cool portuguese tunes played by foreign people. our gaita is getting popular. today we’re doing a small diy segment again
me and T first prototyped a solar pouch almost a year ago. we designed it because one of the issues with solar chargers by themselves is that you have to carry them along side your electronics. putting them in bags is common, but expensive, so we designed a pouch with a panel and a charging cable.
since the first test, i designed an improved version of it using a 6V panel that is a single piece, versus the other diy segment i did previously that used 1V cells. with this 6V panel and a diode, i made a trickle charger for the cellphone. basically, if there’s enough sun, it charges the phone. if you put the phone inside the pouch, it charges it and also it protects it. it’s handy and feels more organic than having a separate unit. the jack for the charger on this model is on the side, which makes it kind of ridiculous to use. i guess i could mod the phone, but instead i’m willing to bend the jack a little.
feel free to copy this design, it is under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. if you want to sell them let me know and we’ll work something out. here’s how to do it:
materials
6V solar panel with less than 3W (in this case, 2W) so it doesn’t burn your electronics equipment (see what the power of your cellphone charger is and choose a panel below that power)
diode (any diode works, a shottky would be better, but i had a lot of regular ones). one advantage is that on a 6V polarization the diode should be at about 0.7V, which in turn makes the whole thing output 5.3 ~ 5V for the cellphone
a jack for your phone. i cut mine from an old charger. make sure it works (this was the second one i used, the first one didn’t work)
fabric, velcro and glue for the pouch. be creative. bland black pouches are so passé
soldering iron, multimeter, solder and whatever you enjoy to have around when you do electronics
instructions
sew a pouch that has about the same size as the panel. make sure it swells enough to stick to the panel even when the electronics are in it
solder the diode to the panel (to the plus terminal, make sure it is polarized correctly so that current flows only to the cellphone)
test the panel in direct sun. if it doesn’t work now, start again
solder the other end of the diode to the cable and jack (check the plus and minus with a multimeter)
test the panel on the jack terminals. if it doesn’t work now, start again
glue the pouch to the panel using whatever glue you may have. put something inside the pouch so that you don’t glue the pouch to itself
test it under the sun and happy charging!
results
it works! that’s it. this is an easy (and less extreme) way of doing a self-powered device. be creative! stick panels on everything!
demo video. i wasn’t drunk, i was filming with one hand, so i couldn’t plug the jack. the main thing is there: it charged!
i found this panel on some online store. just look for 6V panels and you’ll find some. these weren’t that cheap but they are sturdy and give enough juice to charge the cellphone in about 3 hours. also, on a lithium battery, you don’t want to charge all the time. but it’s definitely handy to have around. thanks for reading!
in sync with all the studies i published, CS has finally become a for-profit organization. as some other organizations have done, they started as a pseudo-non-profit (they never got the status approved) and with it, accepted donations and volunteer work to make the website grow. thanks to all that volunteer work, the website grew to a staggering 3,000,000+. once it got too big to fail, they sold it off and now it’s owned bycompanies such as ebay to investment groups that have in their funded website list organizations like twitter and are owned by, among others, the people behind ebay. while this is a big blow to volunteers, since i never volunteered more than my own couch, i don’t feel as bad as many do right now.
but that’s not really what i’m writing about today. today i’m writing my eulogy to my own participation on CS. i might still use it, but i certainly won’t use it the same way.
CS changed my life more than any other online community i’ve been a part of. not because it is very good as an online community, but because it promotes offline connections. this allowed me to meet almost 1000 amazing people from all over the world, allowed be to grow and test my own political ideologies, and most importantly, establish a network of friendships all over the globe. let me make it very clear: CS has made my life incredibly better in many different ways, and i’d be a fool to get angry because they decided to go a different ideological route than they did at the beginning.
what CS does is priceless in terms of breaking cultural boundaries in a select group of the traveling population. in practice, a couch is not commonly given to the poor, the needy or the oppressed. i ran the tests, see GDP data. the people that use CS are the people that don’t need to use CS. but that’s what makes them special. these are travelers that (still) believe traveling is more than a tour guide and a hotel, and no matter how naive, superficial or materialistic they might be, these core values create a very idealistic community.
