Socially Posting Reality

First up, Vote!

This is the process I try to follow for posting\sharing information on social media. It is important that we post the best and most accurate information possible. We need to pollinate social media with reality and accuracy. We have got to get a handle on it, somehow. It's not just all up to the government or the platforms and companies who own, support and run social media.

"Post Reality."

Whose Reality? As objective a reality as is possible to divine from current and available information. I don't see a lot of that today.

Not to mention by one expert's account to the Congressional Intelligence Committee: "1 in 25" partisan memes\postings are actual American human beings, the rest are bots. Mostly if not all, Russian bots. Which means, we not as partisan as it appears. Well, that's SOME good news anyway.

That being said, EVERYONE screws up sometimes.

Whenever I do I try to be gracious about it if someone points it out, typically posting in public, sometimes to embarrass.

IF it is something extremely obvious, and I am correct, and the person is being outright stupid, I deal with them appropriately. That can be anything from pointing out their mistake with supporting evidence to cutting them down to an appropriate size in their mind (that takes a degree of skill or talent and I see many screw that up and embarrass both parties). Mostly it's best to be compassionate and polite.

But some just need a kick because others need to see that on their side and feel some catharsis on my side. I say that because there are too many bullies out and about, trolling for fun not to educate, not to be accurate. Like children.

Just be aware that nowadays they may simply be a waste of your time in trying to educate them. If they are obviously not interested in actual education, in better and more accurate information, they are just being stupid, and by definition (my definition).

As hard as I try, and I'm a university trained researcher but, I make mistakes too, I may act too fast. I'm human. I may be tired, nor feeling well, distracted, maybe I really shouldn't be posting, etc.

These here are my gold standard points however for how I do try to act in trying to be helpful to others and to be as accurate (and mature) as I can be. Consider that when you read some things online that people post.

IF trained researchers can make these same mistakes, what kind of information do you think is being passed about by those who have no idea what they are sharing or how to go about it? What percentage of information do you think is accurate? Because today one really needs to ask instead, what percentage of information do you think is inaccurate?

When you have other nations like Russia trying to subvert our path, to add chaos to our nation, with national leaders like the POTUS Trump constantly being incorrect and constantly outright lying, constantly escalating the numbers of already inaccurate or irrelevant information. along with people with vested interests in dis- and misinformation, just how much bad information do you think is out there?

Information you may pick up and inadvertently become a part of sharing incorrect information.

Traditionally all through history, we have had incorrect information simply because of an overabundance of poor information, and a lack of available accurate information. Either by accident and simple human fallibility.

Today we have it because people want it there for questionable purposes, vested interests, greed, espionage and political purposes. There is also the allegation that many people actually do like and prefer wrong information ("Study Finds People Like the Wrong Stuff on Social Media Better").

Weird, right?

We simply have to be more careful and do our best to flood social media with the most correct information available that we can access. So....

