Still, markets can fail due to unpriced externalities (like pollution or military costs of defending oil supply lines) or unaccounted-for systemic risks (like derivatives or programmed trading leading to market collapse). Example, from Greenspan: "Greenspan Destroys Deregulation in 16 Seconds" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
So, there are limits to what unregulated markets alone can do.
The gift economy, the subsistence economy, and them democratically planned economy can all provide alternatives for times when the exchange economy fails.
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Super-Rich_Can_Save_Us!" http://onlythesuperrich.org/ "Just as Atlas Shrugged portrayed self-interested successful capitalists working to create a "Utopia of Greed" that is free from government, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! portrays an altruistic group of super-rich individuals working to "re-make government" and where "the rebellious rich take on the reigning rich."[4] The novel's protagonist is inspired by Warren Buffett. On August 14, 2011, Warren Buffett wrote an influential op-ed entitled, "Stop Coddling the Super-rich",[5] which argues that the super-rich should bear more responsibility and pay their "fair share" of taxes."
As I wrote here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p... "Why not do the same for those who eat junk food? and who don't exercise. And who don't eat large quantities of fruits, vegetables, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains). And don't get enough vitamin D or iodine. And who don't breastfeed infants for at least two years if a mother (WHO recommendation). And who are frequently stressed. And who don't get enough sleep. And who don't work at home. And who don't homeschool their children (to avoid illness spread via compulsory schools). And who don't buy as much as possible online to avoid stores. And who smoke. And who are promiscuous. And who don't buy all organic food and organic cotton bedsheets (just in case). And who bring other stuff with toxins into the house (like formaldehyde off-gassing composite wood products). Because all these things either reduce your immune system or increase your risk of getting sick. So, are you in prison for poor health choices yet? Following your plan, you can leave when you agree to do all of the above... A starting point: http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra... "
Unlike software patches, it is not as easy to "uninstall" a vaccine, or, if all else fails, "reinstall" your body.
Indoors agricultural is also rising, given cheaper energy costs for LED lighting and more consistent results in controlled environments...
Yes, hunting/gatherering in a large home range is easier than pre-modern century farming styles, which seem to have only increased because of increasing population densities and tribes pushes to marginal lands or smaller lands. http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
Anyway, I applaud the trend in the original article. Of course, living next to a farm can pose health challenges (like from contaminated ground water) depending on what pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers are used (even "organic" ones).
If you look at the "Biosphere II" project, or similar intensive agricultural projects (as in the book "Survival Gardening") it looks like a few people per acre can be supported with intensive methods in favorable climates, especially if you grow a lot of beans and return sterilized human manure to the land.. http://www.permies.com/t/12422... "It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare -- and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993] "
Intensive agriculture is knowledge intensive though, even if robots might mean it would not be so labor intensive. But no doubt eventually we will see plug-in (or cold fusion-powered) containers that have seeds and lights and robots in them and just output food given water and some other inputs. But it won't be as picturesque as a diversified semi-hobby organic farm. But it might not be as unsightly as, say, parts of Iowa where much of year the devastated industrialized farmland looks like a moonscape, and the soil is essentially only used to prop up the plants, only ~10% of calories per acre is created compared to intensive practices, and most of the result is fed to animals where ~90% of the calories are wasted relative to human consumption (so, only ~1% efficient overall compared to intensive cultivation of vegetarian foods, in round numbers).
Info on sustainable farming practices: "Towards holistic agriculture: a scientific approach" by R. W. Widdowson" http://books.google.com/books/...
And on economics: http://www.juliansimon.com/wri... "Of course an increase in consumption imposes costs in the short run. But in the long run, population pressure reduces costs as well as improves the food supply in accord with the general theory, which I'll repeat again: More people, and increased income, cause problems of increased scarcity of resources in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen. That is, prices end up lower than before the increased scarcity occurred, which is the long-run history of food supply.
Some people wonder whether we can be sure that food production will increase, and whether it would be "safer" to
I left high school in the middle of 11th grade for much the same reasons. In general, unschooling/homeschooling are a great option for many people of all sorts of ability. A "basic income" could also replace compulsory schooling: http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...
More on the problems with compulsory schooling from a NYS "Teacher of the Year" John Taylor Gatto: http://www.newciv.org/whole/sc... http://www.johntaylorgatto.com... http://www.the-open-boat.com/G... "Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion,class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And in later years it became the training shaken loose from even its own original logic -- to regulate the poor; since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling just exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to where it began to seize the sons and daughters of the middle classes."
By the way, Gatto points out the "gifted" label itself is a scam: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com... "In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling. Thatâ(TM)s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation. There isnâ(TM)t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We donâ(TM)t need state-certified teachers to make education happenâ"that probably guarantees it wonâ(TM)t."
And also by Gatto: http://www.bartlebyproject.com... "By 1973, schools were big business. In small towns and cities across the land schoolteaching was now a lucrative occupation - with short hours, long vacations, paid medical care, and safe pensions; administrators earned the equivalent of local doctors, lawyers, and judges. Eccentricity in classrooms was steeply on the wane, persecuted wherever it survived. Tracking was the order of the day, students being steered into narrower and narrower classifications supposedly based on standardized test scores. Plentiful exceptions existed, however, in the highest classifications of "gifted and talented," to accommodate the children of parents who might otherwise have disrupted the smooth operation of the bureaucracy. But even in these top classifications, the curriculum was profoundly diminished from standards of the past. What was asked of prosperous children in the 1970s would have been standard for children of coal miners and steel workers in the 1940s and 1950s. "
And it gets even worse, by others: http://www.thewaronkids.com/ "The War on Kids is a documentary on Public Education in America. While several documentaries on schools have come out since The War on Kids, these films tend to be either propaganda for charter schools or look at symptoms without any appreciation or understanding of underlying issues. To be a great documentary,
Here is an essay I put together with about 100 positive and negative responses to the situation. http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a... "There are a large number of possible cures that can be tried either to create jobs or to deal with the problems posed by widespread chronic unemployment, each with various different long term societal consequences (both good and bad). There are also other possible economic models like a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy where paid employment is not required to obtain basic goods and services, or a Gandhian swadeshi ecovillage economy that emphasizes community and family over abstract exchange. Some heterodox economists suggest moving towards those as another possible approach for dealing with the problems posed by a jobless recovery and other related economic issues like social equity and sustainability.
There is a paradox that many people may be happier with more free time to spend with friends, families, and hobbies, if they still can acquire the basic goods and services they need somehow -- but this positive increase in satisfaction might appear as negative economic indicators like a shrinking GDP or a continually increasing unemployment rate. Also, not all jobs created by a recovery are equal in terms of their implications for overall societal well being (for example, more prison guard jobs may indicate some other social dysfunction is taking place)....