it was there that i got the support and like-mindedness to advance my ideas for community building, and most importantly, understood how diverse we are and how important it is to listen to each other.
so seeing CS go for-profit (even if they call it “B”, it’s still for-profit), is both its coming of age and mine. since i started, i have been on permanent state of deepening my own understanding of how things work between common people. what i found, that can be seen in all the studies i’ve done all these years, has not only surprised me but given me a stronger basis for when i say people are generally good, trusting and above all, creative and empathetic. i have gathered evidence that demonstrates that age, race, gender or nationality are irrelevant, and that what still matters is the real human moments created and the setting they are created in. it matters more if you are tired and need a bed, hungry and need food, or lonely and need a hug, than whether you are rich or poor, black or white, man or woman or other.
i have also learned one of the biggest lessons of my life. though this wasn’t through CS, it was thanks to CS that i met the amazing people that helped me achieve it. i learned that the homeless, the weak, the junkies, petty thieves and low-lives that surround us are not hopelessly trapped, not invalids and certainly not lazy, no matter how the capitalist individualist mindset tries to push that through propaganda. i have seen hiv positive people with their eyes lit about the future as they worked for a common goal even though their lives had been dramatically shortened, i have seen junkies reduce their drug use for the simple fact that they were fed and happy. above all, i have see that social justice and a meaningful existence are the most powerful tools one can have to change the world around us. empathy and compassion but also bravery and relentlessness to exert them.
but it was also through these experiments and experiences that i learned that new ideas are necessary. i grew frustrated with the middle class european activists that i would meet, that seemed to be more focused on hypothetical situations and impossible practical options than getting their hands dirty. and above all, the overwhelming majority of humans that though having their hearts in the right place, feel they can’t do more, powerless to do more, and hopeless for the future.
i can say that certainly there is little hope, but hope is for those who don’t know what the consequences of their actions are. we are only hopeful and faithful if we don’t know what will come of our doings. i have no hope and no faith on my own future now because i understand what works and what doesn’t, and above all, have finally detached myself from the veiled need for survival.
i grew frustrated, as time went by, of how many people were telling me they wanted to change the world. of how many were telling me others were wrong and they were right. but when asked a concrete ideal for our present, there was none. this is the value crisis we live in, and this is where i focus my ideological work now.
none of this would have been possible without CS and the wonderful people i met through it. but CS itself was an organization i had a high moral respect for. what they were doing, though naive, was sending a message to the world that borders and property weren’t realities, but man-made fictions. what CS confirms now is that the idealistic, when naive, are quickly capitalized by the unscrupulous elite. CS has gone from the wonderful idealistic and incompetent group of people that just wanted to meet foreigners and do parties with all of them, to a serious business venture. this, therefore, makes it incompatible with the way i see things should be done. either one is for profit openly, as airbnb for example, or one is for other goals, like servas. what CS did was a bait and switch: get volunteers, raise enough social capital, and once you’re big enough, sell and go for profit with all the work done by the volunteers. the only thing wrong here is the fact that there was a clear claim they were non-profit when it wasn’t true. i certainly don’t appreciate being lied to or deceived, so now i will provide alternatives to whoever seeks equivalent systems.
i wouldn’t say CS owes me anything or that i owe CS anything. for the years i worked with it, it was more of a mutual reciprocity exchange. now that my experiences will be sold, i feel that trust has been broken and will move on.
here’s my list. i recommend anyone who hosts on CS and wants to leave to maintain their profile and write to people to request to them through other networks. that way, one can transition people from CS to other networks, to stop the deception.
some musette de cour. a lovely painting of a bagpiper too
i won’t do much discussion this time. this is a short test i did to the data and it somewhat confirms the rule that some hosts have that there should be a minimum stay. this is the first widespread rule that i see has some evidence to it (even though the correlation is very low, 0.17454, [octave source](http://ubuntuone.com/p/1CJ3/))
here is some evidence that rating is biased: the longer someone stays, the more likely it is that their rating will be higher. it doesn’t mean, however, that the maximum rating will be affected. instead, it seems there is a “logarithmic” effect on the curves: though it grows, it will settle on a value that still might not reach a high rating, and probably settles on what would be the “final evaluation” of the experience. i.e., you don’t like someone at first sight, but with time, you will gain a better perspective. this perspective might still be negative or positive, so this is not a predictor of quality of stay. instead, it is probably a predictor of how good it will be seen in the end.
