Communications: Parable from the Old Man Labs on tape this morning: When you think about it, the parallel between how human being operate at the personal information processing level is very much like the design of a radio receiver.
Except, perhaps, while the radio design we speak of here is usually the super heterodyne variety, the humans might be characterized as the super hypeodyne variety. Yes, we receive and act on hype.
Both receiver-types have optimal designs and there are some very useful parallel concepts to be understood to better manage our personal thinking and performance – whether radio or the human – as we target peak results.
(Continues below)
To begin with, though, a few bits of basic information are useful.
The first concept is that noise is additive. We could go into how inter-stage noise in couple amplifiers work, but it’s a simple enough term that it should be apparent.
Like the kindergarten (or grade school) exercise where kids sit in a circle. The facilitator, or teacher, whispers something (usually a short story of a sentence or two) into the ear of the first student.
This student, in turn, passes the information on to the student on their other side, whispering it, as well.
As you would expect, the “story” that comes out after 20 – or more repeats – is usually TOTALLY different than the “seeded question” given at the beginning.
This is critically important to understand when looking at media and your computer.
If you want to base your life on “closest to source” information, you need to be extremely aware of this repetition (or in radios amplification) distortion factor.
Take a typical “news” story and you can see how this works. The story about third world sh*tholes is a dandy.
What the president actually said was to the effect “Why can’t we get more immigrants from Norway and Asia?”
The crooked media – in their zeal to prosecute Trump (or is that persecute?) simply though deliberately dropped the mention of Asia.
This done, the repetition error was free to run amuck. By the time it was repeated and then misquoted by media experts, the story first went “Trump thinks Haiti is a sh*thole” to “Trump wants just immigration from Norway.”
And this – after more distortions fanned by anti-Trump sentiment instilled by dark forces – simplified at the other side of the room to “Trump is a racist.”
The grown-ups in the room see it…but the PROBLEM is that over half of the voters are only going to head the distorted message at the end of the repetition cycle.
It’s an axiom of public relations design that “People tend to remember the last thing they heard on a topic” – which I don’t know if you’ve heard before, so there it is.
That’s one problem.
But now, let’s consider the additive noise contribution along the way.
In a radio receiver, we can observe (and measure) noise at every point in the design. Let me run through a few of them for you:
- There is antenna noise.
- There is first amplifier noise.
- There is mixer noise.
- There is more amplifier noise.
- There is detector noise.
- And there is audio (amplifier) noise.
Signal noise analysis has an analog in how you and I live in the hypeodyne world.
First there is “antenna noise.” We trust the media to faithfully report simple stories and concrete facts. But, as the “sh*thole” adventure teaches, malicious editing abounds.
The news antenna design itself is prone to picking up unwanted noise. A source example would be Dick Durban who was playing a filthy political agenda by playing the race card, made possible by mentioning Norway but not Asia for his sickly partisan agenda. By feeding the already malfunction news antennas of the northeast – which are noisy devices already, he is tuning the hypeodyne for party and perhaps personal gain…
Then there is our first amplifier distortion. Simply thought of by where the story places on key “repeater” websites like Drudge. Top story on Drudge distorts the amplitude of the signal making it stand out, or not.
At the other extreme, Bitcoin has just broken critical support and is likely headed down to the $6,000 range as a result. We rather expect this will be important but since the media (antennas) aren’t passing on that signal people in the main are oblivious to the tulips collapsing there.
The media antennae are – just as in radios – directional in nature. Thing is, most people don’t realize that simple fact. So as the media looks in one direction, the real meaningful data is often in another direction.
The useful radio analog here is the directional antennas such as the Yagi (Uda) beam, cubical quad, or the (hope you have the real estate) rhombic antenna.
Then there is mixer noise as we follow the signal path.
In a radio receiver, a high frequency signal is mixed with a local signal to result in a third signal – the desired one, which will then be further amplified and processed.
What are your personal mixer analogs?
Well, you have friends, social media, colleagues at work, people at the gym, folks at the store, relatives, and everyone who texts, calls, speaks, writers, or otherwise changes how you process an event like “sh*tholes.”
Now you have a “signal” that you personally amplify. This kind of amplifier noise comes from your childhood, life experience, and so forth. If you have been raised a minority in America, you’d amplify the (distorted, maliciously edited) signal from the media antenna differently than if you were a) hearing the complete quote with the further context. And colored by examples of racism that you’d personally experience because yes, racism is still existent in the world today.
