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Interesting thoughts, Michael(?). I agree that some trends in Japan may foreshadow things the USA does (even the Japanese banking crisis decades ago related to rel estate bubbles leading to stagnation).

Thanks for your book link, which also has a link to a related site which includes connecting current challenges with historical developments:
http://www.transitiontoanewhum...
"I have spent a couple decades writing a book about human ecology, because it is drastically changing, which presents great danger and great potential. The idea is to describe both so that we can avoid the disasters and take advantage of the potentials. The problems I describe could end human civilization, but the only way to avoid the disasters is to adapt to a new ecology, like the title of the book says. About 10,000 years or so ago, we started leaving the ecology we had grown up in for millions of years. Right now we are in an ecology that is one transient ecology of many that we have been moving through. We need to find one that is stable and that we can live in long term or we are, well, a specie without an ecology is in trouble. If we do not create a stable ecology that is some form of civilization, well, it is going to look like one of those "Post Apocalyptic" movies. It will not be pleasant and it will be hard for humans to ever really be much more than animals. The thing is that it is not just about finding a new ecology, it is also about adapting to survive and be comfortable in it. We are still mostly adapted to the old ecology when we lived in tribes and we need to change to adapt to the new ecology. It is a lot of things. We need to be smarter and more comfortable in a civilization than we are. That is what the books are about. In the mean time, this web site is supposed to serve a few other purposes and offer other resources. It is especially to present discussions about how different points of view can be understood."

Just spending a few minutes so far looking at your site and book blurb, in scope, it reminds me of "Beyond Civilization" by Daniel Quinn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

It also reminds me a bit of "A New Way Of Thinking" which you may find of interest:
http://www.anwot.org/

You have a synopsis here that mentions genetic issues:
http://www.transitiontoanewhum...

Certainly evolutionary pressures need to be understood (I was in a PHD program in ecology and evolution for a time). But in the time scale of a transition to some new economy full of AI and robots as capable as most humans for most economic activities (twenty years?) these seem to me to not be pressing issues, whatever the long term may hold. You might also find of interest Freeman Dyson's speculations about genetic engineering as far as possible long term trends in designer biology.
http://www.nybooks.com/article...

On genetics and health, while mutations and birth defects are serious issues, it seems to me the most pressing current health issues relate to vitamin D deficiency, diet lacking in enough vegetables and fruits and with too many refined carbohydrates and artificial additives, too much bad stress, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, lack of community, problematical infrastructure, and so on (see "Blue Zones" for example).

You also wrote on your site: "In my broad studies, I had to examine the Philosophy of Science. One interesting point is about how science is advanced. Is it by a team of researchers or by individuals. It is a contested point, but I think it is clear that it is by both. Still, in the balance, the contributions by individuals like Newton and Einstein show the power of individual inspiration. That is the path I have taken. "

I certainly appreciate the

"Mass surveillance is inevitable to any industrialized country. Which is why all countries with any technological sophistication have it. To think that one can 'fight' it to any real degree is like thinking one can 'fight' indoor plumbing or mass electrification."

Sad, but true. Still, political plays a role in the outcome of all this in terms of what sort of world we want to build together.

Recent posts by me to slashdot on that referencing other items:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

The bottom line -- read David Brin's "Transparent Society", read Theodore Sturgeon's 1952 "The Skills of Xanadu" about the meaning of privacy in a mobile networked world, read James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" and think about how we can transcend our society to some new healthier form. There are links to all those in my previous posts. It is so sad that with all this mindbogglingly powerful technology the main use we can think for it at first is to create artificial scarcity and kill each other with it. So sad. That is ultimately a moral issue requiring new ways of thinking, like Albert Einstein suggested after the development of atomic technology:
http://www.anwot.org/

We need to accept we have powerful technologies relative to classical human needs and rethink fundamental issues of our society accordingly, such as moving beyond artificial scarcity and moving towards a basic level of abundance for all (which would include more time for voluntary civic participation instead of endless overwork at mostly pointless activities related to preserving a scarcity-based status quo).
http://www.whywork.org/rethink...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...

