Slashdot Mirror

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions/autism/

Especially during pregnancy, due to our indoors lifestyles. There may be other causes too, including vegetable deficiency disease, but vitamin D deficiency is a apparently a big one. Other possible causes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html

With that said, most people posting here are probably total hypocrites about health. They will go on about "herd immunity" and how immoral parents are who don't vaccinate their children for whatever reasons, but these same posters will then most likely eat junk food, pull all nighters, go to work and school when sick with the flu or whatever else, and not get a vitamin D test, and sit most of the day. Thus, such posters (or their children) will likely spread far more diseases than an unvaccinated kid who eats a lot of fruits & vegetables & beans, avoids junk food, gets enough vitamin D and iodine, stays home when sick, washes their hands, sleeps well, moves around a lot during the day, was breast-fed to age two years or beyond (see WHO guidelines), works or learns mostly from home, and so on. See also:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/ChildBookReviews.aspx

The lack of critical reasoning on this subject on slashdot is also saddening, whatever the conclusion. The typical argument here on vaccine safety seems equivalent to someone saying, because the Intel 386 CPU did not have a floating point bug in 1990 and still runs OK now (some version of some vaccine did not cause a specific problem over the years), that means any CPU produced by anyone in 2012 can never possibly have any bugs and will run forever (all vaccine lots are always safe). That's just a nonsensical argument from a quality control standpoint, given many vaccine formulations and production techniques are continually changing. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

For all we know, the next lot of flu vaccine rush out could give millions of people AIDS because it was intentionally contaminated at the factory by someone. Specific vaccine lots may or may not be "safe" or "effective" either individually or in combination (ever installed one piece of software that broke something else?), but any discussion about the vaccine issue needs to be a lot deeper than what is apparent here, including issues of systemic risks from a single point of failure and the practical impossibility of providing several human generations of testing in advance when any lot of vaccine is released (especially when it is rushed out). A vaccine is not like a software patch than can be backed out, or in the worst case, be reformatted away. See for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40
"SV40 became a highly controversial subject after it was revealed that millions were exposed to the virus after receiving a contaminated polio vaccine."

Diseases are also continually evolving.

So much of modern medicine and modern science (as well as the holistic industries) is full of social problems that people on all sides of this question may want to do their own research and think more deeply on this topic. Some related quotes:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

What's sad is that there are low hanging fruits (and vegetables) that could reduce so much disease in the USA and globally such as vitamin D and eating more veggies. Things like that protect against all disease, including emerging ones. Those basics are being ignored by a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands
"... Disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: ''to serve and obey and guard men from harm". Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids. ..."

See also my essay from a decade ago:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html#what_have_funding_policies_in_automotive_intelligence_wrought
"Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).
    We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process? "

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.

Building on that theme: http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
====
Some quotes on social problems in science

Here are some related broad quotes on social problems in science, some of which relate to competition for funding.

From an article about a sociologist and anthropologist who studies science and technology, Bruno Latour:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour

"In the laboratory, Latour and Woolgar observed that a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out. To an untrained outsider, Latour and Woolgar argued the entire process resembles not an unbiased search for truth and accuracy but a mechanism for ignoring data that contradicts scientific orthodoxy."

A quote from another academic, Brian Martin, involved with Science and Technology Studies:
http://www.suppressedscience.net/physics.html

"Textbooks present science as a noble search for truth, in which progress depends on questioning established ideas. But for many scientists, this is a cruel myth. They know from bitter experience that disagreeing with the dominant view is dangerous - especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. Call it suppression of intellectual dissent. The usual pattern is that someone does research or speaks out in a way that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body. As a result, representatives of that group attack the critic's ideas or the critic personally-by censoring writing, blocking publications, denying appointments or promotions, withdrawing research grants, taking legal actions, harassing, blacklisting, spreading rumors. (1)"

From David Goodstein, who was Vice Provost of Caltech:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face. "

About a book by Jeff Schmidt, a previous editor of Physics Today magazine:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"In this

"Of course, you're going to have to take my word for it that this communication is not a fabrication, because I'm not handing over my gmail password."

Even if you supplied your gmail password, and I checked your account, a message could still be faked if you had a friend at Google or did funky things with email routing. :-) I'm not saying that message is fake -- it sounds completely like something an assistant of Gatto might say. (He even offered to help resolve a particular point or two.)

I'm just suggesting that a citation may not really "prove" anything if one is hardnosed about it. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Or George Orwell:
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose
"There is no use in multiplying examples. The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Even science as a human endeavor is rife with fraud, group think, conflict-of-interest, learned helplessness, and so on; see this collection of quotes I put together:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

What has happened in the USA is that ideas like compulsory schooling (and a variety of other things, like linking the right to consume to having a job) is starting to bump up again the solid reality of 21st century high technology and the 21st century and ideas spreading across the planet. Bullying growing as a problem in schools and so kids hiding their talents is just one example of many. I wrote my own essay on that a few years back:
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html

Anyway, just because one, or even several, of an author's points can't be substantiated, or are even completely wrong, does not necessarily invalidate a broader message. It depends on how central the specific points are to the overall argument. How many citations do you see in the essays of Mark Twain or the poems of Maya Angelou?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

The Richest Man in the World: A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income.