for this set all guests were considered, including friends of CSers and non-CS people.
an interesting test of this would be a rating of a guest over time. this would give us an idea of how personal rating changes over time. i have some data on another rating i did a while a go, i might stitch it together with this one. here is the plot of the data
today i’m continuing my series on the connection between measurable profile variables on CS and my own personal rating of the experience. since it is a personal subjective rating, consider all of this data as merely informative.
again, i used the same database, and this time loaded the whole thing into octave. then i calculated the correlation coefficients between each variable and my personal rating. octave is much better to work with, so i’m abandoning “pretty” graphs for more accurate ones.
correlation factors found
variable
correlation with rating
number of photos
-0.013480
number of positive references
0.068074
number of neutral references
0.039177
number of negative references
0.0037717
it’s interesting to note that of all, the strongest indicator is the total number of positive references, even though it is very weak. it is also interesting that the correlation factor between negative references and rating is positive. i would say it is a small sample size for me to conclude anything, but it’s interesting nevertheless since one would expect a negative correlation for both neutral and negative, if these were good predictors of bad experiences
graphs of the data distribution
as usual, bell curves slightly tilted to the positive experience. since the distribution seems to be consistent with a bell curve, the correlation coefficient is appropriate enough.
sources for replication
besides the usual database, here is the [octave script](http://ubuntuone.com/p/1C5f/). make sure you edit the shebang line and the database path according to your needs.
discussion
by now i’m a bit tired of getting always the same “random variable” results. it would be interesting to look at datasets of people that believe references, images, etc are predictors. since i controlled for these variables at my own place, my dataset is the “raw” version of the experience. my guess is that depending on the variable chosen, each person would selectively bias their own perspective on the experience, when if controlled for, the variables amount to very little in terms of predictive power.
this would allow us to see how is it that things really feel like they work when they don’t: we shape it ourselves via our own perceptions of the other. by assigning arbitrary characteristics to them that come from some outside narrative and not a real, factual analysis of who they really are. prejudices come in many forms, and these online status symbols are themselves tools of prejudice and social differentiation. it is by now clear that these symbols have no evidence to support their validity, however, they remain essential tools for this group’s stability. the seeking and valuing of these virtual status symbols creates a shared belief that one should behave appropriately, which causes a safer behavior in general.
so, in a somewhat contradictory way, even though these status symbols are not relevant in practice in terms of quality of the experience, they become so through common beliefs in their validity, and this makes the community as a whole work more harmoniously.
as a side effect, anyone who unknowingly ignores the social codes of CS will be treated as an example of the things these symbols are trying to protect people from, even though there is no evidence this is true, creating a whole set of people that will suffer injustice and prejudice on this network. these people will rapidly leave the network due to the overwhelming unfriendliness that they might encounter. this filtering out then leaves only the people that comply with the social codes, rendering the network functional.
nowhere in this chain of filtering and reasoning is any account to facts. there is no critical analysis of any of this data. but that shared irrational belief is what keeps the community functional. in a way, these status symbols and social rules are essential to properly filter out users on this network, not because they work, but because they are only accepted and tolerated by those who believe them, and those who don’t are progressively outcast or eliminated.
many times i ended up hosting people that were clueless about how to message someone and that felt great injustice about it. fact is that CS works very well, but only for a group of people. for the rest of the “scum” that uses it, the frequent failures to find a place, the angry or disrespectful replies and judging encounters will cause people to leave the network.
i’ll do another one on this: my hypothesis is that CS is a temporary phase in people’s lives, and that after some time or a bad experience people will simply leave it. my guess is that there are nowhere near 3 million CSers. i’ll dig for the real numbers soon.
i decided to continue the data analysis i started in [my previous post](http://www.philosopherbagpiper.com/archives/308). this time, i decided to go full subjective and will not try to extract any scientific conclusions. i decided to test my ratings versus geography, and made a “heat map” of how much i like people of each nationality. this chart is a bit clunky, but gives us a good global perspective. blue is lower, red is higher, yellow is in-between. sorry new zealand, my zoom skills cut a bit of the map!