Some humor by me on is at the end of this post, a parody of the "bunker scene", where this time Hitler confronts post-scarcity ideas:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

Any movement that relies on secrecy to succeed is pretty much a non-starter, even in times of less technology like the 1950s Civil Rights movement. The push for encryption against the government by technologists is similar to the argument that handguns will somehow stop government corruption or fascism. It is not going to work. What will work is broad social change done through democratic processes.
"What Social Science Can Tell Us About Social Change"
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...

Or as I've said before: "As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go r

:-)

AC wrote: "Paul, referring to Disciplined Minds on Slashdot is like admitting that you are a predator alien. We're going to have to be much more clever than that if we want to convince people to question their ideologies. The subconscious will not cede its control unless you offer it something in return. The best way to deconstruct the subconscious is to study branding and market research. Learn about what happens when people buy stuff, and compare that to what people do when they try to evaluate claims about scientific models with limited information.
See my thread: http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14667 "

First, I probably can't in general disagree with your points on branding, advertising, purchasing, etc. Even if specific cases for specific individuals may differ, as in some people are more analytical than others (sadly sometimes meaning perhaps they are more easily bamboozled by "facts"?), some people may be in a stage of life looking for a new idea to try or an explanation for a past difficulty, etc.. I can wonder if that person to be so good at selling such ideas would be me though? But yes, in general, you are probably right. I liked the personal development diagrams in that thread (having only looked through the first page of 11 in the thread, need to read more later). Reminds me of one I've seen elsewhere with eight stages or so but generally overlapping.And I liked the line in Megamind where he says the difference between a villain and a supervilian (or by extension amateur and professional) is ... "presentation". "-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy2zB8bLSpk

The first ten episodes of the popular "Downton Abbey" provides examples of workers identifying with the system around them and not seeing much hope for change (although a war shows up and some things do start to change, and some do see potential for change). James P. Hogan echoes similar themes in Voyage from Yesteryear, as people cling to the old scarcity-based social hierarchies even when confronted with abundance. Historian Howard Zinn's take on that: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html

BTW, you might also like some other quotes I've collected here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also related (there are better links I've posted before, these are just top Google matches):
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/
http://landshape.org/enm/peer-censorship-and-scientific-fraud/

One thing Einstein got very right was the need to improve our ways of thinking given our new technological powers:
http://anwot.org/

I'd also agree we could use better communications systems to discuss science and reason together about it. My wife and I have taken some steps towards such things in terms of making free and open source software, but no big successes so far. This web page has a video related to a Kickstarter campaign I thought about doing to further those efforts a couple years ago, but I did not proceed with it (taking work doing more conventional stuff instead for sadly short-term reasons): http://twirlip.com/

At least I still have some time now and then to advocate for a Basic Income as at least one way someday to give people more intellectual freedom (among other things). But even that is a tough sell, although I am glad

Related by me: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html

By others:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/natural_depression.aspx
http://www.anwot.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738337/
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

http://www.escapingnorthkorea.com/
"During his time in China, he learned of the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fleeing to China through a 6,000-mile modern-day underground railroad, which runs from Pyongyang to Bangkok, in search of food and freedom."

Why dont; more peopel leave North Korea or revolt? Psychology and culture... (which includes things like "quorum sensing").

See also:
http://anwot.org/
"Mental Wealth is the skillful thinking we require to create a wonderful fantastic lifeâ(TM)s experience. Not everyone can accumulate and give their loved ones a sizeable monetary inheritance. Each of us can accumulate mental wealth and experience the joy of giving it away! The wisdom embodied in mental skills enriches us, even more than the benefits money may provide.
                I recommend taking The Short Course to Mental Wealth prior to undertaking the fuller course, A Newer Way of Thinking. The short course provides mental skills that equip us to become our own best friend, lifelong. It introduces the vocabulary that frees our will to act using reason and wisdom, replacing instinct and habit; directing and producing our own destiny rather than remaining a servant to fate and circumstance.
                The more complete course, A Newer Way of Thinking, explains why we must upgrade our thinking to survive and thrive in the Nuclear Age. Of greater importance, it offers the practical steps to create global peace through our collective efforts. Learn what others have found works and have gladly shared for our benefit. Help make the world a kinder gentler place. Begin with The Short Course to Mental Wealth."

