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Rafe Furst — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:02:27 +0000

Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription, The following story is true, I've just changed the names and told it in parable form. The material numbers and circumstances are roughly accurate, and Alice is a friend of mine who may tell the story herself on video here soon...

A True Story

Alice was feeling particularly poor at a certain time in her life and because of this she was under a lot of stress, Levitra samples. Her friend, Bob, Purchase Levitra online, was a billionaire many times over and he disliked seeing his friend in pain and so he wrote her a blank check and said, "Alice, whatever amount you cash this for, it will relieve me of the burden of figuring out what to do with it, buy Levitra online cod. Will you do me the favor of accepting this gift?" Alice was stunned because she knew she could have cashed the check for Million and Bob would not have missed it at all. And she knew Bob was sincere in what he was saying, Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription.

Alice was overwhelmed with Bob's kindness, Where can i buy cheapest Levitra online, but instantly relieved of the stress. It was a big decision though, how much to take, and Alice didn't want to make it hastily, Levitra over the counter. She put the check in her safety deposit box at the bank so she could sleep on it. But she still hadn't figured out the answer the next day and so the check remained there. Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription, This went on for a week, eventually a month. Online buying Levitra, Bob didn't mention the check and while Alice thought about it every day, the amount of time she did so diminished. Life has a way of crowding out unnecessary thoughts, and despite Alice's financial difficulties, Levitra price, there were other realities that needed more attention. Alice knew she'd get to it soon enough and wanted to choose the right amount of money to accept, Where can i buy Levitra online, both because it was important for her future, but also out of respect for Bob's gift.

Twenty years later, Alice was very successful financially (and otherwise) and Bob asked her to meet him, where can i find Levitra online. Bob was under some stress because a relative of his had fallen on hard times and was in desperate need of cash, Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription. Bob knew his cousin was too proud to ask Bob for help and was thinking of how he could give the money to his cousin anonymously without the cousin figuring it out.

The amount of money to give was an important detail, Buy Levitra from mexico, but Bob was stumped, so he asked Alice's advice. "Alice, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, buy no prescription Levitra online, but my memory isn't so good anymore and it was a long time ago that I gave you that blank check, but I can't for the life of me remember how much you cashed it for. Buy Levitra in canada, Would you mind telling me so I have some idea of what an appropriate amount would be for my cousin?"

Alice smiled, "Bob, I'm happy to tell you, but first I need you to understand that what you gave me that day was the best gift that anyone has ever given me, order Levitra online c.o.d, for which I am eternally grateful. Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription, And because your gift has allowed me to become successful and realize my dreams, I've been giving similar gifts to those around me who I know will be similarly helped by it. Also, Buy Levitra online no prescription, I think it's time I return what you gave to me that day, after all it's been 20 years...."

Bob began to protest; he didn't want the money back, he just wanted to know what amount to give to his cousin, but Alice ignored him and reached into her wallet and came out with a check, buy cheapest Levitra. "Here's the check you gave me that day. I never cashed it. Order Levitra, I don't know what the right number of dollars is for your cousin, but the right amount for me was zero."

Angels and Devils

While true, this story is also an archetype. It appears in many forms we are all familiar with: The Wizard of Oz; music lyrics; the Bible; and so on, Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription. What I like about the version above is that it's particularly relevant in these times of financial hardship and uncertainty about the future, where can i order Levitra without prescription. It helps us realize that sometimes what we think we need most is really an illusion, preventing us from seeing how we can be living right now the life we want for ourselves in the future. Rx free Levitra, Quite often in American society, the illusion happens to be money or time. But it's different for all of us. Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription, For many it's an immature egoic construct -- an emotional mechanism that served our needs as a child (e.g. I have to clean up my room for my parent to smile and play with me), purchase Levitra online no prescription, but which fails to mature and keep pace with our lives.