• Think before posting.
• If possible, click on the post, following it. Does it exist? Check the date it was originally published.
• Do a quick search on the title or topic to see how recent (or valid) it is and what and if the source is reasonable. Especially if there is no publish date or if it is not obvious from content exactly when it was posted.
• The more important or controversial the information the more vetting (validating) is necessary.
• Post less assuredly from others you do not know or do not know well.
• Triangulate (see footnote1 below) research on a post prior to posting (find one or more other relevant, trusted and disparate sources to vet information). Typically cyber-vetting is used today as it can be highly effective and quick...and accurate when done properly. Highly inaccurate when done improperly, which we see a vast amount of from right-wing extremists. 
• As a general rule, if something agrees with your POV too much, it's probably a lie or Russian type disinformation attack on social media. So give it trust only once you've vetted the information.
• When friend or foe challenges your post, do not do an ignorant, or conservative "knee-jerk" type reaction. It's immature and counterproductive. Instead, although you can initially reply with something clever or snarky if entertaining to others in some way and especially to your challenger. But do then go and vet that information to be sure you are correct about it. Especially if challenged by someone you trust or is known to post valid information. There is nothing more foolish than to be caught in a mishap and then double down on what is then your stupidity. Do not be a Donald Trump. Best rule is after guessing it is correct and posting, always go vet that info at some point in the next hour to 24 hours and come back to correct it if you find issues with it, or to clarify it if you realize it may come across with options for being incorrect in part or whole.
• IF you post something incorrect, especially if it's gone viral before (or after your posting), leave it up online. Then, add to the initial post to indicate what is incorrect so as to allow others to read the updated post and attached thread below so they can understand WHY it's incorrect, along with links to associated vetted information. In that way, you help to decrease the incorrect information online. To simply remove it, typically so you are not embarrassed, leaves others who might have seen it, open to making the exact same mistake. 
• Never call something "fake news". It is immature and has too much Donald Trump, Republican, and conservative negative baggage. 
• Show don't tell. Telling is fine if accompanied with value-added information. But it's also all about the orientation and who your post is actually addressing. frequently we get emotional and address our side, not the other side and may even say things to force the other side to "dig in" and worse, "double down."
• When you vet information, research down through several levels or layers and over several sources of information. Use sources who should know, not just any source with that topic. Sites like InfoWars, typically do not know a damn thing. IF you find something on a site like that, you then have to vet THAT information several more times and it can go exponential, so best to leave them to the nut cases and ill-informed (you cannot help them, they are not interested in reality and really not interested in being correct, especially not by a member of their as they see it, ignoble opposition...ironically enough, they are typically the ignoble ones). Most incorrect postings on social media are not verified at all or sometimes worse, vetted only one level down, or out. I say worse because then they tend to incorrectly think that they DID do due diligence. Typically it takes two, three or more to finally know if something is true or not and that all the related and relative supportive information has been acquired.
• More questionable sources require ever more vetting.
• At times you may find something requires excessive vetting of never seeming to be enough sources, or you cannot seem to vet it. That's not hard to deal with. You simply admit it's merely your (maybe informed, maybe not so informed) opinion. Or that you tried and cannot fully vet it and/or that you got the information from some public figure who should know or whatever. The point is to state it in such a way so if you are later proved to be incorrect, it reflects not on you or your vetting process but on others. 
• That last part of the last point does NOT refer to "plausible deniability", a method used by national leaders and greatly abused by the Republican party. Don't stoop to their level. Though I do admit to using that at times for reasons that are hopefully overt, obvious and the biggest reason, humorous. 
• Truth. That is what is important. IF you should find you are wrong, and in vetting your information you learn something new and contrary to your beliefs, you have two choices. Absorb those beleifs, incorporate them into your overall beliefs. Update, reprocess and look at your understanding of things with this new updated information. Do no ignore it. Worst case,place it to the side and DO NOT FORGET about it. The other thing you can do if it really disturbs you is to start again and revet with this new information. You can try to prove your original beliefs right, or the new ones right. Just be careful of ending up with your beliefs being verified, when they shouldn't be. Because in the end if is not about you, not about your beliefs, but about what is really going on. Share the new information and help humanity. 
• Humor is almost always useful and one of the best ways to persuade or handle difficult information. Just be aware and careful, it can backfire. Joking about a mass shooting, typically will. 

In the end, we all want (or should want) ACCURATE information. Not Donald Trump type incorrect news and information, inaccurate and constantly changing information and faux facts and disinformation and misinformation all which benefits incorrectly one viewpoint over another.

There is a distraction involved in all this. One that has led to many new conspiracy theorists. Many new conservative Republicans who spook at a shadow in ever corner.

"How do you know what is true and accurate?" The ask.

That is for another article, this is for the foundational concept of sharing Truth. Next is the consideration for what is true or can be true or who to trust to disseminate what is true. But basically, a country has got to trust it's intelligence and law enforcement agencies over it's elected officials. See, for the most part, most of those people are like you or I. That is like most of us. We have a given job, we do our best to follow the mission set before us. To be honest, truthful. To do the best we cvan for our country.

Republicans and Donald Trump would have us distrust those people, until we distrust ourselves, until we have to trust only HIM. He wants us to believe we cannot trust our government, our judciary, our law enforcement, our intel agencies.

WHEN that is PROVEN untrue, then you act, you ignore, you refuse to believe. But at that point, you have far worse problems. Personally, AND socially.

But we are not there. Not by a long shot. Those whom extremists call the "deep state" or in some cases the "swamp", are just patriotic citizens, who remain in government from elected administration to elected administration. What conservatives have done in calling these people out is to sow fear into the basic fabric of America. Refuse them their fear mongering.

IF all information online were accurate and properly vetted, America would suddenly take a leap forward in education, politics and social interactions. Much of our bickering today is due to people either arguing the same point of view from different perspectives because one or both sides is lacking relevant information. Or one side is vastly incorrect and the other side has little or no grounds from which to debate the issues. It's like debating with a crazy person. Not to say the other is insane, but the dynamics are very similar.

In the end, we can help to alleviate this current situation by posting only the best information we can access. Also by focusing on the facts and not emotional reactions. Falling back to that old adage of "Hate the sin. Love the sinner." We have got to find a way to communicate, to see our opposition as noble opposition, and to help them find a way to become once again, noble. Just don't put yourself in that position where they have the same problem. Because then, we are all truly lost. Even though we have been seeing that effort pushed at this time by Donald Trump as POTUS. 

We find ourselves now at the point since Donald Trump became president, to truly need to make America great again.

We have got to get back to the basics, to pollinate reality into social media, politics, and culture. To get back to the facts, and back to...reality. 

Footnote 1:
Triangulation is three points, one being your POV. So one or two (usually at least two) other sources. A university professor of mine once explained this to our class saying to always get three other and disparate sources. Even better if you can find at least one on the opposition side who agrees with your POV. The other form is to go out to disprove your POV and if it proves true, you win. Either should be neutral in orientation so you don't involve personal information bias.

