Mothers and fathers.

Spaketh the logs :

Framedragger: (Just complained to Taleb about him using Medium. This whole “scrape article right after it’s published because the unicorn it’s riding on may go really go down soon” is a bit stupid. On the small off chance that he replies with a request for a suggestion to be considered, I wonder if there’s anything to actually be suggested. need to search for a bit (I’m certain he wouldn’t fuck around with MP-WPi unfortunately)..)
mircea_popescu: Why’d he have to ? Deploy one for him, and him passwords. Explain how to make backups (even if it’s a dump-db-encrypted-to-key script you throw together) and that’s it. And before anyone asks : the advantage of this is that this solution scales. ACTUALLY scales.ii Specifically, if at any point in his own time and for any reason in ~his own domain~ Taleb wants to get more control, he can. he actually can. you explain to him, when he asks, HOW to be more in control of his MP-WP install. in terms of configuring the php script, or in terms of configuring the apache server, or in terms of configuring the linux install, or the linux kernel, or in terms of VLSI and baking his own hardware. THIS is the important thing, and the only thing that matters ; and this is the fundamental reason we hate, equally, and forever, medium, blogspot, whatever the fuck. “Convenience” my right foot. It’s never convenient to be stupid, and it is absolutely never convenient to be locked into being stupid. It is admirable to compensate for his ignorance or disinterest, to the perhaps extreme level of doing the hardware, and the OS, and the HTTP server and the PHP on top of it yourself, if you like the guy enough. More power to you. But it is still something of his, which even if delegated he still owns. This is how a father acts. It is contemptible and beyond contemptible to rely on his ignorance, disinterest AND COWARDICE to get him on a windowsesque thing which “works”, and provided he’s willing to adapt what he wants done to what the butons say, all will be well. This is how a mother acts, and why kids have not much business with her past the age of about 10 or so, depending how retarded they are.

Framedragger: Gotcha. (And agree). I still dream of easily-reproducible systems, though. But one way to abstract away the idiosyncrasies (of say WordPress) is exactly what you said: another person.
mircea_popescu: Hey, I dream the same. But the truth is, until there’s enough critical mass of those “another persons”, there’s no good way to fix anything. Theoretical fixes only work in theory.

Framedragger: Well, I’d go so far as to offer some free support to Taleb, unfortunately I’m not in his WoT; will see…
mircea_popescu: Until and unless, we’re stuck doing the communion favour for each other, whereby the hope is that someone in the Republic will be capable to summarize something you don’t understand ; and you can trust he’s not fucking you over in so doing. Because no, the difference between Pete explaining in summary how the fuck cars got fucked and you giving the keys to working WP to Taleb is not substantial. What you’ve both done is – summarized a familiar topic for the benefit for foreigners. And this is exactly how working school fucking works, also. And why kids ask “why” universally across time, space and culture ; and why idiots answer “because that’s the way it is” out of fucking line.

There’s fortunately or unfortunately little else to add to the emphasis-added lines contrasting motherly and fatherly parenting approaches than that it personally rings oh so very true. As someone who’s worked with both of his parents on a daily basis for the better part of a half decade – each highly successful in their own right yet vastly different in management styles – the contrast between the hands-on father and nudging mother is all too real, too profound, and too influential on the final products of both the children and the businesses.

If there’s any defense of the mother’s approach, it’s that it aims to foster self-determination, or at least the sense of self-determination, sooner. So if you sink instead of swim by her hand, it’s only because you didn’t teach yourself how to swim fast enough. Or so the theory goes. In practise, of course, there’s no drowning allowed. Didn’t you read the sign ? So sure you’re dropped in the deep end to fend for yourself, but you’ll always be nudged back to safety. Contrariwise, by your father’s hand, it may be decades before you feel self-determined, and in the interim you may pine daily for more responsibility, but when you do finally crack the nut, it’ll be because you’re actually self-determined and you’ve earned it.

The issue with the mother’s approach is that both her and your footprints always need to be side-by-side in the sand, even if she’s just treading lightly alongside, and this is fundamentally and biologically unsustainable. Contrast with the father who plans for one set of footprints to eventually carry on alone once having both sets becomes more of a burden than a benefit. The mother was built to carry infinite burdeniii and becomes addicted to it. It’s hard for her to let go. The father, he’s just enjoying the ride as much as he’s shaping the men of tomorrow.

Not that either wants the party to end.

___ ___ ___

  1. Mircea Popescu’s WordPress v2.x. You’ll have to ask him for a copy if you want one.
  2. Spaking of relevant logs :

    mircea_popescu: Something (convenience, anything else) is correct if it scales, which is to say is derived from the prime mover. Anything else – incorrect. Sinful is also a proper attribute of incorrectness, because it is literally a headless spawn of the very devil.
    davout: Not sure I really get what you mean by “it scales”. If you bundle lots of shit, it quickly becomes unmanageable because all abstractions and conveniences have a cost.

    mircea_popescu: Not so. I can go from everything I do in an infinite string of correct whys to prime logic. Broken shit can’t do that.
    davout: What’s “prime mover” in this context?

    mircea_popescu: Possibly your idea of “scales” is tainted by the idiots, “to scale means to be used by a larger cattle headcount”. That has nothing to do. To scale means to go up the abstraction tree. An apple is a correct apple if it scales, ie, if the concept of apple follows from it. Literally the Aristotelian imperative. The first thing to have moved.

  3. Eg. childbirth.

7 thoughts on “Mothers and fathers.

  1. Iirc there’s a patched version available, I don’t recall if bv or phf are maintaining it.

  2. Ben Vulpes says:

    The infinite burden doesn’t necessarily have to end at ten. One could fashion a life outside of the asylum and that’d be enough work for as many humans as you care to throw at it for as long as the party goes on.

    • Pete D. says:

      Sure, but just to play devil’s advocate, at what cost to the world outside the asylum is that second life fashioned ? Why shouldn’t the burden terminate when the youngest chiltlin’s 10 ?

  3. […] the answer was further than I did because I didn’t quite go far enough. Thankfully mother Mircea saved my ass and planted me right where I needed to be so that the show could go on. After a […]

  4. […] particularly during those tender and impressionable early years.i It’s into the world of your mother and father that you were born, even if young boys and girls imagine that “it’s different […]

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