One form of emotional immaturity is overgeneralization -- we unconsciously apply childhood mechanisms to situations which are more nuanced. Buy Levitra no prescription, Just because I had to achieve a clean room for my parent to reward me with one particular outward demonstration of love, doesn't mean that I now must achieve career success to deserve the love of my spouse and friends. Yet so often, that's what it boils down to, australia, uk, us, usa, canada, mexico, india, craiglist, ebay, doesn't it. Or if not exactly that, some variant in which parent, spouse, friend is replaced by society, church, God, child, and so on, Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription.

These immature emotional constructs become scripts which we memorize as a child and we shorten into mantras that go through our minds subconsciously thousands of times a day, Online buy Levitra without a prescription, even as we get older. Cleaning my room yields affection, but I wanted to play with my toys instead, so I got scolded and it made me feel bad, order Levitra from mexican pharmacy, and maybe that means I am a bad person and I don't deserve love, and if I want to not be bad and thus deserving of love I need to do something that I don't want to do or that I fear, Order Levitra no prescription, and so I don't do it, which brings me back to that feeling bad about myself, and so on. Ultimately, Levitra pharmacy, it just becomes mantras: I'm a bad person; I don't deserve love; I'm afraid of failing; etc.

Mantras are the emotional version of the music that gets stuck in our heads and reverberates. Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription, They color how we feel in the moment and how we perceive the world around us. Buy generic Levitra, They can be devils or angels, depending on their form. They lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe we need more money, buy cheap Levitra no rx, then indeed, we need more money. Levitra from canadian pharmacy, But the devil is always in the details. It's not the money that's the problem, it's the conflict between money and "more", Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription. Money is finite, more never ends. The illusion is complete and we become blinded to the more nuanced reality, buy Levitra without a prescription.

The Safety Net

We are born with infinite possibility to create the lives that we want and it is only through the scripts, mantras and illusions we spin that we become distanced in time, Levitra for sale, space, and emotionally from most of them. We are all both angels and devils, the distinction itself being just an illusion we create. Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription, And just as we can become reconnected to the world of abundance by presuming it exists, we can protect ourselves from becoming fallen angels with a safety net.

The key is, remembering that the safety net is equally as real as the illusion. The yin does not exist without the yang. The need for more money does not exist without the perception that what we need is different than what we already have.

Alice shared her story with me two months ago, and I have been telling it to many people since as my way of paying it forward. If you feel inspired by her story, please pay it forward by sharing a safety net story of your own in the comments. It doesn't matter how trivial you feel it is, others will be inspired by it who you won't ever know about.

Alternatively, if you know someone who needs inspiration, tell them the safety net story they need to hear most, right now, whatever it is.

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Rafe Furst — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:52:43 +0000

In A World of Goodies Buy VPXL Online Without Prescription, , I tried to explore the implications of creating a currency based not upon scarcity but on abundance. The concepts in that piece were only half-baked and I'd like to bake them a bit more here. I'm hoping you will help.

The first task is to make the sharp distinction between the economics of scarcity and the economics of abundance. Books could be written on the topic, VPXL over the counter, but I'll sketch what I mean and hope you get the basic idea. All economic theories you are likely to have heard of are based on the assumption that we live in a world of scarce resources. Commodities markets allocate those resources based on price equilibrium, but in the end the market does not actually create any new value. The supply of oil in the world, for instance, buy VPXL no prescription, is already set, Buy VPXL online cod, and it's limited. As we approach that limit it becomes scarce, and the price (i.e. marginal value) goes up. More fundamentally, VPXL for sale, with a limited resource, Where can i find VPXL online, my acquisition of it precludes you (or anyone else) from simultaneously having it. From a value perspective, it's a zero-sum game: if I win, then you must lose, buy generic VPXL.

If we assume there are resources that are not limited, Where can i buy VPXL online, but rather are abundant, then an amazing shift occurs. Such resources cannot become scarce (by definition) and thus the price/value of those resources does not rise the more they are "consumed". In fact, it's just the opposite. The value of an abundant resource increases the more it is consumed. This is the so-called network effect. The very first telephone was worthless and it only became worth something when it was connected to the second telephone. The more telephones were added to the network, online buy VPXL without a prescription, the more valuable each pre-existing telephone became. Order VPXL online c.o.d, You will probably be objecting right now that there's a limit to how many telephones can be created since the raw materials are finite. And you will probably also note that the added value in going from two phones to three phones is smaller than going from zero to one; in other words there are diminishing returns. Both are true statements, but miss the crucial point that if the universe is more abundant than it is scarce, then the fundamental rational economic motivator goes from competition and acquisition to cooperation and giving. Let me explain by example, australia, uk, us, usa, canada, mexico, india, craiglist, ebay.

