Interesting link. Here is a sci-fi story about even-cheaper-than-foreign-labor AI and robotics leading to unemployed US Americans ending up in "Terrafoam" cages: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
A great essay by Philip Greenspun on why US Americans, especially women, avoid science: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science "Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs in the sciences. Yet Summers, an economist, left one out: Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."
Posts I made to the p2presearch list concerning education (it would take years to read through all the embedded links on Gatto, Holt, Goodstein, Schmidt, Honigman, Lewellyn, etc.):
someday... From 1929: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/ "Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred yards or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant...."
Great point. Generally those putting their all into being good parents, good friends, and good citizens aren't putting their all into maximizing their bank accounts.
And what would our world be like without that "gift economy" of contributions to the present and the future?
The "rich" may often be free riders on all that voluntary "investment", in that sense.
"I had to come back to this point because it was so intriguing, why would I want to do this?"
Because an older version of economic "efficiency" in an economy suggest equality leads to greater happiness; see for why "Pareto" efficiency is mostly bunk as far as good policy: "Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal" http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014 "Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance everywhere "inefficient"? Why do they feel that corporate executives deserve no less than their multimillion-dollar "compensation" packages and workers no more than their meager wages? Here is a lively and accessible debunking of the two elements that make economics the "science" of the rich: the definition of what is efficient and the theory of how wages are determined. The first is used to justify the cruelest policies, the second grand larceny. Filled with lively examples--from food riots in Indonesia to eminent domain in Connecticut and everyone from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham to Larry Summers--Economics for the Rest of Us shows how today's dominant economic theories evolved, how they explicitly favor the rich over the poor, and why they're not the only or best options. Written for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary economic thinking--and why it is dead wrong--Economics for the Rest of Us offers a foundation for a fundamentally more just economic system."
Or just google on the various justifications for a "basic income".
You have good points on refactoring. But a basic income, as well as the other changes (better subsistence, more gift giving, better planning) are indeed all just incremental changes to what we have now. We have social security and medicare and money for schooling (just only for the old and young, not everyone), we gardening and personal robotics, we have GNU/Linux and Wikipedia, we have government planning. We just can improve on all of them.
But, it is hard to improve things when people don't even admit the problems and systematically suppress discussion of improvements... http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/ "The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
So, without an ability to incrementally improve, then we are more like to get occasional huge blowbacks and wars and such... And big failures. Which is your point.
"Name one other case where an invention or useful implement has preceded the theoretical framework to explain it."
Fire?:-)
Although it's been suggested somewhere that Rossi has taken money from a bunch of Greek-nationality investors who are now in Canada? One can take money from individuals even if not ask the general public.
I agree, only time will tell at this point. See my other comment to this story for what the catalyst might be related to though, connected to a previous research report from 1994.
And here are some more reasons I sent to Rossi: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation "The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioecenomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore...."
Mentioned here by "Sojourner Soo", with the abstract from 1994: http://ecatnews.com/?p=1144 "Anomalous heat was measured from a reaction of atomic hydrogen in contact with potassium carbonate on a nickel surface. The nickel surface consisted of 500 feet of 0.0625 inch diameter tubing wrapped in a coil. The coil was inserted into a pressure vessel containing a light water solution of potassium carbonate. The tubing and solution were heated to a steady state temperature of 249 C using an FR heater. Hydrogen at 1100 psig was applied to the inside of the tubing. After the application of hydrogen, a 32 C increase in temperature of the cell was measured which corresponds to 25 watts of heat. Heat production under these conditions is predicted by the theory of Mills where a new species of hydrogen is produced that has a lower energy state then normal hydrogen."
In the 1950s (or maybe 1930s) a Princeton physicist was talking about some similar things (forget his name offhand).
Rossi could have ended almost all dispute by just running two eCats side-by-side, one with the catalyst and one without. Or even just one with the hydrogen and one without, where people picked the one getting the hydrogen. That would rule out many things. (Maybe not all, but a lot.) The fact that he has not done that, which would be relatively easy, makes me more suspicious that it really works (although people have invented explanations for why he has not done that).
What has been said by Steven Krivit is the suggestion that LENR (cold fusion) does work, but not as well as Rossi suggests it does (and he has been still trying to get it to work well).
Still, it is so hard to be an innovator in our society, that I could cut Rossi a lot of slack. Just maybe not a check yet.:-)
You make some interesting points, and it is true the government at all levels can indeed do various bad things for all sorts of reasons, but the problem is that coordination of some sort is so darn useful. For example, what are you going to do when someone pollutes your groundwater? Call the EPA? Who is going to prevent endless feuding between your neighbors with guns? The Justice Department? (At least, in places that still have a reasonable level of economic order.) Who is going to maintain the roads? Who is going to support really basic long-term research (under our current economic paradigm without a basic income)? Who is going to redistribute wealth to account for the fact that "the rich get richer"? Who is going to make sure that markets take in account externalities like pollution, local risks, and systemic risk?