Or, a top Google search result on mental chains:
http://www.calresco.org/lucas/breaking.htm
"Our world of today creates many barriers, walls built of prejudice, of monetary difference, of national boundaries, of belief systems. All these self-created divisions are arbitrary and abstract ideas which often act to avoid growth, to prevent humanity exploring those areas of state space so far not understood. What is possible in our world is unknown by anyone, despite the arrogant assurances with which pronouncements (e.g. "there are no other options") are made by leaders in all fields. No leader, of any type, can possibly deal with all the available information on any subject, so the centralised (undemocratic!) decision making so beloved of corporate, political and bureaucratic systems alike is fundamentally flawed, and increasingly is becoming destructively unsustainable in both social and planetary terms. Every scientific (or political) assumed certainty is now questionable however within our new science. We need not fear to question, only by so doing can we go beyond the errors of the past, those dogmas of static truth and conformity.
    It is far too easy to assume that what we already know is all there is to know. This delusion of perfection, the 'authority knows best' syndrome, is endemic to many of our political leaders, academics and experts. Yet throughout history the bullying 'conform or die' certainty of one time or group has been overturned by the discoveries of the next. Today's reality will become tomorrow's stupidity. Transcending what we believe today may be the essential step in taking humanity onwards into a new millenium based upon a better understanding of complex systems. Our essays and papers further explore these themes."

This extends to the core of "science" as a social entreprise:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

I agree risks have increased. We need to think bigger than just the risks though. At the same time, we need to think different on Earth: http://anwot.org/

Problem is, most people are still enmeshed in "scarcity" thinking -- even with the tools of abundance at their fingertips. So, rather than build solutions, we build drones to fight over the problems.

http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm
====
The race is on to make the human world a better (and more resilient) place before one of these overwhelms us:
        * Autonomous military robots out of control
        * Nanotechnology virus / gray slime
        * Ethnically targeted virus
        * Sterility virus
        * Computer virus
        * Asteroid impact
        * Y2K
        * Other unforeseen computer failure mode
        * Global warming / climate change / flooding
        * Nuclear / biological war
        * Unexpected economic collapse from Chaos effects
        * Terrorism w/ unforeseen wide effects
        * Out of control bureaucracy (1984)
        * Religious / philosophical warfare
        * Economic imbalance leading to world war
        * Arms race leading to world war
        * Zero-point energy tap out of control
        * Time-space information system spreading failure effect (Chalker's Zinder Nullifier)
        * Unforeseen consequences of research (energy, weapons, informational, biological)
====

The solution I proposed there was developing a free and open source distributed library of information about how to make things, working towards the goal of creating self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore.

However, since then I think the deepest issue is changing how we thing, so we can move beyond, as in my sig, the irony of using the technologies of abundance from a perspective of fighting over misperceived scarcity. Bucky Fuller talked about that too, in moving from "weaponry" to "livingry". See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://anwot.org/

Here are some emails I wrote to Ray Kurzewil on these themes years ago that someone else put up on their site: http://heybryan.org/fernhout/

I essentially suggested that uploaded human minds would have their runtime consumed by the digital equivalent of natively-evolved digital piranha. I also suggested that the direction we come out of any singularity may have a lot to do with the moral direction we are pursuing as we go into it -- and that AI created mainly out of human military and economic competitiveness against other humans probably would not node well for having a happy singularity. That is why it is important to move our global society into a more compassionate direction before creating such AIs.

As I suggested a dozen years ago: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm
"The race is on to make the human world a better (and more resilient) place before one of these overwhelms us:
        * Autonomous military robots out of control
        * Nanotechnology virus / gray slime
        * Ethnically targeted virus ..."

See also though the root cause misperception: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere? ..."

Think of the unknowns surrounding DNA like a lock that kept us safe from ourselves. Removing those unknowns is like telling everyone how to open all the locks on the planet (including digital locks protecting nuclear weapons). That implies our culture needs to change if we are to survive. On my website I talk about some of that. Here is another good one: http://anwot.org/

http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
    Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."