I was scheduled to meet with Stephen recently and as the meeting time approached I realized that Kim and Jose (whom I'd been meeting with just prior) would benefit from meeting Stephen and joining the conversation Stephen and I were about to have. I also felt that Stephen and I would benefit from the inclusion of Kim and Jose in our conversation, so I invited them along. At the close of our four-way conversation Stephen took a book from his shelf and gave it to me as a gift. He said that, based on our conversation, I would probably get a lot of value from it. As I prepared to stuff the book into my backpack, I noticed Kim and Jose straining to get a glimpse of the title, and I lamented to myself that there was only one copy available when it was clear that all three of us would benefit from it if we could. So I took a picture of the cover with my iPhone and emailed it to Kim and Jose so that they could locate a copy and enjoy the book at the same time as I did. In doing so, I also happened to connect Kim, Jose and Stephen via email. Prior to that they only way they could get in touch with each other was to go through me, Buy VPXL Online Without Prescription.

One great thing about information is that the cost to replicate it asymptotically approaches zero, Online buying VPXL, whereas the cost to replicate physical materials approaches some value greater than zero. Just look at what it would have cost to get a physical copy of the book for Kim and Jose vs the 30 seconds of my time that it cost to snap the photo and email it.

But more importantly, information has this other crazy aspect to it: giving away information (unlike physical objects) does not diminish its value; more often than not, purchase VPXL online no prescription, giving away information increases the value of that information. There are exceptions to this rule, Where can i buy cheapest VPXL online, of course, but on average this is true. (At the least, this is an empirical assertion that can be falsified, buy VPXL from mexico, and you are invited to explore whether it holds true in your experience or not). VPXL from canadian pharmacy, The question that I'm trying to answer here is what would it look like for a currency to be based, not on a scarce resource, like physical materials, where can i order VPXL without prescription, but on an abundant resource like information. Order VPXL from mexican pharmacy, It's hard for us to even conceptualize an economy of abundance because our brains evolved in a time of relative scarcity. Furthermore our thought patterns, beliefs and models of the universe have been colored by scarcity through the lens of culture. Science is not immune to this bias either, as I've suggested before on this blog, rx free VPXL. Buy VPXL Online Without Prescription, So to help with the mind-shift necessary to explore the world of abundance, I'll ask you to observe that the constant injection of energy from the Sun into the Earth's biosphere eventually gets converted, at least partially, into value that drives our real-world, present-day economy. That oil came from fossils of living organisms, grown and nurtured by the Sun. I will leave it for another time to argue for why value-creation is pervasive in the universe, and not just a function of where you draw the system boundary (as sunshine hypothesis implies). But suffice it to say, if you grant me that value is created by the Sun and converted into a form that drives our economy, then we can proceed.

By the sunlight hypothesis, Buy cheap VPXL no rx, it should follow that, on the time scales that matter to us humans, there is at least one truly abundant resource: energy from the Sun. If you are worried about a billion years hence when sunlight runs out, buy no prescription VPXL online, then I doubt we will ever see eye to eye anyway…. VPXL price, It also follows from the sunlight hypothesis, and the arguments I've sketched above, that the information economy that is so widely talked about, VPXL pharmacy, truly is an economy of abundance. And as more and more human activity is devoted to the creation, Buy VPXL without a prescription, spreading and sharing of information, the more our "real" economy becomes based on abundance.

It may be true that we will never move entirely away from material needs and scarcity economics. But regardless, order VPXL, as a percentage of the total real economy, Buy VPXL online no prescription, we are on a trajectory that suggests that the vast majority of economic value will be backed by abundant resources rather than scarce resources.