Yes, in theory one can come up with less formal social organizations to do these things. But there is still some organization. And probably one then has voting or key decision makers with permissions, or people who defer to other people for various reasons and so on. Perhaps the best sci-fi story about such an alternative is James P. Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear, but even he admits that the story took it too far from what probably could be made to work in practice (but it's still an inspirational story you'd probably like).
So, one way or another, you end up with something like a "government" when you try to build a real society. Different forms of government may work better or worse for different cultures, times, situations, or personalities, but we still need some form of organization and agreement.
Something on the theory: http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm "Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation."
Something on the practice: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/ "The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. "
And health and community are important to happiness (but a US conservative typically might not want to admit that...)
The fact that some parts of governments in the USA may be doing a bad job, and may be captured by the interests they are supposed to regulate, does not mean all government is bad. Several European governments (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden) are doing better in many respects. We may need a more general paradigm shift in our socioeconomics though before our government can start working well again. But in general, the most thriving societies have both good government and a dynamic business exchange sector.
Actually, many of them were essentially self-employed farmers and craftspeople, so they had flexible schedules: "Noam Chomsky: Wage Slavery = Chattle Slavery" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oztdRo9GLLk
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery "However, self-employment became less common as the artisan tradition slowly disappeared in the later part of the 19th century. In 1869 The New York Times described the system of wage labor as "a system of slavery as absolute if not as degrading as that which lately prevailed at the South""
Wonder why that fact was not emphasized in your history class? NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto says: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm "I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."
We have not just lost what we had. We have lost the memory of what we had...
As John Gardner says, every generation must learn again for itself what the words on the monuments mean... "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society" http://books.google.com/books?id=U5hXpnwUmW4C
"I'm 28, in good health, and I'm already weary of this world."
While I understand the sentiment, and the other points you made on connections and Seneca are wise, you might still want to check your vitamin D levels and think about how you are eating and exercising. Some health tips I put together: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
http://www.terrywahls.com/ "In 2003 Terry Wahls, M.D., was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis and soon became dependent upon a tilt-recline wheelchair. After developing and using the Wahls Protocol, she is now able to walk through the hospital and commute to work by bicycle. She now uses intensive directed nutrition in her primary care and traumatic brain injury clinics. Dr. Wahls is the lead scientist in a clinical trial testing her protocol in others with progressive MS. "
Perhaps there is some nutrients and vitamin D and such in the blood of young creatures? But you can get it from vegetables, sunlight, and other things instead of blood...
From Dr. Wahls' site: ======== I am a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A., where I teach internal medicine residents in their primary care clinics. I also do clinical research and have published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific abstracts, posters and papers.
In addition to being a doctor, I am also a patient with a chronic, progressive disease. I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis in 2000, just as I began working for the University. By 2003 I had transitioned to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. I underwent chemotherapy in an attempt to slow the disease and began using a tilt-recline wheelchair because of weakness in my back muscles. It was clear: eventually I would become bedridden by my disease. I wanted to forestall that fate asmy long as possible.
Because of my academic medical training, I know that research in animal models of disease is often 20 or 30 years ahead of clinical practice. Hoping to find something to arrest my descent into becoming bedridden, I used PubMed.gov to begin searching the scientific articles about the latest multiple sclerosis research. Night after night, I relearned biochemistry, cellular physiology, and neuroimmunology to understand the articles. Unfortunately, most of the studies were testing drugs that were years away from FDA approval. Then it occurred to me to search for vitamins and supplements that helped any kind of progressive brain disorder. Slowly I created a list of nutrients important to brain health and began taking them as supplements. The steepness of my decline slowed, for which I was grateful, but I still was declining.
In the fall of 2007, I had an important epiphany. What if I redesigned my diet so that I was getting those important brain nutrients not from supplements but from the foods I ate? It took more time to create this new diet, intensive directed nutrition, which I designed to provide optimal nutrition for my brain. At that time, I also learned about neuromuscular electrical stimulation and convinced my physical therapist to give me a test session. It hurt, a lot, but I also felt euphoric when it was finished, likely because of the endorphins my body released in response to the electrical stimulation. In December 2007, I began my intensive directed nutrition along with a program of progressive exercise, electrical stimulation, and daily meditation. The results stunned my physician, my family and me: within a year, I was able to walk through the hospital without a cane and even complete an 18-mile bicycle tour.