However, schooling is certainly effective in keeping young people out of the work force. What most of the comments here seem to ignore is that 200 years ago, children at age 4 or 5 were working on farms and in mines and in factories. Now, with automation and electric motors, children are out of the work force generally until they turn 21 (or longer if they go to grad school). Things have changed so much, and many people posting here seem unaware of that. At this point, most work is "make work" related to guarding or pointless zero-sum competition.

I agree with your point about decision makers being out-of-touch with emerging technological realities. See my site for more on that.

And see also:
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/
http://anwot.org/
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html

AC wrote: "The post-scarcity society is not going to end this, even supposing it does turn from utopian dream to reality. If anything, it will make everything worse, because you'll have more resources with which to bestow your benevolence."

This is just about exactly the point I'm concerned about, as reflected in my sig of: "A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity."

And that is the nightmare we are actually living today! People tend to forget about all the nuclear missiles still ready to launch from a computer glitch in decades old hardware from the 1960s and 1970s.

That is exactly why we need some sort of global mindshift to a newer way of thinking in order to survive having discovered all kinds of new sorts of technological "fire" (like nanotechnology, robotics, biotech, nuclear, networked bureaucracy, etc).
http://www.global-mindshift.org/discover/viewmeme.asp?memeid=239
http://anwot.org/

By the way, on "education" which in practice means compulsory state-sponsored mass schooling, see:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://disciplinedminds.com/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Or also on your theme:
"The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too"
http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/05/13/why-they-hate-our-kind-hearts-too/

Good points. A fundamental question after 9/11 was "Why do they hate us?" The knee jerk response was "They hate us because we are free and wealthy and they hate freedom and wealth". But a truer answer is more likely "They hate us because we fund their oppressors and so have contributed to their relative unfreedom and poverty".

The biggest issue with all this is that advanced technologies of abundance like robotics, networked computing, nanotechnology, nuclear, aerospace, biotech and so on must be used from a perspective of abundance. Such technologies, like Bucky Fuller talked about, could create universal abundance for all of humanity -- and then some, as we spread into the solar system and to the stars, But, people are often using such technologies of abundance from the perspective of scarcity and so they are adapting advanced technology to fight the last century's wars over perceived resource scarcity. Thus we have ironies like people creating nuclear missiles to fight over oil fields, rather than using advanced materials and knowledge about how the atom works to make clean cheap energy for everyone (whether via nuclear means or solar panels or hot or cold fusion or whatever). I wrote a related essay here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

The same is happening with the misguided energy going into creating stuff like Stuxnet, especially given that what goes around comes around, and now everyone has access to Stuxnet as a prototype platform to build even worse stuff. Obama's escalations of the drone wars and the cyber wars just adds more ironies to his Nobel Peace Prize.

Still, ultimately, "war is a racket", and that racket sadly drives much of US foreign policy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

In general, everyone globally needs to totally rethink our collective economy and geopolitics for new 21st century realities. That will happen eventually because we can't survive the way we have been going on. It's only a question of how long until that change in mindset happens and how much suffering the world experences (including from nucelar war) until then. Here is another related website:
http://anwot.org/

"The world is full."

Carrying capacity is a function of technology and lifestyle (which are in turn functions of imagination and ethics):
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

The carrying capacity of the local solar system with known or easily forseeable technology is probably on the order of quadrillions of humans living in many millions of Earth's worth of space habitats.

See, to complement "Know Thyself", see also "A Newer Way Of Thinking":
http://www.anwot.org/

The big issue is we are trying to apply scarcity-based economic thinking to the technologies of abundance. So we demand that people work for the right to consume, but then we make them compete against firms introducing robots. This was a problem seen as far back as 1964:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"The continuance of the income-through jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand -- for granting the right to consume -- now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system."

A basic income, improved gift economy, better technologies for local subsistence, and internet-empowered planning at all levels could help increase our collective carrying capacity and quality of life.

See also:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Albert Einstein said: "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

He also said that if he had known the Nazis would not make atomic bombs, he never would have worked on them. Of course, now even digital watches (or at least smartphones) have enough computer power to design the essence of atomic weapons...

Here is a website by psychiatrist Donald Pet about moving to that newer way of thinking we need:
http://anwot.org/

Here is related stuff I have written:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? ... These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ..."