The knol mentioned in the video has been moved here because Google Knol is shutting down: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

That parable and video was directly inspired by this:
"Structural Unemployment: The Economists Just Don't Get It"
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/structural-unemployment-the-economists-just-dont-get-it/#comment-254

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/

The Richest Man in the World: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income.

The knol mentioned in the video has been moved here because Google Knol is shutting down: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

That parable and video was directly inspired by this:
"Structural Unemployment: The Economists Just Don't Get It"
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/structural-unemployment-the-economists-just-dont-get-it/#comment-254

"No one has hit the nail on the head yet how to use technology to properly increase a student's ability to learn. If / when that time does come, teachers / professors will need to make a carefully calculated decision how they will react to it. "

Something I wrote over five years ago: http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change. ...
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

That bottom line: modern schools were designed in Prussia in the 19th century mainly to dumb people down and destroy their individual initiative to fit the needs of the Prussian military and the Prussian economy (see John Taylor Gatto). Give them more resources and they will only do that obsolete mission better.

"No one has hit the nail on the head yet how to use technology to properly increase a student's ability to learn. If / when that time does come, teachers / professors will need to make a carefully calculated decision how they will react to it. "

Something I wrote over five years ago: http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change. ...
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

That bottom line: modern schools were designed in Prussia in the 19th century mainly to dumb people down and destroy their individual initiative to fit the needs of the Prussian military and the Prussian economy (see John Taylor Gatto). Give them more resources and they will only do that obsolete mission better.

Maybe it is more an "anti-violence" push? :-) http://www.educationrevolution.org/blog/educating-children-in-a-violent-world/
"Lest you think I am overreacting when I declare that the means and methods by which nearly all of the children in this country are educated are inherently violent, consider what Webster's lists as its third definition for "violent": "caused by force; not natural, as in a violent death."
    Conventional education is all about force, beginning with each state's compulsory education statute. The failure to cover the state mandated curriculum, or its equivalent, is punishable by law. Even worse, students and teachers trapped inside schools that sort, grade, and rank children like fruits and vegetables face an increasing specter of punishment if the students don't measure up on mandatory -- and soon to be nationwide -- high stakes standardized tests. Students are told that, if they don't pass, then they can't move on to the next level. Teachers are told that, if their students don't pass, then it's time to look for another job. The indelible bottom line: learn or else. (Chris Mercogliano, past co-director of the Albany Free School)"

If the money is allocated to "education" then why do you consider it reasonable to exclude non-classroom (e.g. administrative) overhead? The fact is, divide the number of kids in NY in public schools by the amount spent, and it is about $20K per child per year. Administering a system where the money goes directly to the familes should have very little overhead. Personally, I'd rather see a more general basic income for everyone in the USA though on the order of US$2000 per month (about one half the US GDP), and then families could decide how much of that to allocate to educational expenses.
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.usbig.net/index.php

I agree we'll see 60% unemployment or worse (barring radical changes) fairly soon (due to robotics, AI, and free content on computer networks), but I don't think that issue is fixable by reforming public schools. Every country is going to see this, regardless of the school system. Some solutions besides a basic income:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not."

A "basic income" for all is an other solution...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current."

We in the USA need a security strategy the emphasizes intrinsic security and mutual security over extrinsic security and unilateral security. More on that here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

"The only serious threat to Canada is the USA and that war would be over rather quickly, so why bother with a huge military to defend against that?"

Agreed, considering Canada has already repulsed invasions from the southern border twice, so it could probably do it a third time even easier... :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Upper_and_Lower_Canada.2C_1812

Those who, like in Canada, invest mainly in intrinsic security and mutual security are generally in a much more secure position over the long term than those who foolishly invest mainly in extrinsic and unilateral security like sadly has been the recent custom of those to the immediate south of Canada.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

From: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
===
        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 relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete. ...
        As with that notion of "mutual security", the US intelligence community needs to look beyond seeing an intelligence tool as just something proprietary that gives a "friendly" analyst some advantage over an "unfriendly" analyst. Instead, the intelligence community could begin to see the potential for a free and open source intelligence tool as a way to promote "friendship" across the planet by dispelling some of the gloom of "want and ignorance" (see the scene in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge and a Christmas Spirit) that we still have all too much of around the planet. So, beyond supporting legitimate US intelligence needs (useful with their own closed sources of data), supporting a free and open source intelligence tool (and related open datasets) could become a strategic part of US (or other nation's) "diplomacy" and constructive outreach.
===

My biggest issue with Kurzweil is that the singularity is like a mirror, and what he sees there is a mirror of his success in business creating artificial scarcity through copyrights and patents and engaging in commercial competition rather than global free cooperation. Still, he gets a lot of ideas right.