interestingly enough, i don’t seem to rate central europeans as high as, let’s say, eastern europeans. same thing with anglo saxon countries: us rates high, as does australia. i think we can remove the language barrier, since there are rating differences between austria and germany and i don’t speak german. also, best rated? my own country but my sample is biased: i only hosted, with one exception to this, friends and friends of friends, who i ended up rating higher than the average CSer. since the map doesn’t show sample size, we might be dealing with a lot of anomalies.
since these looked promising, here are the rating curves by country. watch out: a lot of graphs coming. it’s very nice to see that bell curves emerge on big sample sizes: that means i’m not particulary favorable to any country. but it’s also interesting that some countries provoke a more variable response, versus others. for example, compare canada to germany. as usual, no evidence for being favorable to any particular country. Y axis is the total frequency, X axis is the rating.
here are the sources for replication (besides the database on my previous post): [heat map](http://ubuntuone.com/p/1BY8/) and [country charts](http://ubuntuone.com/p/1BY9/). i love the discouraged if/foreach syntax for php. sorry but that’s what you get for free personal code.
a galician tune this time, a “muiñeira”, a traditional dance song on a 6/8 beat.
i finally did it! i finally merged and collected the data from the 3 houses. i still haven’t done the repeat visits (very few) and the cleaning/cooking score. but as for the rest of the data, it’s all there, in full relational-database beauty. here is a small analysis on these three years, the truth and the fiction around what CS claims to be proof of safety. this one is going to be like a small paper again, since the findings are very unrewarding.
abstract
[CouchSurfing](http://www.couchsurfing.org) (CS) is the biggest hospitality network online. it provides on its website a series of tips for what it claims is increased safety. i decided to test these claims, more specifically, whether verification or vouching are relevant to the safety of the experience as a host. my study has demonstrated that both verification and vouching are irrelevant for security.
methodology
during the past 3 years, i hosted, without any selection, over 800 guests and collected their CS pages, length of stay and several other variables. of these about 100 were selected during the messaging stage, but a previous analysis showed the selection used did not change the data distribution. from the whole data set i then filtered out only the people whose profile lists their data publicly. from this selection i obtained a total of 477 guests for the analysis. this data is public so i disregarded any further privacy issues, since i don’t use personal information.
the data was registered on several google calendars, which were parsed and fed into an SQLite database, with a schema designed for the purpose of this experiment. i include the schema and anonymized data in the end of this article for repeatability.
results
this table groups all data by category. here are their respective meanings:
place: the place where the data was collected. the three houses where we collected data, they were previously analyzed on this and other websites
sample size: the sample size for each grouping
verification level: CS allows for 4 verification levels: 0 not verified, 1 name locked, 2 postcard sent, 3 postcard confirmed
vouches: vouches are something people give away when they have vouches themselves. i’ve found them rather useless since the only people with multiple vouches are also usually people highly involved in the community and have many other “reliability symbols”
violence: whether there was a physical violence incident
theft: whether there was a theft incident
creepy: whether there was sexually creepy behavior (e.g., unrequited groping, etc)
average, max and min rating: my personal rating of the experience, from 0 to 10, 0 being me not liking the person at all, and 10 loving that person (not necessarily romantic love)
it should be noted that the only creepy instance was from a verified member, but there weren’t enough creepy guests to have statistically significant data.
it should also be noted that the street guests, not featured here, would also add 1 theft and 1 creep, but these guests were part of another social network (the street and the local anarchist punk network) and therefore not relevant for this study.
Place
Sample size
Verification Level
Average Vouches
Violence
Theft
Creepy
Average rating
Max rating
Minimum rating
e8
142
0
1.17
0
0
0
5.55
10.0
2.5
145
1
2.31
0
0
0
5.56
10.0
2.5
14
2
2.79
0
0
0
4.79
7.5
1.0
50
3
4.0
0
0
1
5.28
10.0
0.0
SPCC
8
0
2.0
0
0
0
6.06
7.5
5.0
20
1
1.2
0
0
0
5.8
10.0
4.0
2
2
4.0
0
0
0
5.25
5.5
5.0
1
3
19.0
0
0
0
6.0
6.0
6.0
_42
34
0
0.71
0
0
0
5.43
7.0
2.5
44
1
0.55
0
0
0
5.31
7.5
1.5
4
2
0.5
0
0
0
7.38
9.0
5.0
13
3
8.0
0
0
0
5.35
7.0
4.5
conclusions
i conclude that safety on CS is unrelated to verification status and to vouch status. no difference was found between the verified and unverified guests in terms of safety and creepiness (except the one case mentioned).