In 2007 I was losing my phone and keys and was afraid my chief of staff would soon be calling me
"Knowing people with multiple sclerosis, I can say it is a horrid disease, you gradually lose your functions over time. I believe there is some links to aspartame intake."
There is a mention of avoiding aspartame there (I don't know how big a part of that it is), but there is also getting enough vitamin D, getting Omega 3s, getting enough iodine, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and more... Those for sure could make a difference for many people eating the Standard American Diet and avoiding the sun.
"All that can be done in a rational world is to oppose the hate when it makes itself manifest by its vile actions."
It's a little more complex than that. One can ask: * What dysfunction leads to the hate, and can it be fixed before the hate manifests itself? * If the hate is there, how can one prevent it from being acted on by the context around the hate? * If the hate is being acted on, how can one respond to it effectively, given that acts claimed to be justified against those who hate can themselves be hateful and/or cause more hate?
All too often, the response to hate creates more hate. And violence begets violence. Dysfunction spreads like a disease. If one sees hate and violence as like a disease, what is the right response to it? One set of idea: "Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World" http://www.amazon.com/Creating-True-Peace-Violence-Community/dp/0743245202
In general, as a society, how can we move beyond black/white thinking, to thinking in color? http://www.anwot.org/
Still, there remains truth in your point, that there are people who hate, who are damaged, and others need to figure out how to respond to that situation (even if the haters are responding in kind to previous hate). It's a big challenge. And there is often a conflict, that the permissive policies that sometimes might prevent hate might allow existing hate to persist. It's not an easy thing to deal with.
"Plagues cannot and will not wipe us out because of the way we humans work."
For what it is worth, I was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution for a time.:-) But it's also true I am not expert in the field. I know about the tradeoff you are talking about, but there are ways in which it does not always apply.
But yes, will it wipe out everyone? Maybe not. But even killing 10% of the USA's population would mean 30 million casualties. Is the US elite willing to risk that for some outdated notion of empire? Probably, but should the population let them?
For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic "The pandemic lasted from June 1918 to December 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27%, were infected."
That was not a plague *designed* to do the most damage...
Even if you were right about natural disease vectors (and the 1918 flu is a counter-example), diseases can be intentionally spread (like was done with smallpox contaminated blankets in North American by the invaders). Think about all the food the USA eats that now comes from China, for example...
Consider what happened to the Native Americans. They got hit by a rapid succession of various plagues imported by Europeans like Smallpox and Measles, to which they had not native resistance (most of those plagues coming out of European's associations with livestock). Each wave of plague wiped out some fraction of the population, wave after wave.
How many "Spanish Flu" attacks in a row do you want to see, each designed to wipe out 30% of the population as a delayed reaction? How many weaponized Ebola-variants dumped in water supplies by drones flying across borders? With then some misguided teenagers (or military professionals) in some country the USA has literally pissed on (as in the video in the article) in the past crowing on the internet about how l33t they are that they made it happen, and they think they and their family are safe from it for some reason (either having a cure or just being nowhere in the vicinity of a fast acting plague widely spread by a mechanical vector)?
And biotech is just one example. There can be computer plagues like Stuxnet that destroy critical infrastructure or even cause military system to attack local targets (like dams). There can be nasty nanotech or microrobotics. The issue is that our technological powers have increased greatly, but our politics and aspirations have not adjusted to that new reality. it is much easier generally to destroy than to create, especially when a group just picks the soft targets. Trying to run a civilization without a basic trust is much, much more expensive, and everyone loses if it gets to that point.
If you won't consider the biotech point (maybe I'm wrong, I hope so), here are some robot related comments I wrote to someone else the other day in response to them sending me a link about the Willow Garage PR2:
Thanks for the comments. Yes, that site could be a lot better. I want it to be hosted in the best and fanciest peer-to-peer distributed semantic tools (that I help write), but until then I've ended up with the lowest of the low plain HTML.:-) Shoemaker's children, I guess.:-)
You're right about potential new bottlenecks, but there is a big difference between, say, people not getting enough food to eat and people not getting enough attention, like Abraham Maslow talked about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
We now probably have enough as a global society, even with a big population, that we probably don't need to ration the basics (if we did not divert 90%+ of our resources to competition, guarding, and warfare -- example, every checkout clerk is a guard, teachers are mostly guards, lawyers are mostly guards, much medicine is now defensive, etc.). Even if we do not, we will be there very soon with new energy sources, with new materials, with 3D printing, and with robotics in general. Potentially, we could support quadrillions of simultaneous human lives with the resources in the solar system, each having access to far more energy and matter than a typical Earth-dweller.