Headlines like "Internet accounts for 5 million jobs and 4% of the economy" are misleading because they do not say how many jobs the internet made obsolete or how much older economic activity is no longer needed. In the same way that agricultural labor went from 90% of the US workforce (200 years ago) to about 2% (although lots of people still garden as a hobby), manufacturing etc. is going from around 35% of the US workforce (50 years ago) to around 10% now and probably, like agriculture, around 2% fairly soon. The decline of paid manufacturing labor is inevitable given flexible robotics and 3D printers and so on. Just look at a stream of slashdot articles on robotics and such. I agree that thinking the "service" economy is going to provide jobs, like some say, is ridiculous -- but I feel it is because service robotics and AI and free information exchange is proliferating. We need to fundamentally rethink the notion of an income-through-jobs link as the main thing granting a right to consume the fruits of our increasingly automated agricultural, industrial, and service sectors (see the 1964 "Triple Revolution Memorandum" and Marshall Brain's recent story "Manna"). We need to some combination of a "basic income", a proliferation of personally-owned means of production (like gardening robots, 3D printers, and solar panels), an expanded gift economy like via GNU/Linux and Wikipedia and the Creative Commons, and better internet-facilitated participatory government planning at all levels. More details are here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

For good or bad, the wage-based economy as we knew it is in its final death spiral. The stronger the demand for decent wages and good working conditions, the faster most jobs of any sort will be automated. For example, here is a robotic system under development that can replace most fast-food workers:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/fast-food-robotics-an-update/
There may be some jobs that will be exceptions to automation for longer periods of time (for example, ones at Google developing AI to replace more jobs), but overall that is the trend. Here is a related video parable I made about that:
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Expanding on your great points: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Just sounding like a broken record, sorry: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
    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."

Thanks for the comment, and you make several good points. Still, the fictional character "Atticus Finch" said in "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The easiest way to get shot is to carry a gun". These days, the easiest way to get nuked (or invaded or quarantined) is to have a nuclear ICBM or start building one. With one ICBM, you'd be the world's next North Korea. I know you were probably just saying that to make a point, but as a counter-point, is nuclear blackmail really the way you would want to get your liveliehood if you could do it? Do you want to be the next tin-pot dictator always waiting for the assassin's blow? Do you want to preside over a land where people are starving to death (like North Korea in the past) because you care more about power than the people? Here you are using the most advanced communications system for sharing knowledge the world has ever known (the internet, and sites like slashdot) and what you have shared right now is a strategy for nuclear blackmail. It also sounds a bit like you are trying to dissuade others from trying to make the world a more joyful and healthy and more secure place (by over-emphasizing the point that there are some anti-social people out there)?

As I write in that essay, there are new ways of thinking about security.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream. We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."

I am advocating for mutual security and intrinsic security. It sounds to me like you are re-affirming the old ways towards security, like unilateral dominance through a big military, which will be ultimately self-defeating with modern technology. What good is a US aircraft carrier in battle when one small smart missile could sink it?
http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/
http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon
Or where it could someday be infiltrated by a nanotech-based rust monster? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_monster
What good is your nuclear ICBM when someone (or something) figures out how to explode it in the silo or retarget it at your home city to make you the slave?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project

The balance is changing. The world is a smaller place. I don't like to use "overpopulation" to describe the process because that implies the solution is to get rid of lots of people. I better term might be "under-resourced" or "under-landed" or "under-expanded".
http://www.juliansimon.com

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?

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?

These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. Here is some dark humor I wrote on the topic: A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene. See also a little ironic story I wrote on trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide because it feels "Burdened by Bags of Sand". Or this YouTube video I put together: The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income.

Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. I discuss that at length here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

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. ...

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?

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?

These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. Here is some dark humor I wrote on the topic: A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene. See also a little ironic story I wrote on trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide because it feels "Burdened by Bags of Sand". Or this YouTube video I put together: The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income.

Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. I discuss that at length here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

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. ...

From 10 years ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html#what_have_funding_policies_in_automotive_intelligence_wrought

Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).

We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process?

Open source software is typically eventually of much higher quality ( http://www.fsf.org/software/reliability.html )
and reliability because more eyes look over the code for problems and more voices contribute to adding innovative solutions. About 35,000 Americans are killed every year in driving fatalities, and hundreds of thousands more are seriously injured. Should the software that keeps people safe on roads, and which has already been created primarily with public funds, not also be kept under continuous public scrutiny?

Without concerted action, such software will likely be kept proprietary because that will be more profitable sooner to the people who get in early, and will fit into conventional expectations of business as usual. It will likely end up being available for inspection and testing at best to a few government employees under non-disclosure agreements. We are talking about an entire publicly funded infrastructure about to disappear from the public radar screen. There is something deeply wrong here.

And while it is true many planes like the 757 can fly themselves already for most of their journey, and their software is probably mostly proprietary, the software involved in driving is potentially far more complex as it requires visual recognition of cues in a more complex environment full of many more unpredictable agents operating on much faster timescales. Also, automotive intelligence will touch all of our lives on a daily basis, where as aircraft intelligence can be generally avoided in daily life.

