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Upgrading the purpose of Memeverse.com

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

So far this site has been nothing more than a personal blog that served as a bin for anything I want to express that didn’t specifically fit any other sites. While I will continue to use it for that purpose, albeit erring towards more professionalism, I am expanding its purpose into a wider presentation of myself and my projects.

“Daniel Memenode” is the alias that I have adopted some time ago for my online identity across multiple venues. It is a kind of personal brand that I am more comfortable with using than my real name.

“Memeverse Media” is a name for all of the projects that I am doing online. While that may seem a little superfluous it has multiple purposes. It’s a brand that I can use to represent all of my work online in an unified manner, such as through this site. It is a convenient shorthand for all my projects. And it has personal meaning to me. Not only does it represent an “universe of ideas”, but it helps me think of my projects not as a necessarily disparate collection, but something with a particular direction to pull towards. It’s basically like the name of any other business or company which has multiple products, but a single brand associated with all of them.

I’ve done something similar before with “Libervis Network”, but the difference is that I assigned a rather limited set of meanings to that brand. It was meant to represent projects related to “digital freedom”, mainly free open source software, creative commons and such. Another difference is that I treated it as if it was an entity in some manner separate from me, but owned my me, which is a common but silly fiction.

With “Memeverse Media” I’m being open ended and more individualistic. I don’t consider it a fictional entity, just a name for all of my projects online, not something pretended to be separate. “Memeverse” seemed like a logical name since it has a great meaning and ring to it and has served as the name of my personal blog for quite a while.

So in addition to being my personal blog this site now also serves information about my projects and services, which is after all still fitting for a personal blog. There is a page outlining my current projects and a page with the services I am currently offering and examples of prior work (yet to be finished). I will also, in addition to typical blog entries, post references to articles and other material I create elsewhere on the web. So if I publish a new article on Nuxified.org I will post a reference to it from here. Same for any other of my sites.

This way the memeverse feed truly becomes a feed that represents me on the web, the way I see fit, which should help build better relationships with my readers and customers. In other words I’m unifying my web presence under one identity and one brand. :)

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She dreamed a dream… and it came true

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

What a meme this is! I haven’t seen something quite like this in a long while. First, my dad who visited us briefly in our apartment mentioned that there’s a video on youtube of an old woman singing professionally like Celine Dion. It was interesting to hear, but I soon forgot all about it. There’s all sorts of interesting stuff on youtube.

But what an interesting coincidence, or perhaps a testament to how incredibly powerful this was for so many people to the world.. I accidentally stumbled on the video in question. I was looking for reviews of a book on self improvement with introspection exercise I’m following (“How to finally find what you love to do and get paid doing it” by Brian Kim) and on one blog where I found it, one of the entries was “5 Feel-Good YouTube Videos” which claimed that “any one of them could make your day” and that “you might choke on your own happy hormones”. I was somewhat skeptical as I tend to have a general dislike of cheesy meaningless feel goods in a sense that they’re like drugs which wane away and wont make you permanently happy (knowing who you are and becoming the full of your potential would).

The image linking to the first video portrays this ugly woman (sorry..) and I clicked expecting something cheesy and perhaps boring..

Oh boy was I wrong. The video in question is of Susan Boyle achieving her dreams in a dreamy song called fittingly “I dreamed a dream” and literally helping possibly up to 100 million people in the world become genuinely inspired, hopeful and more open minded in these gloomy times of crisis. It is like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly in all its glory, a flower in the middle of the desert of cynicism, like some sort of a miracle. Well see for yourself:

Susan Boyle

That video was viewed almost 40 million times so far and there are other uploads getting millions so far. That’s just youtube though. As linked from the video’s description there are already numerous fan sites. Even Wall Street Journal blogged about her. I hear there is an album for sale, the only album she ever made, for incredible $1000 USD (due to high demand no doubt). This lady is an instant super star and is quite possibly gonna quickly become quite wealthy, as she deserves.

What’s so special about her though? When I step back I realize that she certainly is not unique in her talent in that there’s a lot of singers out there with great singing talent. What’s so special about this is that against all odds she was persistent, she applied again even after she was turned down before for talent shows like this. This shows courage and belief in yourself and unwillingness to see failure as the end. She knew what she had. She had a dream and when this chance was given to her, she achieved it in a blaze of glory. Her path towards this was probably difficult due to her looks.. which says something about the society we’re living in, but what was on the inside far outweighed what was outside. This context makes for a story that enamored millions and gave her the fame and possibly resulting wealth that she can now enjoy, in the middle of the economic depression, dispensing inspiration to others as well that no matter who you are, if you know yourself, be yourself, you can make it.

Some people say her talent is god given (or even go as far as imply that she’s an angel from heaven, human capacity for hyperbole is certainly amazing). I don’t believe that. Her talent is all her. It should be insulting to ascribe all achievements of an individual to a mythical entity and thus rob the individual of his credit and inherent worth.