Instead of doing that, the USA has seeded Iraq with depleted uranium? Makes no long-term sense. "Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview" http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116 "Horror Of US Depleted Uranium In Iraq Threatens World" http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm "Iraq Depleted Uranium Contamination Linked To Illness, Deformities & Death" http://consciouslifenews.com/iraq-depleted-uranium-contamination-linked-to-illness-deformities-death/114318/ "The report also states that total deformities are around 11 times the world average, and that the number is rising. The report is the first study done on births during 2010, and it shows "unprecedented levels" of birth deformities [in Falluja], which suggests that the longer adults are exposed to the contamination, the more their children will be affected by the DU."
As Bucky Fuller said, whether it will be "Utopia or Oblivion" will be a touch-and-go relay race up to the very end.
Will people still have the equivalent of a military? Well, it's true that most organisms have some way to avoid predators or to consume other organisms or external resources or to compete in various ways, so yes, I can't disagree. Something I wrote on that theme: http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html "... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see *both* the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality
"Its a nice rosy thought but we really don't have the unlimited energy you speak of; or if we do we haven't the ability to transport it where we need it and concentrate it enough for many of the applications our society has come to depend on."
As well as the diversion of most of our resources into guarding, competition, and war...
As to your quote, I answer it with another quote: "The woods would be pretty quiet if no bird sang there but the best.":-)
Also, who is to judge what "best" is?
Clearly, even third rate is soon going to be enough to create WMDs (like the biotech, nanotech, or microrobotic equivalent of what script kiddies do with computers). So, we still need to figure out a way to make a world that works better and better for more and more people (including by reducing violence through healthier nutrition); see for example: "Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat: Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour" http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
Also, if the brains of the masses are dulled in the 21st century, it is in large part because the "best" put in place systems to make them that way through compulsory schooling; see John Taylor Gatto's writings: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm "I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"
How much our resources do you think are currently consumed by guarding, competition, and warfare? I'd suggest over 90%... See for example: http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html "Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. Ther
I also mention three other aspects that are important too besides a basic income (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning). More on all that by me: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
If you look at the hard data yourself, you will see that US governments (federal, state, local) together spend about US$600 per month per capita on welfare, unemployment, and schooling. If that money was given directly to every citizen, a family of four would be getting US$2400 per month (tax free) which for many would be enough to live on and homeschool in an area of the country with a low cost of housing (especially as both parents could still do additional work or subsistence gardening activities and would have time to be frugal and would have less stress leading to recreational shopping therapy). http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/jobfree.html
With more involved parenting, and more neighbors with free time for being involved in their communities, most neighborhoods will be much better place to grow up in, and there will be less juvenile delinquency and fewer kids wanting to act out by hurting others. See also: http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
The graph you point to, indicating rising government over the next few decades up to about one-half the GDP, is pretty meaningless in the sense that it must depend on a lot of unstated assumptions all subject to political action. Also, some things like health spending may drop greatly as people understand health better; see the links I assembled here: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
Besides, what is wrong with redistributing one half the GDP as a basic income (and health insurance)? That would amount to about US$2000 per month as a right of citizenship right now (more if the economy grew more), and to make up for the effective enclosure of the land and of the copyright commons and for pollution suffered from industry and so on. I think that could make a lot of sense, and so do many others: http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
The remaining half of the GDP would be about as big as the total US GDP around 1995, which seemed big enough to motivate anyone who needed motivating by money back then.:-)
Also, right now the US governments spend more per capita for medical care than other countries require to give all their citizens generally better health care outcomes than in the USA.
So, the numbers easily work out. It is the ideology that is the problem. See: "The Mythology of Wealth" http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402 "Justifications for elites and social hierarchy goes all the way back to the pharaohs...."
The fact is, our current socioeconomic system is falling apart (see other links I've posted in this thread) -- and one consequence of that is increased domestic violence and increased warfare. I have collected more details here: http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
So, the status quo is failing, and increasingly at risk from WMDs from alienated people. We ne
"There will be no advanced technology building in that society in the long run, it's going to be an economic disaster as fewer and fewer will work, and eventually people will refuse to work for others, all while those, who actually create jobs will obviously move their investments somewhere, where this insane policies will not apply. The economy will be destroyed."
So, the economy you are talking about defending is already history in that sense.
"People will build viruses and release them just because they will be able to and nothing will prevent them, no amount of wealth in the world will stop them, and the more resources they will have in their hands the more "interesting" experiments they will be able to devise."