Decisions on how this public intellectual property related to automotive intelligence will be handled will affect the health and safety of every American and later everyone in any developed country. Either way, the automotive software engineers and their employers will do well financially (for example, one might still buy a Volvo because their software engineers are better and they do more thorough testing of configurations). But which way will the public be better off:
* totally dependent on proprietary intelligences under the hoods of their cars which they have no way of understanding, or instead
* with ways to verify what those intelligences do, understand how they operate, and make contributions when they can so such automotive intelligences serve humane purposes better?

If, for ex

"It's REALLY hard to do! It's basically exhausting."

So true. Something I posted in 2001:
"License management tools: good, bad, or ugly?"
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/gnu.misc.discuss/30tDY9VE92Y
"My question is: should software tools, protocols, and standards play a role in easing this required "due diligence" license management work (at least as far as copyright alone is concerned)?"

Also, where I hypothesized millions of US citizens arrested over copyright, same as now for marijuana: http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html

I'm thinking more and more that it is just not possible for anyone to really prove they have a legal right to have proprietary content on some specific device when you look really hard at it. Bills of sale might be forged, to begin with, so what does showing one prove? And if you not going to jail depends on some third party verifying something over and over, good luck. And many proprietary licenses are violated often if you have too many copies (including on backup media), so you really can never 100% prove you have right to the software on a device because there might be copies elsewhere, and how do you prove you don't have extra copies somewhere? A very problematical situation if someone really pushes things...

Also, border searches now occur a hundred miles or so inside the actual US border, so most US Americans (who are mostly bi-coastal) can in theory be searched at any time this way by warrant-less border-related searches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

Since, as above, people can't really prove they have legal access to anything they paid for, that makes almost everyone in the USA effectively a felon who can be arrested tomorrow by the border police if someone with some power wants to push the point. So, using only freely-licensed information might just become the safest option, even if that might also not be good enough (how do you known a statement about something being under a free license is really valid?). We'll see how all this "artificial scarcity" plays out...
http://www.artificialscarcity.com/

This book has a section on why goods with low incremental costs for distribution should be free according to the authors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better

A "basic income" could fund creators rather than copyright monopolies...
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://www.livableincome.org/amillionairegli.htm

Maybe that is not the best study in the world, but you seem to me to be ignoring the context here. I was originally responding to a comment that included stuff on asthma, allergies, and fibromyalgia. The page I am citing and the references covers many allergies, and fibromyalgia in that context (fibromyalgia in practice perhaps often being a catch-all phrase for joint pain which can have multiple causes). Also, you are just out of hand dismissing an MD's report on his own decades of clinical experience. And that experience is also reflected by reports by others, if you look around. It is just not extremely profitable or easy advice to give in this society, compared to pill pushing and surgery selling.

By the way:
"The relation between vitamin D deficiency and fibromyalgia syndrome in women"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21894355

And:
"5 Ways To Control Fibromyalgia With Diet: New research shows that picking these foods may ease pain"
http://www.prevention.com/node/27278
http://www.prevention.com/health/health-concerns/5-ways-control-fibromyalgia-diet/5-veg-out
"Some researchers speculate that oxidative stress may be a cause of fibro symptoms. Oxidative stress occurs when the body doesnâ(TM)t produce enough antioxidants to battle cell-damaging free radicals in the body. Most fruits and veggies are packed with important antioxidants, like vitamins A, C, and E, which fight free radicals to keep your body normalized. Certain studies also show a raw, vegan diet can improve symptoms, but thatâ(TM)s difficult for most people to follow. If you do choose to eat meat, though, opt for a small portion of grass-fed beef. "It is an excellent source of iron and vitamin B12, both nutrients which are extremely important in keeping your pain-processing nervous system healthy," says Holton."

Of course, they don't cite their studies; some other studies are mentioned here:
http://www.beyondveg.com/cat/links-out/raw-research.shtml

So, be skeptical of new information. But how about being skeptical about old information, too? And maybe going a bit further and looking around for yourself at a new idea (or an old one that was forgotten or driven out socially)? It's not very scientific to just dismiss all new ideas for lack of enough evidence (for example, what kept us from LENR (Cold Fusion) for two decades because some hot fusion scientists at MIT could not replicate an experiment in a week or two where success would have jeopardized their own livelihood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Pathological_skepticism
http://pesn.com/2011/12/27/9601994_History_of_MITs_Blatant_Suppression_of_Cold_Fusion/

The scientific enterprise in our society is so messed up in so many ways, as reflected in the quotes I collected here; one example:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"In the laboratory, Latour and Woolgar observed that a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out. To an untrained outsider, Latour and Woolgar argued the entire process resembles not an unbiased searc

...both of the library variety and the hands-on variety in his practice. He cites thousands of reference sin his book "Eat to Live" and has had thousands of patients over his career.

Researchers at Harvard University have seconded the vitamin D deficiency hypotheses as a potential cause of autism.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/news-archive/2009/new-harvard-paper-on-autism/

Yet your post got modded +5 insightful. Still so much mis-info on slashdot about health... But I still feel it is slowly improving. And you are reasonable to be skeptical.

