Great work Mithus - I knew you would do it. I am looking forward to reading it.
I have questions for James but it seems that I got back to reading him a little too late.
I stopped watching the internet years ago while James was debating relativity with the admin on this board but then last year I ran across the following article using a word that I encountered only once before - “affectance”. The article from Cornell University’s computer science department discusses the use of affectance as a model for increasing accuracy of measurements involving networked radio telemetry.
Years ago when I first heard that word, I tried to look it up with no luck. Fortunately someone asked James about it and he provided what seemed an appropriate definition. More recently seeing this article, I had to wonder if it was the same “affectance”. After a good bit of study, although I can’t say that I totally understand it all, I realized that it was the same as James’ defined affectance - “subtle influences”, especially relating to radio transmissions. Shortly after that I had to wonder if perhaps the infamous "James S Saint’ was in fact one of those listed engineers in the article; Kowalski, Kudaravall, or Mosterio. But then I found another article from the University of Massachusetts. And today when I do a search I find definitions and all kinds of articles about “affectance”. Someone was onto something, something subtle. Something with quite subtle influence. He seemed to be quite a remarkable character.
I had been observing James decades ago after he captured my attention with a topic - “Watching the watchers watching the watchers watch”. I immediately knew what he was talking about but it took a couple of days before I realized what he was really saying. It was clear that he was aware that the people employed to observe the public live with a different frame of mind and value standard. Judgements occur that ethically shouldn’t. And I first thought that he was commenting on the observer’s supervisors watching them watch. But he wasn’t. What he was bring to light was that just as the public live in a bubble of skewed belief, unaware of the thoughts and perspectives of those observing them from above, those very observers are also living in a skewed bubble of belief, also never thinking that they too are being not merely observed, but often misjudged and misguided by a third layer of unseen eyes, attitudes, and agendas. I found that thought disturbing. And that was only the beginning of many unsettling revelations James seemed compelled to bring to light.
The next topic he raised that rocked my boat was about techniques for establishing complete social invisibility - leaving undeniable evidence that one person was actually a different person who was trying to hide his identity - a surprisingly effective trick. He explained the details and how those two topics were directly related (James, if you are still out there - How am I doing? 
). In those days it was common for discussion boards to suddenly develop a problem and disappear. In this case, I could easily see why. James had a way of blurting out things that serious people didn’t want heard. And that led to just about every organization blasting him with any kind of allegation that might stick, calling him every name in the book. In that regard he reminds me of President Trump and the liberal media. Both he and Mr T just boldly blurt it out and let the chips fall where they may as long as it gets all worked out in the end. And James too seemed to have known too much about the deep state swamp, US socialist agenda, globalism, and how they all play together. He often showed a deep disdain for people manipulating the masses no matter who they were. He was the natural whistlerblower type. I wonder how he would have been as a Fox News host.
James seemed to have a way of causing people to think and with an endless list of wizened sayings. I wish I had had the forethought to record them. On occasion I’ll be reminded of yet another one. I had to wonder where he ever came from. What kind of man when discussing religion thinks about things like what the words “god”, “Adam”, “Man”, “spirit”, and such really mean before getting into it? How did he ever find out? He was a consummate deconstructionist ensuring that everyone was on the same page. It would have been great to see him and Ben Shapiro debate something but I can’t think of anything they would argue about.
After reading up on him more and starting to think like him, I have to wonder. Is affectance a thing and substance? Or is it a philosophy of subtle influence? Seemingly both.
It’s great to see there is a book to reference.
When I was translating this text from James’ blog, I asked him about the word “Affectance”, and about “Logical Affectance” in particular, because I couldn’t find it in any dictionary or lexicon.
He answered:
James defined Affectance as:
) Subtle influence(s) {as used in Infant Psychology},ultra-minuscule, mostly randomized electromagnetic pulses,
) Actualization of potential(s) to affect
) A region of varied and subtle changes
) An amount of subtle affects
From the book:
In terms of an earlier definitions within child psychology, there is a correspondence with my view of deconstructing the psyche into earlier elements, or ‘normally’ deconstructing, or de-differenting the psychically variably established stasis(existential epoche),.
Which under unusually dramatic circumstances may subtly and negatively affect. a dramatic reversal into a pre-unified Lacanian mirror.[regression (with loss of intervening variables)].
Imputed by positive, (more actual re-cognition of richer symbolic content) or lesser, leading to negative affectance.
Absolute acceptance, implies in existential terms, a relational discordance, as in NietzcheSartre, a variable positive~negative relationship between Being < Existence > Nothingness; in re-cognition.
Re-cognition has both phenomenological and eidectic variable overlapping applications.
This is how I perceive the affectence-effectance relationship.
That is the one that I am more interested in, but so far, i’m not seeing much on this board about that.
Yes, James didn’t write much about it here. In case you haven’t seen them, maybe you’d like to read his posts in these threads:
Rewrite the Constitution
In Sight of SAM, I am
The Communal Particle
The Ant and the Übermensch
Global Information Segregation
Before the Annihilation
Will Machines completely replace all Human Beings?
Thinking about the End of History
Forms of Government
There is a treasure trove. Thanks.
This is going to take forever to catch up.
You better watch out, man. Saint jameses ‘SAM’ model is highly if not completely socialistic. Don’t let him getcha.
Now, promethean75, don’t be like so many others on the Internet who claim to know a text before they have read it. 
but three of a kind - A, C, D - beats a B high, dude.
Due to your comment I jumped ahead to research “SAM”. I know from many years ago, James was extremely anti-socialist. And he had pretty solid arguments. But since you said that and knowing James to be a theorist, I thought that perhaps he changed his mind at some point.
His explanation of a “SAM Corporation” refers to a multi-cellular type of structure. That alone infers an anti-socialist nature but isn’t conclusive.
I found more relevant and detailed description in the thread, Democratic vs undemocratic. In that thread he explains:
As I understand it, socialists seriously hate constitutions except as a prop or ruse. Constitutions limit the power of a governing body. Socialists do not tolerate anything limiting their power. That is why the US Constitution has been under such attack lately by the Left. So that is one thing.
I was familiar with James’ CRH from long ago and it poses an even greater problem for socialists.
Socialism is about the centralization of authority. James’ CRH and thus SAM is an extreme distribution of authority, the very definition of “democracy”. So it seems to me that SAM and socialism are almost exact opposites.
I’m guessing that James’ idea that people in one of his groups are very much like a tight nit family and thus strongly live for each other is similar to the socialist idea that all people are to live exclusively for sake of the social elite or upper class. That is the only place I see any association between the two. James’ groups don’t seem to have any upper class structure, merely 4 offices under constant scrutiny from the other members.
The US has 50 States with somewhat distributed authority among them. That makes the US a democracy even though the States are tied together by a republic architecture. The primary issue is just that socialism requires a central government with total authority over all people throughout a nation. Socialists don’t like that the 50 States have any degree of independence from their authority. James was talking about perhaps 50 million independent groups/States with freedom for people to swap from any one small group to another, volume permitting.
Any distributed authority, or anything democratic, is the exact opposite of socialism (the term “Democratic Socialism” is an oxymoron). It is merely an issue of distributed authority versus central authority. So even if there is some tiny element of a socialist nature inside the diverse and distributed cells or groups, the fact that the groups are their own authority absolutely forbids socialism.
So the way that I see it is that James’ SAM Corp is actually, literally, a million times less socialist than the USA and would totally forever block socialism and its big brother communism.
exotic philosophical language like ‘multi-cellular type of structure’ is really only articulating an already simple and well understood feature of government; that of seperate bodies that cooperate (and keep each other in check) to make the governing process as democratic as it can be. contrarily, any government that yields absolute executive power from a ‘single cellular structure’ - to use the language of james - is a fascist government. probably the fact that you imagine socialism as being unable to be ‘multi-cellular’ is because the historical examples of any attempts at a socialism never made it past the initial stage of its revolution… and therefore had to mainstain a stringent ‘proletarian dictatorship’ comprised of a single party. this is why its commonplace to equate communism with totalitarianism, something marx nor lenin never permanently advocated. the purpose of the temporary central party dictatorship was to concentrate control and work out the difficult organizational processes involved in stabalizing the newly revolutionized society. but instead of moving past this stage, the communist countries turned into state-capitalist models. this is largely due to the fact that there was immense economic competition with other capitalist economies… so they had to be able to compete. that, and its a natural historical trend for those in power to find ways to keep their power. but this is all 20th century stuff, and the world is now more than ever ripe for a sucessful, global revolution something along the lines of what trotsky envisioned so long ago. shame that the banner of socialism is being carried by the clowns on the left today. they’re all entirely too moderate in my opinion.
there is nothing socialists oppose about the idea of a constitution per se. moreover, if you think of a socialism in terms of a governed and government split rather than a government of the governed, you’d naturally think in such dichotomous terms as ‘the government not wanting to lose its power to the governed’. but if the governed are the government, there is no opposing body to lose power to.
and the american constitution is being attacked because of how silly some of that shit is. just read a tweet of some redneck placating to trump over the right to bear arms. dude actually thinks there is a ‘god’ that has granted him a natural right to have a gun. i mean c’mon, man. seriously?
uh-oh. my toasted asiago bagel with cream-cheese has just arrived, and i should therefore like to conclude this post with great haste.
75,
In the long run I kind of take an adverse position.Aristocracy had a stranglehold of many centuries of absolute control, the new money aristocracy knows they have to make it this time or they will be broken in an age of progressive short changing.
So it will rather be an internal spiritual virtual revolution with a spiritual head of reason triumphally coming back and willingly sacrificing itself, if , and only of, the new world order stumbles badly.
It will be the Roman Imperium redux, by structural necessity.
Even the eagerness by which a drastic power grab acceleration tries to obligate what is left of representing any form of checks and balances.
Its inconceivable for it to retain a will to powerful another socialist revolt. People will be satiated by perfumed narcotic overfed materialism to be able to sort things out.
The new left’s spectacular failure is proof enough, that was a prime example of a missed universal opportu ity.
That is not the multi-cellular aspect that I was referring to.
The way I understand it is that every SAM group is a separate cell-like or family like entity consisting of from 4 to 50 people. Each has its own constitution with unique amendments. Those constitutions act like a DNA molecule would in a human cell. The whole body of society would then have millions of those cells, each with a slightly different constitutional amendment set.
That is what I meant by “multi-cellular”.
I thought to be a fascist government required the forced oppressing or silencing of policy opposition. James’ CRH requires open, free, and constant debate concerning all laws. He even stated that laws must prove that they are accomplishing their aim else they are automatically removed.
It seems to me that a fascist government just does whatever it wants without allowing opposing views (exactly what the US Left is currently doing - a fascist socialist coup d’état). James’ CRH is the opposite, actually requiring regular debate against already standing laws as well as any new laws. The two seem completely incompatible. His CRH preempts and defuses any attempt toward fascism.
Weren’t Marx and Lenin all about historical natural outcomes of societies? If even with extra help, society ends up in a different place than they predicted, they were simply wrong.
Just from my own standpoint Marxist communism is just a fantasy. Didn’t Marx propose an eventual state of communal and peaceful anarchy, having no rulers? He imagined a day when there would be no competition against the status quo and thus everyone would simply be happy going along with the flow. That is a utopic fairy tale.
The communist party in China became dictatorial and capitalistic because natural human drives required it to happen. There was, and is, resistance from both outside and inside the communist state. And there always will be. That alone requires a military control over the population. And a military control requires an economic control which in turn requires wealth and capitalistic pursuits.
Even if they conquer the world, which they certain strive to do, they will not “beat their swords into plow shares”. That story was about as realistic as the Democrats paying off all student loans and providing universal healthcare for all the world. It was socialist carrot-on-a-stick propaganda since day one.
That sounds like double talk. The governed cannot also be the governor. That would constitute certain death. A government populous participation scheme can and does work, but there must always be something outside, uncontrolled, dictating limits. There must always be a restraining or confining element. And there must also always be incentive.
There is always division between an upper and a lower authority. And there must always be. That is why socialism always has a class distinction. It is a simple minded way to maintain a governed vs governor distinction.
In trying to avoid the potential wordsmith games involved in classifying government types, the issue is really only a matter of who has authority over your life. James was saying that the highest authority should be a combination of your own neighbors rather than someone far removed from your situation in life and probably someone you will never meet - an extreme democracy that even the Greeks would envy. He expressed the concern that a distant, unrelated person would not be able to truly assess your situation and thus not be able to properly guide or govern your life. How much does Pelosi or Trump know about your real situation?
He used the analogy of the entire world being nothing but small businesses. I didn’t see anything implying an overseeing hierarchy of authority controlling those businesses. Instead, the idea seems to be a practical answer to the concern, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” without the irresponsible welfare state debacle.
How can you have a socialist State if there is no State? He seemed to be proposing a form of constitutional anarchy - a constitutional substructure with no proposed hierarchical superstructure - no national ownership of production or financing.
It does seem that he allowed for a hierarchy to be formed by the choices of the independent groups or cells. He mentioned somewhere that a natural hierarchy would gradually evolve through time and experience from his CRH. In that vein he described the entire society to be like a human body where the brain and mind form without the conscious designs of the cells (the groups). The human body is certainly not a socialist structure. The human mind does not dictate the means by which the liver or kidneys do their job. It comes much closer to a constitutional republic of constitutionally formed cells (DNA being the cell’s constitution or James’ CRH).
sounds like a PAZ, and the first problem with these that comes to my mind is this; how do groups not bound by the same constitution interact with each other without coming into conflict over what is interpreted as legal/illegal behavior, or what is characterized as a ‘right’?
well i mean nobody can predict what will become of a society, really. aside from flirting a bit with hegel’s dialectical materialism idea that society evolves and develops according to some internal rationale/logic (which he later dismissed as too philosophical and idealistic), marx’s predictions weren’t so outlandish and really a matter of commons sense. at some point the working class will become conscious of its situation and want to radically change it. all marx did was critically analyze the relationship between workers and the owners of the means of production, and presuppose and impending conflict because of those circumstances. but phrasing such as ‘historical natural outcomes of societies’ are too ambiguous to really represent marx’s thinking. that’s something hegel would say, but probably not marx. there can be no unnatural outcome of a society, can there? i mean what’s an ‘unnatural outcome’?
that ‘utopian society’ stuff was made up by the right to caricature marx’s ideas and discredit them as fantastical nonsense. if marx ever used the term ‘utopian’ to describe this theoretical society, what he meant was a society in which drastic improvements were made to the quality of life for its citizens… not that we would all sit around the camp fire holding hands.
i don’t know if natural human drives ‘require’ anything, but i do know that there are any number of ways a political system can go under the various influences of the particular environment they are in. what happened to china is more like a contingency than a necessity. that china became what it did doesn’t mean it ‘had’ to become what it did, though.
to address all your other questions i’d rather just try and explain how eloquently simple the basic premise of socialism is. the single most important objective here is to put complete control of the means of production into the hands of the workers, and abolish private corporations. this seemingly minor detail would force a radical restructuring of the entire government and therefore affect every aspect of life directly. as a result a true democracy would take shape around it because the working class would become the managing class, hence the governing class. that’s the basic gist of it.
I didn’t see how the CRH would usurp authority from any existing Western government other than perhaps granting free speech. The Asians might not like it.
I suspect that you’re missing the point of the groups. No matter what the surrounding circumstance, it helps to have allies or friends. The SAM constitution seems to merely provide for allies regardless of life’s concurrent challenges. It really wouldn’t matter what kind of government you were under unless they expressly forbid SAM type groups. The SAM Corp (or later called “Coop”) is merely a structured agreement between friends to provide for mutual support. There doesn’t seem to be anything sinister, nefarious, or rebellious about it. It seems to be, and as he stated, merely like a small business agreement that pertains to more than merely making money. And I’n sure that making money isn’t forbidden either.
In this case, “natural outcome” doesn’t imply the existence of an unnatural. It merely emphasizes that things happen for understandable and expected reasons, like the “natural consequence” of a rock rolling down a hill or perhaps a parachute not opening in time.
So you don’t believe in determinism - everything is a consequence of what came before it?
At this point I think you have answered why you thought that James was proposing a socialist and fascist government. He was proposing the exact opposite, but I can now see why you thought otherwise.
We aren’t really talking about James anymore, but socialism. Do you have a preferred thread where we can discuss your ideas concerning the proposed benefits of socialism?
Nah I don’t hunker down and get involved in serious debates/discussions anymore. I learned years ago what a waste of effort this is. I’m only here because I’m a forum addict.
Thanks for your candor. I suspect that you are far from being alone on this board in that regard. 
This appears to be a soapbox board - output only. I’m still wondering why James stayed here so long.