Sometimes when you find ourself in a hole and you don't want to be there, the best thing to do is stop digging and start thinking in a new way about how you got there and how to get out.

The mystery of the human genome was sort of like a protective lock that prevented people from engineering terrible plagues. Now that mystery is going away, with lots of well-meant good intentions to cure genetic diseases and so on. With that protective "code" widely understood, we had better be sure to learn how to be nicer to each other, and use that knowledge to build a better society rather than tear everything down.

Or, in other words:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/quotes
"Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

In general, our society needs to move to "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein (and now Donald Pet) talk about, given we can either use abundance to build a better world for all, or we can use it to destroy that possibility for all:
http://www.anwot.org/
http://anwot.org/blog/2011/07/10/stren-70-why-do-we-have-destructive-aggression-and-war/

And a basic income for all is part of that transition to a newer way of thinking, even though it seems all these social trends are very slow processes. I've heard that is until the trends reach some tipping point like about 10% of the population understands them and values them, and then the trend races forward. It's amazing that it was considered as much as it was in Germany recently:
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_snd-basic-income.html

There really is no alternative to a newer way of thinking and related socioeconomic policy, given the power of WMDs at this point in the hands of disgruntled people at the edges of the society who may think the whole thing is grossly unfair. The miracle is that people are so peaceful anyway, and that things like blowback actually so rarely happen.

Likewise, if LENR (what was formerly called cold fusion) pans out, while it will open up many possibilities for good, it will lead to more destructive possibilities as well, and probably, after a brief spurt of new jobs, we will see massive formal-sector unemployment as energy can often substitute for labor. Related links (even if things are still up in the air, and solar panels are a proven technology also rapidly dropping in cost):
http://www.google.com/search?q=lenr
http://pesn.com/2012/01/12/9602009_NASA_Admits_LENR_Cold_Fusion_Game_Changer/
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/cold-fusion-being-studied-at-mit
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/newenergytimes-gets-three-nasa.html
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/billionaire-donates-money-for-cold-fusion-research-at-us-university
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

The mystery of the human genome was sort of like a protective lock that prevented people from engineering terrible plagues. Now that mystery is going away, with lots of well-meant good intentions to cure genetic diseases and so on. With that protective "code" widely understood, we had better be sure to learn how to be nicer to each other, and use that knowledge to build a better society rather than tear everything down.

Or, in other words:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/quotes
"Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

In general, our society needs to move to "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein (and now Donald Pet) talk about, given we can either use abundance to build a better world for all, or we can use it to destroy that possibility for all:
http://www.anwot.org/
http://anwot.org/blog/2011/07/10/stren-70-why-do-we-have-destructive-aggression-and-war/

And a basic income for all is part of that transition to a newer way of thinking, even though it seems all these social trends are very slow processes. I've heard that is until the trends reach some tipping point like about 10% of the population understands them and values them, and then the trend races forward. It's amazing that it was considered as much as it was in Germany recently:
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_snd-basic-income.html

There really is no alternative to a newer way of thinking and related socioeconomic policy, given the power of WMDs at this point in the hands of disgruntled people at the edges of the society who may think the whole thing is grossly unfair. The miracle is that people are so peaceful anyway, and that things like blowback actually so rarely happen.

Likewise, if LENR (what was formerly called cold fusion) pans out, while it will open up many possibilities for good, it will lead to more destructive possibilities as well, and probably, after a brief spurt of new jobs, we will see massive formal-sector unemployment as energy can often substitute for labor. Related links (even if things are still up in the air, and solar panels are a proven technology also rapidly dropping in cost):
http://www.google.com/search?q=lenr
http://pesn.com/2012/01/12/9602009_NASA_Admits_LENR_Cold_Fusion_Game_Changer/
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/cold-fusion-being-studied-at-mit
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/newenergytimes-gets-three-nasa.html
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/billionaire-donates-money-for-cold-fusion-research-at-us-university
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

"All that can be done in a rational world is to oppose the hate when it makes itself manifest by its vile actions."

It's a little more complex than that. One can ask:
* What dysfunction leads to the hate, and can it be fixed before the hate manifests itself?
* If the hate is there, how can one prevent it from being acted on by the context around the hate?
* If the hate is being acted on, how can one respond to it effectively, given that acts claimed to be justified against those who hate can themselves be hateful and/or cause more hate?

All too often, the response to hate creates more hate. And violence begets violence. Dysfunction spreads like a disease. If one sees hate and violence as like a disease, what is the right response to it? One set of idea:
"Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World"
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-True-Peace-Violence-Community/dp/0743245202

In general, as a society, how can we move beyond black/white thinking, to thinking in color?
http://www.anwot.org/

Still, there remains truth in your point, that there are people who hate, who are damaged, and others need to figure out how to respond to that situation (even if the haters are responding in kind to previous hate). It's a big challenge. And there is often a conflict, that the permissive policies that sometimes might prevent hate might allow existing hate to persist. It's not an easy thing to deal with.

A general field can be seen as Peace Making. Morton Deutsch outlines some ideas here:
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audiodisplay/deutsch-m

Dealing with hate and dysfunction is a core theme of some North Eastern Native American culture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadodaho
http://www.amazon.com/Become-Human-Being-Tadodaho-Shenandoah/dp/1571743413

Ultimately, as Mr. Fred Rogers says, it's OK to have negative emotions like anger. The issue is what we do with them...
http://pbskids.org/rogers/songLyricsWhatDoYouDo.html

"I'm not sure what the right response would be. Mostly to grow up as a society and stop alienating people to the point where they decide that the solution to their problems with the rest of society is to eliminate as much of it as possible. But I really have no idea how to achieve that."

I agree, and here are some ideas I put together on that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere? ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. "

And:
http://www.livableincome.org/amillionairegli.htm
"Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. With a basic income and more money going on a systematic basis to the health care system, the health care system emergency rooms will no longer be overrun with people there for reasons they could see a doctor for. So, emergency care would be better for millionaires. Millionaires with heart attacks won't be as likely to end up being diverted to far away hospitals because the local hospital emergency room is full.
Likewise, emergency rooms might, with more money going to medicine, become sized for national emergencies, not personal emergencies, so they might become vast empty places, with physicians and other health care staff keeping their skills sharp always running simulations, learning more medical information, and/or doing basic medical research, with these people always ready for a pandemic or natural disaster or industrial accident which they had the resources in reserve to deal with. So, millionaires who got sick or injured in a disaster could be sure there was the facilities and expertise nearby to help them, even if most of the rest of the population needed help too at the same time too. In that way, some of this basic income could be funded by money that might otherwise go to the Defense department, because what is better civil defense then investing in a health care system able to to handle national disasters? So, any millionaires who are doctors (many are) would benefit by this plan, because their lives as doctors will become happier and less stressful, both with less paperwork and with more resources."

Lots more links on my site. See also this site on "A Newer Way Of Thinking":
http://anwot.org/

Sadly, this was also in the news yesterday about budget cuts to health programs:
"Report Claims Cuts Weaken U.S. Bioterrorism Response"
http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/Surveillance/30333

A great related article:

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?"

I know I sound like a broken record on this... But we really need a new intrinsic/mutual definition of security arising from "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein called for if we are to survive all the technological power we are creating in the 21st century:
http://anwot.org/

To go with the newer way of thinking, then we need different sorts of machines... Thinks like 3D printers of everyone, or solar panels for all, or advanced "AutoDoc" medical systems, or organic gardening robots, or plenty of other similar things where we use our technological knowledge to make abundance for all -- instead of using advanced technologies of abundance like robotics to fight over scarcity, or worse, create artificial scarcity. Still, DARPA has made contributions to some of these, so that's a good thing.

That's a sensible point, and I won't disagree with the general truth of it, but the 21st century problem is that our weapons of mass destruction (nukes, plagues, bureaucracy/holocaust, and soon robotics and nanotech) have become so powerful that we need "A Newer Way Of Thinking" to deal with the consequences of all that power.
http://anwot.org/
Otherwise, just a few malcontents empowered by such WMDs could doom us all, as could just an accidental use of them. So, for our own protection, we need to work towards a global society that has a greater proportion of fairly happy people, and a very low proportion of people who think they have gotten a terribly raw deal. That means rethinking security in terms of mutual security and intrinisic security, and thinking deeply about rich/poor divide issues.