Either way: "'...triangulation ’ originates in the field of navigation where a location is determined by using the angles from two known points. Triangulation in research is the use of more than one approach to researching a question. The objective is to increase confidence in the findings through the confirmation of a proposition using two or more independent measures.2 The combination of findings from two or more rigorous approaches provides a more comprehensive picture of the results than either approach could do alone.3"

Why are we sometimes so stupid when we're just not?

Age and intelligence don't always bring better judgment; this does.

By Adam Grant Ph.D.

First off, this isn't perfect, it's not meant to be. It's meant to provoke thought, to give one a way to perceive a frustrating and confusing issue. To open us up on a topic beyond not ever really even thinking about it all that much. And so we go off....

This is the perceived standard definition of how we understand all the information we take in on a daily basis. This is essentially how people think things work. We take in Information, we understand it as we can in who we are through our Wisdom, and then we end up with Greater Knowledge.

  I + W = GK

But that doesn't quite cover how things actually are. There is a big difference between taking in information (the "I" in the formula) depending on if it is easy to understand, or not that much information. What we see happen all too frequently of late is this form:

  I > W = GK

Information that is more than we can handle, or too complicated, with filtered through, or understood by us using our personal forms of our wisdom, does not give us Greater Knowledge. Rather it gives us confusion, which we ameliorate by rationalizing that we understood enough to make an informed decision, to have an opinion that we can not only share with others, but in many cases, demand is what is really going on. At times, even against all good sense and information to the contrary. 

We watch the news or read something online and believe that we walk away with more than we had to begin with. Now being more informed and not less informed than before we took in the new information.

However, that is not always true. And why is that?

Understand, there are always outiars. But in general as a general rule, this seems to have a good deal of veracity. And the general perception after all, is similar but misconstrued. And that too bears weight on this.

Information that is in quality or quantity (typically both) less than or equal to one’s inherent (learned) wisdom, does usually lead to (or equals) gaining greater knowledge from the input of new information. Whenever we read or view new information, we tend to believe we will walk away more informed.

And yet in considering say, the 2016 US Presidential election, that does not seem to be the case. I've heard many reasons to explain why smart people would make a stupid choice in voting for Donald J. Trump. And they all fall short of explaining just what is happening. And it's happening in a lot of areas, all across the world. 

So what were they thinking? What is happening? What is the common denominator? 

Instant Media, for one thing. We are taking in vast amounts of information now a days and much of it is more complex than many of us realize. Not to mention much of this information is incorrect, unvetted or purposely put out to confuse and misinform. Aside from all that, exactly what is happening?

The issue is the original formula. It's not what is typically at play here. Information is not equal to or less than what we can understand. It is frequently more than we can understand, or just as important, information we have access to enough other relative or related information so that we can give it true context and understanding. 

This form makes it much more usable: 

  I < W = GCK + PF = GK/W

INFORMATION that is in quality (or quantity) less than or equal to one’s inherent WISDOM (or in challenging one’s non verifiable perceptions (i.e., religion)) leads to (or equals) GREATER (or enhanced) COHERENT KNOWLEDGE which is countered or enhanced by one’s PROPER FOUNDATION which equals one’s Wisdom in it also then being undercut or enhanced by the quality of one’s inherent (previously acquired) Wisdom.

And relax, a “proper” foundation does not relate to an Ivy League school or a progressive over conservative or religious education. Typically that IS true, but it just seems like what is going on. A proper foundation (or education) t is actually any one that trains and allows one to think clearly and accurately. 

Obviously an improper foundation is one that trains or allows one’s thinking to be unclear and inaccurate. And yes, that too is up for debate, and mostly incorrectly. But that's another blog entirely. 

What seems to be happening all too frequently and world wide, is this form:

  I > W = LCK + pF = S\W

Too much or too complex (i.e., greater) INFORMATION than one’s inherent WISDOM leads to LESSER COHESIVE KNOWLEDGE which, when added to one’s POOR FOUNDATION then leads to STUPIDITY depending on how one's inherent Wisdom then interprets all that.

You'd be surprised at just how much information we receive on a daily if not hourly, or minute by minute basis, is too much information or too complex information for us to make any sense of at all.

And yet, we think we do understand it and some people delusionally believe they fully understand it. I've talked to more conservatives on that matter, who believed they fully understand things over that of progressives who seem to have a better handle on just how much we do not really understand. 

Getting back to it, information that is less than or equal to one’s inherent Wisdom leads to (or equals) less (or defective) Coherent Knowledge which equals one’s Wisdom being undercut or enhanced by the quality of one’s inherent (or previously learned) wisdom. Not to mention, learning is misunderstood by many. Simple knowing information is not "knowing" knowledge" One has to also correctly and sufficiently understand it. 

If you take in more information than you can handle either due to quantity or complexity (quality), at some point it's simply too hard to understand. Mix that with a typical American (new millennium) or western consideration of what one should be able to do and understand, and this can lead to a perfect storm of misunderstanding.