verification and vouching serve, in my opinion, as virtual rituals to give the impression that the network is safe. while they are irrelevant for security itself, it gives the website users the feeling of safety. it also gives CS the big bulk of its income (verification is paid).
according to these results (and i shall post more), safety is entirely unrelated to any of the factors that one can scrutinize from a CS page: pictures, references, vouching, verification, age, gender, etc. security seems to be a consequence of the negative space of CS. this negative space is the people that don’t join because they are afraid/untrusting/don’t believe the concept and the people that left because of bad experiences. in this sense, security comes from the fact that CS guests are a very small subset of the general population, that have a computer, can read a minimum of english and believe a system like CS can work. anyone outside this frame is very hard to find on CS (i have never found on the whole 800+ group of people that i hosted)
this implies that the claims of safety by CS are false and that the verification serves more as an income source than a security feature. it can also be easily taken advantage, as we saw with the single incident of creepiness reported. but these features create a sense of security (unrelated to real security) that is key for the good functioning of the website. this is what i call the power of virtual ritual: even online, irrational beliefs tend to be perpetuated and gain social value, even when there is no evidence behind them
it is also interesting to see that no place had a significant effect on the security, even considering SPCC was an illegal squat. it hints that security must come from some unaccounted variable and certainly, a variable outside what can be obtained by visiting a CS profile
bonus charts
i now have hundreds of possible charts to do, so i’ll leave two charts that i found interesting around the distribution of the guest ratings. ratings were done using some software that allowed me to rate from 0 to 10 each guest using a continuous slider with .5 steps. this gave me a better “resolution” so i could add more detail to the choices. what i found was what one would expect: the shape is basically a bell curve, which means that people are best modeled by a random variable (a stranger can be someone we love, hate, or anything in between). i also leave the relationship between rating and age to show that age is also irrelevant for the rating, except when the guests are really young, which gives them a slightly lower rating (annoying teenagers, you know what i mean). the high variability of the older guests is due to low sample sizes. i am still working on the software so i get error bars with these charts. i’ll post more goodness soon. if anyone wants any specific charts, just let me know
data for repeatability
note: my license applies, if you want to use this data please respect it. the database was anonymized and can be downloaded [here](http://ubuntuone.com/p/1AWy/) in sqlite3 format. sqlite3 is free software and if you don’t know SQL i can’t help you. if you want a spreadsheet or something like that please request it
SQL query for the table (outputs html-ready rows):
sqlite3 -separator "</td><td>" guests.db "select place.name,count(guest.id),verified,round(avg(vouches),2),sum(violence),sum(theft),sum(unrequited_hitting),round(avg(personal_rating),2),max(personal_rating),min(personal_rating) from guest left join stay on stay.person=guest.id left join place on place_id=place.id where guest.age>0"
whenever something is null or empty, that means they do not provide that information, so it’s my recommendation to not include it in any analysis
thanks for reading! and yes, science confirms verification is a scam, CS is safe regardless of it!
india also has bagpipes (the mashak), and had them before the arrival of the british. they then incorporated the more advanced scottish bagpipe into their traditional music. [here is an old recording of it](http://www.cornemuses.culture.fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=413&Itemid=94).
preface
i’ve been writing online for a long time, and every now and then i’d mention “exuberantism” without really explaining what it is. i’ve also been defining a lot of abstract arbitrary models for things in order to provide some background to how the concepts i will use. these months have been a set up, because now there will be a jump from the objective to the subjective. we will take the ideas developed previously and apply them on a biased principle framework.
so far, all that i wrote was pretty much vague, but overall somewhat objective. it was about measurable quantities, organizing features of the world around us, and how things themselves appear to be structured. but there is a fundamental part missing here, and that is what principles guide these texts, or better, why are models and metrics being defined versus being defined for the sake of themselves. this is my move from a scientific way of dealing with concepts to a political way of dealing with concepts. first i will explain why, and then explain what these principles really are.
