Slashdot Mirror

"[p2p-research] College Daze links..."
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html

"[p2p-research] The Higher Educational Bubble Continues to Grow"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html

A mixed message:
"[p2p-research] Slashdot | Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005489.html

"[p2p-research] College Daze links..."
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html

"[p2p-research] The Higher Educational Bubble Continues to Grow"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html

A mixed message:
"[p2p-research] Slashdot | Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005489.html

This is all very ironic, as I mention here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005991.html

So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html

So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?

Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1

Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317

So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?

Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".

Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html

As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.

More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g

This is all very ironic, as I mention here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005991.html

So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html

So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?

Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1

Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317

So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?

Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".

Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html

As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.

More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g

This is all very ironic, as I mention here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005991.html

So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html

So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?

Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1

Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317

So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?

Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".

Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html

As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.

More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g

You're right, it is a good idea to separate those things, digital from physical right now.

I'd go a step further and suggest a big problem these days is that people lump under "capital" both imaginary fiat dollars (ration units) and physical things like cement plants. As suggested by another poster, if we want a new cement plant, it takes time to build one. But an endless supply of fiat dollars can be created by the stroke of a pen in Congress. Digitally, there is so much capacity now relative to basic needs like surfing the web that, compared to when one hand to spend a lot of money to buy a few IBM mainframe computing cycles, most computer and network access costs now are too cheap to matter much.

But, still, for a post-scarcity future, consider the resources you mentioned.

* Water. We have oceans full of it. With enough energy (like from wind and solar), it is easy to desalinate it. There are desalinization breakthroughs mentioned on slashdot quite frequently.

* Food. The USA alone can produce enough food to feed something like three billion people. Unfortunately, much of it goes to animal feed:
"The Truth About Land Use in the United States"
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
We've plenty of food for a mostly vegetarian diet for a much bigger population than we have now. And that's even without effectively farming the oceans or people moving off-planet to space habitats.

* Land. See the above link on how much land there is in the USA. We can also build seasteads. And eventually we'll be building space habitats. We can build thousands, even millions, of Earths worth of surface area for materials in the solar system, like Princeton Physicist Gerard K. O'Neill showed how to do.

* Megan Fox. Sure, human relationships will always have a scarcity aspect. Still, digitally there is a vast quantity of Megan Fox around:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Megan+Fox&btnG=Search+images
We'll no doubt see virtual actors soon -- there are already all sorts of interactive games with virtual people. And look where this sort of robotic technology is going:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=2188
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/dec/14/aiko-fembot-robot
Also, no doubt there are millions of women who look a lot like Megan Fox, or act like her. So, I question just how scarce Megan Fox as a concept is. But yes, sure, if you want to point to specific people or rocks in the world, yes, there is a scarcity there of that one person or thing. But, then think how scarce and precious everyone on the planet is. Maybe they all deserve a basic income as a human right, to have some claim on the fruits of an abundant industrial commons? Even Megan Fox? Maybe if she had had a guaranteed basic income every year to meet her living expenses for life, she might have had a happier life? And maybe all the people around her would not have been so eager to exploit her, and she could have had a more authentic life?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Even millionaires like (likely) Megan Fox may be better off with a universal basic income:
"[p2p-research] Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/003949.html

Consider:
"Megan Fox Opens Up About Weight Loss, Depression: "Transformers"

The USA has centuries worth of coal. Nazi Germany almost took over the world using coal to make liquid synthetic fuels using 1940s technology. The US population is 300 million about. There are tens of millions of people unemployed and underemployed. We could switch entirely to coal in a year or two if we really wanted too. That would be terrible for the environment, and public health (mercury pollution etc.) but we surely could do this.

