Stiegler BrainTrust

BrainTrust series of novels by Marc Stiegler - ASIN:B086RX2Y2Z

SeaSteading kicked off by GAFA launching CruiseShip archipelago after getting tipped that BigGov is going to raid/exile all foreign engineers. the first BrainTrust ships were built in haste sixteen years ago, just before Deportation Phase II, when the American national government sent the 101st Airborne Division to Silicon Valley to round up and expel all the foreign engineers. GPlex and FB, having seen the writing on the wall a year earlier, had been rushing to complete the first isle ships and get them into international waters two hundred miles offshore so their foreign employees could go there and still be maximally productive.

tweets

Every deck of every ship had a different outdoor theme for artwork and decorations....The BrainTrust’s designers had taken the theme idea from a book, A Pattern Language, that Colin had mentioned so reverently Dash made a note to look it up sometime.

There are a lot of libertarians on the BrainTrust. Quite ironic, actually, considering that the BrainTrust’s basic political structure is that of a corporate dictatorship.

bits on their Accel LMS

• I believe the "James Caplan" referred to in the series is one of the submitters to "Dollars, Distance, And Online Education: The New Economics Of College Teaching And Learning" ISBN:9781573563956, aka "J. R. Caplan", cf Forceware Systems, Performance Consultants to Education, Exxon, maybe https://mobile.twitter.com/caplanjrc
• there's mention of using adaptive learning
• Accel is not actually an educational tool. Rather, it’s a framework for incorporating educational tools, mostly modules, and paying royalties to the authors based on the frequency with which those modules successfully teach students the specified material.
• we ran into the usual problems with textbook publishers, teachers unions, and government certifying boards, each of whom would lose out if we shifted to a system that empowered each individual child to self-actualize at their own maximum speed.
• We developed and deployed a testing module—psychological tests and measurements, really—available free for download. It does a first-pass screening for people with the intelligence, drive, etc., to become high-productivity BrainTrust members.
• The tablets had the same starting position. Each was situated at the beginning of a module about supply and demand under the heading of economics. Lenora explained, “In this version of the supply and demand module, we open with a short scenario, a game if you will, for the students to play.
• Devise and run a Nigerian Hoax, as described in the preceding module, against your teammates and teachers. Extra merit tokens awarded for a successful hoax. Merit rewards deducted for running the hoax against your parents or others. —Accel, Topic: Mental Manipulation. Module: Nigerian Hoax Wrap-up
• I'll feed you your lines through an earbud. Just simple things like 'turn the voltage up to fifty,' and 'you must do this for me and for science.' Oh, and you have to act very authoritatively. (Obedience To Authority) Scenario testing. Instead of using the Milgram experiment with its risk of significant psychological trauma, the subject is shown a series of videos and stories, each of which requires a decision at the end. All the choices have both good and bad consequences, so it gives us rich feedback to evaluate. And of course, we would have the sensors hooked up to the subject while it’s all happening.
• a lot of open-source educational software (edtech) developers would rail against the idea of letting module authors profit from their efforts. Dash: But…any decent introductory text on incentive engineering would show how valuable money is as one of a suite of rewards. If you want to enhance the reliability with which higher quality materials are produced, you should really include money. Incentive engineering—it’s a crucial idea. Author: Dash, let me remind you. We’re in 2018 now. There is no field of incentive engineering yet.
• Write an addictive app using at least five of the gratification-inducing techniques discussed earlier. The top three apps will be presented to Wilson Ventures for startup funding consideration. —Accel. Topic: Mind Manipulation. Module: User Interface Final Project.
• I need a module on ethics. Comparing and contrasting ethical uses of wealth and power to unethical uses... Teach the students how to avoid being like you.
• Confirmation Bias: A well-known flaw of the human thinking apparatus is its willingness to accept, without critical thought, a claim that fits neatly with the mind’s pre-existing belief system. Below is a short questionnaire to assess your belief system. Based on that profile, a readily absorbed claim will be presented. The student is required to dissect the claim and identify at least two reasons why it is wrong… —Accel Topic: Critical Thinking. Module: Failure Modes.
• In the Age of gossip-powered media, it is less important to know a lot of facts than to reliably distinguish actual facts from alternative facts. -Accel. Topic: Fake News Creation and Identification. Module: Introduction.
• Here we investigate both Alt-Right and Alt-Left cookbooks for manufacturing alternative facts in support of fantasy belief systems. All alternative fact systems follow the basic SAD principles that drive successful popular media: keep it Simple, keep it Angry, keep it Divisive. —Accel. Topic: Fake News Creation and Identification. Module: Introduction.
• Nine people live on island A and one person lives on island B. The people of island A unanimously vote to disallow using resources on island B, including the person on B. Explain the moral hazards and the likely destructive consequences. Identify two alternative incentive systems that produce better long-term outcomes. —Accel. Topic: Incentive Engineering. Module: Macro-Incentives.
• Step 1: Use Alt-Right Recipe #1 to justify America’s 35% tariff on imported goods. Step 2: use Alt-Left Recipe #1 to justify the same tariff. Extra merit tokens awarded for writeups sufficiently fantastical that they are accepted as articles by either BreitTart or Slat. —Accel. Topic: Fake News Creation and Identification. Module: Text-based authoring of alternative facts.
• “He’s a tyrant.” The fourteen-year-old chimed in. “Level six on the ten point scale.”... “So according to the module, here’s the list of techniques it’s ok to use to neutralize him. As you can see, they all require his cooperation, more or less.”