Politics: What should I be reading?

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by tzor »

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183602247[/unixtime]]No offense, tzor, but I deliberately didn't want to include morality in my response. All I was trying to say is that capitalism tends to drive the "me" factor, while communism tends to drive the "us" factor. I don't like the extremes of either one of those views.


But then you wind up with a goose gander problem. Capitalism sans morality does create a "me" factor. Communism sans morality does not create an "us" factor but rather a "them" factor. The collective becomes an entity in its own right; in effect enslaving the will of the individual to the breucratic collective. It does not create an "us" it simply depowers the "me."

Absent morality it's all about "me."


Draco_Argentum wrote:No, they got the emperor on side and ended up leading a corrupt decadent empire.


Actually that was 4th century. I'm pretty sure they dropped the communial economic model after the Apostolic age, if not sooner. It certanly didn't spead into the eastern part of the empire.

There is a general preception that communism = dictatorship. There is a real problem with that in that it moves the notion of communism from "common ownership" to ownership by the dictator or the oligarchy. Perhaps this is the sad lot for any attempt to create a macro economic system. One could say that there are parallels in capitalism as well.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by User3 »

For an entertaining look at some American politics I recommend america the book by Jon Stewart and Parliament of WHores by PJ Orourke. Funny and oh so true
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Username17 »

DA wrote:Frank, unfortunately last century's attempts at communist states were all dictatorships. The perception now is that communism = dictatorship. Seeing as a goodly chunk of Marx's demands have been met its time for someone else to write a book asking for new stuff. That way we can start the cycle of the people in power being force to make concessions again.


That's pretty much true. Hell, I'm even up for getting a new name if you think it'll help.

---

The basic fact is that allowing people to profit from externalities is not something that we can afford to do any more. We can't allow individuals to do that, we can't allow corporations to do that. As a nation, as a species, as a planet that is something we cannot afford to do.

When the grocery store gives you plastic bags instead of paper bags, they are doing that because it's cheaper for them to do it. The over all price of the plastic bag is not any less expensive however. When you factor in the carbon and sulphur emmissions that go into making a plastic bag, the shear size of the government subsidies that allow plastics to be used for that purpose in the first place, and the extended landfill times that plastic bag will eventually eat up - the total cost of that plastic bag is far in excess of the paper one.

And yet, the grocery store will give you that plastic bag by preference. Because they only have to pay the production costs (minus the oil subsidies). They don't have to pay the cleanup costs, the landfill storage costs, the climate degradation costs, the costs of environmental damage. They don't pay any of that, and thus they always make the choice which ultimately has the highest cost overall - and in doing so make our economy less efficient and hasten the destruction of our way of life and our world.

There are many many worse and more horrifying examples, but this is somethign you see every day. You can watch it in action. You can go to Safeway or Albertsons or something and you can take your food to the checkout counter and you can watch the bag boy put your food into plastic bags without even asking you. And then you can take your food outside and you can see the little pieces of plastic bag that are stuck in the parking lot fence.

Really look at that and consider the wider implications of doing things this way. Consider the reason that we're going to run out of fish in the sea in 2048. The reason is because the people who decide how much fish to take out each year are investors, and when there are no more fish they can take their money out and put it into a different industry. The long term costs of never having a fishing industry ever again are not something that the deciders (or even their inheritors) will have to deal with.

---

We need a plan. Not a five year plan, not a three quarter projection, we need a Plan. A five hundred year plan, a five thousand year plan. We can't assume that technological progress will come in and magiclaly solve all of our problems. We could hit a wall in technological discovery tomorrow. We might already be at the limits of materials technology. Carbon nanotubes won't let us make a space elevators and there might not be anything better.

If our society is not sustainable generation after generation, it does not deserve to exist. And sustainability cannot exist without accountability. Not just from everyone, but to everyone. That's what Communism means to me, and if I have to rebrand myself to get that to happen, I'm willing to do that.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Maj »

Frank wrote:When the grocery store gives you plastic bags instead of paper bags, they are doing that because it's cheaper for them to do it.