As for the long term, we could probably even evacuate the entire planet in a couple decades or so if as as species we were willing to accept about 10% of the population dying from rocket explosions and stuff. Some rough ideas on how to do that, basically by launching seeds for self-replicating habitats and then using rocket with fuel produced by coal:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004029.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004037.html
"""
So, seven billion people soon, minus a few doomsters, times US$100K per person, is US$700 trillion. The world GDP is about US$60 trillion, so, in round numbers, this is about ten years of world economic output to put everyone into space. ...
Now, would I suggest we do this? No. Would there be obstacles and so on? Yes. Would most of humanity go along with this? Probably not, as many people have an attachment to the land of their birth. Would lots of people die of heart attacks on the way up? Probably. Would plenty of stuff go wrong and hundreds of millions of people die (10%? 20%? 90%? 99%?) if this sort of thing got rushed, like entire habitats and space ships blowing up for stupid reasons, or there being unforeseen cancer hazards, or there being malicious computer viruses destroying life support systems, and so on? Almost certainly.
Would the money be better spent fixing up the Earth first, just from an ethical perspective? Surely -- maybe the last thing we want is a solar system filled up with the same kind of people who could not make a good thing work out on Earth when they had it easily within their technical grasp. As I say, the best reason to go into space is because we are happy down on Earth and think it might be fun to have cities in space too. And as above, I am guessing we could support more than ten times our current population in urbanized seasteads.
My point is not that we *should* do any of this evacuation into space, but that we *could*. It is to suggest that, with a little imagination based on existing research studies done by NASA (and then buried), the numbers
actually work out (with some handwaving. :-) So, a total evacuation of the Earth for space could be plausibly done within the lifetime of probably anybody on this list (even though you might have to go on a starvation diet for many months, and you'd need to leave everything behind except your underwear to cut launch costs. :-)
So, the implication, if such a thing is within our plausible grasp, is that there is cause for hope. It is to suggest that everything people are going on about in current politics, how we need to spend all that money for our "protection", or how we are running out of oil or iron or whatever (anything except helium that nobody talks about), it's all just all scaremongering from a technical perspective (even if the social issues of inequity or change are real, and I'm all for addressing them).
So, with that as a background possibility, that within thirty years almost every middle-aged or younger human being alive today could be living in space in relative luxury, I just don't see the point for the gloom and doom about running out of oil, global climate change, etc..

The USA has centuries worth of coal. Nazi Germany almost took over the world using coal to make liquid synthetic fuels using 1940s technology. The US population is 300 million about. There are tens of millions of people unemployed and underemployed. We could switch entirely to coal in a year or two if we really wanted too. That would be terrible for the environment, and public health (mercury pollution etc.) but we surely could do this.

As for the long term, we could probably even evacuate the entire planet in a couple decades or so if as as species we were willing to accept about 10% of the population dying from rocket explosions and stuff. Some rough ideas on how to do that, basically by launching seeds for self-replicating habitats and then using rocket with fuel produced by coal:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004029.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004037.html
"""
So, seven billion people soon, minus a few doomsters, times US$100K per person, is US$700 trillion. The world GDP is about US$60 trillion, so, in round numbers, this is about ten years of world economic output to put everyone into space. ...
Now, would I suggest we do this? No. Would there be obstacles and so on? Yes. Would most of humanity go along with this? Probably not, as many people have an attachment to the land of their birth. Would lots of people die of heart attacks on the way up? Probably. Would plenty of stuff go wrong and hundreds of millions of people die (10%? 20%? 90%? 99%?) if this sort of thing got rushed, like entire habitats and space ships blowing up for stupid reasons, or there being unforeseen cancer hazards, or there being malicious computer viruses destroying life support systems, and so on? Almost certainly.
Would the money be better spent fixing up the Earth first, just from an ethical perspective? Surely -- maybe the last thing we want is a solar system filled up with the same kind of people who could not make a good thing work out on Earth when they had it easily within their technical grasp. As I say, the best reason to go into space is because we are happy down on Earth and think it might be fun to have cities in space too. And as above, I am guessing we could support more than ten times our current population in urbanized seasteads.
My point is not that we *should* do any of this evacuation into space, but that we *could*. It is to suggest that, with a little imagination based on existing research studies done by NASA (and then buried), the numbers
actually work out (with some handwaving. :-) So, a total evacuation of the Earth for space could be plausibly done within the lifetime of probably anybody on this list (even though you might have to go on a starvation diet for many months, and you'd need to leave everything behind except your underwear to cut launch costs. :-)
So, the implication, if such a thing is within our plausible grasp, is that there is cause for hope. It is to suggest that everything people are going on about in current politics, how we need to spend all that money for our "protection", or how we are running out of oil or iron or whatever (anything except helium that nobody talks about), it's all just all scaremongering from a technical perspective (even if the social issues of inequity or change are real, and I'm all for addressing them).
So, with that as a background possibility, that within thirty years almost every middle-aged or younger human being alive today could be living in space in relative luxury, I just don't see the point for the gloom and doom about running out of oil, global climate change, etc..

See also: "The psychopath as peer?"
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005499.html
But also a reply:
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005502.html

See also: "The psychopath as peer?"
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005499.html
But also a reply:
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005502.html

"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
      http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It accounts for the very real problem that women and minorities are woefully underrepresented among the scientists, because it is hard for us, white, male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned and cut and polished, they will look like us. It accounts for the fact that science education is for the most part a dreary business, a burden to student and teacher alike at all levels of American education, until the magic moment when a teacher recognizes a potential peer, at which point it becomes exhilarating and successful. Above all, it resolves the paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. It explains why we have the best scientists and the most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system of education is designed to produce precisely that result."

See also:
"[p2p-research] College Daze links"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html