In other words, if we were to imagine a currency of abundance, order VPXL no prescription, we'd also have to re-imagine what what happens when the "federal reserve" for that currency grows all by itself (or if you prefer, Buy VPXL in canada, as the sunlight pours in). In such a world, in order for the currency to represent the true value in the economy, we'd be forced to print new currency on an accelerating basis just to keep up. A currency of abundance is a very different beast than the currencies of scarcity we know of today, purchase VPXL online, which is to say all of them. Instead of runaway inflation being a bad thing (as it is with currencies of scarcity), VPXL samples, it's actually a great thing, something to be desired, and something worth striving for, buy cheapest VPXL.

I know that last sentence is going to lose a lot of people. And I understand why, because it is hard for me to fathom the implications too. It means redefining just about everything, including what it means to be human. It begs the question of what is the true nature of "value", Buy VPXL Online Without Prescription.

One thing I've gleaned about an economy of abundance is that it begins with the gift. In particular, it replaces the basic transaction of a scarce world -- I give you something if and only if you give me something in return of equal or greater value to me -- with the unilateral action in which I give you something, and expect absolutely nothing in return.

There's so much more to say here, but I will leave it at this for now. I had choices about what information I would reveal to you when I told you the story of the book. One of those choices was whether or not to reveal the exact identity of the individuals in the story. Another was to reveal the name of the book that Stephen gave me. It would have cost me a lot less to share both pieces of information than the benefit you would receive by knowing them. That is, the act of knowledge transfer could be viewed as a gift to you that I chose not to give. As an important aside, that very same act would have benefited Stephen, Jose and Kim as well. And it would have benefited me. And yet, I didn't. Why not.

There's lots more about that meeting and the events leading up to it that would benefit you and many other people to know. Time is valuable precisely because it's scarce. In the end, it may be the only scarce resource we humans depend on. I could spend all of my time giving you gifts of information and thus have no time left for myself.

Just before the meeting, Jose and I were at a bookstore and he gave me a book (not the same one as Stephen gave me though). It was at least the fourth time he'd suggested I read it, and since I hadn't yet (despite my stated and real desire to do so), he bought it for me right then and there. And because I trust Jose, I bought a copy right then for each of Stephen and Kim. Here's the book.

The Process

Rafe Furst — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:02:27 +0000

A True Story

Angels and Devils

The Safety Net

Alternatively, if you know someone who needs inspiration, tell them the safety net story they need to hear most, right now, whatever it is.

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Rafe Furst — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:52:43 +0000

The Process

Rafe Furst — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:02:27 +0000

A True Story

Alice was feeling particularly poor at a certain time in her life and because of this she was under a lot of stress, Levitra samples. Her friend, Bob, Purchase Levitra online, was a billionaire many times over and he disliked seeing his friend in pain and so he wrote her a blank check and said, "Alice, whatever amount you cash this for, it will relieve me of the burden of figuring out what to do with it, buy Levitra online cod. Will you do me the favor of accepting this gift?" Alice was stunned because she knew she could have cashed the check for $30 Million and Bob would not have missed it at all. And she knew Bob was sincere in what he was saying, Buy Levitra Online Without Prescription.

Angels and Devils

The Safety Net

Alternatively, if you know someone who needs inspiration, tell them the safety net story they need to hear most, right now, whatever it is.

The Emergent Fool » Infinity

Rafe Furst — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:02:27 +0000

A True Story

Angels and Devils

The Safety Net

Alternatively, if you know someone who needs inspiration, tell them the safety net story they need to hear most, right now, whatever it is.

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Rafe Furst — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:52:43 +0000

The Process

Rafe Furst — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:52:43 +0000

The Emergent Fool » Infinity

Rafe Furst — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:02:27 +0000

A True Story

Angels and Devils

The Safety Net

Alternatively, if you know someone who needs inspiration, tell them the safety net story they need to hear most, right now, whatever it is.