Detector noise is that what you think about the “sh*thole” story will depend on what the other pressures were striking you on a particular day. If you’d been in a traffic accident when the story broke, it would have little to no importance compared to getting insurance quotes, filling out the accident report, making sure you didn’t get a whiplash, and so on.
And then once once all this is amplified with all this damn distortion adding up along the way, we get to the audio noise analog.
In other words, once it has come of the screen, or speaker, what are you going to do? If you watch passively (as we try to do) little further distortion occurs. But actions taken here (re-actions, technically) will then form a feedback loop back to the antenna (the media) which is why riots happened in Ferguson, Baltimore, and what have you.
To us, it is just a matter of looking clinically at the source-media-influencers-amplifiers-detector distortions along the way. But, people unaware that they are in very real terms acting the part of “predictable little information processors” will be subject to easy tuning (manipulation) all the time.
So, as a thought model, we prefer to think of ourselves as high performance triple-conversion super heterodyne analogs than unaware little hypeodyne receivers.
As your class project this morning, here’s are some “stories being whispered” to the class of hypeodyne trainees this morning:
STUDY: Worst-case ‘global warming’ scenarios NOT credible…
Trump wall: President’s view on Mexico border has changed – Kelly
President Trump’s Use of Executive Privilege Has Been Likened to a ‘Gag Order’.
And from our favorite directional antenna of all? Tech workers flee US, blame Trump.
Drop by tomorrow for another lesson in “Hacking social programming.”
This is why engineers – intuitively understanding linked stages by their training – tend to think more rationally than liberal arts majors. Simple, huh?
Write when you get rich,
George@ure.net
But to discount the premise “News Sells”, where else would Ure hours of “stirring the pot” become the substance for your “meaning of life in the piney woods”?
You gain access to Ure passion of radio waves by using the assembled components of a device that allows Ure thoughts to process Ure sensory inputs from said device’s outputs. Were it not for Ure Engineering/Scientific/”possibility of woo woo”influenced thoughts, Ure daily “muse” could well become NOTHING other than the “cut and paste”, unsubstantiated dribble that you so Very Much..Love 2 Hate!
And on that note..a few “cuts and pastes” from moi:
I. (Major premise)—Rattlesnakes frequently bite when enraged, and their bite is poisonous.
II. (Minor premise)—This snake before me is a rattlesnake; therefore
III. (Conclusion)—This snake before me may bite when enraged, and its bite will be poisonous.
Fallacies of Prejudice.
But perhaps the most dangerous of all fallacies in the search for truth on the part of the most of us are those which arise from the following:—
(1) The tendency to reason from what we feel and wish to be true, rather than from the actual facts of the case, which causes us unconsciously to assume the mental attitude of “if the facts agree with our likes and pet theories, all is well; if they do not, so much the worse for the facts.”
(2) The tendency in all of us to perceive only the facts that agree with our theories and to ignore the others. We find that for which we seek, and overlook that which does not interest us. Our discoveries follow our interest, and our interest follows our desires and beliefs.
The intelligent man or woman realizes these tendencies of human nature and endeavors to avoid them in his or her own reasoning, but is keenly conscious of them in the arguments and reasoning of others. A failure to observe and guard one’s self against these tendencies results in bigotry, intolerance, narrowness, and intellectual astigmatism.
Spoken with an engineer’s clarity!
“actual facts of the case”…supplied to you and I by …who….which in my estimation IS the problem with any conclusion made….take for example the fact that 3 steel buildings fell to earth ,caused by a fire…of which in ALL of recorded history of steel building fires..NONE ZERO NADA ever fell to earth…just 3 in NYC…must be the water that caused that FACT to gander the conclusions that have been given to , YOU and I….imho
2 were hit by planes, one was not, but all 3 fell in their own footprint from fires, I got ya. Controlled demolition, was what it was. Planned, rigged, and all 3 pulled. A triple billion gain for Silverstein, and a 13 year trillions of dollar war for the neocons so they could remake the Middle East in their own image and the warning is they are not quite done. More to come.
I have become so cynical about the information flow that I generally ignore as much of it as possible. It has come to a point where I listen to first hand accounts only when they are available. This so severely limits info input that I am not really informed, but that hardly matters as I have no clout with anybody other than closest friends, so que sera sera.
The waters of insanity are rising around us. Have your boat on standby and pray somebody can find the drain plug soon.
I pretty much quit watch in..channel to channel the same crap every time. Much of which is way off course from what reality is.