Here is a list of possible ways to deal with joblessness.[53] Some "cures" emerge mostly on their own; some require political action to start or to prevent. This list is intended to be complete in order to help in understanding the interaction between social changes and job creation; not all possibilities are desirable by most societies. The ones in the first half of the list (like wage subsidies, a shorter work week, or a basic income) in general would usually be considered more positive and adaptive responses than the ones in the second half of the list (like war, escapism, and luddism), although actual preferences or ordering of desirability and acceptability may vary depending on political beliefs and feelings about things like government intervention and taxation. Many of the items in the second half of the list have profit-making aspects for some individuals within the current economic system, although usually directly at the cost of others in society (like crime). Not all items on this list are compatible with each other. Not all might be considered moral or would be legal under international law or existing trade agreements. Some of these "cures" create new jobs (like public works), others make it easier to survive without a job (like frugality), others eliminate the unemployed individuals from the official statistics in various ways (like prisons), others in some way destroy abundance which has a side effect of creating jobs to build it back up (war), and some allow someone unemployed to take a job that someone else was doing but who no longer can do the job anymore for various reasons (like mandatory retirement). Some of the "cures" that help individuals survive without a job may actually increase the unemployment rate as they reduce demand for items in the market place produced by paid employment, contributing to overall increased joblessness even as the individual may be helped locally. Because these items may interact in unexpected ways, and people have many different feelings about them as different groups may benefit or be harmed in different ways, and many vested interests are involved, it is challenging for any economist, political scientist, politician or private citizen to make sense of all these issues or to pick a best way forward, even though people are trying in various ways to do that.[
"The US economy is rapidly splitting in two, into a blue-collar/lower education economy where unemployment is high and job prospects are low; and a white-collar/higher education economy where unemployment is low and that's where all the growth is happening (tech, finance, etc.)"
I agree the first one is not coming back, but as I see it, the second one is mostly going away too. To over-simplify, robotics eliminated blue collar jobs, but AI eliminates white collar jobs. A "basic income" is one solution to this. Below is a further elaboration on that theme.
Blue collar jobs making and mending things (and some "pink collar" service jobs like massage, hair cutting, bartending, nursing, and waitressing) are eliminated (or greatly reduced) by robotics and similar automation that can recognize and manipulate physical things (or empower one person to do more, like a powered exoskeleton or semi-autonomous welding rigs requiring only partial supervision). Better design of tools and products (including eventually 3D printing) also reduce such jobs by making "DIY" easier or making products that last longer or are easier to assemble and install yourself (like "John Guest" plumbing connections that press together).
White collar jobs and some other "service jobs" (like librarians, accountants, insurance agents, travel agents, system administrators, managers, teachers, radiologists, telemarketers, telephone-based support positions) are eliminated by AI and lesser programs that can recognize and manipulate information, or at least amplify the ability of an individual to "Do it yourself" like tax software. Again, even if they don't replace such jobs, they can empower one person to do what used to take dozens of people.
There is some overlap because most jobs in practice have a variety of aspects. Radiologists work mostly with visual patterns, for example, so software for robot vision is affecting them. Hair styling requires creative application of general principles to an individual with a certain shape of head and character of hair, so AI may be an important aspect for planing overall strategy. Improved telephone support may require recognizing human speech and holding a conversation.
So, the value of hiring a human for any job is going to diminish over time as robotics, AI, ad other automation improves. We saw that first in agriculture (in the USA, going from 90% of employment to 2% over two centuries while output grows, although gardening remains a popular hobby). Now we are seeing it in manufacturing (in the USA, going from about 35% to 15% over 50 years and still falling while output grows, and while the hobby maker movement rises). We will see that with white color jobs too. That is why we need a healthy mix of basic income, an expanded gift economy, improved subsistence, and more participatory democratic government planning.
By the way, it is true the USA imports more and more manufactured goods like from China. However, the smaller national US workforce still produces more than ever as well. The USA may bring those manufacturing back from China, but there will not be significantly more jobs from it because such jobs will be automated. Steve Jobs said this about Apple's manufacturing for example. The choice is between using humans acting like robots for pay in China (and shipping costs etc.) versus using real robots in the USA. Even China is automating to reduce labor costs. More discussion: http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...
Other issues make this worse, such as ultimately limited demand for most goods and services with a law of diminishing returns, as well as money supply issues as most money moves to a mostly zero-sum FIRE sector casino economy concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and away from most human
Even if I'm mostly using GitHub for new stuff... It was a real encouragement and inspiration back then. It is like when someone turns on a light bulb in the middle of the night in a kitchen desperate for a drink of water and the light bulb is so bright you can't even look at it but lets you find the sink, and then when the (open source) sun comes up in the morning, you almost forget the lightbulb is still on compared to the sun. Thanks for turning on that lightbulb when we needed it most.
I guess if I had a question it would be, what do you think about Rick Webb's (another venture capitalist) article suggesting we're in the nascent stages of transforming to a post-scarcity economy (expanding the gift, planned, and subsistence aspects instead of purely emphasizing exchange)? http://entertainment.slashdot....
The problem with the current approach to US government transfers is it is mostly "needs based" (inviting fraud and shame) and is also skewed by narrow politics (like farm subsidies to huge farms not to grow stuff or to grow unhealthy stuff). A basic income for all (social security from birth) would democratize our distribution system, leading to all kinds of innovation in services. It would also respond to increasing unemployment as AI and robotics can do more and more jobs and most human labor becomes increasingly devalued in the exchange economy. We need to accept that there are two broad economic spheres -- an open ended one of real goods for living (food, education, personal housing, infrastructure) and a mostly zero-sum casino economy tied mostly to banking, stocks, derivatives, other finance, insurance, and real estate speculation. The reason the USA is still in the midst of a Great Depression (whatever mainstream economists claim) is because vast amounts of cash are in the FIRE sector and there is a drought of cash for the living sector. That is why economic models about money supply and inflation are flawed -- they don't differentiate enough between these two spheres. A basic income funded by tax (income or wealth) as well as possibly inflation and also royalties on use of government assets like fishing rights or spectrum use (like the Alaska Permanent fund) is a way of moving money out of the zero-sum FIRE sector into the hands of people who would spend it on having a healthier human life.
From 1964, a bit ahead of its time but playing out now given essentially zero net new jobs for a decade even as the population grows: http://educationanddemocracy.o... "Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures--unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S."
Most wealth comes from a combination of natural resources and what our ancestors learned by trial an error, and is our common global inheritance, as explained by C. H. Douglas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... "Social credit is an interdisciplinary distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879-1952), a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. It encompasses the fields of economics, political science, history, accounting, and physics. Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic and political power to individuals. Douglas wrote, "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."[1]... According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers. In order to accomplish this objective, he believed that each citizen should have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete access to consumer goods assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.[6] Douglas thought that consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the
The concept of compulsory public schooling is wrong-headed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... "The film takes a look at public school education in America and concludes that schools are not only failing to educate, but are increasingly authoritarian institutions more akin to prisons that are eroding the foundations of American democracy. tudents are robbed of basic freedoms primarily due to irrational fears; they are searched, arbitrarily punished and force-fed dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. The educational mission of the public school system has been reduced from one of learning and preparation for adult citizenship to one of control and containment."
Consequences that flow from it, like random adults needing to surveil unrelated children all day via hidden means are also wrong. http://www.the-open-boat.com/G... "Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your kid up in his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated and more often implied that the state through its agents knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, your local traditions do. And that your kid will be better off so adopted.
But by the time the child returns to the family, or has the option of doing that, very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger too and why not? In the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.
Now let's look at the strangers of which you (interviewer) was one and I was one. Regardless of our good feeling toward children. Regardless of our individual talents or intelligence, we have so little time each day with each of these kids, we can't possibly know enough vital information about that particular kid to tailor a set of exercises for that kid. Oh, you know, some of us will try more than others, but there simply isn't any time to do it to a significant degree. "
We can have sympathy for all the people caught up in the madness, but it is still madness. Alternatives: http://www.educationrevolution...
As a starting point why not just give the money that goes to public schools to the parents of young children so the parents can spend more time with their children and also hire tutors and such? My essay on that: http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...
But ultimately we need a basic income for all from birth, like John Holt talked about in "Escape from Childhood".
Sorry, I meant to reply to the parent of the post I replied to. Also, Dan Pink talks about "Autonomy (not Challenge), Mastery, and Purpose".