for the whole time i’ve done science, worked in technical fields and so on, there seems to be a kind of hidden hypocrisy in the scientific and technical activity in general. the power structures around us are corrupt and use technically skilled people like me to advance their agenda. the examples of this are everywhere, and science has been overwhelmingly successful at developing weaponry, surveilance techniques, mind control and brainwashing techniques and so on. it’s not that all of the scientists and technicians involved wanted this exploitation, but in my opinion, they were naive to believe they were doing a good thing by researching under the wrong power structure. my criticism is broader than this. i believe it’s time to end the idea that knowledge can’t be biased by anything so it can’t make any claims of principles. it’s not that i’m arguing for knowledge to advance according to its own goals (that would violate the principles of the scientific method). i’m arguing that it’s time we abandon the idea that knowledge is something good regardless of whose hands it is in.
it is my belief that no scientist should be doing research under private, patent protected or corporately owned frameworks whose only goal is to profit. no technically skilled professional should be an accomplice to mass corporate and state murderers. it is not acceptable to promote free and critical thinking while selling your own work for it to be used exactly against those principles.
i’m talking about software engineers that break privacy and sell personal information, about engineers that design to fail, about technicians that refuse to repair, about teachers that submit to flawed economicist school policies. i’m talking about discoveries locked in corporate patents and laws that could otherwise benefit us all, and instead are used as a domination weapon for the sake of profit.
but as it might be obvious by now, that makes me biased. i do not believe research should be done for the sake of research. that is cowardice on the part of the researcher. anyone who worked at the manhattan project surely knew bombs were made to kill people and to exert oppression. yet for the sake of the advancement of “science”, they were bullied into providing states with overwhelming destructive capabilities. just like [wernher von braun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun), the guy that made nazi rockets and then made rockets for nasa, technically skilled individuals seem to believe their work is above moral judgment, which in turn makes them directly exploitable. this is a naive view of knowledge and rational inquiry and especially, a very naive notion of politics and society. knowledge is not above the power structures that own it.
but forcing everyone to change that would require great courage from all the bullied technical staff of all these companies, many of which do not share my view. in fact, today there are fully trained engineers and scientists that are religious fundamentalists or plain bigots. white hat hackers that are offsetting black hat ops. the technical abilities are a tool of oppression and the technically literate are beginning to become part of the oppressing class. consider google or facebook with their guru like internet knowledge. consider the world bank, the imf or the federal reserve with their guru like knowledge of finance. the technically able, though pawns of a power structure that directs them, are directly responsible for much of the current issues we face. be it combustion engines, factories, farming, extraction, you name it. some engineer designed those machines, some scientist demonstrated how to process the materials. some highly educated human being accepted that the knowledge s/he developed would be used for the ultimate destruction of the biosphere.
so what is my proposal? as a technically literate human being, i too have been a tool of companies. i feel a bit hypocritical writing all this since i have done corporate espionage myself, and developed tracking software that gets people fired and violates their privacy. but i am tired. i am tired of seeing open source software being used for goals that violate its principles, of seeing beautiful discoveries of science and engineering being immediately thrown into the next generation weapon.
my proposal comes in many levels, and exuberantism is the name i give this holistic view for the advancement of our species saving my own ass and not feel like a hypocrite. obviously, since i am no longer following the scientific method, the base principle i will present must therefore be taken on the basis of faith. accepting it on faith will be the most irrational thing this proposal will ask of anyone. everything else i put to scrutiny to the scientific method.
the guiding principle of exuberantism
the guiding principle of exuberantism is simple.
to maximize through work the exuberance of a system
let’s define these terms clearly.