The people distributing the viruses were lacking some sort of moral awareness. More wealth in the hands of parents can let them raise their children better. It can allow communities to create more interesting opportunities for kids than widespread destruction. More distributed wealth means more people can work on defenses or deal with emergent problems. More wealth distributed means fewer kids growing up with brains damaged by poor nutrition. And so on. But I agree there will always be problems. But we can still probably reduce the frequency a lot.
But I also mention three other aspects that are important too (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning).
Things like compulsory schools and wage-slave workplaces are also main distribution points for plagues, given most people do not have the option to stay home for a long time. We should move beyond such security problems.
Basically, GDP has doubled or tripled over the past four decades, but real wages have been flat for most workers (with all the benefits going to 1% or so of the population). Rather than give money to workers to buy stuff as wages, the money has been provided as loans.
Had there not been the housing bubble etc., there would have been a financial crisis a decade ago. But now people have reached the end of what they can borrow under current standards, and the whole system is in great distress. It will likely get worse without some major interventions and policy changes, but these are resisted because they go against the dominant political/economic ideology of the USA.
Another factor, that you began to get at with leverage, is that the real economy of people's needs (like food and frost avoidance) is dwarfed by the amount of money in the "casino economy" related to speculation and so on (as mentioned in the video series "Money as Debt"). So, the real economy can not function to correct itself for many people because price signals are effectively broken for many real goods for meeting the needs of real people.
See also: http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/ "The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
Whie I like your general points on the movie, if Gattaca's biotech was so advanced, why could the protagonist not just alter his own DNA etc.? Or maybe Gattaca's biotech was not really as advanced as one might think?
Except that the only reason that people in Al Qaeda were not considered overly dangerous nutcases and turned in by their neighbors (or otherwise were pressed to reform by their wives and cousins etc.) is that there is a lot of anti-Western sympathy based on the USA having supporting various oppressors in the region.
You don't get a storm without the heat dynamics behind it... Seeds of evil may exist in the hearts of all people, along with good (see Thich Nhat Hahn's writings), but what emerges has a lot to do with circumstances (as well as culture and individual upbringing). That is part of what is meant by winning "hearts and minds" overseas, a battle the USA has been losing (to the extent it is even trying).
The USA also has had a lot of anti-whatever hate groups, as has Europe. The difference is that those societies in the past have generally been functional enough in various ways that people don't let them grow that much, and also in decades in the past it was a lot harder to project power internationally (like with the KKK). But sometimes the social forces have been there to let hate groups rise (like the Nazis). It is better to prevent fires than to have to fight them. And when you do fight fire, it is generally best to fight it with water (not more fire).
"It used to be that national security consisted of making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now it requires that as few people as possible hate you."
A lot of people, like presumable the non-sarcastic GP, don't get that.
I write about this in my essay here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
Within twenty years (if not sooner), I'd expect any disgruntled alienated teenager will be able to download plagues off the internet, tinker with them, and produce them at home. We need to build a society that works a lot better for everyone before then. One only needs to think about teens making computer viruses (which have had real costs to so many people) over the last twenty years and imagine the same happening in the biological realm. Why should it not?
Nanotech, robotics, computer software, and other advanced technologies pose similar problems in their own way.
A "basic income" (Social Security and Medicare for all from birth) is part of building a world of advanced technology more likely to flourish in the 21st century, as would be improving the gift economy, as is better planning, and making improved subsistence technologies widely accessible (a double-edged sword, true).
Our technologies have become too powerful to allow a global society to have so much inequality, suffering, disease, poverty, ignorance, hatred, and cruelty. We need to move to a new socioeconomic paradigm ASAP. We will still have problems, but they will be more manageable.
There is a lot more on my website about this.
It is ridiculous, for example, to worry about Iran developing a nuclear bomb when they could easily develop plagues. The USA was very lucky that blowback from invading Iraq did not include tens of millions of US Americans dying from ethnically-targeted plagues (whatever the costs to the country being invaded). The USA may not be so lucky next time. And the same goes for attacking smaller and smaller organizations as time goes by. We need to completely rethink our security posture to emphasize intrinsic security and mutual security.
The Foresight Institute also has some good thinking on this in the past, in terms of empowering everyone to deal with emerging threats. It's like the playing fields has totally changed, but the USA still is still preparing to win at Major League baseball when everyone else is now playing pickup games of soccer everywhere.
A big problem is that the USA has so much military equipment (especially nukes and probably other stuff), that if it falls apart politically and economically (which is how it has been heading), it may well take the rest of the world with it. And it is completely ironic, because so much of our energy goes into competition and guarding, that we could
Still, true, some few people might have another immune disorder affecting the pancreas. