An analogy with tech

I was thinking about the similarities between the groupthink in the political sphere and its equivalent in the consumer technology sphere, and it dawned to me that I could more easily explain the political conundrum if I illustrate the problems in the technological equivalent, which might be less emotionally charged, at least for some parts of the audience.

So, let’s see the stereotypes.

1. An iPhone user is a stupid sheep who blindly follows trends and will pay more money for an inferior product.

2. Android is for people who want to customize their device.

3. Android is for poor people who can’t afford an iPhone.

4. A Mac user is a stupid sheep who will buy the overpriced shiny toy because he’s so stupid even Windows are too complicated for him.

5. Windows machines are virus-ridden, unstable, blue-screen-of-death displaying boring gray box.

6. Mac is for creative people, Windows are for accountants.

7. Windows are for poor people who can’t afford a Mac.

8. Linux is for poor people who can’t afford Windows.

Need I go on?

Now, let’s go through the list.

1 and 2: There are many reasons why one might want an iPhone. One is because he really is too stupid to understand that there are alternatives. Another is because he’s too busy doing whatever is his day-job to fiddle with a device, and just wants something that works reliably. His day-job might be “astrophysicist” or “doctor”. He doesn’t have either will or time to fiddle with a phone or to install an alternative kernel. He just wants speed, reliability, good build quality and, occasionally, he wants to run very specialized apps that are available for it. Someone who will “customize” his phone is more likely than not to live in his mom’s basement, because that’s the profile that’s likely to waste time on non-productive shit like that. If you have things to do, you use the phone to make calls, to google something or to find your way around on a map. You’re too busy operating on people’s brains, designing a new rocket engine, analyzing data from the Kepler telescope or getting that call informing you how that million-dollar deal went through. If your phone is all you have to deal with in your life, you’re either a phone designer, or someone who has too much spare time on his hands.

3: Yes, in many cases people who opt for Android phones find iPhones to be too expensive. That might be because they are poor. On the other hand, they might just want to buy something good but affordable and not too fragile for their kids. Or, they might decide that the iPhone just isn’t worth the premium; it does basically the same thing as a much cheaper Android phone, so why would you overpay for the same functionality? Essentially, you may have several good options and once you’re satisfied with the fact that any of them will do a good job, you pick one based on both preference and estimate of cost-effectiveness.

4: Yes, there are people who buy a Mac because they find Windows too complicated (although, it is difficult for me to figure out how that is possible, since both systems are more-less equally trivial to master). On the other hand, there are people who will buy a Mac because Apple’s laptops have great battery life, great screen, excellent touchpad, or because they can run open source tools via macports or homebrew, allowing them to have access to the same toolkit they would have on Linux, but with better reliability, better battery life, less bugs, and with the ability to run Adobe apps. Those are excellent reasons, and it’s easy to understand why one would get a laptop from Apple, and in fact it might explain why Apple laptops are outselling everything on the market, and why they are especially popular with technology and science professionals, who certainly aren’t using them because they find Windows intimidatingly difficult. I, for instance, migrated to a Macbook Air from a Thinkpad running Linux five years ago, simply because it was thin, light, had a great battery, had an SSD, and one of the best displays on any laptop. Also, it ran Unix natively and I was so at home with Linux command-line tools I would have great difficulties re-organizing the things I do in a way that was doable on Windows. So, the options for me weren’t Windows or OS X, but OS X or Linux, and I couldn’t run Lightroom on Linux.

5: Windows machines exist in a wide range of price, capability and performance. Yes, there are the basic Windows boxes, both laptops and desktops, that are indeed quite cringe-worthy. Then again, I’m writing this on a i7-6700K PC, with very high-end components, and it’s incredibly fast, it’s as reliable as a toaster, and my monitor has the same LG-Philips matrix as a 27” iMac, only with matte coating, so I get no reflections from the window beside me. Essentially, it’s the performance equivalent of a 6-core Mac Pro, with a better graphics card, better cooling, and at half the price. Basically, it’s as far from being a bland beige box as you can imagine. In most things, it’s equivalent to an OS X machine, except for the fact that I have to run a virtualized Linux machine in order to get the Unix functionality that I need. That’s less annoying on a desktop than it would be on a laptop, but essentially, the reliability, ease of use, performance etc. are so similar between the two I don’t really care which one I use. I do have a mail archive manager that works only on the Mac, and that does determine my preference in part, because although I did write a proof-of-concept portable alternative in Java, I would hate to write and maintain something that already exists and works great, and I wouldn’t get paid for the work. I have better uses for my time, honestly. As for the viruses, I have a simple rule that had served me well so far: don’t click on stupid shit. As a result, I don’t get viruses. The last time I got a virus I was running Windows 98 or something, and it happened because I mistakenly clicked on something. I do use an antivirus, as a precaution, but honestly, if you’re having problems with viruses, you’re more likely having problems with porn sites and stupidity.

6: As for Mac being for creative people, I used Windows 3.1 for desktop publishing with Ventura Publisher software in the late 1980s, I use a Windows machine for photo editing and writing books, I even used Linux machines for photo editing and writing books. I can basically make anything work for me, and if I’m not counted as a creative person, nobody will meet the requirements. This thing about Macs and creative work is basically propaganda. Windows machines are used by some 95% of all computer users, which basically means they are used by both the most creative people and by most accountants. It’s just that creative people tend to configure their machines differently, that’s all. A programmer will have different requirements than a photographer or a graphics designer.

7: Try configuring a dual-Xeon 24-core, 128GB PC workstation with two Titan X Pascal graphics cards and tell me it’s for poor people who can’t afford a Mac. I personally can afford a Mac laptop because it’s good, and I can’t afford a Mac desktop because it’s worse than my machine and for more money. Essentially, I can’t afford overpriced, underperforming shit of any kind.

8: Since Linux runs basically on all servers everywhere, and since Google uses it on all workstations for their developers, there are obviously good reasons for very rich people to use it in a production environment. If you’re a developer, a good Linux distro might be the best thing to have on your desktop in terms of getting things done efficiently, basically being able to use your desktop as a test-environment for the software you’re developing. Personally, I prefer having the Linux development and testing environment virtualized because Windows makes better use of my hardware, but it’s a matter of preference and I could very easily see myself running Linux on the hardware and doing everything from there if it became more convenient for some reason.

You can see how there are many reasons why someone might have a certain opinion, reasons that differ significantly from the stereotypes. One might use something because he’s too stupid to know better, and another person might use that same thing simply because it works better for his usage case. One person can have a certain political attitude because he’s stupid or evil, while another person can have a very similar position but on a far higher intellectual octave, because he knows much more than you do, has better insight, greater intelligence and, in the end, you might not have any arguments that could disprove his. So tread lightly. The leftists can’t fathom why anyone with IQ over 150 would vote for Trump or have political opinions in the right political spectrum; due to their stereotypical understanding of the opposition they are facing, they are simply unable to either comprehend it, or to argue against it, or do anything constructive about it whatsoever, which leaves them with the option of smearing fake blood on their faces and chanting slogans. This doesn’t differ greatly from the shock some people experience when they get to know an IT expert and a technology enthusiast who uses an iPhone. It’s not that the concept itself is unfathomable, it’s just that they painted themselves into a corner with their closed-minded stereotypes and inability to understand different positions and scenarios.

On anti-Trump protesters

I’ve been observing the anti-Trump protests in the USA, and here are my observations.

First, protesting the result of the elections is inherently anti-American. The American way is to have the whole circus during the campaign, but when the elections are done and the results are known, the circus stops, the losers concede and everybody pledges loyalty to the winner, because the winner now doesn’t represent only his political option, he represents the will of the people and the nation itself. To protest the election results, not because there is doubt about their validity, but because your candidate didn’t win, it’s the property of the third world, of questionable quasi-democratic countries who are manipulated by various foreign-funded interest groups. With these protests, America basically joined the third world and became a banana-republic.

Second, the protesters are not really protesting against Trump, they are protesting against America and everything it stands for. They are ripping and burning the American flags, raising the flags of Mexico and communist movements, they are openly Marxist and, essentially, their main objections to Trump is that he is pro-America. Essentially, I don’t know how those people even have American citizenship, but for all I know, they might not.

Third, Trump is defamed in the same way the neo-Marxists traditionally defame their strawman opponents. He’s basically their list of politically incorrect things – he’s racist despite the fact that he was praised for hiring a record amount of blacks, he’s sexist despite the fact that he treats women wonderfully and his daughter is the shining star of American business world, he’s basically whatever they don’t like, backed by lies and nonsense. Essentially, those leftists are completely irrational.

Fourth, there’s that aspect of not being able to understand how someone can make choices different than yours or have opinions different from yours, and not be an idiot. You can see that when that mental profile can’t understand how somebody can buy an iPhone – he must be a stupid sheep who’s unable to think rationally and just follows the herd. Those people can’t understand the fact that there are people much smarter than themselves who use iPhones, because they are simply unable to listen to the arguments of the other side and instead represent the other side with a stereotype. It’s the same with politics – the leftists never seem to hear the actual arguments of the political right, and instead they prop up the strawman Hitler caricature who’s also a toothless redneck who rapes livestock for fun and whose mother, sister and wife are the same person. That’s the reason why they perceive Trump’s victory as a victory of subhuman scum and a demise of all that is good in what they perceive as their world. It’s not that they don’t have the opportunity to hear the super-smart proponents of the political right, but they choose not to listen – they put fingers in their ears and chant “lalalalala, I don’t hear you, you’re a bigot and a racist and I’m not giving you a platform to speak, lalalala”.

The problem is, the leftists don’t understand how intellectually deficient they really are, because the Marxist attitudes are all they are hearing all the time, from both their peers and the professors at the universities, so they tend to think that the opposing attitudes have been soundly defeated in the intellectual circles and remain present only among the unwashed masses. In reality, it’s the Marxist attitudes that have been defeated in the real world and retreated into the academia, where you aren’t contradicted by the hard wall of reality and you can live in imaginary worlds of imaginary realities, where failures of blacks are due to slavery and racism and failures of women are due to patriarchy, and white men are the obstacle to realization of an ideal world (which would be a lesbian version of a combination of Latin America and Africa, so basically a shithole).

The fundamental flaw of the leftist worldview is that it is egalitarian. It assumes everybody is the same and ascribes perceived differences in outcomes to oppression. That’s why they are opposed to the founding principle of America, which is not egalitarian, but a free market republic. The political right, essentially the free-market fundamentalists, say that they don’t know whether everybody is equal or if everybody’s different. You do whatever you are capable of doing, offer it on the market of goods and services, and if it’s good, it will sell. The free market doesn’t give a damn whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you’re an African or an European. It gives everybody a fair chance, and allows the demand-side of economics to separate the winners from the losers. And that’s the position that isn’t heard at the American universities. You don’t get to hear the intellectual content of the arguments on the other side. You don’t get to hear how laissez-faire market is essentially an implementation of natural selection and evolutionary biology in human society, and allows the good things to float and bad things to sink not by judgment of some central committee, which would decide how much do you need and what you need to do, but simply through economic feedback. Sure, the system has weaknesses, but those weaknesses are orders of magnitude less than those in any socialist or egalitarian system. Those weaknesses are not discussed in context, and no kind of science is actually applied in those “social sciences” that are being taught. If you don’t have the ability to disprove the basic concepts, it’s not science, it’s doctrine. Just try to argue against any doctrinal concept that is taught there and see what you get – counter-arguments that reports facts, or emotional yelling and screaming. If you think I’m joking, look at those protesters. They are all about emotions, virtue-signaling and quasi-intellectual posturing. Every single one of them is an idiot who functions on a sub-human level of herd mentality, emotions that signal herd-membership and intellect that merely rationalizes prejudice – essentially, they are much worse than the strawman-Trump-voter they imagine in their make-believe world where socialism is progressive and borders are evil.

You could deport all those protesters to Mexico, and conditions in America would improve measurably, while conditions in Mexico would remain pretty much the same.

I shit on climate science

The main-stream media presented us with the “scientific facts”, in form of the polls showing how Donald Trump lags significantly behind Hillary Clinton and has no chance of winning the elections. They laughed at anyone questioning the scientific accuracy and validity of those polls. They presented themselves as someone who speaks from the position of science, truth, evidence and reason.

All of that proved to be bullshit and propaganda. The polls were intentionally cooked up by oversampling Democrats, by intentionally oversampling target groups that were more likely to vote for Clinton, basically, they started with the desired result and cooked up a scientifically-sounding brew of horse shit.

But stay assured that every other thing they have been telling you is spot on, like the global warming, which is so incredibly discredited that its advocates are using progressively stronger magnifying glass to find any sign of the supposed climate change, at the times where the original theory predicted that all coastal areas of the world should have been under water already. God fucking damn it, even Venice, which is built on water, still exists. Krapanj island in Croatia, whose highest point above sea level is 1.25 meters, is still completely untouched by the supposedly rampant sea level rise. We have more green areas in the previously arid parts of the world (because CO2 is plant food, and the plants immediately responded with accelerated growth in response to its increased availability), so no desertification, and no climate-caused exodus from the endangered areas. Antarctic ice cap is actually showing the overall increase. Arctic ice cap is also increasing in the recent years. Analysis of data from the NASA satellites shows no reduction in polar ice since they started recording the data in 1979.

It’s all horse shit, the entire supposed science behind the global warming theory. The scientific part was extremely poorly done, doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny and I lost all confidence in it a decade ago, when the predictions started to prove false.

But yeah, President Trump is a joke and climate change is gospel. Believe in it in order to get more likes on Facefuck and have more hip friends who fucking love science, bitch.

Because education, and shit.

Unrests in America

I have several observations. First, the color revolutions are coming home. It’s all Soros funded, like the shit he attempted in Russia, Ukraine and other places, with varying degrees of success. Also, the method he used here in Croatia to destroy our culture, by purchasing the media in order to control the public narrative, and financing all sorts of shitty NGOs that promote anti-civilizational values (when you ignore the meaningless buzzwords such as “democratic”, “open” and “tolerant”), it’s all come back to America. There’s no longer a difference from the psyop used to subjugate other countries, control and subvert their election process and their governments, and the psyop that is used in America. America is now merely another victim of the shit it used to export to us. The only countries that are completely resistant to this are the Islamic countries, which export their own variety of bullshit, and Russia, which figured it all out and outright banned Soros and his propagandist servants.

Second, although they usually use the buzzword “democratic”, those people are everything but. Whenever they don’t like the result produced by the actual democracy, they bring thousands of people on the streets to paralyze the society and cause chaos. The thing is, the amount of votes those protesters could cast in the elections is negligible. They already voted, and turned out to be a minority. The interesting thing is, Americans themselves defined terrorism as an attempt by a political minority to influence the society by non-democratic means. That is exactly what this is: a minority that lost the elections wants to overturn the result of the election using non-democratic means. They are terrorists.

Third, a country with so many stupid, irresponsible crybabies might be completely incapable of actual recovery. It might even turn out to be so dysfunctional as to simply descend into chaos and violence.

Essentially, that’s what you get when you indoctrinate young people with completely unrealistic ideas, such as group identity politics, human rights, sensitivity-based speech and actions, and basically the concept of big, over-reaching governments that is supposed to “right all wrongs”. Essentially, the Americans first invented that bullshit as a method of pressuring other countries, but they also kept teaching that in their schools, and when the children indoctrinated on those lies and illusions grew up, they turned out to be entitled, irresponsible, crybaby idiots with demands.

If you want to see why the extremely conservative, Christian positions on society are correct, just take a look at what happens to society when you try to remove them and base the society on atheism, entitlement, sensitivity, group identity, and the concept of rights instead of duties. You get a dysfunctional society full of people of low intelligence and high indoctrination.

The power of trends

Why am I skeptical of Trump’s ability to implement an actual change in America?

Let’s go down my personal memory lane regarding American elections. First there was Carter, who was stale and incompetent and people wanted change, so they elected a dynamic, forceful outsider, a Trump-like figure by the name of Ronald Reagan. He was widely ridiculed for being an incompetent senile idiot who leads with his mouth, doesn’t know how things are done and will most likely stumble into a nuclear war with his blunders. The “progressives” of the time even made a “Spitting image” music video mocking him. What he did was stir things up, make a deal with the General Secretary Gorbachev and the cold war ended. After his two terms, the voters elected his vice-president, the Bush Sr., because they thought they are voting for the continuation of good policies. This, however, did not materialize and the next thing they elected the young, Kennedy-like, energetic, optimistic Bill Clinton, to represent the new generation born after the second world war. During his presidency, Yugoslavia fell apart in a bloody war, misery, crime and corruption flourished in the former Soviet Union, the CIA-financed Mujahideen in Afghanistan made their own state and started planing world domination of Islam, and Bill Clinton was fucking his intern, playing sax and projecting his Kennedy-like smile to the camera. Nevertheless, America then had money, things were good and nothing directly threatened them, so people were generally pleased with him, but still chose to elect a Republican as a follow-up, because they were tired of Kennedy-like presidents who, like Kennedy, fucked everything that met the prerequisites of being female and being left unattended. They elected Bush Jr., who was an idiot, but since they thought they had no pressing issues to solve, they thought a benevolent idiot playing golf and not fucking interns was exactly what they needed in the white house. However, Al Qaeda then actually managed to succeed with their plans of striking at American symbols, from the second attempt. People seem to have forgotten that there was a first attempt, with an explosive-filled truck in the WTC basement. That was very close to structurally compromising the building, and unfortunately the engineers actually said how close, on TV. Bin Laden paid attention and the second attempt worked. Unfortunately, it seems that he also had inside help – the plot was allowed to succeed by some elements within the FBI and probably other American institutions, because the plotters were known, they were followed, but nothing was done to hinder them. The doors just seemed to open magically in front of them, because those same elements needed something that would galvanize the population, to threaten it enough to be willing to surrender its freedoms for the sake of security. The president, stupid and incompetent as he was, simply nodded to all such proposals and signed off on everything, including the two stupid wars that the military-industrial complex required to get the military machine going and moving the economy. This massive spending without the additional war taxation to pay for it collapsed the American economy, and by the end of Bush Jr.’s first term, it was in complete shambles. People were tired of endless war, they were tired of their healthcare not working, they were tired of the economy that’s wrecked, and they wanted change, so they elected a young, dynamic, optimistic black guy who promised all kinds of stuff that basically said nothing but sounded good. That’s how we ended up with Obama as president. In his first term, he didn’t do jack shit, because he’s a demagogue and an ideologue who doesn’t compromise, but people were marginally willing to give him a second chance, to finish what he started. As a result, he did more of the same, which is to say, nothing, except trying to look and sound hip on TV.