exuberance
exuberance is a quantity measured to the degree of uncertainty available to whoever is doing the calculation. the metric for exuberance of a system is the total information of that system, measured in bits, as it was previously discussed. this might sound shocking to all the non-tech types, so i’ll illustrate. what is the difference between a blank canvas and a painted canvas? the second has more information in it, measured by quantifying all the local arrangements of the matter in it. considering the canvas+paint has more mass than just the canvas, the system has more information because the particles are more numerous and therefore, their specific arrangement is less likely than just the canvas. this is not intuitive, you can’t see it clearly at first, and i will not try to explain it any further. i’m still studying this subject to make it even simpler, but so far, i think this is somewhat straightforward: the more unlikely/surprising something is, the more exuberant it is. it is important to draw the right boundary for the math, that is clarified in the next item. a counter intuitive consequence of this is that depending on the boundary, the above example might be a good or bad one (for example, if we extend the boundary and consider the production of paint, the wood for the tools, and so on)
definition of system
a system is an arbitrary boundary drawn around a contiguous portion of spacetime which will be used to measure the exchanges of exuberance in it and with other systems. this definition is compatible with general thermodynamics boundaries, but it is generalized to bigger systems. since the boundary is arbitrary, one must always make sure the boundary is not drawn to prove one’s own opinion, but it is drawn according to the highest rational justification found by whoever is doing the math. this might involve debates, which is fine. evidence of unscientific reasoning in drawing these boundaries should be discouraged, since this undermines the definitions used.
maximization
a maximization means that through whatever means chosen the system will be in a positive gradient of exuberance. this does not mean it should be so at all times, because optimization using time means local minimums might cause bigger future maximums. this means that greedy techniques should be avoided, and careful rational examination of the possible outcomes should be preferred. this also means that it is acceptable to sacrifice present exuberance for future exuberance, but never on false premises and especially not unless it is ground on solid evidence
work
work is the expression of energy that causes changes in the exuberance of a system. like the work done by the painter on the canvas, work is a necessary part of this definition. in rigor, it is useful work that is encouraged, work that increases e (i will use e for exuberance from now on). therefore, work can be done by humans, plants, animals, stars or even planets. all work is treated equally and quantitatively. there are no distinctions between work done by machines, humans or geological events. work is treated in its purest physical definition
to summarize and put it succinctly, an exuberantist is someone who believes they should maximize exuberance in their system. i encourage people to consider their boundaries the most effective one to avoid impossible problems and to avoid falling back to individualism. but obviously, since the metric is e, there is no requirement to follow any of these
properties of max(e)
one of the main properties of this ideology (it is an ideology after all), is that even though it has a guiding principle, its guiding principle is by definition relativistic. a painted canvas, no matter the color or shape, is better than an empty one. it doesn’t matter if it is a religious figure, a pretty portrait or an ugly post modern blob. what matters is that there is an effort (work done) by something to increase e in their system.
this means that there is no way of objectively distinguishing two human beings based on their physical attributes: they are roughly the same value of e. they can only be distinguished by their work, which can be seen under the light of this metric. people with a high entropic tendency (to break shit, to kill, etc) have a very low or even negative e gradient. their activity should be contained. but since there is intrinsic value (e) in every thing, they should not be destroyed (which would decrease e). instead, the effort should be to direct, contain, educate in order to allow for a mutual coexistence of these two systems.
this is also valid for bigger systems like cities, countries and so on. vast systems are not distinguishable qualitatively because the quantity e is quality agnostic. exuberance is only concerned with the unlikelihood of the arrangements, not the particular arrangements themselves.
this is the core of the moral and ethical consequences of exuberantism, which i will explore. i will also explore exuberantism in all its levels, from the basic every day life to the broad way groups and societies could organize themselves.
this is a work in progress, and the metric is still being worked on since it is the most sensitive part of this model. for now, i think it’s a lot to read. i am an exuberantist, and luckily i’m not trying to convert anyone, since it is part of the exuberantist ideology to avoid its own expansion, in order to avoid intellectual monochromatism.
this is my answer to the “valueless” life as an educated individual. a life according to a rationally defined, but not easily exploitable, moral framework. this is meant to give peace of mind when avoiding the every day cowardice. the idea that we are part of a local/global effort to make our life/home/city/world a more exuberant place.
to the people that know my work, this probably makes a lot of sense and might even “click” certain unanswered “why”s. [the documentary on SPCC](http://vimeo.com/19174515) is a good example of some ideas of exuberantism in practice (in the end even i failed at some of these principles for personal cowardice). i hope to continue providing good examples of it.