On Autonomy, think about our hunter/gatherer past and how much autonomy most people had when hunting or gathering or doing other basic tasks: http://www.eco-action.org/dt/a...
Those three things map onto your points, where "Simple" is relative to your current level of skill, "Engaging" relates to increasing mastery of some task, and "Rewarding" relates to a meaningful-to-you purpose. See this RSA Animate video featuring Dan Pink for more on motivation and those three areas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
AC wrote: "Some jobs are not possible to do with a never-ending flow of interns and indian mechanical turks. For some tasks you need dependable people who have years of insight into the business model of your company and who have the kind of intimate knowledge of your IT infrastructure that takes years to acrue."
This is so true. There is a lot of "domain knowledge" in many fields, even if the underlying programming issues may often be the same (how to write and maintain good code as part of a team). If you only know one or the other, it is hard to do the job well. And it takes time to learn both.
And for someone who has gone up the learning curve on both domain knowledge and technical & teamwork knowledge, it may take increasing or new challenges to keep things interesting. For whatever personal reasons, some people care more about certain problem domains at some moment than others. See Dan Pink on how the biggest motivation to do good work comes from a combination of purpose, mastery, and challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Game psychology suggests a sense of "flow" is best achieved by matching the challenge to be only slightly more than the skill level: http://www.jenovachen.com/flow...
Although E.F. Schumacher made a good point here too: http://centerforneweconomics.o... "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
There is some tension between Schumacher's point and Black's point, so resolving it may take a deeper level of analysis.
But it is hard to make huge profits from suggesting people live well and clean up their environment and thus prevent and cure disease... There are a lot more profits to keeping people on patented drugs by just treating chronic "conditions" or reducing the pains associated with them.
To be clear, I'm not against anti-aging research or genomics. I'm just saying, we as a society and scientific community are often ignoring the obvious well-proven paths to better health and extended life-span and diminished "frail span" for most people.
Of course, genomics also has a dark side -- the potential for customized plagues that may destroy humanity in the next few decades, like I worry about here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
So, I'd suggest we build healthier and more secure and equitable communities for everyone right now, before the plague potential of genomics fully emerges, in order to have the community spirit needed to deal with the dark side of such innovation.
The article cited dosing for Wafarin/Coumadin as a motivation for genetic research -- ironically ignoring it is not needed at all with better nutrition (in probably almost every case, so talk to an informed medical practicioner etc..). The link above is from something Dr. Joel Fuhrman wrote in 2004 (just to show how people searching for a magic bullet ignore the obvious). From there: "Coumadin, Vitamin K, and a Plant-Based Diet... Eat more healthfully and stop taking Coumadin. The main problem with the studies that show that patients at risk of stroke benefit from anticoagulation with Coumadin is that they tested mostly high-risk patients on the typical disease-creating American diet, not low-risk patients on a vegetable-heavy, plant-based diet. As one's diet changes to include more vegetation and less and less animal products and refined foods, one's cholesterol drops, one's blood pressure typically decreases, and one's risk of a heart attack or embolic stroke plummets.
A high-nutrient, plant-based diet already has been demonstrated in medical studies to have a powerful effect at decreasing the risk of embolic stroke as well as heart attacks. In fact, in the Nurses Health Study a mere 5 servings per day of fruits and vegetables reduced risk of embolic stroke by 30 percent (and this is still a poor diet by my standards). 2 Another study looking at the consumption of greens, vegetables, and daily fruit consumption found a dramatic decrease in stroke incidence (approaching 50 percent) when they compared high and low fruit and vegetable consumption.3 My dietary recommendations, extremely low in salt and offering the equivalent of more than 10 servings per day of stroke-protecting produce, have been demonstrated to dramatically lower cholesterol and offer a much greater resistance to both strokes and heart attacks than Coumadin therapy. For people following my nutritional advice, the use of Coumadin becomes ill-advised. The use of this dietary intervention quickly drops people from a high-risk to a low-risk status. In most cases, Coumadin is no longer needed.
Most people on Coumadin would be much safer if they ate an ideal diet with lots of vitamin K containing greens; took an aspirin, EPA/DHA fatty acids, and LDL protect daily; and stopped taking the Coumadin. The risk of all causes of death would decrease precipitously. Eating right will not cause you to bleed to death. Instead, it can save your life.
Natural anticoagulants to consider instead of Coumadin are tomato juice, pomegranate juice, fish oil, vitamin E, horse chestnut seed extract, and ginkgo biloba.
Is Coumadin the Only Hope?
For those who absolutely must take Coumadin, because of a recent thrombotic event, the danger of not eating a healthful diet exceeds the risk of increasing the Coumadin dose slightly to accommodate the healthier diet. As long as the amount of greens you eat is consistent, your doctor can adjust your Coumadin dose to accommodate it.
For the patient who must stay on Coumadin, the diet must be consistent from day to day to avoid fluctuations in the effectiveness of the drug. To keep the vitamin K amount constant, it is sensible to eat one large raw salad a day and one serving of dark green vegetables such as asparagus and string beans, but leave out the dark green leafy vegetables, such as steamed kale, collards, and spinach. Adding some of those to a soup is okay, however. The goal is to keep your vitamin K level stable, so the amount of blood thinning does not swing into a danger zone. A dangerous level of blood thinning can occur if the dose of Coumadin is adjusted to a high vitamin K intake and then suddenly the patient does not eat many vitamin K-containing foods for a few days. In other wo
Kurzweil was heavily rewarded for success as a CEO in a capitalist society. So his recommendations tend to support that and also be limited by that. So, things like a "basic income" or "Free software" may be beyond Kurweil's general policy thinking.
Se also the disagreeing comments here: "Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil Destroys Zeitgeist Movement 'Technological Unemployment'" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Modern robots can be networked through the internet. So, at some point, you don't just have one million robots learning things independently. You have effectively one robot with a million hands learning potentially very quickly by trial and error replicated a million times faster then with just one hand.
A parable by me on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... "A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
http://www.starlite.nih.gov/ "Work with your colleagues (some humanoid, some not) to complete quests in a lab. The STAR-LITE laboratory can be chaotic and safety violations will occur. You will make critical safety decisions to ensure that you and your colleagues work safely in a lab. STAR-LITE (Safe Techniques Advance Research â" Laboratory Interactive Training Environment) is an innovative and groundbreaking method to learn about laboratory safety techniques. STAR-LITE was inspired by and is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth R. Griffin."
And: http://www.ergriffinresearch.o... "The Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation, Inc. (the Foundation) is a non-profit organization which is involved worldwide in promoting safe and responsible practices for handling biological materials in institutions such as hospitals, public health agencies, and research laboratories. The Foundation works to support the expansion of safe, secure, responsible laboratory capacity in under-resourced countries where diseases emerge/re-emerge. The Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation, Inc. was formed in loving memory of Beth Griffin, whose vibrant, young life as a researcher was prematurely ended after contracting the rare macaque-born B virus (previously known as Herpes B Virus) from an ocular exposure to Macaque monkey secretions while doing research."
There is quite a bit about proper eye protection in the simulation.
I'd agree from what I've seen first-hand that academic labs tend to cut corners and take risks that would not be acceptable in industry. Cover ups might be easier too with less people involved and with the grad students living more on the edge and in more fear due to David Goodstein's "Big Crunch" in academia. http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg...
But part of it also may be poor training coupled with a youthful sense of invulnerability of students.
Anyway, my kid and I played through that STAR-LITE simulation. It's a bit slow paced, but we both learned a lot. If it was open source (which I don't think it is despite being charitable funded), perhaps someone could improve the game dynamics of it? It's OK as is, and well worth anyone's time, but I feel it could just be better. That website also had troubles a while back including the download link not working, and we asked someone we knew at a government lab to ask them to get it back up. An open source safety simulation could have greater availability, although it would be good for any modules for it to be vetted by safety experts.
