Hi! I'm Jason Arthur Taylor. Here is a new "meta" page I am setting up, which is easier to remember than all the sites I publish/post comments to. One goal is to make it a little easier for people to see what I've posted, and to avoid requiring people to join a social network or website just to read what I've written.

Even so, it is still extremely difficult to discover my older content. (I reverse-googled my public content on twitter and facebook. Almost none of my content was there. You'd have to press page down for hours to be able to see my old stuff.) So I'm planning on dumping copies of some of my stuff here. Perhaps Google's bots will index this someday, so my comments are a little less hidden from you, the curious reader.

Jason on facebook. Here is where most of my longer posts reside these days. Unfortunately, following or even friending me will not get very many of my almost daily facebook posts in your newsfeed, which are perhaps too controversial or otherwise provocative to be safe for you to read. You actually have to become my facebook friend, and click on friends, find my name, click on the drop down, and click on "Enable Notifications."

Jason on twitter. These days I use this as an index to my daily posts. What is nice is that my tweets usually directly link to a facebook post which can be viewed without logging in to either facebook or twitter. So, even though I will convert this page to a blog someday, in the meantime one doesn't need to have any social media accounts to read my daily rants.

Jason telling people what's what about a few things. I just started visiting here now. I had a lot of posts on usenet too back in the day.

I reply to all messages to me within 24 hours, if only with a short, "OK"; if you don't get a reply, I never got your message and I hope you take the time to try again using a different communication method.

Some people have been so impressed by my facebook posts that they have asked me to write for their blog. I had accepted one offer, but, in the end I prefer normal posts on facebook (which itself was due to issues and confusion about how to interpret my multi-line tweets) because of the ease with which people I actually know can like stuff and comment. Until my contributions to society are more recognized by pundits, that is the realistic limit of my audience, although IMO the real limit is even lower.

The posts or comments below may qualify as being "TLDR" ("Too Long, Didn't Read"). Therefore, I'm hosting a cheezy mp3 edition of them which you can download to your cell phone and play on it's mp3 player when you are driving, eating, etc. However, I assume you would have an mp3 player and really know the value of listening to podcasts while you do something boring like commute to work, so these files are intentionally long. Also, they are indirect since they were posted for a different purpose than what I am using them for here. Perhaps if TED has the sense to invite me to do a talk you'll get a short, genuine 18-minute edition (vs. another unaccredited rip off of what is actually my work).

1. Why Privacy is Dead and Why We Might Even be Living in a Police State @ facebook.com, February 16, 2015 mp3 edition

Abstract

Most people will eventually ask the tough questions, like "What is the meaning of life," etc. In my opinion, some questions like this that most people should eventually ask themselves are "why isn't there much privacy," "how did the so-called 'military industrial complex' come about," etc. This post attempts to use a little bit of math to give a partial answer.

2. Median Pleasure Time Horizon as a Personality Discriminator @ facebook.com, July 24, 2014 mp3 edition

This is not a "real" publication. It's merely some anonymized advice I gave someone that I want friends and colleagues to have easy access to so I can save time and don't need to repeat prior lectures. This post attempts to explain how you can avoid the trap of short-term success. It will also help one understand a facebook comment attempting to explain why being too nice can lead to unhappiness, conflict, and war. (See #3 below.)

Abstract

Each person is unique, but collectively they can be classified. In this facebook post, I attempt to use a single variable to classify people into about four vaguely defined categories. (Yes, this is an oversimplification, but that's actually the value as well.) The variable I used is the average amount of time into the future a person typically looks forward when deciding what to do (near term vs. distant future). If you are wondering what I mean by phrases like "SL", "HL," marshmallow, etc., just read this article.

Disclaimer: Trading is about psychology and predicting human behavior, and my trading record is exceptional. However, I do not have any formal training in psychology. As such, this post is poorly referenced. Also, it is possible someone else came to these same conclusions and I am just ignorant of their work. If you know of anyone with similar ideas please post the reference in a comment. (You don't need to be my facebook friend.) Also, some of the emails I pasted from (to more quickly post this post) are ~20 years old

3. Why Being too Nice Paradoxically Enables War @ facebook.com, May 26, 2014 mp3 edition

Due to lack of time, much of my work is still unpublished. It only comes out in response to something demanding it. That was also why I wrote this comment.

Abstract

This comment (it is not the opening post) explains why I think that being too nice is irrational and enables war. This is the opposite of what most people I've explained this to over the years expect. Being very nice, observing one's "humanitarian impulse," is often actually what I call "SL" behavior, which is described in the above "Median Time Horizon..." post. It can prevent useful interactions from occurring. This comment goes so far to prove that a "need" to be nice is inherently irrational! Worse, causes a specific type of irrationality leading to disagreements. The shocking conclusion: war is currently rational because most people irrationally need to be nice! Putting the url to this comment here should save me time when friends tell me they want to understand why I think that the most popular approach to dealing with disagreement (i.e., to ignore it) is probably not optimal in the long term for society as a whole.

I think that we'd be a step closer to world peace if more people read this. So eventually I plan to submit this to a journal. Until then, I hope you either critique it or spread it to your friends even though for the reason stated in the 2nd-the-last paragraph, sentence 3, I doubt anything will change.

To read this comment you do not need to be logged into facebook, but you will probably want to so the screen auto-scrolls down to the correct comment. The actual comment begins with " Mr. Schumacher the video.." not "Is there a difference between...," which was the initial post ultimately leading me to disclose this. (In case you are wondering he was a very good band teacher I had long ago.)

Disclaimer: I do not have any formal training in psychology or world politics. As such, this comment is poorly referenced. Also, it is possible someone else came to these same conclusions and I am just ignorant of their work. That said, these opinions of mine are about 20 years old.

4. How the Nanny State Sustains Itself by Flying Their Own High Flag of Politically Correctness @ facebook.com, Aug 24, 2015

Abstract

This short post tries to solve a paradox: why do some people with diseases not want cures? The simple answer? We bribe the sick with cash only if they stay sick and, in some cases, also take drugs. I then attempt to show something obvious in hindsight: that to maintain a nanny/security MIC state, individualism must somehow be suppressed, and this is only one method to help do just that.