Buy VPXL Online Without Prescription

Rafe Furst — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:52:43 +0000

The Process

Rafe Furst — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:22:32 +0000

Imagine a multiverse, infinitely infinite. There's just infinity. Or if you prefer, nothing. There's no space, no time, no matter, no energy. There's no structure whatsoever, and nothing "in" any of the universes that make up the multiverse. it's not even clear whether these individual universes are separate from one another or the same. But since our minds seem finite and we have to start somewhere, let's imagine them as separate: an infinite collection of universes with nothing in them, no dimension, and no relationship between them. Now lets assume there is some process for picking out universes from the multiverse. Since there's no time in the multiverse, the process has no beginning and no end. It's like a computer program, but it's infinitely complex. Let's call it The Process. If The Process is infinitely complex and has no beginning and no end, what can we know about it? We know that it picks some universes but not others, which effectively creates an "in group" (all those that are picked) and an "out group" (all those that are not). Of course, both sets are infinite and still have no structure. But note that all the universes in one group or the other now stand in relation to one another. That is, they share the property of "in-ness" or "out-ness", and between the two groups there's the relationship of "different". The Process further divides these sub-multiverses in unknown ways, and this sorting creates other relationships between universes. You can visualize a network of universes with the connections representing these relationships. The network is infinite, and if you consider any subset of the network, it's also infinite. But these subnetworks are no longer arbitrary, they are networks themselves and networks have structure. And since a subnetwork by definition shares the same connection relationships as the original network it is a "sub" of, the subnetwork is structurally similar to the network itself. That is, the network is self-similar, which in mathematical terms means it's fractal. Of course this fractal we are talking about is infinite, and so wherever you start, it's turtles all the way down, and all the way up. Notice that the process of identifying subnetworks does something interesting, it creates an asymmetry that wasn't distinguishable before. For any network N, if you choose a subnetwork, n, then N "contains" n but not vice versa. This containment relationship can viewed as a network where the connections are arrows, meaning they have directionality, N --> n. You may have noticed that we just went from talking about a network of universes to a network of networks (of universes), but that's okay. Remember the multiverse is infinitely infinite, and we're just chatting about some arbitrary aspects of it. There's lots of other aspects we could talk about instead, but it's starting to get interesting here, so let's continue.... Somewhere in the fractal multiverse network of networks described by The Process there is a subnetwork (actually an infinite number of them) where the structure is like this: each universe is connected to by only one other universe but connects to an infinite number. Let's call this structure, Time, and note that there are an infinity of subnetworks of the network which have this Time structure. Unless stated otherwise, I'll be talking from now on about networks with Time structure. Remember though, the multiverse itself has no structure; The Process overlays structure on top of it and thereby allows us to know about things like Time. Now let's start using the words network, system, particle, entity, agent and universe interchangeably, so we can say things like "time network", "temporal system", "particles over time", and "A causes B" to refer to roughly the same thing. I realize that by overloading these terms I'm jacking into (and hopefully hijacking) your intuition about what these words mean, but that's my intent. Hopefully you'll continue playing along by my rules and try not to project what you already know onto this alternative cosmology. When we use the words network, system, particle, entity and agent, you might wonder whether we are talking about a universe or a multiverse. The answer is Yes. Remember, the multiverse is infinitely infinite and self-similar, so in some sense we can say it contains itself. We have a hard time with infinity so this concept is mind-boggling, but if you follow the logic, hopefully you'll accept this paradox as true. So lets just use the word universe from now on and forget about multiverses. And to not get confused, let's refer to what we used to think of as the Universe as the known universe instead. The known universe is where you live (or more precisely where you think you live) along with everyone and everything you know about or can imagine. The known universe is expanding the more you learn about it. The known universe is temporal. And as we know from Einstein, it must therefore also be spatial -- remember it's not space and time but rather the spacetime continuum. The known universe consists of particles (i.e. matter) and therefore -- also thanks to Einstein -- it consists of energy. Time, space, matter and energy here may or may not be totally in