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“This is John Galt speaking…”

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

After being referred by a friend who is reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand to a speech made by a character in the novel called “John Galt” I’ve searched and ultimately stumbled on this series of videos which present an incredible dramatization of John Galt’s speech. For the sake of viewing convenience and because I think it contains so many ideas that I desperately wish the world of people to hear I’ve embedded all parts of the series made so far below. :)

Ayn Rand is usually credited as the originator of the philosophy of objectivism and had a lot to do with promoting the ideas of capitalism. She was not a voluntaryist which is evident from a brief part of this series where her character John Galt speaks of the proper role of government being only to defend against initiation of force, which is effectively the minarchist view (as close as one gets to voluntaryism without still entirely rejecting the idea of needing a coercive monopoly for anything). I don’t believe there needs to be a coercive monopoly on defense because that would mean forcing all who would want to compete in providing this service out of the market therefore making those who are supposed to merely defend against initiation of force, THE initiators of force themselves.

And while I’m at the few disagreements that I have with Rand, I have to mention I’m not entirely confident about objectivism either, at least according to my limited understanding of it as what seems to be a rather absolutist view of reality that might leave too little room for subjectivism. On the other hand I can come up with no real criticism for anything that is said in the Galt’s speech presented in the videos below as far as the philosophy goes and I realize that my acceptance of subjectivism goes only to the extent of accounting for the fact that each of us may perceive reality in somewhat different ways, have different preferences and so on.

In either case I can find no disagreement to the assertion that a human individual, his or her nature and belonging life, liberty and property are the beginning of all exploration. Before you can know the universe around you, it helps to know yourself and dare to be yourself without clearly self-nullifying delusions getting in the way, much of which is greatly explained below. So I’ll quit my babble and encourage you to click that big play button below. Give it a chance, you might just be hooked to go with it to the last part. I’ll update the post as the author uploads new parts.

Enjoy and.. think.


Part 1.


Part 2.


Part 3 & 4.


Part 5.


Part 6.


Part 7.


Part 8.


Part 9.


Part 10.


Part 12. (he skipped a number it seems)


Part 13.


Part 14 (with spoilers!).


Part 15.


Part 16.


Part 17.

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Think twice before you endorse violence

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Before I go to sleep, here is something to ponder:



So in short, if you would say to me that government must be there to provide ANYTHING you will essentially be saying that you want to force me, by the threat of incarceration or death or any other kind of violence, to buy the service that you want.

At this point any statement which calls in the need for government to do something is equally disgusting to me as a statement like “I would like to rape you or hire someone to rape you every day”.

Now think about that before you go on to march for your pet “cause” like “free government healthcare for all” or “net neutrality legislation” or “proprietary software should be illegal” (yes, that’s for you Richard Stallman).

Statists disgust me.

Good night

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Moral science?

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

If I piqued anyone’s interests with my previous entries maybe I can start this one with an open ended question. Do you think there can be such a thing as moral science?

To define it, it would be equal essentially to physical or biological science in that it would describe universal processes that go on in the world or within a specific set, like human beings.

A moral science would thus describe at the very least, a framework according to which to determine how ALL people form their morals and at most determine the actual morals that are universal to all people.

It is important to distinguish this from the imposition of ones morals on to others. This would not be the objective of moral science anymore than it is an objective of physical sciences to impose ones arbitrary idea of why objects attract each other on to all others to believe. It is about observing, hypothesizing and then testing the hypothesis.

Someone attempted to create such a scientific framework already. I’m not sure he’s the only one (probably not), but he’s the one who caught my attention. He is Stefan Molyneux and his theory is called “Universally Preferable Behavior“. I’ve read Part 1 where he explains most of his theory and I have to say it’s quite interesting. Stefan Molyneux is quite an unorthodox and somewhat controversial philosopher with a bit of a cult following. My assumption is that the latter is due to him being one of those easily impressive people with leadership qualities that tend to, intentionally or not, attract a little too much zeal from those impressed. I’m not a big fan of personallity cults, but it’s no reason to completely dismiss the man and his ideas. Often the best and most revolutionary ideas have been brought about by most controversial of persons.

But I’m not necessarily making up my mind about whether UPB is a valid moral science theory or not. By default I do subscribe, to an extent, to moral relativism if not because I believe that morals are always subjective and cannot be a part of predictable patterns, then because I don’t yet understand such patterns. Just because something hasn’t been discovered yet, doesn’t mean it wont be, and attempts like the UPB are thus worth paying attention to.

One thing I continue to believe as strongly as ever though is this. I can hardly go wrong if I adopt only a single moral principle, or just The Principle if you wish, a “prime directive” to use trek-speak: non-initiation of force. Whether one is a moral absolutist or a moral relativist if both can agree that at least we wont force each others beliefs and morals on to each other we can make tremendous proggress as we continue to journey through life and explore the world and our beliefs.

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The merger of realities

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

A little upgrade on last entry. I’m just trying to get this stuff out of my mind.

Taking the assumption that reality is relative to you while at the same time believing in the distinct possibility that this subjective reality of yours is based upon the absolute reality outside of you, what do you do when you are trying to convince someone that what you believe is real? Well, of course, you debate, but if both of you are assumed to have different realities then it would make sense to identify the commonalities between them.