Consider you are talking to a physicist and he is talking at the top of his understanding. Do you really think you know what he is talking about sufficiently to go out and explain it? Now consider a child explains to you how a tow works that they just made from scratch. Couldn't you normally go out and explain that sufficiently to others? Well that is the situation in a nutshell. 

Merriam-Webster defines stupidity as: 1 "The quality or state of lacking intelligence or quickness of mind." 2 "A stupid act or idea."

In 1976 a Professor at the University of California came up with a set of five rules about stupid people. Carlo M Cipolla.

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Cipolla called this one the Golden Law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.

The uncle unable to stop himself from posting fake news articles to Facebook? Stupid. The customer service representative who keeps you on the phone for an hour, hangs up on you twice, and somehow still manages to screw up your account? Stupid.

This law also introduces three other phenotypes that Cipolla says co-exist alongside stupidity. First there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense. Cipolla imagined the four types along a graph, like this:

Basically I have always argued that stupidity is a chosen or selected ignorance. We are all ignorant and I've said for very long that is a noble state of being. We all have ignorance. It's selecting to remain ignorant, especially against all good sense, when you have chosen to remain ignorant and therefore are stupid. We've all seen situations where someone knew better and did something anyway and suffered for it and they were told they were stupid. 

If one believes something one should always be ready to upgrade the quality of a belief. Whenever we are faced with a reason to change and refuse, we have then chosen stupidity over intelligence. Ignorance is then completely off the table, it's gone. Thus, stupidity is a chosen or selected ignorance.

IF however you are stupid by nature, if it is your make up, your DNA at issue, then you have a mental challenge and it is out of your control to make informed decisions. Labeling a person such as that as stupid then is just mean and inaccurate. 

In my view to be stupid requires a conscious decision.

So, what does all that mean? 

In the end it's actually kind of simple...choose not to be stupid. 

Digital Dilettantes and Their Fundemental Misunderstanding

I was once one of those believers in “Information should be free." That was back at the beginning of the public internet in the 1980s before the web took hold in the 90s. But the issue really wasn’t not paying people for their efforts, their art, their genius. It was about what can be free being free. 

Information, should be free. Information that IS free, should be made free. Old information surely. Public information, absolutely, and so on. Government for one should be supplying citizens with all the information possible. 

An informed citizenry is far more productive for a nation, for the world, than an ignorant citizenry. 

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.

The current spate of dilettantes crying for “free information for all” have diluted the original meaning of the original intent of the phrase. To quote, as friend and fellow author Kurt Giambastiani put it in his blog recently, "Talent Just Wants to be Free: The Idiocy of Digital Dilettantes", there is a problem with thinking that all information should be free. Obviously, artists deserve to be rewarded for their talents and efforts.

Please feel free to go check out Kurt's blog that spawned my blog here as well as his comments there on this blog. Kurt always has something interesting on his blog. He offered this as an example of part of the problem with this information should be free issue: Income for US authors falls below federal poverty line – survey.

If information is made freely available to the general public, it will enhance the human experience overall. Certainly Public Domain works should be freely disseminated to the public, world wide. The downside is that some ignorant people will take in some of this information and yet remain ignorant as we have seen so much of lately. 

At that point those people are stumbling into the realm of stupidity in choosing to accept bad information merely to support bad information they already have. However, if we offer as much good and accurate information as possible, eventually the truth tends to win out. 

Supplying information leads into the same issues we see in the services industry. 

Why for instance does a mixed drink cost more at a bar than at home? Because you’re paying for more than the ingredients. You're also paying for the venue, the mixologist’s skills and knowledge, the server serving you so you don’t have to serve yourself, others of the public congregating in the venue, perhaps music or talent that is supplied, and so on.

So it is with supplying information to the public. 

Someone needs to package, store and disseminate it. The infrastructure leading to accessing that information needs to be monitored and maintenanced. Which is why I think the internet is no different than our roads and bridges and should be available to all to utilize them. If the government needs to pay (through us) to have and make information freely available online, then so be it.

Someone has to do it, and it needs to be done.

That is not to say that new information that has a cost. especially for individuals, musicians and artists, people who deserve to eat and live a good life while producing their works, should have their works devalued. Of course their works shouldn't be free and they should be appropriately compensated for the quality of their time and works.

The issue isn’t so much that these digital dilettantes are wrong, as they are misguided and perhaps being cheap bastards too. 

YES, information should be free and freely available to all. IF it’s free to begin with. At some point then down the long road of time it should become free. Free as in public domain. A concept I think we should retain after the death of the artist and perhaps that of their immediate family. As for the succeeding members of their family retaining rights, there are currently laws in place about that as well as their ability to retain those rights and so on.

We do need to push information out to all humans everywhere who want it and it does therefore need to be free. 

There are also other important considerations as has so kindly and eloquently (as always) pointed out by Kurt Giambastiani. 

Still, people need information to live, to eat, to survive. Artists and content producers do need to live and eat and survive. We just need to consider the context and not gloss over the issues like ignorant and greedy dilettantes.

Seeing, what is really there

This blog came up because of my trying to fathom the minds of extreme conservatives, Republicans of late, the Tea Party, Fox News, and well, that whole entire mess. In talking to conservative acquaintances, many things have come up. Not a few of which have left us both feeling in the end, frustrated.

I can't convince them to see my point of view, they can't convince me to see theirs. But, I have a few things on my side that tend to validate my views and opinions, more than theirs. That is to say, their mindset has a few downsides.

For one they watch Fox News, a notoriously questionable network due to their ridiculous concern of market share over news facts. They also don't try to verify facts very well, if at all. Instead they have a mindset that tries to verify their mindset. Not a bad thing per se, with the correct checks and balances, but they usually don't have those.

For myself, I'm not that attached to my view points. I'm attached to whatever verifiable reality actually is. Actuality over reality. I approach achieving my beliefs in a completely different manner, from what I can gather, than how they do. But enough of them and their intellectual down sides.

On my side I do have a few things going for me. Allow me to try and clarify....

When I was younger, I was very interested in the Cold War as I was on a path back then to a job within that insanity. I have now a certificate on my wall, signed by a government agency, thanking me for my efforts during that mostly behind the scenes, war of the wills, that from time to time left cold bodies along dark road sides. Sometimes bullet ridden, blown up in cars, or even as in one extreme example, poisoned by a signature plutonium micro-pellet riddled with microscopic holes delivered by the end of an umbrella device carried by a Soviet agent.

Even before that, my youth was a path straight into the field of espionage.

I had studied Martial Arts beginning in grade school. This was my primary orientation for the first part of my life. I was the one new kids got stuck with because I was a good trainer with novices and a good leader. I had to see what was, what they had, what they could handle, interpret that back to the ignorant, in a way that would move them quickly along. That laid a foundation for me throughout my life where I was a good team leader, accurate and effective. Bruce Lee, in this video (at 5:35) says that Martial Arts are a way to "express oneself honestly. Not lying to oneself...that my friend, is what you do." This was the foundation for who I was then and who I still am now.

In Junior High I was a Flight Commander in Civil Air Patrol (Wikipedia article) where we studied aerospace history as well as physically performing search and rescue missions finding downed aircraft in the Cascade mountains. I got my RadioTelegraph Operator's license, instructed cadets in my Flight in military march and drill and served (believe it or not), as a role model. I flew in small planes and landed my first plane in eighth grade at Tacoma Industrial Airport by Gig Harbor, Washington. I also took pilot ground school through our squadron. We were taught how to rely on what actually is, not what we believed in, but what we knew to be true in order to save and protect lives.

I was also on a private youth rifle team in junior high sanctioned by our local police department. I got my High School sports letter from three years on the Rifle Team. I was an illegal street racer. I got my SCUBA diving license (NAUI) in 10th grade. I took my first sky diving jump at seventeen, the only one to land on the LZ (landing zone) that day.

At eighteen I spent my first time with someone for a week, armed, acting as her bodyguard until she could leave town to avoid local organized crime related to a murder at the time and which I'm currently working on a screenplay about.

I spent the first part of my life studying, reading, watching, and talking to people about espionage, the Soviet KGB, our own CIA, and so on. Those studies included world wars, spy craft, history in general, and the rest that would entail.

At eighteen, I took Criminal Evidence for Police from a veteran cop at Tacoma Community College. For many years, that teacher had been the partner of famous retired LAPD officer turned novelist, Joeseph Wambaugh of The Blue Knight novel fame (and others), which lead to the seminal TV show. That class was the beginning of giving me a way to order up my thoughts that meshed well with how I naturally thought since I first began reading the classics, like Aristotle, in fifth grade.

None of that is bragging. I merely mention it as foundation for what I am about to say next.

I used to read only non-fiction espionage books by ex-spies and defectors, ex-spy leaders and ex-government officials from our government and others, both friend and foe. I refused to read spy books back then out of fear of it contaminating my catalog of information. A catalog that one day could save my life. I applied to the Tacoma Police Department at nineteen but they gave the available jobs to only minorities that year due to a new law that had just come into effect.

I went into the Air Force at twenty the next year as a Law Enforcement Specialist. Before I got out four years later, I applied to join the USAF Office of Special Investigations. When the OSI CO at that base asked me why I wanted to join them, I said that it was just a step in a path I was on and that all through my life, it was almost as if someone were directing me into this field (which is why I mentioned all that previously above). In the end, that Commanding Officer said that I had the highest score he had ever seen on an OSI entrance exam. Before and after the testing, I had many "interviews" with him until finally, I was accepted and given my papers.

In picking a base to be stationed to, when he asked what I wanted out of that career, I said I was hoping at some point to get into being a courier, or some other job like that which I might not at that time even know about. I said that while I am in the OSI I wanted to learn all I could about the job. So he suggested for me request being assigned to the base (now closed) in the Philippines called, Clark AFB.

That surprised me as I'd expected (hoped for) Europe or Asia, thereby closer to our primary foe, the KGB. I asked him why. He said that I if really wanted to learn all about the job, that was the place to go, because that base had the highest amount of theft of any of our air bases in the world. That was the place, he said, where I would have to fill out a lot of forms and in fact would learn all the forms in the catalog there. I just frowned.

I told him that although I appreciated that, it wasn't what I had meant. When he asked for me to clarify, I explained that I was more interested in field work than paperwork. I explained a little more and his eyes lit up with understanding.

"In that case," he said, "you'll want to go to Berlin." He said that in fact there was currently a job available there that no one seemed to want to fill, as the job has been open for a while.

I asked why. He said that the agent who had vacated the position, had been leaving work at the end of a work day, had gotten into his car, and it exploded, killing him. When I asked who did that, he just gave me an odd look. I shook my head not understanding but started to get the clue. He nodded as in, "you know". So I said, "KGB?" He tilted his head slightly, then nodded, which I took to mean that there was no knowing for sure, but that was the reasonable, accepted conclusion. So, no one wanted that job as no one wanted to get blown up.

Then he said, "If you want to learn how to deal with other agencies like that, then Berlin [in 1979], would be the number one place to go." Immediately, I said, "Sign me up." He said okay, and to come back the next day. I returned the next day and got my paperwork which I still have.

My life took a turn that winter and as it turned out, I got out instead, got divorced, and ended up going to college. Eventually, I got a degree from Western Washington University in Psychology in their Awareness and Reasoning division, and Phenomenology, with a minor in Creative Writing and script and screenwriting.

Now at this point, let me point something out.

I just said that I was initially vetted over a few months and accepted into the USAFOSI. But before that, I never did get to be a Law Enforcement Specialist. I was cut from that in Basic Training due to issues around my having flat feet.

The reason I am telling you this now is that disinformation, and misinformation, the manipulation of information without being fully untrue, is running rampant in our media and news media, our party platforms and political organizations, today. I could have told you when I mentioned my situation with USAF Law Enforcement, but in not doing so, I set that into your mind, to give myself more authority, even though I later took it back. This may sound like hogwash, but it does work when dealing with masses of people, in statistical relevance. We are being bombarded with this kind of thing, being manipulated like this, constantly.

Even though I never was a cop, an OSI agent, or a spy, up until the time (and after) that I got out of the Air Force and decided not to go into that career area, I had focused, studied and oriented my life toward that lifestyle.

Spies are scenario builders. They have to be, their lives depends on it. Even in the back of one's mind in that field, one has to consider all possible scenarios and play them out ahead of time, so that when whatever might happen, happens, you have hopefully previously considered it and have a plan of action set in mind. Sometimes what makes someone seem like a genius, is simply pre-planning or at very least, pre-consideration. That leaves you more time in not being surprised by unexpected elements and with more options available in a smaller amount of time, in a possibly deadly situation.

It was damaging for me to change my life course midway as I had. It made my life difficult for years after, but I still retained that format of analyzing information with the thought that my life may depend on my having the most accurate information at hand. I've been in many situations where I had to make a snap decision to save myself or others and well, I'm still here. And so are they.

The one thing that has been a guiding light to me in all my life has been in search and support of the Truth. My attitude generally speaking, has been mercenary. When I'm paid by someone or some group, when I decide to accept a position, I fulfill that position to the best of my ability. Who within that group I am focused on serving, is a sliding rule, because the mission and the truth, are what matter. But I don't want to explain all the ins and outs of that here and now.

In Psychology we were taught how to read and write Psychology journal articles for peer reviewed magazines. These are difficult to read (and write) and have statistics in them, which you also have to understand, as it's very easy to skew stats to one's whims. I had to take a year of Psychology Statistics for that and it was very hard and quite miserable to suffer through.

What is important to me in life, is not that I prove my case so much as to prove the right case, honing that case to what is the greatest truth that is possible to discover. I have never had a problem telling someone at work that a mistake was made and it was my fault. Other people after all, matter; I'm not all important, even if it costs me.

In the beginning when I was younger, I had no problem with doing the government's bidding; even if that meant fulfilling my orders in being directed to kill someone. I would assume there was good reason behind it. This is not an unusual mindset for any young military type.

As I got older and with all my reading and learning, I started to see that life is not like in the old film Westerns. Life is grey, many and varied shades of grey. I've grown up a lot and learned the hard way that what you think is true, may have merely been set up for you to think that way; so that it may seem like one thing, but really be another.

I also dove into and swam through the conspiracy theory thing back in my late teens. Once I first ran into that, realized it was a theory (or syndrome), I studied what it was all about, the theory behind a conspiracy theory, and the people who tend to fall for them. One needs to understand about conspiracy theories before getting involved in any one conspiracy theory. To understand that, you have to have a handle on information theory, crowd theory, a whole plethora of theories. When you understand that, you can pick apart much of the bad information we hear in the media today and more easily separate out all the better, the good information. When you understand that you can all the better also disseminate your own precisely flawed, targeted information.

That is something that the Soviets, the Russian people, were expert in. We learned much from British MI6 and their knowledgebase, which they shared with us and even more so at the end of WWII when the Germans ceased to be the problem and the Soviets rapidly became one. The Brits knew about a lot about that through the centuries as they were at odds with the Russians and various other European countries throughout history. We learned a lot from the Brits about all that, and they from the Soviets and the Russians before them.

The KGB invented disinformation. Something that our national news media and politics have been picking up on of late, esp., Fox News and the Republican and Tea Parties. Others too are picking up on it.

It's been my experience however that the shadier types usually learn this first and then the other sides pick up on it sheerly out of self-defense and eventually learn to turn it into an offense. At times our own CIA has even used it inadvertently against the American people when publishing to foreign press, but then newer news media naively filtered it back home. So it has been a hard row to hoe for the CIA over the years as they are accountable to us, even though it may not seem that way at times.

It is in having gone through all these things that I have mentioned here, as to why I have a good background for what I see and hear going on all around me in the world; and why I believe I have a good orientation and background for fathoming and sussing out what the truth is much of the time; even through our own sad news media.

However, I get it wrong at times too. One's insight is only as good as whatever information can be accessed. I try to access as much accurate and disparate info as possible, in the best journalist sense by attempting to find the greatest truths and any associated "truths".

In the 1990s I was a Senior Technical Writer. That required, especially on the high level IT teams I was assigned to, a fairly high degree of accuracy and effectiveness. Otherwise, you were out the door pretty quickly.

When I finally decided to seriously go into fiction writing I realized that all that wasted and now useless information I had assimilated on the KGB and the Cold War, wasn't actually that useless. Though the Soviet KGB is no more, it is replaced now by the Russian FSB. Maybe the data I had wasn't so useful anymore, but that style of thinking, of analysis, the scenario building, the vetting of sometimes dubious or misleading information, all port over quite well into writing fiction.

This article wasn't supposed to be about me. I'm pretty much beside the point.

I just thought I could use my outlook and background to point out how it can be different than what one might consider to be the norm. My point in talking about all this was simply to show how I see things, differently. But then I've been told that I see things differently, going back as young as I can remember. Most importantly, I just wanted to try to point out a way to look at all this. To try and explain it in another way, in the hope that it may open some people up to vet their opinions differently, to re-evaluate their assumptions; to be more careful and circumspect on their beliefs. Even their deepest held and most cherished ones.

So I put it to you that all in all, through all my education, orientation and experiences, going up against conservatives who watch Fox News, I think at least in general, I have typically have a somewhat better sense of what I'm talking about. I do try and I do frequently have a more accurate view of things than they seem to have. That's not to say they are always wrong; but not infrequently they just haven't vetted their outlook very well.

In the words of Robert Reich, "...test your assumptions, shake your assumptions."

One more little tidbit....

Where's all the information on the internet?

I wonder.

I've been trying to research something that happened years ago back in 1974, in Tacoma, Washington, and I'm having a lot of trouble with it. Like, is someone locking down all the online info? Sure there is still a lot out there, but it seems to me like there was more out a while back. Maybe there even is more out there now, but I used to be able to access more types than I can now.

All this talk about security and hackers, who are indeed out there but, how much is it a selling point to lock things down so we can be charged for it, for security reasons, for access, for info, for knowledge, for power?

He who holds the information holds the power. Is this a trend? Should we be worried? Is it too late?

I've been involved in many levels of security and technology in my life. I've been in the military, had a secret clearance, worked in keeping systems secure, learning about it, networking, I've been in rooms with people, talked to them, asked them questions, people who most of you will only ever see on TV. I see this from a variety of perspectives. Information should be free to people to better humanity. We need secrecy in some cases for purposes of national security. These both are true.

There is an old saying in the IT (information technologies or internet technologies if you like) world that you can have complete business or you can have complete security, but you can't fully have both. It's a continuing balancing act that by necessity slides from one end to the other, hopefully never being too far to one side or the other that in the end, that is dangerous for both endeavors.

Back in the 80s I was on newsgroups (remember those, pre WWW? before the "graphical internet"). I was one of those screaming that information should be free, the internet should remain free and open, knowledge should be free for the masses around the world. Well, to some respect, I've come around. Artists should be paid, obviously. So should writers, musicians, programmers, even software companies and certainly retail businesses but that's a bit different and not at all what I'm talking about today. Though that's all gotten a bit out of hand in some ways, too.

They started charging in the beginning for access to the internet (AOL, Compuserve, etc.). The web started up and took over and then ecommerce started up, which we were very against.

"Free the Internet", we cried. "Keep the internet free." Or more correctly, make it free. No someone has to pay for it, obviously, but free to just sit and use. As free as our roads and highways. Paid by most, used by all.

The internet should be free, as it was at the universities where we originally were accessing it from.

Well, we finally lost that battle, but then we saw the cool things coming up from it. There's some good stuff out there, buying online, saving our infrastructure (roads, gas, working from home, etc.), though now they don't want to support our digital infrastructure and make access to the internet free, or fast, or even, consistent. Or safe, but that's another matter.

And what about this "singularity" that could spring up, a sentient AI (artificial intelligence) that could one day come into being? We would have no control whatsoever over it. And it could do a lot, to everyone. Culled from so much of the nasty out there, what if it found God? God help us.

Fantasy? Thirty years ago, the internet was fantasy.

Now I’m starting to think that after all, we may have been right to start with. "Keep the internet free, information should be free." Certainly public information should be free, but not only free, but free to access. And, it's not. Now a days the term "free" has come to be relative. "Free" as long as you pay for it.

My brother had this to say recently:

Searches are getting weird. Things I used to be able to do easily are now almost impossible. Google used to put forth thousands of responses now I'm often getting just one or two. And some of these are of known info. Also, it's suddenly gotten stupid when it comes to simple misspelled words. For instance, before if I put in the phrase "Sitiacum Puyalup Indian Tribe", it would easily pick up on what I was looking for by associating the words. I could get everything wrong and it would still figure it out. Now it's barely picking these up at all. Sometimes not at all. Hopefully this is some oversight that will be corrected soon. I can't believe that they will let their system slide backwards like this. It creeps me out that I'm thinking about having to talk to actual humans to get info. What is this the 1980's?!

That last part was obviously in jest, but he has a point. Lately, and with my current situation where I'm trying to research something and can't find any useful info unless I pay for it, pay for a service that may turn up nothing and yet, they will still charge me; it's really making me wonder if we weren't right after all.

Knowledge does need to be free, for whoever wants it. Maybe though, we do still need to mature a bit more, maybe. Maybe not.

I just keep remembering "1984" and "Brave New World", and others.

As concepts remain, history and technology progress. That is, as we have an ideal remaining constant ("information should be free"), the world changes around that, and what that originally meant may change with it, and so we need to keep up. Our government, our elected officials need to keep up. Not to ground us down under history, or grind us under status quo, blinding us with Zeitgeist, but to maintain our ideals by evolving our processes to keep us at a qualitative level and to advance that, to progress us to where we never thought we could go.

We  should be getting smarter, with more leisure time but we are getting dumber, with less time for ourselves and more time devoted to the God Corporation, or Money. We don't need money so much, as we need our resources, clean and well thought of. Barring that we do need our money so we can do for ourselves. But we've been cut off from both.

We need apparently now, to justify and indemnify those who should remain or be responsible to see, that what should be, should be. And will be.

Decide where you should be in life and wonder why you aren't there. And vote with your ballots, your mouths, words, thoughts and actions. Be good to one another but strive for better. Set an ideal and try to achieve it in any small or big way you deem fit.

"Of peace on earth, good will to men (and women)." - "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" lyrics
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

Remember too, good will to yourself.

Peace.

Avoid Being a Conservative. Or a Liberal?

This is what I find so annoying about the Conservative mind set. They don't think it through.

Definition of Conservative: "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change."

You do realize what being conservative indicates? Fear.

Conservatives need to realize how destructive that attitude can be. To retain the status quo requires you to have to change.

The only thing that never changes, is change. To remain as you are, changes you; and the status quo you desire, as counter intuitive as it is, changes you.

That is in great part, the problem with our county these past years. A culpable misunderstanding of what people believe.

But to be too liberal, is also bad.

The issue really is a lack of information, ACCURATE information, and consideration.
Issues, require thought. And accurate information.

What I've been seeing is people adhering to fear, a lack of having or seeking, accurate information, and a desire for things to remain the same. Which in itself is dysfunctional and destructive.

Embrace change, but embrace sculpting that change. Because embracing status quo, which is what Conservatives are all about, is killing us.

The problem is that considering change, considering helping change is fear evoking (there's that fear again, be brave). Considering change means that you have to take responsibility and know something other than going to work each day, watching sitcoms at night, or reading books that aren't good for you anyway.

Once you accept that change is necessary, in fact, it's unavoidable,  then you have to consider what to change and conservatives don't want that responsibility. Because it's so easy to be wrong and God knows they don't want that. What's so funny about that is that in the end, they are typically wrong anyway. So why not be wrong while evoking positive changes?

Why not? Because then they'd be considered "Liberals" and God knows they can't have that label.

But I don't consider myself a Liberal, or a Conservative. If anything, an "Intellectual", because I use my intellect, what little I may have, to make decisions. Therefore I take in the most accurate information possible to me, supported by various and different and disparate sources. Sources that don't always agree with one another. Then I make a decision, act on it, and accept the responsibility for being, sometimes, wrong.

But that's why we have a democracy. Because the more informed a citizenry that we have, the more the chances of our making more right than wrong decisions.

So, don't be afraid to make changes. Just get informed first. And don't select only the information you want to believe in, but the information that is the most accurate, as supported by multiple and disparate sources. And then, act.