Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence discusses his VP role model and his debate prep on “This Week.”

Let’s stop pretending what he ( Pence) is talking about. Cheney was the “grownup” in the relationship and Bush was the “spoiled kid”.

We can see from where Mike Pence is coming from. He will have to run the country and become the commander-in-chief, because, like Bush, Trump isn’t up to it. He is not completely ignorant, but stupid.

Bush, in a stupor, had to have his Chief of Staff run the war in Iraq, because he, Bush, thought it was about another Crusades.

My guess is that Pence will continue the war against Islam, while ignoring Nixon’s connection to Globalization, while Trump moves America towards authoritarianism. #fail

Source: Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (the mahdi’s arrival)

The greatest thing about a fiction narrative is that truth can be told without a lot of facts running around and distracting us. So in the movie “Lucy” and when actor Morgan Freeman tells us there are only two outcomes for the OODA loop of a cell,  because it is fiction, we can take those facts presented in the fictional movie as truths and run with it.

I already fictionalized what he said by asking you to think of the cell’s life as an OODA loop. If you don’t know what an OODA loop is, then you might as well move on or Google, because I’m not going to get into that discussion here. What I will say is that it sounds to me like cancer starts when, like Lucy, when one cell in your body gives up. There are two option at the end of every OODA loop. Option 1: a human cell becomes immortal and is called a cancer and becomes immortal or Option 2: dying and letting the next generation takeover.

In other words, for a human battling cancer and in a moment of time for one of their cells at the center of its environment, the cell sees no future for other generations of its kind and position. Within the confines of the cells position it becomes immortal and is called cancer. Through the consequences of this decision, the cell’s loop is literally broken by the magnitude of the inertia of that decision and the outcome of this revelation (through the cell’s decision process) and the cell stops evolving and the cell becomes cancer.

A friend of ours, who we have loved since she was 3-years-old, recently died of brain-cancer. I have a hard time believing there was any cell in her body that had given-up, but I have no clue as to what the environment was like when the cell did give-up.

I have said once that cellphones are the cigarettes of her generation, and she loved the cell phone, and selfies, and Facebook, and all that connecting they represent. In a word, she lived inside her connected generation, so it is hard to blame either her or her cellphone. She basically ended her last 60 days of life expressing herself with the one finger that could still move, and thanking the doctors who kept cutting on her brain (de-massing) down to the last finger. So she was not a quitter in any sense of the word.

But just because one cell might have given-up, it doesn’t mean we should overlook the objects and those connections that might have produced such a toxic environment and made a cell simply give up on evolution and go immortal.

What it does mean is that we have to observe the narrative from a distance and the magnitude of the narrative is by distance square. In other words, that distance our friend had to travel in battling cancer is very hard to remember, because, I, for one, think about that little girl everyday, and remaining positive is still good medicine.

Still,  that movie did produce a powerful image as the “mahdi” Lucy sees no future and becomes immortal. What’s that mean? Is the mahdi a form of cancer, or vice versa?

Democracy, Work, and Wealth | Harold Jarche | LinkedIn

Old mental models will not help us much. If we do not address wealth distribution, then we won’t be able to deal with other issues, such as climate change or environmental degradation. We need people who have the time to think about these. This has traditionally been the middle class, but it is shrinking in most developed countries. The rich alone do not give us the necessary diversity of opinions. An aggressively engaged and intelligent citizenry, in significant numbers, is needed to deal with the wicked problems facing us. Addressing wealth inequality will give us the people and the space to do so.

via Democracy, Work, and Wealth | Harold Jarche | LinkedIn.

Because of its large vertical command force (maybe we could call it an “on demand” force) the consumer economy has a structure similar to that of an insurgency. The hierarchical structure that the consumer economy uses to get its “things” is still present, but busy.

The problem with a consumer economy seems to be that the gap between the wealthy and poor gets wider, as the economy fades. So likely what happens is that when the wealthy gain control, as the poorer consumer insurgency loses their ability to command, a new greater hierarchic structure comes into being, and built off the one that is still present. In other words, the “Mitt Romney” of the once powerful consumer economy takes command.

The problem, if I am understanding the post the above quote comes from correctly, in the US these large platform corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google are mostly foreign. At least the majority of their workers are. So if this hierarchical structure gets too “American” and isolates much of the world, these “foreign workers” will not become a part of the “American” economy and there is no structure in the US that can replace them. These computer products are all hand built, and there are just not that many “hands” in the US worker base to replace them.

Of course this is all a bunch of crazy talk, but given the scenario of a consumer economy collapsing, the real problem with this new stronger form of a hierarchical structure taking hold in America will be that the once powerful insurgent consumer structure will change from a negative slope to a positive slope (from a -5/2 to a possible +5/2).

The problem being, a positive sloped economic structure most commonly supports a civil war instead of an insurgency.

Beyond 2013 Retrospective Day I

“What we have done in Afghanistan has made zero difference….our orientation was wrong…”

If our orientation was wrong then, because orientation has been called the most important letter in the OODA loop, it probably means we got everything else wrong in the loop as well.

But it also should be noted that the fact that our orientation was wrong was not caused by ignorance of Boyd–we got it wrong because our leaders found out they were not Boyd.

The one principle the followers of Boyd try to take advantage of, besides deception, is to accomplish two tasks to your enemy’s one.

So it is likely that our war in the Middle East was always supposed to have been the one-two punch of Afghanistan and Iraq together.

When discussing Orientation and getting the Orientation  wrong, in the context of Boyd, Orientation begins in the workspace and the workspace was not Afghanistan.

The area of orientation was Afghanistan/Iraq and the judgment of getting it right or wrong needs to be taken from a position observing both.

So it is likely we didn’t just get the position in our orientation wrong, but hell yes we got it wrong!

But we are now pivoting towards the Indo-pacific and our position as well as our orientation is changing.

Like our war with Russia, the position we took in our orientation with Afghanistan and Iraq is an old position. If this position is right or wrong should be judged by history. It is just too hard for the person going through something like this to keep a clear head.

In the context of Boyd, the position of this next pivot point is highly critical. As I imagine Boyd would have said explicitly, the point that we are pivoting on will represent our orientation into the future.

So, as we pivot in a different direction towards Afghanistan and Iraq, where in the world can you mark an x on a map that represents our values? It is our values that we will use as a pivot.

It will be interesting to learn from the zenpundit if there was any talk about our orientation going forward at #BoydandBeyond?

via zenpundit.com » Blog Archive » Boyd & Beyond 2013 Retrospective Day I.

Discrete Paths

Larry Dunbar • ” It doesn’t account for incumbent (defender) advantage over new entries (attackers).”

If we pretend for a moment that the OODA loop is different than the OODA process, and say that the OODA process is mostly structured as a series of time-steps, while the OODA loop is structured as a parallel circuit, with discrete paths running parallel with each other. Under this pretence, the advantage Venkatesh Rao is talking about is running on a different, but parallel, path than the example you talk about.

Rao’s advantage is in the structure path of the loop, while your advantage (the advantage of the incumbent) is on the path I label D&C,(Destruction and Construction) after Boyd’s concept.

Although I believe that the math in Rao’s concept is flawed, the concept follows the strategic path.

The strategic path deals with structure, or form, that the loop will eventually take, and because Rao’s concept deals with structure (“executive decision” function) there is definitely an exponent. The exponent represents the structure of the loop and the exponent is the advantage of his concept.

The path of D&C does not have a exponent. Although D&C deals a lot with the culture of the loop which has an exponent, the model of the D&C path only says C=-D, so C+D=0.

In your example C+D did not equal zero, and that is the advantage of the incumbent.

In other words, if the incumbent force is in command of D&C, the advantage it has is the normal fact that the insurgency that is trying to control the D&C is never able to have complete command of the logic in the D&C, which leaves the OODA loop with a serial circuit.

This means the loop is left partially “open” in series.

I am not sure this is bad.

While it leaves open a path the “winner” doesn’t really want to leave open, the advantage represents growth (a well known growth) and, possibly, another way out, if your loop goes horribly wrong.

What’s Boyd say about that? If you are not will or unable to take the necessary steps to win, then you need to switch sides?

So while Rao’s strategy is trying to tear up structure, with the fight between who is in command on the straight-aways and who is in control at the corners, the incumbent advantage is leaving a door open, just in case Rao has his math wrong.

A Successful Landing

Much of Hector’s success in building a manufactured home that will withstand a drop from 10 feet has to do with the crossing of a quantum amount of energy across a gap into another dimension.

From my study of Boyd’s work with the OODA loop, I have determined that there is only one “way” into the next dimension, but 3 paths. So, while you may not agree with the “way” into another dimension, you still have to follow all 3 paths at the same time. So now the game gets interesting.

As the diagram shows the next dimension is perpendicular to the Past and Future and there are three ways across the gap between the Past and Future. If you guys can’t get it, go virtual.

It should be noted that when you are in the gap, you are in another dimension, so these paths across the gap between the Past and Future are very important.

At least they are important if you believe in another dimension–a dimension somewhere between heaven and hell, perhaps.

I am thinking that an answer to that question is worth looking into.

Trailer Go Bang!

I had a wonderful talk with my neighbor Hector yesterday. He has been building these Tiny Homes locally here. They seem to be the rage on the east coast, and I think they were first created to get people off-the-grid, so to speak, but I am not sure this is why Hector’s tiny homes are so popular.