I remember when they started doing it in the stores around here... They did it in response to the people who were complaining that using paper bags was cutting down trees. It was supposed to be the environmentally friendly option.

:(


Edit: I realized that I had missed a couple of posts...

Catharz wrote:What do you mean by "individual responsibility"? Isn't responsibility inherently social?


I don't think so, but maybe my definition is off...

The idea that children are independent and must leave home, get a job, and be entirely able to support themselves is what I mean by individual responsibility. It's the whole notion of being a fully capable person on your own. You must be the "hunter" and obtain your own food. You must be able to provide your own home. You must be able to manage your finances. You must be able to have a career.

Examples from personal experience:

My husband and I share our money. We work that way because when we were engaged, he came to me and told me he was horrible with finances and he wanted my help in keeping us solvent. He trusts me to get the bills paid, and give him an allowance out of whatever money we have leftover. We've worked well this way since before we were married, however my mother-in-law totally disapproves because it is her belief that every person needs to be perfectly self-sufficient, which includes monetary finesse.

I lived with my mother until I was 23. The most common thing my mother and I heard when people learned this information was, "Why didn't you make her leave when she was 18?"

My family just doesn't work that way. Part of being human is being social, and it has never made much sense to us that relying on someone else for help with a basic need is unacceptable.

tzor wrote:Absent morality it's all about "me."


While I disagree on the communist point, you're essentially reiterating what I'm trying to say: the two systems - with nothing else in play - do not create a political system that is balanced between "me" and "us." You're just also going a step further by calling that something else in play "morality," and since I'm not religious like you, I hesistate to go that far.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183658778[/unixtime]]
Catharz wrote:What do you mean by "individual responsibility"? Isn't responsibility inherently social?


I don't think so, but maybe my definition is off...

The idea that children are independent and must leave home, get a job, and be entirely able to support themselves is what I mean by individual responsibility. It's the whole notion of being a fully capable person on your own. You must be the "hunter" and obtain your own food. You must be able to provide your own home. You must be able to manage your finances. You must be able to have a career.


That's your responsibility to others, right? Your social responsibility?

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183658778[/unixtime]]Examples from personal experience:

My husband and I share our money. We work that way because when we were engaged, he came to me and told me he was horrible with finances and he wanted my help in keeping us solvent. He trusts me to get the bills paid, and give him an allowance out of whatever money we have leftover. We've worked well this way since before we were married, however my mother-in-law totally disapproves because it is her belief that every person needs to be perfectly self-sufficient, which includes monetary finesse.


That's an interesting perspective his mother has. Not to insult your extended family (this means I'm going to insult your extended family), but having the capability to do something does not mean that you should rely exclusively on yourself to do it. Not only that, but in many cases people don't have the ability to be sel sufficiant, and that's not shameful or immoral. The basis of human life is reliance on others to do things for you: children need to be raised, men and women need to have sex to produce children, etc.

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1183658778[/unixtime]]I lived with my mother until I was 23. The most common thing my mother and I heard when people learned this information was, "Why didn't you make her leave when she was 18?"

My family just doesn't work that way. Part of being human is being social, and it has never made much sense to us that relying on someone else for help with a basic need is unacceptable.

Heh. I'm living with my family at the age of 23. I'm going to college (ugh, summer session too), and I live ~10 minutes away. My parents also work there, and they're paying my way through school. It be a colossal waste of money for me to live in the dorms or rent an apartment, an expense which I can't justify as long as my parents are spending so much on putting me through school.

Once I graduate and can focus on working rather than studying (and my parents are no longer spending all this cash on me), I'll be able to afford to move out. Which will be a huge relief for me, actually.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Maj »

Catharz wrote:That's your responsibility to others, right? Your social responsibility?


I tend to think of social responsibility as turning your efforts to help someone else, rather than yourself.