You define the terms you use to make your claim and seek agreement from your partner on those terms. By this process you are identifying a common paradigm according to which you would judge your arguments, like defining the rules of the game. Once they have been defined and ones argument breaks them, their arguments must be taken as failing.

And I believe most people who would call themselves reasonable and are privy to scientific method would almost universally, take two things into the common paradigms: internal consistency (no logical contradictions) and empirical consistency (no contradictory evidence from reality you both defined as such).

Also it is crucial to ask questions. If you’re in doubt about whether you’re “on the same page”, that your subjectivie realities are in misalignment, nothing can detect and solve the problem better than questions. You ask your partner; so do you think this is or this isn’t? Ask questions until you understand where he’s coming from and can then see if you can match where you’re coming from with it or dispute the entire framework of thinking.

A relativist described previously would possibly just call the whole debate an illusion, but who cares about them relativists. ;) More reasonable ones would say this is a merger of realities, because in the process of pinging the reality of another you are identifying the common points and thus seeing evidence of reality that is beyond only your subjectivity, but is actually objective to both. That’d be more sensible, if you ask me. And yes, that belief reflects my own subjective reality and needs to be understood if anyone is to continue debating reality with me, among other things. :P

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Exploring animal rights

Monday, October 27th, 2008

I sometimes get into heated discussions with my (former) friend regarding my belief that all human action must be voluntary and that therefore we should have no coercive government (instead each individual should govern himself). We rarely agree on any point and never agree on our paradigms. Right now I even doubt whether he has a consistent paradigm due to his apparently absolutist relativist thinking, but I digress (and absolute relativism may be a good topic for some other entry).

One good thing that I take out of the recent debate is my curiosity about the issue of animal rights. Since my last blog entry effectively posits that rights are inherent in being what and who you are rather than something given by others it does not in principle discriminate between species. It applies to every thing and every one in the universe. In that entry my focus was on humans though and here I want to focus on animals.

The basic premise of the previous entry was that if one was capable of something one must have the right to exercise that something so long as it doesn’t deny another to exercise his own capabilities. To deny the existence of this right is to deny the existence of this capability and since it is what makes one what it is, it means to deny its existence as such.

According to this, an animal which is alive has the right to live. If it is capable of marking property as its own it has the right to property. If it is capable of barking, running, crying and doing anything else it can do, it has the right to do all these things. The logical conclusion would seem to be that if a human denies and violates any of these rights, even while professing to be a voluntaryist like me, is not being consistent OR is suffering from what my (former) friend called “specieism” (an equivalent to racism) where I believe only humans can have rights even when I see the evidence that others are capable of having rights too.

Then the only way to keep voluntaryism consistent with itself, without falling into specieism, is to either prove that a given animal is not capable of having a particular right which we habitually deny them.

Driven by that I started a discussion thread on one of the voluntaryist forums and also with a friend on IRC. I posed this as a potential threat to logical consistency of voluntaryism. What we concluded is something that I apparently overlooked. I even hinted at it in an above sentence where I mentioned being “capable of having rights”. It is the issue of demanding rights.

A human may exist as a human only so long as he can exercise what makes him human, including demand. If we look at history only those who cared about rights and demanded and defended them have ever been admitted to them. Otherwise their humanity was suppressed by other humans.

A definition of “demand” could be useful. According to wiktionary it corresponds to a need, desire, claim for something, an urgent request or an order. A demand for rights, that is the recognition and respect of self as such then corresponds to a need, desire, claim, request or order to be recognized as yourself.

Are animals, then, capable of demanding their rights? I think the answer depends on whether they recognize their own rights to begin with, recognizing their own capabilities and what makes them themselves. In other words, it seems to come back to the question of whether they are self-aware? If they are not even aware of themselves as what they are then they don’t even recognize their own rights as part of who they are and are thus incapable of demanding such recognition from others. This is why most animals also willfully aggress on other animals and why humans which fail to recognize their own rights also tend to fail respecting the rights of others. Such lack of recognition results in violence.

It is hard to answer this question with absolute certainty, but given what we can scientifically determine so far is that animals aren’t self aware in which case the capability of demanding rights is not a part of who they are and thus granting them to live or do anything that they are instinctually driven to is up to anyone in their vicinity, whether it is another animal or a human. This is what makes it possible for a human to own an animal and let it do some things while denying it to do others.

This is also consistent with the known and widespread belief (even among non-voluntaryists) that only sentient rights can have rights. I think I understand better now the basis of this claim. The emphasis is on can. Whether they can or can’t depends on whether they are sentient.

This said, every individual decides for himself what sights or acts does he prefers more or less and I would say I don’t like the sight of a human torturing animals. I therefore reserve the right to ostracise everyone who does this. Animals might not be capable of having rights, but I am capable of feeling disgusted when they are being hurt for no good reason and based on this disgust I can make or break my relationships with other humans, at least this way, through non-forceful action, sending a signal to them that I don’t approve.

And like with everything in the free market, the more people demand of others not to do something less people are likely to do it.

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