Skilluminati Research

Posted Jul 06, 2007

Update 11/18/08 Faced with a global economic crisis and the prospect of a radically altered standard of living, there's been a lot of traffic coming through Skilluminati Research to read about the "Changing Images of Man" report. I've also fixed the link for this gem of an information overdose from William Sims Bainbridge. The media tools and psychological triggers that marketing and advertising persuaders use are no different from the tools and triggers of political spectacle. It's worth taking the time to understand the rather obtuse field of Memetics -- because most of the people who do understand it are being paid to use it against you.

After this excerpt there's links for further reading on the subject, as well as some related Skilluminati articles. The NBIC report, however, covers a tremendous range of topics and memetic theory is just a tiny slice. The acroynm stands for Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Enhancement. Here's the Abstract overview:

"The chief areas of application include: expanding human cognition and communication, improving human health and physical capabilities, enhancing group and societal outcomes, strengthening national security, and unifying science and education. Convergence will be based on the material unity of nature at the nanoscale, technology integration from the nanoscale, key transforming tools, the concept of reality as closely coupled hierarchical complex systems, and the goal to improve human performance."

Not exactly a page turner but there's about 50 amazing passages in here, most of which you can clear find through browsing the table of contents.

In the "information society" of the 21st century, the most valuable resource will not be iron or oil but culture. However, the sciences of human culture have lacked a formal paradigm and a rigorous methodology. A fresh approach to culture, based on biological metaphors and information science methodologies, could vastly enhance the human and economic value of our cultural heritage and provide cognitive science with a host of new research tools. The fundamental concept is the meme, analogous to the gene in biological genetics, an element of culture that can be the basis of cultural variation, selection, and evolution.

"World-views" may be self-regulating, in this respect, each dominant ideology naturally stimulating the evolution of counter-ideologies. Just when Western Civilization rejoiced that it had vanquished Nazism and Marxism, and the "end of history" was at hand, radical Islam emerged to challenge its fundamental values (El-Affendi 1999). Quite apart from the issue of terrorist attacks from radical fringes of Islam, the entire Muslim religious tradition may have an evolutionary advantage over western secularism, because it encourages a higher birth rate (Keyfitz 1986). An inescapable natural law may be at work here, comparable to that which regulates the constantly evolving relations between predators and prey in the biological realm, ensuring that there is always a rival culture, and complete victory is impossible (Maynard Smith 1982). However, deep scientific understanding of the memetic processes that generate radical opposition movements may help government policymakers combat them effectively. It may never be possible to eradicate them entirely, but with new scientific methods, we should be able to prevent them from driving our civilization to extinction.

The scientific study of culture is both possible and pregnant with knowledge of human behavior. Thus, it deserves to be given more resources, especially in light of current events. These events include not only the terrorism of September 11, 2001, but also the dot-com crash and the failure of nations as diverse as Argentina, Indonesia, and Japan to sustain their economic development. Memetic science could help us deal with challenges to American cultural supremacy, discover the products and services that will really make the information economy profitable, and identify the forms of social institutions most conducive to social and economic progress.

DOWNLOAD THE NBIC REPORT -- "Converging Technologies"

For more information on memetics, the best intro I've seen so far would be Wes Unruh's introduction -- look past the fact it's a Squidoo page and check out The Truth About Memetics. (Wes is also the author, along with Vancouver-area metagenius Edward Wilson, of the very expansive and thought-provoking book The Art of Memetics, which you can read for free by clicking here.)

Courtesy of Pizza SEO, here's a DIY curriculum for a deeper understanding of memetics as a practice:

1. Start with Language and Power, a thorough and unusually honest assessment of persuasive language patterns, from a wide variety of contexts and disciplines.

2. To keep your brain moving with another model (this is contradictory but still useful), check out The Memetic Lexicon.

3. To scramble the signal even further, here's purely pragmatic perspective from Eric Dahl, who maintains this wiki about Memetic Warfare.

4. Finally, for a sense of where all this logically leads, check out Dan Bartlett's excellent introductory essay The Biology of Belief.

Filed in: Social Control

Posted Jul 06, 2007

This is a follow-up supplement to a recent Brainsturbator article, "Yoshiro Nakamatsu, We Salute You," in which we present a pdf copy of his 1993 US patent. This is the schematics for the device known as the "ENEREX" or "Nostradamvs Engine II" -- we think. All of Nakamatsu's books are in Japanese and we are very, very lazy monkeys.

DOWNLOAD US PATENT #5,399,251

Filed in: Future Tech

Posted Jul 06, 2007

Skilluminati Research presents the most complete copy of "Physical Control of the Mind" we've been able to get ahold of, featuring a majority of the chapters as well as many of the original photographic illustrations.

Delgado's work has grown to essentially mythological status. It is our opinion that Delgado was a butcher with sausage fingers, so this book is primarily presented as an antidote to conspiracy theory speculation. Most of the grandiose claims Delgado states as "incontrovertible facts" have been shown, in the decades since this work was published, to be hilariously ignorant. Recent interviews with Delgado indicate that he might have realized he was taking an absurdly reductionist approach to the single most complex problem facing science in the 22nd century. (Those same interviews show him to be the same fascist he has always been, too. Some monsters never change.)