You might like this article critical of Dr. Hyman:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/08/dr-mark-hyman-mangles-autism-science-on/

None-the-less, if you truly are a hard-working skeptic and not just a lazy skeptic-of-just-new-ideas, the entire scientific enterprise has failed in several big ways in relation to medicine, as I quote here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."

So, it is hard to move beyond that. Look at what happened to the guy who suggested doctors wash their hands after dissecting corpses before they then deliver babies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
".. As a result, his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Other more subtle factors may also have played a role. Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands, feeling that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.[7]:9[Note 6]
Specifically, Semmelweis's claims were thought to lack scientific basis, since he could offer no acceptable explanation for his findings. Such a scientific explanation was made possible only some decades later, when the germ theory of disease was developed by Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and others.
During 1848, Semmelweis widened the scope of his washing protocol, to include all instruments coming in contact with patients in labour, and used mortality rates time series to document his success in virtually eliminating puerperal fever from the hospital ward. ...
In 1865 JÃnos Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. ... He died after two weeks, on August 13, 1865, aged 47, from a gangrenous wound, possibly caused by the beating. ..."

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder too for twenty years...
http://pesn.com/2012/09/06/9602177_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_September6/

Who are the real charlatans of medicine?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"In the most recent study investigators reviewed 61 trials, involving 25,388 patients, in a meta-analysis comparing angioplasty and stent placement with no treatment or medications alone. A meta-analysis pools numerous studies on the same subject. The findings indicated that there was no evidence that angioplasty and stent placement for coronary artery disease resulted in fewer heart attacks or deaths when compared to patients with the same level of disease who

From: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx "Interventional cardiology and cardiovascular surgery is basically a scam based on a misunderstanding of the nature of heart disease. Searching for and treating obstructive plaque does not address the areas of the coronary vascular tree most likely to rupture and cause heart attacks. If there was never another CABG or angioplasty performed or stent placed, patients with heart disease would be better off. Doctors would be forced to educate our citizens that their heart disease risk is determined by what they place on their forks. Millions of lives would be dramatically extended. To abandon the theory of stretching and cutting out areas with plaque would shut down interventional cardiology, nearly all cardiovascular surgery, and many suppliers of the biotechnology. In many cases, interventional cardiology is the major income generator to hospitals. The ending of this ill-conceived, out-dated and ineffective technology would dramatically downsize hospitals in the United States and free up over $100 billion annually in medical care costs. Besides being ineffective, interventional cardiology places the responsibility in the hands of the doctor and not the patients. When patients finally realize they must take control of their heart problems with aggressive dietary modifications (and when needed medications for temporary periods) we will essentially solve the health crisis in America.
The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions.
Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

When I heard about his treatment a couple weeks ago, I tried to figure out how to contact him, but to no avail. Neil Armstrong benefited from the best of 1960s technology, but sadly did not benefit from the best of 21st century medicine (aggressive nutritional intervention). Sad. We could have had him healthy and vibrant and as a witness to the better side of human kind for another decade or two. Instead some heart surgeons can afford to make a few more payments on luxury cars and big houses.

We just lost Martin Fleischmann (just as LENR aka "cold fusion" is resurging) probably from the same kind of widespread nutirional ignorance in the medical profession.

Some attempts by me to try to help with improving human health:
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Something to keep in mind:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challengin

"If only there were a way to make that happen..."

See Michael Kay's work: http://www.ise.ncsu.edu/kay/pln/index.htm
"A public logistics network is proposed as an alternative to private logistics networks for the ground transport of parcels. Using the analogy between the packages transported in the network and the packets transmitted through the Internet, a package in a public logistics network could, for example, be sent from a retail store and then routed through a sequence of public distribution centers (DCs) located throughout the metropolitan area and then delivered to a customer's home in a matter of hours, making a car trip to the store to get the package unnecessary. The DCs in the network, functioning like the routers in the Internet, could also be located at major highway interchanges for longer distance transport.
    Currently, it is common for a single logistics firm like UPS and FedEx to handle a package throughout its transport. The such a private logistics network, much of the technology used to coordinate the operation of the network is proprietary. As a result, the principal competitive advantage that a private logistics company has is the barrier to entry due to the very large scale of operation (national or international) required in order to be able to underwrite the development of private facilities and propriety technologies. Nevertheless, a single firm, unless it becomes a monopoly, is ultimately limited in the scale of its operation, resulting in the use of a limited number of large-scale hub transshipment points that can result in packages making many circuitous hops before reaching their destinations. In a public logistics network, the different functions of the network would be separated so that a single firm is not required for coordination. This would enable scale economies to be realized in performing each logistics function since each element of the network has access to potentially all of the network's demand. The increase in scale would make it economical to have many more transshipment points. Each transshipment point, or distribution center (DC), could be an independently operated facility that serves as both a freight terminal and a public warehouse, and could be established in small cities and towns that would never have such facilities if they were served as part of a proprietary, private logistics network."