See also my essay from a dozen years ago on open source and charitable dollars: http://www.pdfernhout.net/open... "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 m
He's been talking about it for years... http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar... "Study after study has shown that as protein consumption goes up, so does the incidence of chronic diseases. Similar studies show that the incidence of chronic diseases also goes up when carbohydrate and fat consumption go up. This is because if the consumption of any of the macronutrients exceeds our basic requirements, the excess hurts us. Americans already get too much protein (and fat and carbohydrates), and this is reflected in soaring increases in the diseases of excess--heart disease, high-blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and numerous others.
Micronutrient deficiencies
Most Americans eat diets that are deficient in micronutrients, not in macronutrients. Rather than worrying about macronutrient percentages in your diet, focus your attention on meeting all of your micronutrient needs. For example, fat intake on a healthful diet could vary from 10 to 25 percent depending on the percentage of higher-fat fare such as avocados and raw nuts and seeds as a percent of total calories. Eating more of these higher calorie, fattier foods may be necessary in an active thin athlete or a growing child. Any concern you might have about not eating excess fat should be focused on the fact that fatty foods are more calorically-dense foods, and generally lower in micronutrients than vegetables and other less calorically-dense foods.
The focus of my book, Eat To Live, is on micronutrients. Simply put, the goal of a healthful diet is to get the highest amounts of micronutrients--both in quantity and diversity--from the fewest calories. Micronutrients, including vitamins, minerals, fibers, bioflavonoids, antioxidants and other phytochemicals, are the key to superior health and ideal weight.
When you eat to maximize micronutrients in relation to calories, your body function will normalize, chronic illnesses like high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol will resolve, and you should be able to maintain your youthful vigor into old age.
Heart disease and cancer--the major killers in modern societies--would fade away and become exceedingly rare occurrences if the population adopted an Eat To Live lifestyle. The current epidemic of obesity also would fade away because when your diet is high enough in micronutrients, excess weight drops off at a relatively fast rate. When your diet is high in micronutrients, it's as if you had your stomach stapled; you simply don't crave to overeat anymore. It is actually very difficult to overeat when you eat your fill of high micronutrient food."
..and who don't exercise. And who don't eat large quantities of fruits, vegetables, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains). And don't get enough vitamin D or iodine. And who don't breastfeed infants for at least two years if a mother (WHO recommendation). And who are frequently stressed. And who don't get enough sleep. And who don't work at home. And who don't homeschool their children (to avoid illness spread via compulsory schools). And who don't buy as much as possible online to avoid stores. And who smoke. And who are promiscuous. And who don't buy all organic food and organic cotton bedsheets (just in case). And who bring other stuff with toxins into the house (like formaldehyde off-gassing composite wood products). Because all these things either reduce your immune system or increase your risk of getting sick.
So, are you in prison for poor health choices yet? Following your plan, you can leave when you agree to do all of the above...
My suggestion: http://www.phibetaiota.net/201... "The greatest threat facing the USA is the irony inherent in our current defense posture, like for example planning to use nuclear energy embodied in missiles to fight over oil fields that nuclear energy could replace. This irony arises in part because the USA's current security logic is still based on essentially 19th century and earlier (second millennium) thinking that becomes inappropriate applied to 21st century (third millennium) technological threats and opportunities. That situation represents a systematic intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. There remains time to correct this failure, but time grows short as various exponential trends continue.
To address that pervasive threat from unrecognized irony, it would help to re-envision the CIA as a non-ironic post-scarcity institution. Then the CIA could help others (including in the White House) make more informed decisions to move past this irony as well.
A first step towards that could be for IARPA to support better free software tools for "crowdsourced" public intelligence work involving using a social semantic desktop for sensemaking about open source data and building related open public action plans from that data to make local communities healthier, happier, more intrinsically secure, and also more mutually secure. Secure, healthy, prosperous, and happy local (and virtual) communities then can form together a secure, healthy, prosperous, and happy nation and planet in a non-ironic way. Details on that idea are publicly posted by me here in the form of a Proposal Abstract to the IARPA Incisive Analysis solicitation: "Social Semantic Desktop for Sensemaking on Threats and Opportunities" http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
And, as will be mentioned below, the greatest threat facing specific CIA staff is heart disease and cancer. These two threats, global and personal, are actually connected in an odd sort of way, both reflecting past adaptive behavior which is no longer very adaptive under new conditions resulting from technological change. The current economic crisis the USA is facing also results from unrecognized underlying exponential trends.
I supply this document as mainly food for thought as people at IARPA contemplate the future of US defense intelligence and "incisive analysis".
But this document is a sort of "meta" incisiveness, because it is about the CIA itself and related institutions and their difficulties dealing with this phase change in our society (as the late James P. Hogan mentioned in his 1982 novel "Voyage From Yesteryear")...."
... issues like "dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression". The US RDA for vitamin D for adults is several times too low, and people in solitary confinement indoors are unlikely to be getting enough sunlight to make up the difference. The isolation itself is no doubt harmful to many people too, but the vitamin D aspect could at least be addressed easily even within the current system. The nutrition issue is even larger; see for example: http://www.psychologytoday.com... http://www.theguardian.com/pol... http://www.naturalnews.com/039...
Ironically, corporations get to repent by "restorative justice" (paying reparations or fixing what was broken) while real people are hit with "punitive justice". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
US prison population stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... "In 2008 approximately one in every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was behind bars, or being monitored (probation and parole). In 2008 the breakdown for adults under correctional control was as follows: one out of 18 men, one in 89 women, one in 11 African-Americans (9.2 percent), one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent), and one in 45 Caucasians (2.2 percent). Crime rates have increased by about 25 percent from 1988 to 2008.[18] In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandatory sentencing that came about during the "war on drugs." Violent crime and property crime have declined since the early 1990s.[19]"
What a difference a nun can make even in prison: "84-year-old nun sentenced for her anti-nuclear activism" http://www.catholic.org/nation... "Rice said she learned in prison to see her fellow inmates, not as perpetrators but as "victims" of a system that gave them few options. Walli says that like Rice, he spends long hours talking to inmates to "instill the idea that human life is sacred. "They know that they are the human fallout and the victims of the profiteering by the elite and top leaders of the corporations that are contracted to make the nuclear weapons. It's (the money) denied to human services that should be the priority of any government," Rice said. "
Slashdot Mirror
"Nothing you listed creates a severe public health threat."
Do you seriously believe this?
AC wrote: " Thank god for people like Julian Simon. http://www.wired.com/wired/arc... "
See also: http://www.juliansimon.com/wri...
Still, markets can fail due to unpriced externalities (like pollution or military costs of defending oil supply lines) or unaccounted-for systemic risks (like derivatives or programmed trading leading to market collapse). Example, from Greenspan:
"Greenspan Destroys Deregulation in 16 Seconds"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
So, there are limits to what unregulated markets alone can do.
The gift economy, the subsistence economy, and them democratically planned economy can all provide alternatives for times when the exchange economy fails.
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Super-Rich_Can_Save_Us!"
http://onlythesuperrich.org/
"Just as Atlas Shrugged portrayed self-interested successful capitalists working to create a "Utopia of Greed" that is free from government, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! portrays an altruistic group of super-rich individuals working to "re-make government" and where "the rebellious rich take on the reigning rich."[4] The novel's protagonist is inspired by Warren Buffett. On August 14, 2011, Warren Buffett wrote an influential op-ed entitled, "Stop Coddling the Super-rich",[5] which argues that the super-rich should bear more responsibility and pay their "fair share" of taxes."
Daniel Quinn wrote about such cycles of collapse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Other ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Jane Jacobs suggested alternatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
On self-renewal: http://books.google.com/books/...
Zinn on "The Coming Revolt of the Guards": http://www.historyisaweapon.co...
To do before collapse (1999 proposal to NASA): http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
As I wrote here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
"Why not do the same for those who eat junk food? and who don't exercise. And who don't eat large quantities of fruits, vegetables, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains). And don't get enough vitamin D or iodine. And who don't breastfeed infants for at least two years if a mother (WHO recommendation). And who are frequently stressed. And who don't get enough sleep. And who don't work at home. And who don't homeschool their children (to avoid illness spread via compulsory schools). And who don't buy as much as possible online to avoid stores. And who smoke. And who are promiscuous. And who don't buy all organic food and organic cotton bedsheets (just in case). And who bring other stuff with toxins into the house (like formaldehyde off-gassing composite wood products). Because all these things either reduce your immune system or increase your risk of getting sick. So, are you in prison for poor health choices yet? Following your plan, you can leave when you agree to do all of the above... A starting point: http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra... "
Unlike software patches, it is not as easy to "uninstall" a vaccine, or, if all else fails, "reinstall" your body.
http://robohub.org/tag/agricul...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://www.ieee-ras.org/agricu...
Indoors agricultural is also rising, given cheaper energy costs for LED lighting and more consistent results in controlled environments...
Yes, hunting/gatherering in a large home range is easier than pre-modern century farming styles, which seem to have only increased because of increasing population densities and tribes pushes to marginal lands or smaller lands.
http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
Anyway, I applaud the trend in the original article. Of course, living next to a farm can pose health challenges (like from contaminated ground water) depending on what pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers are used (even "organic" ones).
If you look at the "Biosphere II" project, or similar intensive agricultural projects (as in the book "Survival Gardening") it looks like a few people per acre can be supported with intensive methods in favorable climates, especially if you grow a lot of beans and return sterilized human manure to the land..
http://www.permies.com/t/12422...
"It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare -- and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993] "
Intensive agriculture is knowledge intensive though, even if robots might mean it would not be so labor intensive. But no doubt eventually we will see plug-in (or cold fusion-powered) containers that have seeds and lights and robots in them and just output food given water and some other inputs. But it won't be as picturesque as a diversified semi-hobby organic farm. But it might not be as unsightly as, say, parts of Iowa where much of year the devastated industrialized farmland looks like a moonscape, and the soil is essentially only used to prop up the plants, only ~10% of calories per acre is created compared to intensive practices, and most of the result is fed to animals where ~90% of the calories are wasted relative to human consumption (so, only ~1% efficient overall compared to intensive cultivation of vegetarian foods, in round numbers).
Info on sustainable farming practices:
"Towards holistic agriculture: a scientific approach" by R. W. Widdowson"
http://books.google.com/books/...
And: http://remineralize.org/
And on economics:
http://www.juliansimon.com/wri...
"Of course an increase in consumption imposes costs in the short
run. But in the long run, population pressure reduces costs as
well as improves the food supply in accord with the general theory,
which I'll repeat again: More people, and increased income, cause
problems of increased scarcity of resources in the short run.
Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices
present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to
search for solutions. Many fail, at cost to themselves. But in a
free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run
the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had
not arisen. That is, prices end up lower than before the increased
scarcity occurred, which is the long-run history of food supply.
Some people wonder whether we can be sure that food production
will increase, and whether it would be "safer" to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Posting to undo mistaken mod.
I left high school in the middle of 11th grade for much the same reasons. In general, unschooling/homeschooling are a great option for many people of all sorts of ability. A "basic income" could also replace compulsory schooling:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...
More on the problems with compulsory schooling from a NYS "Teacher of the Year" John Taylor Gatto:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/sc...
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
http://www.the-open-boat.com/G...
"Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion,class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And in later years it became the training shaken loose from even its own original logic -- to regulate the poor; since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling just exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to where it began to seize the sons and daughters of the middle classes."
By the way, Gatto points out the "gifted" label itself is a scam:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
"In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling. Thatâ(TM)s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation. There isnâ(TM)t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We donâ(TM)t need state-certified teachers to make education happenâ"that probably guarantees it wonâ(TM)t."
And also by Gatto:
http://www.bartlebyproject.com...
"By 1973, schools were big business. In small towns and cities across the land schoolteaching was now a lucrative occupation - with short hours, long vacations, paid medical care, and safe pensions; administrators earned the equivalent of local doctors, lawyers, and judges. Eccentricity in classrooms was steeply on the wane, persecuted wherever it survived. Tracking was the order of the day, students being steered into narrower and narrower classifications supposedly based on standardized test scores. Plentiful exceptions existed, however, in the highest classifications of "gifted and talented," to accommodate the children of parents who might otherwise have disrupted the smooth operation of the bureaucracy. But even in these top classifications, the curriculum was profoundly diminished from standards of the past. What was asked of prosperous children in the 1970s would have been standard for children of coal miners and steel workers in the 1940s and 1950s. "
More here:
http://homeschooladvocate.org/...
And it gets even worse, by others:
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
"The War on Kids is a documentary on Public Education in America. While several documentaries on schools have come out since The War on Kids, these films tend to be either propaganda for charter schools or look at symptoms without any appreciation or understanding of underlying issues. To be a great documentary,
See my reply here agreeing with your main points:
http://politics.slashdot.org/c...
Here is an essay I put together with about 100 positive and negative responses to the situation. ...
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
"There are a large number of possible cures that can be tried either to create jobs or to deal with the problems posed by widespread chronic unemployment, each with various different long term societal consequences (both good and bad). There are also other possible economic models like a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy where paid employment is not required to obtain basic goods and services, or a Gandhian swadeshi ecovillage economy that emphasizes community and family over abstract exchange. Some heterodox economists suggest moving towards those as another possible approach for dealing with the problems posed by a jobless recovery and other related economic issues like social equity and sustainability.
There is a paradox that many people may be happier with more free time to spend with friends, families, and hobbies, if they still can acquire the basic goods and services they need somehow -- but this positive increase in satisfaction might appear as negative economic indicators like a shrinking GDP or a continually increasing unemployment rate. Also, not all jobs created by a recovery are equal in terms of their implications for overall societal well being (for example, more prison guard jobs may indicate some other social dysfunction is taking place).
Here is a list of possible ways to deal with joblessness.[53] Some "cures" emerge mostly on their own; some require political action to start or to prevent. This list is intended to be complete in order to help in understanding the interaction between social changes and job creation; not all possibilities are desirable by most societies. The ones in the first half of the list (like wage subsidies, a shorter work week, or a basic income) in general would usually be considered more positive and adaptive responses than the ones in the second half of the list (like war, escapism, and luddism), although actual preferences or ordering of desirability and acceptability may vary depending on political beliefs and feelings about things like government intervention and taxation. Many of the items in the second half of the list have profit-making aspects for some individuals within the current economic system, although usually directly at the cost of others in society (like crime). Not all items on this list are compatible with each other. Not all might be considered moral or would be legal under international law or existing trade agreements. Some of these "cures" create new jobs (like public works), others make it easier to survive without a job (like frugality), others eliminate the unemployed individuals from the official statistics in various ways (like prisons), others in some way destroy abundance which has a side effect of creating jobs to build it back up (war), and some allow someone unemployed to take a job that someone else was doing but who no longer can do the job anymore for various reasons (like mandatory retirement). Some of the "cures" that help individuals survive without a job may actually increase the unemployment rate as they reduce demand for items in the market place produced by paid employment, contributing to overall increased joblessness even as the individual may be helped locally. Because these items may interact in unexpected ways, and people have many different feelings about them as different groups may benefit or be harmed in different ways, and many vested interests are involved, it is challenging for any economist, political scientist, politician or private citizen to make sense of all these issues or to pick a best way forward, even though people are trying in various ways to do that.[
"The US economy is rapidly splitting in two, into a blue-collar/lower education economy where unemployment is high and job prospects are low; and a white-collar/higher education economy where unemployment is low and that's where all the growth is happening (tech, finance, etc.)"
I agree the first one is not coming back, but as I see it, the second one is mostly going away too. To over-simplify, robotics eliminated blue collar jobs, but AI eliminates white collar jobs. A "basic income" is one solution to this. Below is a further elaboration on that theme.
Blue collar jobs making and mending things (and some "pink collar" service jobs like massage, hair cutting, bartending, nursing, and waitressing) are eliminated (or greatly reduced) by robotics and similar automation that can recognize and manipulate physical things (or empower one person to do more, like a powered exoskeleton or semi-autonomous welding rigs requiring only partial supervision). Better design of tools and products (including eventually 3D printing) also reduce such jobs by making "DIY" easier or making products that last longer or are easier to assemble and install yourself (like "John Guest" plumbing connections that press together).
White collar jobs and some other "service jobs" (like librarians, accountants, insurance agents, travel agents, system administrators, managers, teachers, radiologists, telemarketers, telephone-based support positions) are eliminated by AI and lesser programs that can recognize and manipulate information, or at least amplify the ability of an individual to "Do it yourself" like tax software. Again, even if they don't replace such jobs, they can empower one person to do what used to take dozens of people.
There is some overlap because most jobs in practice have a variety of aspects. Radiologists work mostly with visual patterns, for example, so software for robot vision is affecting them. Hair styling requires creative application of general principles to an individual with a certain shape of head and character of hair, so AI may be an important aspect for planing overall strategy. Improved telephone support may require recognizing human speech and holding a conversation.
So, the value of hiring a human for any job is going to diminish over time as robotics, AI, ad other automation improves. We saw that first in agriculture (in the USA, going from 90% of employment to 2% over two centuries while output grows, although gardening remains a popular hobby). Now we are seeing it in manufacturing (in the USA, going from about 35% to 15% over 50 years and still falling while output grows, and while the hobby maker movement rises). We will see that with white color jobs too. That is why we need a healthy mix of basic income, an expanded gift economy, improved subsistence, and more participatory democratic government planning.
By the way, it is true the USA imports more and more manufactured goods like from China. However, the smaller national US workforce still produces more than ever as well. The USA may bring those manufacturing back from China, but there will not be significantly more jobs from it because such jobs will be automated. Steve Jobs said this about Apple's manufacturing for example. The choice is between using humans acting like robots for pay in China (and shipping costs etc.) versus using real robots in the USA. Even China is automating to reduce labor costs. More discussion:
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...
Other issues make this worse, such as ultimately limited demand for most goods and services with a law of diminishing returns, as well as money supply issues as most money moves to a mostly zero-sum FIRE sector casino economy concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and away from most human
I've been a member since 2000-01-06 17:58:21: http://sourceforge.net/u/paulf...
Even if I'm mostly using GitHub for new stuff... It was a real encouragement and inspiration back then. It is like when someone turns on a light bulb in the middle of the night in a kitchen desperate for a drink of water and the light bulb is so bright you can't even look at it but lets you find the sink, and then when the (open source) sun comes up in the morning, you almost forget the lightbulb is still on compared to the sun. Thanks for turning on that lightbulb when we needed it most.
And SourceForge is still a great site for putting up demos of FOSS code that need to run CGI.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/tr...
I guess if I had a question it would be, what do you think about Rick Webb's (another venture capitalist) article suggesting we're in the nascent stages of transforming to a post-scarcity economy (expanding the gift, planned, and subsistence aspects instead of purely emphasizing exchange)?
http://entertainment.slashdot....
http://www.basicincome.org/bie...
The problem with the current approach to US government transfers is it is mostly "needs based" (inviting fraud and shame) and is also skewed by narrow politics (like farm subsidies to huge farms not to grow stuff or to grow unhealthy stuff). A basic income for all (social security from birth) would democratize our distribution system, leading to all kinds of innovation in services. It would also respond to increasing unemployment as AI and robotics can do more and more jobs and most human labor becomes increasingly devalued in the exchange economy. We need to accept that there are two broad economic spheres -- an open ended one of real goods for living (food, education, personal housing, infrastructure) and a mostly zero-sum casino economy tied mostly to banking, stocks, derivatives, other finance, insurance, and real estate speculation. The reason the USA is still in the midst of a Great Depression (whatever mainstream economists claim) is because vast amounts of cash are in the FIRE sector and there is a drought of cash for the living sector. That is why economic models about money supply and inflation are flawed -- they don't differentiate enough between these two spheres. A basic income funded by tax (income or wealth) as well as possibly inflation and also royalties on use of government assets like fishing rights or spectrum use (like the Alaska Permanent fund) is a way of moving money out of the zero-sum FIRE sector into the hands of people who would spend it on having a healthier human life.
From 1964, a bit ahead of its time but playing out now given essentially zero net new jobs for a decade even as the population grows:
http://educationanddemocracy.o...
"Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures--unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S."
Most wealth comes from a combination of natural resources and what our ancestors learned by trial an error, and is our common global inheritance, as explained by C. H. Douglas: ... According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers. In order to accomplish this objective, he believed that each citizen should have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete access to consumer goods assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.[6] Douglas thought that consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
"Social credit is an interdisciplinary distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879-1952), a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. It encompasses the fields of economics, political science, history, accounting, and physics. Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic and political power to individuals. Douglas wrote, "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."[1]
The concept of compulsory public schooling is wrong-headed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
"The film takes a look at public school education in America and concludes that schools are not only failing to educate, but are increasingly authoritarian institutions more akin to prisons that are eroding the foundations of American democracy. tudents are robbed of basic freedoms primarily due to irrational fears; they are searched, arbitrarily punished and force-fed dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. The educational mission of the public school system has been reduced from one of learning and preparation for adult citizenship to one of control and containment."
Consequences that flow from it, like random adults needing to surveil unrelated children all day via hidden means are also wrong.
http://www.the-open-boat.com/G...
"Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your kid up in his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated and more often implied that the state through its agents knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, your local traditions do. And that your kid will be better off so adopted.
But by the time the child returns to the family, or has the option of doing that, very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger too and why not? In the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.
Now let's look at the strangers of which you (interviewer) was one and I was one. Regardless of our good feeling toward children. Regardless of our individual talents or intelligence, we have so little time each day with each of these kids, we can't possibly know enough vital information about that particular kid to tailor a set of exercises for that kid. Oh, you know, some of us will try more than others, but there simply isn't any time to do it to a significant degree. "
We can have sympathy for all the people caught up in the madness, but it is still madness. Alternatives:
http://www.educationrevolution...
As a starting point why not just give the money that goes to public schools to the parents of young children so the parents can spend more time with their children and also hire tutors and such? My essay on that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...
But ultimately we need a basic income for all from birth, like John Holt talked about in "Escape from Childhood".
Sorry, I meant to reply to the parent of the post I replied to. Also, Dan Pink talks about "Autonomy (not Challenge), Mastery, and Purpose".
On Autonomy, think about our hunter/gatherer past and how much autonomy most people had when hunting or gathering or doing other basic tasks:
http://www.eco-action.org/dt/a...