From hearing Hector talk, apparently his homes are so popular because they actually pass being dropped from 10 feet and survive. If I was understanding Hector correctly, this is the test a manufactured home needs to pass, if it is going to be sold as a manufactured home that travels on federal highway. Maybe this is a State spec, I really don’t know, because we didn’t get into Construction (C of “D&C” according to Boyd) that much, just Destruction.

Hector says he is keeping the secret to his homes passing the drop test to himself, which I thought was real interesting. Everyone loves a secret, and his bring the fact up that he had a secret reminds me of a friend of mine who made some tools out of a “secret” material that can be found in most households.

My friend kept asking me if I wanted to know his secret, and after telling him that I wasn’t interested in guessing what the material was, nor interested in his secret, he finally told me. I guess my friend told me his secret, because he really wanted me to know how clever he was, because his secret was a very clever answer to a problem of what to build his specifically set of tools out of. By the way, his tools were used to pick locks with, and he could open most locks in a matter of seconds. As these tools are illegal to own, I can’t go into details, so I guess I got a secret 🙂

From my experience as a student enrolled in Mount Hood Community College‘s Mechanical Engineering program, I have to wonder if Hector understands the trailer’s success himself, maybe that is why he mentioned the fact that he has a secret.

The reason I have to wonder if Hector understands the secret is that much of his trailer’s success in surviving the fall of 10 feet has to do with the trailer’s moment of inertia and the impulse produced at that moment. While this doesn’t sound too complicated, but, from what I have gathered in my studying of Boyd and how energy distributes, there might be only one way the trailer travels the 10 feet, but there are three simultaneous paths the trailer takes in reaching the ground.

If much of Hector’s trailer’s success in passing the drop-test has to do a moment of inertia, as an example of complexity, when my statics class at Mount Hood Community College got to a moment of inertia, most of the mechanical engineering class didn’t do so well. I talked with one classmate and he said this was about his third time trying to pass, with his last grade being a “D”.

Now a D seems to me to be a passing grade, but, OTOH, it really might not look good on your class records. Statics class was where the “rubber meets the road” so one really needs to do good in statics class, for safety’s sake.

He did seem to land a fairly nice job with a local manufacturer of modified pickup trucks, so I hope the class turned out alright for him.

Anyway, let’s see, those that did well…?

I got an A-, so there was me and…?

Anyway, Hector is probably an engineer, or one of those polymaths that just seem to know everything.

As for the 3 paths the trailer takes in the fall of ten feet, the first path is in Hector’s strategy in building the trailer. Most likely his “secret” is tied up in the strategy he used to build his trailer.

The second path is in the process Hector goes through in building the trailer. As the trailer follows the second path, it goes through the same process that Hector used in building the trailer. Hector Observed materials needed to build the trailer in the environment of the fall, he Oriented the materials according to the greatest advantage they have in surviving the fall, then he Decided on how to put them all together, and then he Acted against the force produced in the trailers fall. This is the OODA loop that Boyd talks about.

The third path the trailer takes in the fall is in its Destruction and Construction caused by the feed-forward from where is was to the feedback from where it is going. While this sounds complex, what really is happening to the trailer as it moves towards the ground, it is being destructed from one point and constructed back together again closer to the ground, until it hits.

It is because of the third path of D&C that for safety’s sake, one needs to understand completely all the secrets to the trailer. The reason is that when something is destroyed and put back together again, all the energy that represents the mass in the distribution of energy (the 10 foot fall) becomes available. This means any energy that is not available in the construction or destruction of the trailer may become available as the trailer hits the ground, In other words, as the trailer is being destroyed and put back together in another place and time there is a tendency to change the trailer, because of what we know and what we see along its three paths as it falls.

We know what resources we have to make the trailer, who is going to build it, and how much everything costs. This information comes from the past–we also look into the future and this information may tell us to take another path.

In other words we may “see” something in the future that we want to change. We may want to use other resources, have the trailer built by someone else, and we may need the trailer to costs less. If we don’t know why the trailer survived the fall, any change, even of equal strength may make the trailer fail its test, because all the forces, even those that are entropy, can act as the trailer is destroyed and constructed.

OTOH, It would seem to me that Hector doesn’t really need to tell the secret to his trailers successful drop-test, as long as he wants to keep building all the trailers himself.

He probably will only have to give the “secret” out if he wants to sell the business for gobs and gobs of money :).

As it is, he is making $15,000.00 per trailer, and is able to build one a month. Not bad wages for one guy, and a product worth, I think he said, around $32,000.00. This is good money as long as there is no one pushing you to build more, faster, and less costly.

Hector doesn’t seem like the type of guy to get pushed around, so he will probably do OK.