I liked your point in general. Presumably these front-door codes (or a home delivery box with a code) coud be integrated in with a Public Logistics Network? I elaborated on that idea here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#Princeton_University_Freecycle_Transportation_Network_--_an_internet_of_physical_packages

On that, from a decade ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html

Also by me, as a shorter version of the above:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations. "

On that, from a decade ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html

Also by me, as a shorter version of the above:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations. "

I was around Princeton in the late 1980s when this idea of using lasers to modify the rates of chemical reactions was being talked about. In general, I've been thinking about this nuclear proliferation issue for a long time (not just for that reason, a professor I had there, Frank von Hippel, who worked on non-proliferation issues, was upset/concerned when I raised the issue in a paper for his seminar that people would soon be able to make weapons at home or in small communities as technology proliferated, like we see now with 3D printed gun parts). Some possible answers I've come to are in my sig and on my site.
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?"

"The American people have lost control of their government."

That assumes the "people" ever did control their government? See:
    http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/
=====
Q: So, who does rule America?

A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. You can read the essential details of the argument in this summary of Who Rules America?, or look for the book itself at Amazon.com.

Q: Do the same people rule at the local level that rule at the federal level?

A: No, not quite. The local level is dominated by the land owners and businesses related to real estate that come together as growth coalitions, making cities into growth machines.

Q: Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy?

A: No, conspiracy theories are wrong, though it's true that some corporate leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials try to keep things secret (but usually fail).

Q: Then how do they rule?

A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government.

Q: Are you saying that elections don't matter?

A: No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies. That's because of the nature of the electoral rules and the unique history of the South.

Q: Does social science research have anything useful to say about making progressive social change more effective?

A: Yes, it does, but few if any people pay much attention to that research.
=====

See also my essay "On dealing with social hurricanes (like the US CIA)":
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful."

And also this suggestion: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319

Marshall Brain and James P. Hogan are two authors worth reading on these topics.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

Martin Ford also has a great website in this area:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/

Lots more links and stuff on my site: http://www.pdfernhout.net/

And here are copies of some emails I sent to Ray Kurzweil over the years (someone else made a copy of them here) trying to get him to think more deeply about evolutionary and social issues related to the singularity:
http://heybryan.org/fernhout/

Basically, I tried to say much like what you are saying. Our trajectory coming out of any singularity may have a lot of influence on our path coming out of one. It just seems like common sense that more compassion, community, and cooperation now might make a big differnece later. See also Alfie Kohn's work:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm
"No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other -- at work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns all of us into losers."

My sig below sums up my years of thinking on all this.

http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

... structural unemployment and a basic income http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
"A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income.
The knol mentioned in the video has been moved here because Google Knol is shutting down: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
That parable and video was directly inspired by this:
"Structural Unemployment: The Economists Just Don't Get It"
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/structural-unemployment-the-economists-just-dont-get-it/#comment-254 "

Are you seriously telling me that some academics at Harvard telling politicians what they want to hear, (that "using killer robots like you are already doing works great") is a good thing? That academics advocating policies with obvious "blowback" potential is "solving a small problem" that "improves the world"?
http://www.amazon.com/Blowback-Second-Edition-Consequences-American/dp/0805075593

When even people at the CIA are expressing doubts?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF05Df02.html
"Some United States Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the agency's drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency because it is helping al-Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.
"Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, it is doing more harm than good," said Jeffrey
Addicott, former legal adviser to US Special Forces and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).
Addicott said the CIA operatives that he knows have told him al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are effectively using the drone strikes to recruit more militants.
CIA officers "are very upset" with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. "They'll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise. They say we're largely killing rank and file Pakistani Taliban, and they are the ones who are agitated by the campaign."
Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they "infuriate the Muslim male", said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan's tribal region "view Americans as cowards and weasels", he said. "

Have you ever given any thought to the implications of Harvard academics endorsing the ever wider use of killer robots to solve political problems? Including the political problems resulting from earlier use of killer robots by the USA? Where does it end?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

So many things in our world are complex feedback loops. And yes, many academics actually study such complex things (especially in biology and ecology). But apparently it is too hard for those two guys at Harvard to google on "CIA drone blowback"?

I have collected plenty of fairly straight-forward alternative solutions. For example, a "basic income" which is supported by five Nobel prize winners in economics according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Advocates

I outline them on my website in various spots, including here (both positive and negative ones, in this case):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Here is a book of alternatives collected by others:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dictionary_of_Alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC

The issue is not whether solutions are simple or complex (witness the US tax code's complexity, or the complexity of all sorts of numerical models, including most recently one to simulate a bacterium posted recently on slashdot). The issue outline in "Disciplined Minds" is about putting on ideological blinders -- ones that may even prevent someone from seeing or advocating for simple solutions (like a basic

From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/

All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...

Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:

...is with better ideas: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful. ..."

From: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products.

The project's short-term benefits will include

* technology education,
* historical education,
* collaboration,
* sustainable technology development,
* public science literacy, and
* knowledge democratization.

The project's ultimate long-term goal will be to generate a repository of knowledge that will support the design and creation of space settlements. Three forces -- individual creativity, social collaboration, and technological tools -- will join to create a synergistic effort stronger than any of these forces could produce alone. We hope to use the internet to produce an effect somewhat like that described in "The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix).