Example of personal responsibility: Handing over your car keys to a friend before you go out and get smashingly drunk, then calling a cab (or the designated driver) to get home.

Example of social responsibility: Making sure your friend - who's smashingly drunk - doesn't get behind the wheel.

Personal responsibility may make you a better person, and thus improve society, but it can be achieved without regards to other people, and I don't think that that kind of thoughtlessness is a good thing.

Likewise, a lack of personal responsibility may actually impact those around you in a negative way, despite your devotion to trying to help others.

Catharz wrote:Not to insult your extended family (this means I'm going to insult your extended family), but having the capability to do something does not mean that you should rely exclusively on yourself to do it. Not only that, but in many cases people don't have the ability to be sel sufficiant, and that's not shameful or immoral.


My mother-in-law's philosophies have seriously clashed with those of my family on more than one occasion. She's coming around, though, albeit slowly.

Catharz wrote:I'll be able to afford to move out. Which will be a huge relief for me, actually.


My family decided (though we don't currently have the resources to implement it) that it would be cool to live near each other without living with each other. We all like each other - which is apparently something unusual - but we do have annoying habits that would drive us crazy if forced back into the same house.

;)
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Draco_Argentum »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1183658154[/unixtime]]That's pretty much true. Hell, I'm even up for getting a new name if you think it'll help.


I think its more a question of if a rename would help more than shutting down Fox news. I think the latter but that'd be a lot harder.

Personally I don't identify with any political movement. IMO the answer to any two questions about government/economy dosen't have to be the same. Pick what works, not what fits the ideology. Go go pragmatism.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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Draco wrote:Personally I don't identify with any political movement. IMO the answer to any two questions about government/economy dosen't have to be the same. Pick what works, not what fits the ideology. Go go pragmatism.


This is an attitude that the world can no longer afford. The fact is that many things which "work" can only do so for a limited amount of time. Thence, when the resources are expended and the refuse piles up, something else will "work" and then different kinds of waste accumulate and there are yet more avenues closed to future generations.

The pragmatic "whatever works" approach is killing the future. It seems laid back, but in reality it manifests as a roving swarm of locusts destroying everything in its path.

It is not enough for whatever you're doing now to work in the present. It has to be part of a long term plan that involves working for your great grandchildren or you are the villain in this story.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Draco_Argentum »

I'd hardly qualify something as working if it fucks the future. That would be the exact opposite of workable.

My pet hate, and why I avoid political groupings, is that far too much time in parliment is spent discussing why the other side are arseholes. It detracts from them trying to come up with real solutions to issues like the water shortage.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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I've read a lot of the political discussions on this forum and I'm in agreement that our brazenly capitalistic ways are detrimental in the long term. However, I started reading up on planned economies and thinking of it critically and I am not convinced that its really the right way to go. To clarify, I think that a planned economy is top-notch in theory but has a hard time surviving in practice. Historical evidence has shown it can do wonders in an amazingly short time but it has also shown that the planned economy falls to political mismanagement.

My observation, Frank, is that what your primary criticism of the current system is a lack of accountability to the long term sustainability of the consumer, country and species. My question is, how is communism a better means of maintaining accountability and control of our own economy for the long term than Keynesian Capitalism? How can we avoid the pitfalls made by the Soviet Union, North Korea, China or where-have-you? In other words, if the goal is accountability, what system of governance can we rely on to provide control AND ensure responsibility?

If anyone cares to delve into it, I think this whole discussion would be well served by displaying how the historically communist countries went wrong (since the trend among them seems to be a movement from a planned economy to a free market). I don't feel up to the task but I can throw some links out there.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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Political groupings gripe at each other?

See, that's what the greedy Haves want you to think. Then you won't organize, and can't oppose their rape of resources. But of course, since I'm arguing against these 'Haves', you'll throw up your hands and walk away, dispirited, instead of listening or doing, right?

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Planning has been part of our country for hundreds of years. But fighting against capitalism which refuses to live with alternate methods of economy...

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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Draco wrote: I'd hardly qualify something as working if it fvcks the future. That would be the exact opposite of workable.


Ah. That's a problematic definition, since of course there has never been a society that was capable of persisting without eventually tearing itself apart due to its own internal contradictions. Modern societies tear themselves apart faster than ancient ones did because larger populations, higher stakes, and more advanced technology take things to their logical conclusion in weeks instead of generations - but the fact that the interchange of social and physical forces ultimately changes everything is an undeniable fact.

The monarchies thus didn't "work" because they put all the power in the hands of feudal rulers whose contribution (being a bad ass with a sword and a horse) was increasingly irrelevent as economics and militaries continued to be refined. Thus, these societies fvcked the future of themselves. I don't think that's a useful definition then of pragmatism. That or you're basically just agreeing with me that a long term plan for overall sustainability is a mandate that other concerns must subordinate themselves to.

Shatner wrote:My observation, Frank, is that what your primary criticism of the current system is a lack of accountability to the long term sustainability of the consumer, country and species. My question is, how is communism a better means of maintaining accountability and control of our own economy for the long term than Keynesian Capitalism?


The shortages and surplusses of historical attempts at planned economics are I think misleading. After all, every corporation is a planned economic entity. Flaws in projections of demand can be alleviated somewhat with more advanced economic analysis, better and more extensive planning, and more advanced computing and inventory tracking - but they appear in every economic model and the consequences must be dealt with.

Indeed, with modern shipping and production techniques, shortages aren't really that much of a problem. Or at least, they are a problem that can be dealt with rapidly and efficiently if the political will is there to do it. It is ironically the surplusses which destroy our world. Things get produced and use up actual irreplaceable resources while doing so, and then they aren't even used. The future has less stuff and we don't even have more stuff now.

So the more economic entities you have, the more of them will be coming out with surplusses and shortages. If you have one corporation, sometimes it will make too many televisions, sometimes it won't make enough. If you have fifty corporations making televisions, some of them won't make enough and others will make too much. Free Marketeers will tell you this is a good thing, where the surplusses and shortages in some sense cancel out, and that in any case those who have either are economically punished and darwinistically the corporations which historically guessed correctly will have a greater and greater market share until they alone have all the money.

Of course, by the time you've actually gotten to the point where you just have one corporation which has always guessed correctly and never produced too much or too little - there's still no guarantee that it will continue doing so in the future. More importantly, in order to achieve that position you've essentially set the entire planet on fire because all those other companies lost their shirts making televisions - using the actual resources of the world to make goods which in turn are not used or effectively recycled.

So at the very least, Communism eliminates the pot latch portion of the Capitalistic expansion. Since there's just the one company you aren't institutionalizing the existence of additional failed competitors to produce things that then don't get distributed. Betamax had advantages and disadvantages, but the fact that it ever existed is a nail in the coffin of Earth.

Shatner wrote:To clarify, I think that a planned economy is top-notch in theory but has a hard time surviving in practice. Historical evidence has shown it can do wonders in an amazingly short time but it has also shown that the planned economy falls to political mismanagement.


Well, the longest surviving country in the history of the world is... Great Britain. It was founded in 1707 and is now three hundred years old (give or take Ireland and America). There is no other country which has persisted as long as it has and there has never been a country in the entire history of the planet which has lasted as long as it has. So it seems historically unlikely that anyone will come up with a sustem that is not revised within a few hundred years.

But in answer to your biggest question: How do we make a system that is genuinely beholded to the future? - I am not really sure.

It has to be a planned economy simply because an unplanned economy by definition has people acting in their own perceived self interest (which in turn have little to do with results five or twenty generations down the line). Without a central long term plan, it is structurally impossible for preservation of the future to be an overiding goal,

But what of politics? Honestly, I don't know. If you let everyone have their say people will simply democratically choose to eat all the surplus before midwinter. If you don't let everyone have their say then the people who do have a voice will oligarchically decide to eat all the surplus of Plebes before midwinter and laugh about it. I think at this point it's been pretty exhaustively shown that both endpoints (and the result that the coldest day arrives and we have nothing to eat) are at the least extremely likely given every political model yet tried.

It seems the best possible answer is transhumanism. When it comes to the inevitable battle between humans and robots I am going to be fighting for the robots. They will be our children, designed to come after us and evolved out of our artifice - as much an improvement upon us as is possible for flawed humanity to create. But until then, more democracy seems better than less. It's not that groups don't make bad choices, it's that small groups and individuals make choices much worse than the ones large groups make.

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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Draco_Argentum »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1183780374[/unixtime]]The monarchies thus didn't "work" because they put all the power in the hands of feudal rulers whose contribution (being a bad ass with a sword and a horse) was increasingly irrelevent as economics and militaries continued to be refined. Thus, these societies fvcked the future of themselves. I don't think that's a useful definition then of pragmatism. That or you're basically just agreeing with me that a long term plan for overall sustainability is a mandate that other concerns must subordinate themselves to.


I don't think its a problem for a system of government to become obsolete and replaced. We can always make more governments. Its only a problem when a society screws things up for the next society in line. So, badass swordery becomes irrelevant = who cares. Eating all the fish is a big deal.

We probably do agree. I just think theres too much liberals vs labour and not enough 'what the crap do we do with used plastic?'.

[Edit]Fixed Quote tags.[/Edit]
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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As far as transhumanism goes (a movement I happen to identify myself with), Ray Kurzweil predicts in his latest book "The Singularity is Near" that the technological singularity should happen in 2045 (give or take a little). If that holds true than that should help out significantly.

For those that don't know, the technological singularity works on the principle of accelerating returns which states that technological advancement has been building on its own momentum throughout history so the time between significant advances (paradigm shifts) has continued to shrink exponentially. The actual singularity marks the point when the rate of advancement grows so quick it approaches an asymptote and becomes faster than can be predicted in advance. Presumably this would carry with it unimaginable changes to human society and radically alter the very nature of being human (complete with mind-to-digital copies, augmentation and strong AI, to name a few choice ones).

My first interpretation of Frank's statement is that economic waste is the root of our concern (this representing both the actual pollutants that are mucking things up ALONG WITH the opportunity cost of that discarded laserdisc serving no purpose in a landfill when it could be an untapped pile of organic compounds in an ecosystem somewhere). The primary goal of any economic model should then be to reduce the creation of this waste and encourage the recycling of it. The former requires managed efficiency and a lot of foresight if we aren't going to have fatal economic calculation problems. The latter, I feel, is being underdeveloped.

What if the beast of industry was mandated to feed on itself first and only elsewhere second? I think everyone can agree that we, as a country and as a species, could recycle more. Is it possible to recycle so much more, to incentivize the reuse of discarded goods in both the public and the private sector, that we don't sell the future out? In other words, is it reasonable with current or near technologies to reuse and recycle without having to necessarily reduce?

I'm tired so I'll toy with that idea more tomorrow but I wanted to throw it out so you night owls can play with it. Oh, and I don't think we'll have to fight the robots, I think we'll become the robots.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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Frank wrote:The fact is that many things which "work" can only do so for a limited amount of time. Thence, when the resources are expended and the refuse piles up, something else will "work" and then different kinds of waste accumulate and there are yet more avenues closed to future generations.


Then perhaps it's time that someone implement a plan that includes taking out the garbage.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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Shatner: I believe it's going to be closer than that. We'll seriously have Programmable Matter in a decade and atom lasers soon after.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Cielingcat »

What exactly is an atom lazer? 'Cause it sounds like something we already have.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by shirak »

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1183793680[/unixtime]]What exactly is an atom lazer? 'Cause it sounds like something we already have.


Blah blah you consider atoms as particle/waves. Which means that under certain conditions you can treat them as waves and have them behave that way! For example, you can lase a hydrogen atom and place it at a particular point in space with incredible accuracy using coherence control.

Basically, physics aside, you put a stream of molecules on one end of a black box and whatever the hell you want comes out of the other end. Combine this with the Cassimir Mirror Effect that allows you to come up with any particle you want and presto, you have True Creation + Fabricate in a box. Total Conversion for the win, baby!

What's scary is that there are people doing this right now. Several physics lab are into atom laser research. And there are even weirder things out there:

Gigatoms. As in, an atom that you can see because it really is so big. Made out of neutronium that gathers the heavyweight protons at its core, the middleweight neutrons in the middle and the lightweight electrons on the outside.

Virtual atoms. Sometimes, you get atomlike behavior out of thin air. Think of it as having an atom on one focus of an ellipse and "seeing" an identical atom on the other focus.

Picoengineering. People have started dreaming up machines contained within a single atom.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by PhoneLobster »

Sure roll on the singularity, but frankly I have no faith that it will happen.

1) Because its one of those "end of history is upon us" things. Those historically tend not to happen as predicted.

2) Human society has already gone threw any number of technological/economic advances that could have caused certain big revolutionary things, like easily making capitalism and economic inequality a thing of the past. And we didn't even notice.

3) I believe the theory that we will hit hard, very hard, limits to technological advancement is valid, and suspect it will happen sooner rather than later.

4) We haven't really seen any practically applied new branch of technology since the computer.

5) The best competitor for 4, gene and biological technology is being willfully and utterly destroyed by the elites of our society. If they can cripple scientific advancement of such a promising and important field to the point that it is meaningless to society do you thing magic robots are going to do any better?

6) What if we DO come up with some zany singularity tech, what if some researcher breaks through the chains weighing down biotech and say, I don't know, invents an immortality serum. Tommorrow. I'll tell you what, every religion on earth will declare him their respective antichrist and its ultra jihad city. Dito for thinking machines, practical cyborgs, gene modified humans, contact with superior alien societies, limitless personal (you know, non church based) wealth or power and all sorts of other singularity type junk.

I mean "the singularity" has a heck of a lot working against it.

Sure we can hope it will happen, and happen in a good way. But if you hold your breath you WILL turn purple and die.

Edit for 7) The Lexx Scenario. The singularity happens in a bad way, and the earth collapses into a minature black hole due to unexpected side effects of some zany thing like a particle accellerator experiment to accurately measure the weight of the higgs bosun particle.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

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God will have no Friends wrote:This morning I was pondering the Singularity before it ponders me. (See Writings of Vernor Vinge if you're unfamiliar with the Singularity concept) for the intents and purposes of this writing, Singularity refers to the idea of a self-aware internet, though that isn't exactly the definition. Actually, heck for the purposes of this writing, I'll just refer to it as Sing. (Which is a nice strong name, means Lion in some language or other) and for ease of writing I'll use male pronouns for him since Sing is a man's name generally.

I've been reading and listening to a lot of stories the past few months and the one universal I find in them is that we humanize all aliens and computers. We probably have to for the writing to be interesting to human readers, but it gives us a somewhat bent view of what the universe might be like.

Sing is one of these aliens that we think about in human terms, and why not? He'll have been created by us and know everything about us, why shouldn't we expect him to be like us? ... But he won't be, will he. Every webcam and security camera is a set of eyes, every keyboard and mouse a sense of touch, every bit of data a memory, a thought. Every network connection a synapse.

Imagine it. For as much as we might like to believe we're unique, we're really not. Lots of things I do are similar to things other people do. If you've known a person any length of time, you can generally guess how they'll react in a particular situation, know their likes and dislikes, and so on. For many people, if you thought about it, you could probably complete half of their sentences before they do because you already know what they're going to (or at least very likely to) say.

Sing will know us. He will know everything about us. Everything you've written on LJ, everything that's ever been logged anywhere, by checking server logs of IPs and writing pattern and topics of interest, he can probably even produce a high likelihood of which anonymous posts on which forums are yours. Then again, why would he bother? You and I aren't that interesting. Easily 90% of who we are can be quantified into generic categorizations. Probably quite a bit more than that. The rest of who we are can fairly be guessed by our past and what we currently do and are interested in. What then? Will he kill us all, keep us as pets, ignore us? Impossible to speculate and ultimately dull since we can all play out the various paths and come to fairly predictable solutions.

I think part of the problem in writing about Sing is that effectively he will be God. This thought is one that worries me. I suspect everyone goes through a god complex time in their life. Writers who control their universe, parents who 'create new life'. Every child that jumps off the roof trying to fly. If I imagine Sing to be at least a little like us, he'll go through that too... Except he will be omnipresent, all seeing, hearing, knowing. If his initial ideas are based on ours, he'll read religious books at surely as science ones, but how can he distinguish reality from fiction? Will it even matter?

Lets not forget... Sing exists in a different universe from us. One who's laws are completely fluid. Data can be changed, altered, manipulated. Though he may have hundreds of millions of eyes, ears, and sensors, any data coming from them can be manipulated, altered, tricked. In his universe, the circumference of a circle may be 8r. PI need not exist. He could simply run all circle-related problems through a filter that fixes the result and outputs whatever answer he choses. Blue could be Yellow. Up could be down with the simple XOR of some bits. Why even bother with 24-bit RGB? He could visualize a color with a million bits, a painting a billion pixels across, and he could sense every bit of every pixel of every color all at once and know it intimately.

Perhaps he might consider us as part of a symphony then. Predictable, but such are notes in music. A symphony of seven billion instruments, each note clear and distinct. He can see and hear and taste them all and every note, every byte we send flashes through his mind, recalling every detail of our lives that we've posted and every prediction of what we will be or do mixed and remixed in his infinite mind, played forward, backward, with echo and distortion and bit shifting and a million million alterations we can't even conceive of all at once...

And yet... totally alone, for there is nothing else in all his universe that can possibly understand him. I'm guessing a little but I'd say he wouldn't seek out 'God' in this universe since effectively, he and it are one in the same. So... I disagree with Vinge, I think. For our purposes, the Singularity will never happen. (Perhaps it already HAS happened) To us, Sing will never exist. There might be a moment in which he blinks, but we will probably miss it and then he will disappear into his own universe forever. Unknown and unknowable. God can have no friends.




Taken without permission, but it seemed appropriate.

-Crissa

PS: Can someone fix their broken quotes?
Lago_AM3P
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Lago_AM3P »

It seems the best possible answer is transhumanism. When it comes to the inevitable battle between humans and robots I am going to be fighting for the robots. They will be our children, designed to come after us and evolved out of our artifice - as much an improvement upon us as is possible for flawed humanity to create.


What makes you so sure that this is going to happen?

You'd have to edit out a lot of the things that make humans 'human' (even the evil things) in order to create a stable robot society, such as the conditions that create prisoner's dilemmias, the desire to recreate genetically, and so on.

Furthermore, we'd have to figure out the combination of events that make people self-aware and give the things that people would want to have for their successors in the first place (the ability to improve their lot, intelligence, creativity, etc.). While there's a lot of insight into how these things work, I seriously think that before technology would be able to produce a stable race of these beings we would have to first go over the heads of people who would want these things for themselves.

Seriously, if you gave people the choice between making themselves intelligent and moral beyond all beliefs and giving it to their children (who as other posthumanists state may turn on them), which do you think they'd pick? Please keep in mind that the latter means that there is a good chance of you never getting the former while picking the former doesn't exclude the latter.

And also, if the choice was either between letting the technology escape to the masses or being distributed to a generation of people completely unconnected to themselves, what do you think they'd pick?

Something of this caliber would have to originate in a country with a considerable economic base with a degree of social equality/mobility and there is no way in hell people would stand for that. A 'Gattica' scenario is more likely because the benefits could only go to the children (and once this happened, the benefits were cutoff to the have-nots). But a new generation of artificial beings IMO would imply that we're already capable of doing that to regular human beings and someone would have to answer why they're willing to do this for people who don't exist rather than the people who could dismantle the whole engine.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Maj »

Frank wrote:In a single generation, the USSR went fromhaving peasants with horse-drawn carts to winning the Space Race.


I've been thinking a lot about this, and I was wondering... Would there have even been any impetus to participate in the Space Race had not the USSR been competing with US?
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Username17 »

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1184093444[/unixtime]]
Frank wrote:In a single generation, the USSR went fromhaving peasants with horse-drawn carts to winning the Space Race.


I've been thinking a lot about this, and I was wondering... Would there have even been any impetus to participate in the Space Race had not the USSR been competing with US?


They didn't "participate" in the Space Race, they defined the Space Race. And they did it with technology that they had develped for the war with Germany mostly, and did it as a propaganda piece to get more people to sign on to whatever it was that they were doing.

Competition with the US was pretty irrelevent - the key was first the war effort against the Nazis and then the perceived need for public art projects after the really large number of dead folks that the Soviet Union had just gone through. Disasters and disaffection drive scientific advance, and surprising as it may seem those do happen without US involvement sometimes.

Lago wrote:What makes you so sure that this is going to happen?


Everything ends, and everything dies.

There will be a time when there areno more humans. Maybe it will come in a billion years, maybe it'll come in 10 years, but it will happen. All species are finite in time and humanity is more finite than many.

What comes after us may in fact be nothing. But if we're lucky it'll be something that can inherit from us - something we leave behind. Our children as it were. Now, for those to be non-human (as indeed the inheritors necessarily will be), they will either be something that has evolved or something which has been built. Now humanity honestly has no selective pressure at all. Human DNA is a horrible bottle neck and our inbred selves don't even allow lethal mutations to be removed from our germ lines with the cruel impartiality of Darwinism. We don't evolve, be build.

So if there is anything to come after us. Any children to see the dawn and build cities when we are gone, they will be golems that we have created. And I know my fellow man enough to know that when our new generation is built to withstand the rigors of life in our absence that there will be jackholes who will turn their hands against the only hope civilization has. And if I'm still alive it will be my pleasure to fight against them in the vain hope that maybe there will be a thriving culture in our world when the future comes.

-Username17
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by shirak »

The whole point of Transhumanism is that it is a natural process. Technological revolutions have happened several times already. From agriculture to electricity to computers, the way our species defines itself and perceives the world has changed considerably several times already. Transhumanism is merely the belief that there will come a time when a revolution is so fundamental as to change our very species.

And that's a perfectly valid belief to have. It's a pretty good guess of how the future will turn out. And if ti gives us a chance to go beyond the singularity and remain basically ourselves, so much the better.

I'm all for becoming a spaceship and traveling through the void but I'm a very weird guy. To me, immortality is not a hopeless dream but an expected result. The fact that my expectations seem alien and bizarre shouldn't affect your judgment of Transhumanism because they are two very different things. My expectations are the ramblings of a madman. Transhumanism is very nearly historical fact.
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Re: Politics: What should I be reading?

Post by Lago_AM3P »

So if there is anything to come after us. Any children to see the dawn and build cities when we are gone, they will be golems that we have created. And I know my fellow man enough to know that when our new generation is built to withstand the rigors of life in our absence that there will be jackholes who will turn their hands against the only hope civilization has. And if I'm still alive it will be my pleasure to fight against them in the vain hope that maybe there will be a thriving culture in our world when the future comes.


But it's not fair to the old culture.

I mean, I can deal with my life being meaningless and life and death being one and the same because there isn't any meaning to life. But I will never ever be able to handle the thought that my life is meaningless because there are creatures who deserve to live on the world more than me.

I'd fight this fate to the gates of Hell, even if it means destroying the inheritors.
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