The problem is, the new post-cold war generation was all about bullshit posturing and not much about getting things done efficiently, so they thought that electing an oppression Olympics champion would solve the “diversity” and “equality” problems that America was supposedly having. They seem to think that the world’s problems add up to some kind of “bigotry” and if they managed to put a black transsexual gay Muslim female in power, that would mean they solved all the problems. This does show what idiots teach at the American universities, producing more idiots with degrees every year, because those idiots can’t find a normal job anywhere in the economy except on the universities, in NGOs and in the media, where they spout their worthless diversity/equality drivel. Since this generation of idiots has a significant voting power, they managed to elect Obama. The only Pokemon they were missing was a female president, and so they attempted to elect probably the most corrupt, egocentric and wicked person in the world as the next one, because it’s not like America has any problems other than diversity/equality posturing. Oh no, their economy is working great, they have no international problems such as a looming nuclear conflict with Russia and China, or immigration of the Muslims, who are the worst culture in the world and are opposite to everything good in every conceivable way. No, the only thing they needed is a vagina-in-chief.

That’s how I see the trends. Obviously, Reagan is an example that you can elect a disruptive candidate, supremely disliked by the “progressives” in the media, who can actually do good things for both America and the world. The similarities with Donald Trump are striking. So, why am I skeptical?

First of all, I am skeptical because a democracy includes powerful checks and balances that prevent one-sided policies. You need to have systemic support in order to implement anything radical. The parliament needs to agree, the courts need to agree, the major parties need to be in consensus regarding the issue, the military must support it, the banks must support it, the industry must support it, and the people in general must support it. Reagan could end the cold war because he had the military that was aware of how closely matched they are with the Soviets and how bad it actually is, he had the people who were genuinely scared of the nuclear war and wanted the threat to end, and he had the Russians on the other side, who were purely defensive, and all it took to end the war was to convince them that America isn’t going to kill them all.

Now, the situation is different. Both the people and the politicians in America can’t agree on the color of shit. Media no longer has an informative role, it’s purely propagandistic and became completely untrustworthy. Due to this, nobody really believes anything or anyone anymore, and all sorts of conspiracy theories float on the Internet, collecting brainless followers. This makes it extremely difficult for anyone to implement anything useful, because every potentially useful project will encounter enormous opposition from various “activists” and “progressives”. Also, all sorts of interest groups will attempt to “earmark” the project with all kinds of pork-barrel spending as a pre-condition for their support. This will all serve to re-enforce the public skepticism of Washington.

Worldwide, the situation changed as well, because America deceived and betrayed Russia after the cold war. I could go into details but this is not the place – basically, what would be necessary in order for trust to be re-established is America to abolish NATO and remove the military assets not only from the Russian borders, but to establish a buffer zone of militarily neutral countries between the Russian borders and France. Everything that took place since the 1990 and now, regarding NATO expansion, should be rolled back. Furthermore, America needs to stop having a military presence at China’s doorstep, and let the regional countries make peace with each other on their own terms. Sure, they can keep Japan and South Korea under a nuclear umbrella in case some idiot in the North Korea gets ideas, but essentially the situation there needs to be unlocked, and it will only be unlocked once China no longer feels pressured by the American military presence on its doorstep. China will then be able to make graceful concessions to its neighbors instead of being forced into strength-posturing.

So, having in mind what it would take for things to normalize, and having in mind how the people are thinking and behaving in the recent years, I am skeptical of Trump’s chances, especially since he’s the second outsider president who’s supposed to bring radical change to the system. Obama was all about hope and change, and the trends just kept rolling. Trump is all about hope and change, and my expectation is that the trends will again determine the result.