We will develop software tools to enable the creation of this knowledge repository: to collect, organize, and present information in a way that encourages collaboration and provides immediate benefit. Manufacturing "recipes" will form the core elements of the repository. We will also seed the repository, interact with participants, and oversee the evolution of the repository.

You can read a paper we presented on this project in the Proceedings of the Thirteenth SSI/Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing May 7-9, 2001, which we have made available on the web: here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
The slides for the presentation are here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/KFReviewPaperForSSIConference2001.pdf

You can read an essay on how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html ...

It is the aim of this project to create an open-source community centered around applications and knowledge related to space settlement. To gain the broadest participation, the project will also include knowledge related to terrestrial settlements. The initial focus will be on collecting "manufacturing recipes" on how to make things: for example, how to make a 1930's style lathe. Information collected will range from historical interest (fabrication techniques of the stone age to make flint knives) to current (fabrication techniques to make stainless steel knives) to futuristic (fabrication techniques requiring nanotechnology to make diamond knives). This project will involve potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe. It is expected that ultimately millions of individuals (many in developing nations) will benefit from use of this database directly or indirectly.

====

Still working on it on and off, been about a quarter century...
"Self-Replicating Space Habitat graduate school purpose and plans from 1988"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

I've been mostly working towards a social semantic desktop to support the creative, organizational, and analysis parts. And still not much to show for it. :-)

See also:
http://www.openvirgle.net/

Although I'd suggest looking hard at OpenLuna, TMP2, the Mars Society's efforts, Open Source Ecology, the Lifeboat Foun

"all its done in the past 40 years is act as an engine of misery, destruction and sorrow across the globe."

Because it is ironic? http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ... 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."

See also: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful. ..."

"all its done in the past 40 years is act as an engine of misery, destruction and sorrow across the globe."

Because it is ironic? http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ... 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."

See also: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful. ..."

http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

Never really got off the ground so far though...

See also this paper I co-wrote and presented to the 2001 SSI conference on doing all that as an open-source project:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html

Or my graduate school plans from the 1980s:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

Of course, decades later, this may all seem obvious. I've ended up working more more towards a general purpose social-semantic desktop ideas, while thankfully the rest of the world is finally starting to embrace an open source "maker" movement (but with scattered and poorly-integrated tools and repositories). I agree we need better analysis tools for all this, as well as better standards for encoding manufacturing knowledge.

Some other ideas I've posted towards encouraging that:
http://opengov.ideascale.com/a/dtd/21-000-Flexible-Public-Fabrication-Facilities-across-the-USA/8412-4049
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/A-global-effort-to-develop-self-replicating-space-habitats/76206-8319
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Towards-building-a-21st-century-society-in-the-USA-through-open-research/44914-8319

Or:
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international consortium"
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/openmanufacturing/YzbzBFjeBkg

A high degree of automation also probably requires a new vision for "economics", and I've written on that as well on my website (about moving towards a more "Star Trek" like economy).

This all has encountered tremendous resistance/apathy for a variety of reasons. Part of that resistance is probably that trying to talk about manufacturing webs goes against the grain of capitalism, which focuses on lots of narrowly-defined actors who try to socialize all their costs of producing one strand of the web as externalities while privatizing their profits and creating intellectual rent-seeking monopolies to lock those profits in indefinitely. For example, when I was in grad school at Princeton in the 1980s in Operatiosn Research, the professors were very excited about "picking up nickles before a steam roller" (make short term profits while ignoring systemic risk). To talk about systemic risk, or ways to deal with that, went against a narrow short-term focus on profitable optimizations (the kind that lead to lots of industry support and related grants). Thus, ironically, all those professors who contributed intellectually to our current economic disaster (for the 99%) were heavily rewarded for decades with resources and prestige, and then they get to shrug off the disaster their ideas helped cause as an unpredictable "black swan" economic event. Those who tried to do anything about it pro-actively were essentially punished. :-) Such is life, I guess. I'm glad that overall alternatives continue to emerge. A book related to why interdisciplinary work that goes against current cultural grain is so hard to do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplined_Minds

Still, I thi

http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Raising children well and being a good citizen and good neighbor will probably always absorb about as much attention as adults can put into it... We buy a lot of stuff from Amazon -- in part because it is very convenient, and we get an enormous selection, and we don't have to think much about the security of each vendor relationship, and it saves us time and gas traveling quite a distance to stores. I tend to view the Amazon website as like the interface to some really slow Star Trek Matter Replicator that takes about two days to make just about anything. Eventually that wait time will get smaller and smaller for more and more things. Yes, this will add up to large scale social consequences though as more and more people do this. Maybe everyone in the world should just get a US$2000 credit deposited by the government (from taxes and royalties and newly issued money) every month at Amazon as a "basic income"? :-) Our economy is fundamentally changing but most pundits and politicians and especially mainstream economists don't talk about it.