With our bullshit remarks out of the way, we present to you, "Physical Control of the Mind"

DOWNLOAD JOSE DELGADO'S "PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND"

Filed in: Editor's Choice

Posted Jul 06, 2007

The Defense Science Board, always a valuable source for info you probably shouldn't have, has a report on Red Teaming in a Department of Defense context which is most tasty. We offer a pdf download of that report at the end of this short, meaningless article.

How do you test the security of your secure systems? You hire someone to break in. This is true for base installations and it's true for networks and communications infrastructure, too. Right now, there are fake terrorists and hackers working for the government to test out vulnerabilities. The logic, clearly, is to locate potential threats and cracks in the system before Someone Else realizes that they're there to exploit. Red Teams need to improvise, move quickly, and be mostly invisible. To me, at least, that sounds like one hell of a fun job.

We argue that red teaming is especially important now for the DoD. Current adversaries are tougher targets for intelligence than was the United State's major cold war foe. Red teaming deepens understanding of options available to adaptive adversaries and both complements and informs intelligence collection and analysis. Aggressive red teams are needed to challenge emerging operational concepts in order to discover weaknesses before real adversaries do. In addition, in the wake of recent military operations, use of red teams can temper the complacency that often follows success.

Of course, if you're going to do some freelance Red Team activity in hopes of getting hired, make damn sure that you're doing it well. Don't get caught until you want to get caught, until you are in total control of the negotiation. They respect balls and expertise just as much as they respect guns. (For quick reference, think of Keven Spacy in Seven.)

Remember the case of poor Gary McKinnon, who got caught snooping around UFO files . Did they think "whoa, what a badass hacker?" Did they hire him? Fuck no, they're sending him to Guantanamo Bay. Prepare thoroughly before diving into shark tanks.

The Defense Science Board is a beautifully frank operation, and you can only respect people who write as well as they do. Even if they're raving fascists, they're still lucid on the laptops:

Red teams and red teaming processes have long been used as tools by the management of both government and commercial enterprises. Their purpose is to reduce an enterprise's risks and increase its opportunities.

Red teams come in many varieties and there are different views about what constitutes a red team. We take an expanded view and include a diversity of activities that, while differing in some ways, share a fundamental feature.

Red teams are established by an enterprise to challenge aspects of that very enterprise's plans, programs, assumptions, etc. It is this aspect of deliberate challenge that distinguishes red teaming from other management tools although the boundary is not a sharp one. (There are many tools used by management for a variety of related purposes: to promulgate visions, foster innovation, promote efficiencies.)

If you're interested in a high-paying job with lots of benefits that you have to break laws in order to apply to, then we recommend you look into this rapid growth area. Think about it: if you can remote view, then you can compile a dossier on 50+ extremely sensitive US secret locations all around the world and get a job. Right? Occult Red Teams probably already exist, so bear in mind you might have some competition.

DOWNLOAD Defense Science Board report on Red Teams

Filed in: 5GW Project 2008

Posted Jul 06, 2007

In 1917, Theodore Reuss showed up at a commune in Switzerland with a most interesting document: it was the manifesto which would soon establish the Ordo Templi Orientis, or the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, or as it's known to young occultists, conspiracy theorists and weirdos of all persusasions, the OTO. The statement itself was a barn-burner:

"Let it be known", began this manifesto, "that there exists, unknown to the great crowd, a very ancient Order of sages, whose object is the amelioration and spiritual evolution of mankind by means of conquering error and aiding men and women in their efforts of attaining the power of recognizing the truth. This Order has existed already in the most remote times and it has manifested its activity secretly and openly in the world under different names and in various forms: it has caused social and political revolutions and proved to be the rock of salvation in times of danger and misfortune. It has always upheld the banner of freedom against tyranny in whatever shape this appeared, whether as clerical or political or social despotism or oppression of any kind.

To this "secret order" every wise and spiritually enlightened person belongs by right of his or her nature: because they all, even if they are personally unknown to each other, are one in their purpose and object and they all work under the guidance of the one light of truth. Into this Sacred Society no one can be admitted by another unless he has the power to enter it himself by virtue of his own interior Illumination neither can anyone after he has once entered be expelled unless he should expel himself by becoming unfaithful to his principles and forget again the truths which he has learned by his own experience.

All this is known to every enlightened person.

But it is known only to few that there exists also an external, visible organization of such men and women, who having themselves found the path to real self-knowledge, and who having travelled the burning sands, are willing to give to others, desirous of entering that path, the benefit of their experience, and to act as spiritual guides to those who are willing to be guided.

The open-source revolution is a concept that predates the OTO, of course. The actual claims of Theodore Reuss are almost beside the point, because the concept is so effectively infectious. Here at Skilluminati Research, we find a number of words to be utterly useless -- "God," for instance, or "coincidence" -- and we have long since discarded "terrorism," a wet blanket of a term, for "Open Source Warfare" or OSW. Occult OSW was also advocated in the memorable Appendix Yod of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, known as "Operation Mindfuck":

To this day, neither Ho Chih Zen himself nor any other Discordian apostle knows for sure who is or is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to OM, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a "safe" assumption after all, and the "risky" hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be "safer" in the long run, perhaps. Every aspect of OM follows, or accentuates, this double-bind.

This may or may not be the source of the Scottish saying, "never give a sword to a man who can't dance."

BRAINSTURBATOR DOT COM

Filed in: 5GW Project 2008