sync with our intuitions of them, but just suppose they are the same thing and that our intuition is slightly biased by our particular experiences in life and could use adjustment. We haven't really talked explicitly about laws of nature, fundamental constants, invariant equations or even mathematics. And I kinda jumped the gun when bringing Einstein into the equation (so to speak). But it's really hard to follow a line of thought without some sort of logical paradigm, some structure of thought. In the end it doesn't really matter what I'm saying, what you're hearing, or whether any of this is "true". I'm just telling you a story, and hopefully it's amusing enough for you to finish reading. Originally we talked about The Process, which is infinitely complex and which describes all sorts of possible realities. The known universe is one of those possibilities, one in which we see structure and patterns, order and complexity all around us. Somewhere "out there" there may be portions of the multiverse (whoops, I said I wasn't going to use that term anymore, sorry) where it's still appears, unstructured and thus unknowable. But let's come back to the known universe and the "knowable" universe. Because of the fact that we are here in the known universe thinking and talking about it, and not in some unknown or unknowable part, the non-random patterns that we see may look to us like universal laws (E=mc^2, the second law of thermodynamics, etc.) Well, we know that even these laws are not truly universal, they apply to only certain scopes. For example, "relativistic but not classical or quantum realms", or "closed systems but not open systems." String theorists are looking for universal laws, but so far none have been found. But let's just grant them that they will eventually find some (or one). How would we be able to distinguish between a true Law and just a pattern that is very very persistent over all known scopes? How about we stop using the word "law" and instead replace it with the word "principle" to suggest that it may really just be a pattern that we see in the known universe. And as the known universe expands via our increase in knowledge/understanding/awareness, we might find exceptions to the pattern. After all, that's what's happened to every "law" ever considered in the history of science so far, and why should that pattern stop? (Sorry, my paradox detector just went off, let me reset it....) Coming back to principles, there's one that emerged from the last few paragraphs, did you notice it? Cosmologists call it the Anthropic Principle, which is the notion that the universe appears ordered in the particular way that it does with these nifty laws and constants because of the very cosmic coincidence that we are here observing it! In other words, we live (and can only live) in the known universe, by definition. And we wouldn't be "here" and able to "notice" anything if we were in some unknowable part. That's a pretty trippy concept, but one that many physicists take very seriously. It's the same kind of argument as for why we haven't been contacted by aliens yet: there's a decent chance we are the most advanced intelligence out there and we'll have to wait for others to catch up so we can communicate. It's also the reason that your keys are always in the last place you look. Remember the Anthropic Principle because it's really useful. It has the same logical structure as Darwinian evolution and other "emergent" phenomena. Is this Generalized Anthropic Principal (GAP) a universal/fundamental one? Who knows. Probably not. We anthropic agents are so self-absorbed. Another principle that emerges from our cosmology is Coherence. Because of The Process, birds of a feather flock together. Actually, The Process defines which birds are of which feather, so this is a tautology, though it's fun to think of it as "like attracts like". But we know that really it's just co-incidence: the birds exist at the same Time. Using the analogy of birds, we can ask whether these coincident birds are different birds or the same bird. But it's a silly question because the answer is Yes. Think of quantum coherence, if you like. Now let's say we are talking about particles and not birds, and instead of Coherence we'll say Gravity. Isn't it the same thing? We talk about stars and planets and other astral bodies as if they were coherent entities, but If there were no gravity, would those entities exist? Or let's talk about the Cooperation of the cells in your body; without it, would you exist? We've all heard about the "law of attraction" from The Secret, isn't it the same thing? You imagine the future you want, and that acts as a beacon guiding you in every decision you make, every micro-decision, every unconscious action until at some point you find yourself living in the future you imagined. Coherence, cooperation, attraction, unity. Same thing. Here's a secret: there is no Process. Or if you prefer, The Process is completely random. Yet that doesn't change anything I've said above. Think of it this way: in an infinite series of random numbers, all patterns appear eventually, right? So "somewhere" in the infinite randomness, The Process "produces" the structure I've been talking about. Or maybe the fact that we're anthropically talking about it produces the structure. We are The Process. Or more generally, we humans are part of The Process. The Process is the universe.