As I write on the main page of my website:

In brief, there have always been five interwoven economies, and the balance of them changes with technological changes and cultural changes:
* A subsistence economy ("There's some lovely berries over here.");
* A gift economy ("The meat from this deer I hunted is going to spoil; I'll share it with the tribe, and others will share their hunting results some other time as they have in the past.");
* A planned economy ("Let's put the longhouse here. I'll cut the trees, you level the ground, you over there will put up the walls, and you over there will cook us some food while we are busy with these other tasks.");
* An exchange economy ("You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I'll trade you some of my extra berries for some of your extra deer meat.");
* A theft (or conquest) economy ("What's yours is mine because I'm stronger, cleverer, sneakier, or can afford better lawyers.").

Paid human labor has less and less value due to several causes including:
* robotics, AI, and other automation,
* better design,
* the accumulation of physical infrastructure,
* relatively cheaper energy (which can often substitute for human labor), and/or
* the emergence of voluntary social networks.

So, we can expect the balance between those five interwoven economies to change as our technology and society changes, perhaps with:
* A subsistence economy through 3D printing, gardening robots, local PV solar panels, and other local clean energy technologies (like cold fusion or something else);
* A gift economy through the internet, like sharing digital files to use with our 3D printers or gardening robots, or coordinating the movement of free goods like through Freecycle;
* A planned economy on a variety of scales, including through taxes, subsidies and regulation affecting market dynamics;
* An exchange economy marketplace softened by a basic income; and
* Minimizing the impulse to theft (or conquest) and related violence through the previous four changes.

The particular balance a society adopts is going to reflect the unique blend of history, culture, infrastructure, environment, relationships, mythologies, religions, and politics of that society.

Understanding this big picture is all part of rethinking socieoconomic institutions for the 21st century based on new (yet old) paradigms.

http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"Still, even with no net new jobs created during the 2000-2009 decade, the US GDP increased from about US$10 trillion a year in 2000 to about US$14 trillion a year in 2009 (according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis). This increase in GDP came from several sources. Much came from increased productivity (more produced per worker through automation) and from improved design (with new designs being easier to make or use). Some came through technical issues with GDP calculation, since goods or services produced mostly abroad are still credited to the USA's GDP when they are resold locally with some value added (like when Walmart sells goods made in China with some markup to cover profit and the cost of operating distribution centers in the USA, so the markup contributes to the GDP). Some came from what Jane Jacobs termed "transactions of decline" like increased spending on prisons, wars, and care for those sickened from things like pollution or vitamin D deficiency, which is why GDP is a problematical indicator as to societal well-being."

You're right that the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons will never go away. That is why we need to learn to look at the issue differently:
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?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2DEG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUSCANNZUKUS
Yours? http://cryptome.org/2012/03/qc-footprint.htm

Mine: :-) http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
"Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought". .. You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival. ... These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient."

Please don't get too lost in the tree-like details (correct or not) of organizations implementing ever newer versions of AIs in various forms. The key point is that we've had "AIs" in the corporate sense as bureaucracies for thousands of years going back to ancient Egypt or earlier (maybe quadrillions of years if we live in a simulation). That is the "forest".

I do think we have more options though than the ones I outline there (including collections of "people" working together with advanced tools). See for example also Manuel De Landa on "Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces".

See also, another of my essays from a decade ago:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html#what_have_funding_policies_in_automotive_intelligence_wrought
"Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).
    We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process? "

From my website: http://pdfernhout.net/

In brief, there have always been five interwoven economies, and the balance of them changes with technological changes and cultural changes:
* A subsistence economy ("There's some lovely berries over here.");
* A gift economy ("The meat from this deer I hunted is going to spoil; I'll share it with the tribe, and others will share their hunting results some other time as they have in the past.");
* A planned economy ("Let's put the longhouse here. I'll cut the trees, you level the ground, you over there will put up the walls, and you over there will cook us some food while we are busy with these other tasks.");
* An exchange economy ("You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I'll trade you some of my extra berries for some of your extra deer meat.");
* A theft (or conquest) economy ("What's yours is mine because I'm stronger, cleverer, sneakier, or can afford better lawyers.").

Paid human labor has less and less value due to several causes including:
* robotics, AI, and other automation,
* better design,
* the accumulation of physical infrastructure,
* relatively cheaper energy (which can often substitute for human labor), and/or
* the emergence of voluntary social networks.

So, we can expect the balance between those five interwoven economies to change as our technology and society changes, perhaps with:
* A subsistence economy through 3D printing, gardening robots, local PV solar panels, and other local clean energy technologies (like cold fusion or something else);
* A gift economy through the internet, like sharing digital files to use with our 3D printers or gardening robots, or coordinating the movement of free goods like through Freecycle;
* A planned economy on a variety of scales, including through taxes, subsidies and regulation affecting market dynamics;
* An exchange economy marketplace softened by a basic income; and
* Minimizing the impulse to theft (or conquest) and related violence through the previous four changes.

The particular balance a society adopts is going to reflect the unique blend of history, culture, infrastructure, environment, relationships, mythologies, religions, and politics of that society.

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ... 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."

As I say here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing.... 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."

Ideas for helping the NSA and CIA transcend to a new paradigm:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful. ..."

As I say here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing.... 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."

Ideas for helping the NSA and CIA transcend to a new paradigm:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful. ..."