The truth may be more, why worry so much about nukes when biological weapons have been called "the poor man's WMD" and any large state could make them and hide them?

We need to move to a new model of intrinisic security and mutual security, as I suggest here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
    Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?
    Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere? ...
    There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. "

There are few weapons in a conventional sense (drones, nukes, plagues, guns, etc.) that can not under fairly easily imaginable circumstances be turned against the wielder, either by taking it over in some way or by copying it.

But things like health, intelligence, creativity, integrity, and community -- these are some of the foundations of true security and they are very difficult to turn against the possessor.

Sadly, one other truth we must face is, as Marine Major General Smedley Butler said:
"War is a Racket"
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

To move beyond that, we need to turn to "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein called for:
http://anwot.org/

Rather than build robots to guard prisons, why not just get the robots to do the boring work outside instead of imprisoning people for not wanting to do the work (and stealing, selling drugs, etc. for money)?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

We need "A Newer Way Of Thinking":
http://anwot.org/

Where this may all be leading, Marshall Brain's "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Why not just have a "basic income" instead, funded by a tax on robotic factories?
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/

Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Or to invent the computer mouse?
http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/vision-highlights.html

Or to create terrific participatory democracies?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010

Or to move beyond war by thinking better?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.anwot.org/

Or maybe even to have cold fusion?
http://pesn.com/2011/09/14/9501913_Rossis_One_Megawatt_Reactor_Gets_A_New_E-Cat_Model/

The human imagination (empowered by education and health and access to basic resources) is indeed the ultimate resource.

"True again, except that we have to build giant structures with radiation shielding and artificial gravity, no easy feat."

Yes, but with automation to help we could do that. If we can learn to live in zero gravity, other possibilities open up like Marshall Savage talked about in the Millennial Project with Asgard habitats that were basically bubbles with a two meter thick layer of water at the surface between two layers of transparent plastic.
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard
http://oceania.org/images/plate6.jpg
http://oceania.org/images/plate7.jpg

There are at least four ways I know of in theory to support good bone health in space (even assuming astronauts in space were not just vitamin D deficient since the RDA was ten times too low). People can wear clothes designed to provide resistance. People can live in a liquid environment that provides resistance (possibly breathing an oxygen enriched liquid) -- since whales do OK in effectively zero G. People could take (hypothetical) medicines to prevent bone loss. People could have their DNA altered.
http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Liquid_breathing_to_resist_bone_loss

Obviously, more research is needed for all of them. The big thing is that it is not clear if mammals always need gravity for babies to develop in a healthy way. Example: http://www.welcometospaceblog.com/2011/09/babies-in-space.html

I would agree we should solve our problems on Earth first, rather than export a tragic way of thinking. Related ideas (the last two by me):
http://www.anwot.org/
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

We seem to know answers to the social problems (stuff like a basic income, unschooling and life-long learning, advanced conflict resolution techniques, and so on). The problem seems more putting them into practice against entrenched interests ranging from short-sighted billionaires (of the 1%) with a narrow sense of self, to public school unions, to those who profit from war, to the rest of us (99%) and social inertia with fear of change even as our technosphere is quickly changing. I think we could easily do much better socially than this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Inside

As for scams and Rossi's Cold Fusion E-Cat device, I agree it is very suspicious -- it's just at the edge of plausibility, and he could easily dispel any doubt with some better testing. But in general, whether that pans out (we'll know soon), we have lots of energy alternatives, being developed including thorium power, hot fusion, solar PV, solar thermal, and more.
http://www.caelusgreenroom.com/2011/05/26/torresol-opens-world%E2%80%99s-first-molten-salt-c-s-p-plant-ecoseed/

I was a Senior Associate with the Space Studies Institute in the late 1980s (just meant I gave them money). I thought the space power idea was interesting then and it might have made sense then -- even though I suggested to Gerry O'Neill (I took a class with him) that we should build self-replicating space habitats instead -- he called *me* a dreamer. :-) He saw that we would have a slow industrial expansion into space driven by capitalism (which I now think is baloney because we will be moving beyond money soon enough with 3D printers and robotics and s