First…Bitcoin has rallied to nearly $12,000. My friend now daytrades Cryptos. Coinbase has a USD wallet that allows you to store your cash when you sell high and then within seconds buy when they hit lows. He has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in just the two months he started doing this. He manages my money too, but I am a bit more conservative, yet am satisfied with my earnings of low six figures to date. Cryptos are a game of highs and lows. Don’t listen to the hype. Embrace it and make money off of it.
Second, Trump does bring this hyper anti-Trumpism on himself. In all fairness, Fox blasted Obama daily. Obama just ignored it mostly. Oh yes, he had his occasional outbursts, but Obama didn’t go as far as Trump to canonize CNN the way Trump praises Fox News.
I am sick though of CNN, MSNBC etc. being obsessed with stupid stuff. Who cares about his health for instance? I don’t believe Trump is at all racist, but I do believe because of his upbringing he is not as racially sensitive. You can say that about everyone that grows up with privilege. My theory is that Trump wants Trump to always be in the news. He purposefully stirs the pot with contentious, controversial tweets and statements and then sits back and watches himself on TV and says.” My TV ratings are up today”.
Good stuff George. :)
I wondered how the researchers determined that worst case climate outcomes were not possible. Answer: they left out the possibility of positive feedback loops. Unfortunately, that is where most of the worst case outcomes live…
“One wild card not taken into consideration by the new model is the possibility of rapid shifts in climate brought on by the planet itself.
“There is indeed evidence that the climate system can undergo abrupt changes or ‘tipping points’,” Cox told AFP.
The collapse of the gulf stream, the thawing of carbon-rich permafrost, or the melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica — any of these could quickly change the equation, and not in the Earth’s favour.”
Seems like a classic case of looking for your keys under the lamp post, cause that’s where the light is best.
No worries – one nuclear winter will set it all right.
I don’t think we have a nuclear winter to fear. NK leader is impulsive but he’s not stupid. My thoughts are he’s bright enough that he realized his country has a great deal of mineral resources. Looking at other countries that had resources that was coveted and how those countries fared when they said no. Is only using this threat to point out that if that sector thinks they will just march in destroy their country kill the citizens so a few can take what they want. That he’s nuts enough to drop it in their own back yards.
Kind of like a bear getting big and threatening looking to scare off predators or a cobra puffing up its throat. Go ahead this snake will bite. Leave them alone back away and they’ll settle down. But if you decide to go for it they’ll bite and scrap.
Wow..what a great book.. Its been years since I read about Rousseu..
I think our politician’s could maybe learn something from his philosophical ideals of government.. Oh well wishful thinking..what was it dad always said.. Wish in one hand Sh!t in the other and see which fills the quickest.
I think ill make sure I don’t wait so long to add Rousseau on my regular reading list.
I think the border wall is stupid to. Its just a symbol to say no crossing. The Berlin wall was useless to.
If you sincerely want to close the borders to those seeking to settle here illegally. Then you have to be tough on the ones tempting them to come.
Impose the same kind of laws that drug dealers get. The assets of any company hiring illegal imagrants is seized the management staff and board of directors imprisoned not the ones hiring fine them. Those hiring are doing so via orders from the top. Here they do alcohol stings to stop the sale of alcohol to minors. They send in a minor buy the booze if the clerk sells it to them the clerk gets a thousand dollar fine the business a ten thousand dollar fine if it happens more than once the license to sell is pulled. Tberes also jail time involved. Do the same thing. You seize a multi million dollar corporation all their assets first fine them second seize and jail time. My guess is some CEO that makes a million a year wage sure does my want a group of inmates doing the rockem rodeo on his caboose.
Make sure there aren’t any benefits for anyone illegal available.
The same thing with renting ..so far slum lords pray on these people some having to pay ten to twenty times going rent.
No work no food no give away programs they will head back home
The other option .. One I am not a fan of and wouldn’t ever want to see imposed is. Go Adoph on them. You sure didn’t see anyone trying enter illegally there. No one would want to come. To spend billions on a symbol is stupid.
Where there is a will there is a way.
With all the media, the constant coverage and all the “hype”, the amount of real, actionable news is what, 10% of it all? Filters are important or people will just get too involved in the nothingness that is the news cycle.
“over half of the voters are only going to head the distorted message at the end of the repetition cycle.”
That’s what is bothering me about these so-called democracies worldwide. When I consider the variety of opinions only in my own family … no need to elaborate. ;-) Who is fooling whom when about democracy?
THIS is why, whenever a news story catches my eye, I trace it back through the Internet to its source. If I’m unfamiliar with the source, I’ll research to determine (his, her, its) political leanings.