Agreeing by me, but incorrectly posted to reply instead of yours:
http://games.slashdot.org/comm...
Those three things map onto your points, where "Simple" is relative to your current level of skill, "Engaging" relates to increasing mastery of some task, and "Rewarding" relates to a meaningful-to-you purpose. See this RSA Animate video featuring Dan Pink for more on motivation and those three areas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
See also my previous comment on this article: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
AC wrote: "Some jobs are not possible to do with a never-ending flow of interns and indian mechanical turks. For some tasks you need dependable people who have years of insight into the business model of your company and who have the kind of intimate knowledge of your IT infrastructure that takes years to acrue."
This is so true. There is a lot of "domain knowledge" in many fields, even if the underlying programming issues may often be the same (how to write and maintain good code as part of a team). If you only know one or the other, it is hard to do the job well. And it takes time to learn both.
And a big danger for new people is they don't know what they don't know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FourLev...
http://processcoaching.com/fou...
And for someone who has gone up the learning curve on both domain knowledge and technical & teamwork knowledge, it may take increasing or new challenges to keep things interesting. For whatever personal reasons, some people care more about certain problem domains at some moment than others. See Dan Pink on how the biggest motivation to do good work comes from a combination of purpose, mastery, and challenge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Game psychology suggests a sense of "flow" is best achieved by matching the challenge to be only slightly more than the skill level:
http://www.jenovachen.com/flow...
On making work into play, Bob Black write about this in 1985 in The Abolition of Work", and Theodore Sturgeon in the 1950s in "The Skills of Xanadu":
http://www.whywork.org/rethink...
http://books.google.com/books?...
Although E.F. Schumacher made a good point here too:
http://centerforneweconomics.o...
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
There is some tension between Schumacher's point and Black's point, so resolving it may take a deeper level of analysis.
And people are dying early now due to the rich-poor divide. So why not fix that now?
http://overpopulationisamyth.c...
Also, such research ignores the low-hanging fruit of better nutrition as I mention here: http://science.slashdot.org/co...
How to get healthier for most people in the Western world: https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
http://www.grassrootshealth.ne...
https://www.lef.org/magazine/m...
But it is hard to make huge profits from suggesting people live well and clean up their environment and thus prevent and cure disease... There are a lot more profits to keeping people on patented drugs by just treating chronic "conditions" or reducing the pains associated with them.
To be clear, I'm not against anti-aging research or genomics. I'm just saying, we as a society and scientific community are often ignoring the obvious well-proven paths to better health and extended life-span and diminished "frail span" for most people.
Of course, genomics also has a dark side -- the potential for customized plagues that may destroy humanity in the next few decades, like I worry about here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
So, I'd suggest we build healthier and more secure and equitable communities for everyone right now, before the plague potential of genomics fully emerges, in order to have the community spirit needed to deal with the dark side of such innovation.
For example, Wafarin/Coumadin is likely unneeded with good diet: http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
The article cited dosing for Wafarin/Coumadin as a motivation for genetic research -- ironically ignoring it is not needed at all with better nutrition (in probably almost every case, so talk to an informed medical practicioner etc..). The link above is from something Dr. Joel Fuhrman wrote in 2004 (just to show how people searching for a magic bullet ignore the obvious). From there: ...
"Coumadin, Vitamin K, and a Plant-Based Diet
Eat more healthfully and stop taking Coumadin. The main problem with the studies that show that patients at risk of stroke benefit from anticoagulation with Coumadin is that they tested mostly high-risk patients on the typical disease-creating American diet, not low-risk patients on a vegetable-heavy, plant-based diet. As one's diet changes to include more vegetation and less and less animal products and refined foods, one's cholesterol drops, one's blood pressure typically decreases, and one's risk of a heart attack or embolic stroke plummets.
A high-nutrient, plant-based diet already has been demonstrated in medical studies to have a powerful effect at decreasing the risk of embolic stroke as well as heart attacks. In fact, in the Nurses Health Study a mere 5 servings per day of fruits and vegetables reduced risk of embolic stroke by 30 percent (and this is still a poor diet by my standards). 2 Another study looking at the consumption of greens, vegetables, and daily fruit consumption found a dramatic decrease in stroke incidence (approaching 50 percent) when they compared high and low fruit and vegetable consumption.3 My dietary recommendations, extremely low in salt and offering the equivalent of more than 10 servings per day of stroke-protecting produce, have been demonstrated to dramatically lower cholesterol and offer a much greater resistance to both strokes and heart attacks than Coumadin therapy. For people following my nutritional advice, the use of Coumadin becomes ill-advised. The use of this dietary intervention quickly drops people from a high-risk to a low-risk status. In most cases, Coumadin is no longer needed.
Most people on Coumadin would be much safer if they ate an ideal diet with lots of vitamin K containing greens; took an aspirin, EPA/DHA fatty acids, and LDL protect daily; and stopped taking the Coumadin. The risk of all causes of death would decrease precipitously. Eating right will not cause you to bleed to death. Instead, it can save your life.
Natural anticoagulants to consider instead of Coumadin are tomato juice, pomegranate juice, fish oil, vitamin E, horse chestnut seed extract, and ginkgo biloba.
Is Coumadin the Only Hope?
For those who absolutely must take Coumadin, because of a recent thrombotic event, the danger of not eating a healthful diet exceeds the risk of increasing the Coumadin dose slightly to accommodate the healthier diet. As long as the amount of greens you eat is consistent, your doctor can adjust your Coumadin dose to accommodate it.
For the patient who must stay on Coumadin, the diet must be consistent from day to day to avoid fluctuations in the effectiveness of the drug. To keep the vitamin K amount constant, it is sensible to eat one large raw salad a day and one serving of dark green vegetables such as asparagus and string beans, but leave out the dark green leafy vegetables, such as steamed kale, collards, and spinach. Adding some of those to a soup is okay, however. The goal is to keep your vitamin K level stable, so the amount of blood thinning does not swing into a danger zone. A dangerous level of blood thinning can occur if the dose of Coumadin is adjusted to a high vitamin K intake and then suddenly the patient does not eat many vitamin K-containing foods for a few days. In other wo
Contrast with James Hughes, Director of IEET: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
And also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Kurzweil was heavily rewarded for success as a CEO in a capitalist society. So his recommendations tend to support that and also be limited by that. So, things like a "basic income" or "Free software" may be beyond Kurweil's general policy thinking.
Se also the disagreeing comments here:
"Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil Destroys Zeitgeist Movement 'Technological Unemployment'"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Modern robots can be networked through the internet. So, at some point, you don't just have one million robots learning things independently. You have effectively one robot with a million hands learning potentially very quickly by trial and error replicated a million times faster then with just one hand.
Economic alternatives I've helped collect:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyo...
A parable by me on the topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
"A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
http://www.starlite.nih.gov/
"Work with your colleagues (some humanoid, some not) to complete quests in a lab. The STAR-LITE laboratory can be chaotic and safety violations will occur. You will make critical safety decisions to ensure that you and your colleagues work safely in a lab. STAR-LITE (Safe Techniques Advance Research â" Laboratory Interactive Training Environment) is an innovative and groundbreaking method to learn about laboratory safety techniques. STAR-LITE was inspired by and is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth R. Griffin."
And:
http://www.ergriffinresearch.o...
"The Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation, Inc. (the Foundation) is a non-profit organization which is involved worldwide in promoting safe and responsible practices for handling biological materials in institutions such as hospitals, public health agencies, and research laboratories. The Foundation works to support the expansion of safe, secure, responsible laboratory capacity in under-resourced countries where diseases emerge/re-emerge. The Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation, Inc. was formed in loving memory of Beth Griffin, whose vibrant, young life as a researcher was prematurely ended after contracting the rare macaque-born B virus (previously known as Herpes B Virus) from an ocular exposure to Macaque monkey secretions while doing research."
There is quite a bit about proper eye protection in the simulation.
I'd agree from what I've seen first-hand that academic labs tend to cut corners and take risks that would not be acceptable in industry. Cover ups might be easier too with less people involved and with the grad students living more on the edge and in more fear due to David Goodstein's "Big Crunch" in academia.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg...
But part of it also may be poor training coupled with a youthful sense of invulnerability of students.
Anyway, my kid and I played through that STAR-LITE simulation. It's a bit slow paced, but we both learned a lot. If it was open source (which I don't think it is despite being charitable funded), perhaps someone could improve the game dynamics of it? It's OK as is, and well worth anyone's time, but I feel it could just be better. That website also had troubles a while back including the download link not working, and we asked someone we knew at a government lab to ask them to get it back up. An open source safety simulation could have greater availability, although it would be good for any modules for it to be vetted by safety experts.
See also my essay from a dozen years ago on open source and charitable dollars:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open...
"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 m
http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
He's been talking about it for years...
http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
"Study after study has shown that as protein consumption goes up, so does the incidence of chronic diseases. Similar studies show that the incidence of chronic diseases also goes up when carbohydrate and fat consumption go up. This is because if the consumption of any of the macronutrients exceeds our basic requirements, the excess hurts us. Americans already get too much protein (and fat and carbohydrates), and this is reflected in soaring increases in the diseases of excess--heart disease, high-blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and numerous others.
Micronutrient deficiencies
Most Americans eat diets that are deficient in micronutrients, not in macronutrients. Rather than worrying about macronutrient percentages in your diet, focus your attention on meeting all of your micronutrient needs. For example, fat intake on a healthful diet could vary from 10 to 25 percent depending on the percentage of higher-fat fare such as avocados and raw nuts and seeds as a percent of total calories. Eating more of these higher calorie, fattier foods may be necessary in an active thin athlete or a growing child. Any concern you might have about not eating excess fat should be focused on the fact that fatty foods are more calorically-dense foods, and generally lower in micronutrients than vegetables and other less calorically-dense foods.
The focus of my book, Eat To Live, is on micronutrients. Simply put, the goal of a healthful diet is to get the highest amounts of micronutrients--both in quantity and diversity--from the fewest calories. Micronutrients, including vitamins, minerals, fibers, bioflavonoids, antioxidants and other phytochemicals, are the key to superior health and ideal weight.
When you eat to maximize micronutrients in relation to calories, your body function will normalize, chronic illnesses like high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol will resolve, and you should be able to maintain your youthful vigor into old age.
Heart disease and cancer--the major killers in modern societies--would fade away and become exceedingly rare occurrences if the population adopted an Eat To Live lifestyle. The current epidemic of obesity also would fade away because when your diet is high enough in micronutrients, excess weight drops off at a relatively fast rate. When your diet is high in micronutrients, it's as if you had your stomach stapled; you simply don't crave to overeat anymore. It is actually very difficult to overeat when you eat your fill of high micronutrient food."
..and who don't exercise. And who don't eat large quantities of fruits, vegetables, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains). And don't get enough vitamin D or iodine. And who don't breastfeed infants for at least two years if a mother (WHO recommendation). And who are frequently stressed. And who don't get enough sleep. And who don't work at home. And who don't homeschool their children (to avoid illness spread via compulsory schools). And who don't buy as much as possible online to avoid stores. And who smoke. And who are promiscuous. And who don't buy all organic food and organic cotton bedsheets (just in case). And who bring other stuff with toxins into the house (like formaldehyde off-gassing composite wood products). Because all these things either reduce your immune system or increase your risk of getting sick.
So, are you in prison for poor health choices yet? Following your plan, you can leave when you agree to do all of the above...
A starting point:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
My suggestion: http://www.phibetaiota.net/201... ..."
"The greatest threat facing the USA is the irony inherent in our current defense posture, like for example planning to use nuclear energy embodied in missiles to fight over oil fields that nuclear energy could replace. This irony arises in part because the USA's current security logic is still based on essentially 19th century and earlier (second millennium) thinking that becomes inappropriate applied to 21st century (third millennium) technological threats and opportunities. That situation represents a systematic intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. There remains time to correct this failure, but time grows short as various exponential trends continue.
To address that pervasive threat from unrecognized irony, it would help to re-envision the CIA as a non-ironic post-scarcity institution. Then the CIA could help others (including in the White House) make more informed decisions to move past this irony as well.
A first step towards that could be for IARPA to support better free software tools for "crowdsourced" public intelligence work involving using a social semantic desktop for sensemaking about open source data and building related open public action plans from that data to make local communities healthier, happier, more intrinsically secure, and also more mutually secure. Secure, healthy, prosperous, and happy local (and virtual) communities then can form together a secure, healthy, prosperous, and happy nation and planet in a non-ironic way. Details on that idea are publicly posted by me here in the form of a Proposal Abstract to the IARPA Incisive Analysis solicitation: "Social Semantic Desktop for Sensemaking on Threats and Opportunities"
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
And, as will be mentioned below, the greatest threat facing specific CIA staff is heart disease and cancer. These two threats, global and personal, are actually connected in an odd sort of way, both reflecting past adaptive behavior which is no longer very adaptive under new conditions resulting from technological change. The current economic crisis the USA is facing also results from unrecognized underlying exponential trends.
I supply this document as mainly food for thought as people at IARPA contemplate the future of US defense intelligence and "incisive analysis".
But this document is a sort of "meta" incisiveness, because it is about the CIA itself and related institutions and their difficulties dealing with this phase change in our society (as the late James P. Hogan mentioned in his 1982 novel "Voyage From Yesteryear").
... issues like "dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression". The US RDA for vitamin D for adults is several times too low, and people in solitary confinement indoors are unlikely to be getting enough sunlight to make up the difference. The isolation itself is no doubt harmful to many people too, but the vitamin D aspect could at least be addressed easily even within the current system. The nutrition issue is even larger; see for example:
http://www.psychologytoday.com...
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
http://www.naturalnews.com/039...
And environmental toxins contribute too:
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
Ironically, corporations get to repent by "restorative justice" (paying reparations or fixing what was broken) while real people are hit with "punitive justice".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
US prison population stats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
"In 2008 approximately one in every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was behind bars, or being monitored (probation and parole). In 2008 the breakdown for adults under correctional control was as follows: one out of 18 men, one in 89 women, one in 11 African-Americans (9.2 percent), one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent), and one in 45 Caucasians (2.2 percent). Crime rates have increased by about 25 percent from 1988 to 2008.[18] In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandatory sentencing that came about during the "war on drugs." Violent crime and property crime have declined since the early 1990s.[19]"
Recent incarcerations for drone protesters, but presumably not in solitary:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/i...
http://www.syracuse.com/news/i...
http://www.syracuse.com/news/i...
http://www.veteransforpeace.or...
What a difference a nun can make even in prison:
"84-year-old nun sentenced for her anti-nuclear activism"
http://www.catholic.org/nation...
"Rice said she learned in prison to see her fellow inmates, not as perpetrators but as "victims" of a system that gave them few options. Walli says that like Rice, he spends long hours talking to inmates to "instill the idea that human life is sacred. "They know that they are the human fallout and the victims of the profiteering by the elite and top leaders of the corporations that are contracted to make the nuclear weapons. It's (the money) denied to human services that should be the priority of any government," Rice said. "