep thinking of Google's mission statement, how much radical potential it embodied, how radically far & further from the tree we fall, every single year: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Even our own information is a mess, a chaos. Our own information leaks, worse & worse, every year. We retain less & less human potential of ourselves, each year, as mainframes & cloud dominate more & more of the public space, steal up the oxygen of computing & information technology that we could be using to invigorate ourselves, orient ourselves & each other, in the newly public, ever more shared world we cohabitate upon. We have made no progress. Karlicoss has.
- elseweather 6y ago
  Cheers! Responding between dumbbell sets - I hope I may never stop being an animal ;)
- dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
  Seems to me this is more of a religious thing for one such as you than something with objective purpose.
  - rektide 6y ago
    still searching for my earthseed alike principles for sure but i understand the values, the balance at play. obviously based on highly negatively biased votes & comments, but something i feel more concretely, is that this obvious yet occluded truth still needs better means to be focused upon. tbh weird times that there are so few religions that have sprung up and shut down in my lifetime. what days that we have an example, one[1]! tech is all about interlink, embiggening of human spirit & potential, which mirrors so closely the interlink of spiritually & religion & essences of man. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/18/anthony-levandowski-closes-his-church-of-ai/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/18/anthony-levandowski-closes...
  - crawancon 6y ago
    just because he has passion and conviction about a cause linked to leaving a legacy doesn't mean it follows any... cultishness. I myself am a bit of an exobrainian but not as well organized or anywh near as far down the part as Karl is. it's a noble cause to not want to dismiss what never was capturable before; conversations between friends and family that we can harvest, replay, or add as a chatbot to have shell versions of deceased loved ones.
    - dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
      I didn't mean "religious" in the bad sense. We all have some topic that incites that part of our brain and makes us hold long speeches about our ideals. On a more positive level, it also gives us the determination to actually follow through with those ideals. His "itch" seems to be gathering data. If one gathers data for no other reason than it's useful, you don't randomly start talking about the difference between man and animal or how all turns to wind. Those are more biblical sentences.

sokoloff 6y ago

I have friends who have died and for whom I’ve lost our chat logs (some back from the AIM days). I also carelessly lost my home dir from college with my thesis and thesis code/data in it. (Tar, gzip, ftp in ascii mode, don’t check for months.) Is my life meaningfully worse for those losses? No, not really. Have there been several times when it would have been better (even just temporary happiness/comfort) if I had access to the data? Definitely yes.

rektide 6y ago

Oh sure, you can opt to be an animal. You can opt to not gather your intellect, intelligence, to avoid trying to understand who you are, what you do, what you are, as you go about your time online. You can easily- we all easily- avoid reflection, understanding, coherence. Like animals. It's uncivil, the very definition of unbecoming: eternally forgetful. I don't even mind this low path! Sure! Be nothing! Remember nothing! Scatter your essence everywhere, collect & distill nothing! Fine. I don't oppose your choice to eternally disperse yourselves, to harvest & focus & observe nothing. Exist only in the now, for eternity. It's your right, as much as I think it is below you, less than what you probably ought merit yourself. What is just repulsive as heck, just dejected & pathetic, is that there are no alternatives. Except this work. Except what karlicoss is doing. The entire world lets itself be nothing, be zero, like you advocate, just sands of time. Karlicoss is focused on being a human, one with conscientiousness. Seemingly, to me, the entire rest of humanity lets all their data be trapped, contained in hostile corporate networks, under phones that don't give us access to our own data, existing on networks where we have no rights. Let it go is the only option available to nine nines, 99.9999999%. There are probably 7 people in this 7.5 billion person world doing anything at all like this, not letting it go. I'm sorry humanity, it's not your fault: you keep getting dealt a shit, ultra-consumerist crap un-personal computing hand, just getting shorter & shorter ends. But at some point, revolt, working, taking the effort, becoming a Karlicoss, opting to care, is the only sane, sensible option. I keep thinking of Google's mission statement, how much radical potential it embodied, how radically far & further from the tree we fall, every single year: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Even our own information is a mess, a chaos. Our own information leaks, worse & worse, every year. We retain less & less human potential of ourselves, each year, as mainframes & cloud dominate more & more of the public space, steal up the oxygen of computing & information technology that we could be using to invigorate ourselves, orient ourselves & each other, in the newly public, ever more shared world we cohabitate upon. We have made no progress. Karlicoss has.

elseweather 6y ago
Cheers! Responding between dumbbell sets - I hope I may never stop being an animal ;)
dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
Seems to me this is more of a religious thing for one such as you than something with objective purpose.
- rektide 6y ago
  still searching for my earthseed alike principles for sure but i understand the values, the balance at play. obviously based on highly negatively biased votes & comments, but something i feel more concretely, is that this obvious yet occluded truth still needs better means to be focused upon. tbh weird times that there are so few religions that have sprung up and shut down in my lifetime. what days that we have an example, one[1]! tech is all about interlink, embiggening of human spirit & potential, which mirrors so closely the interlink of spiritually & religion & essences of man. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/18/anthony-levandowski-closes-his-church-of-ai/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/18/anthony-levandowski-closes...
- crawancon 6y ago
  just because he has passion and conviction about a cause linked to leaving a legacy doesn't mean it follows any... cultishness. I myself am a bit of an exobrainian but not as well organized or anywh near as far down the part as Karl is. it's a noble cause to not want to dismiss what never was capturable before; conversations between friends and family that we can harvest, replay, or add as a chatbot to have shell versions of deceased loved ones.
  - dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
    I didn't mean "religious" in the bad sense. We all have some topic that incites that part of our brain and makes us hold long speeches about our ideals. On a more positive level, it also gives us the determination to actually follow through with those ideals. His "itch" seems to be gathering data. If one gathers data for no other reason than it's useful, you don't randomly start talking about the difference between man and animal or how all turns to wind. Those are more biblical sentences.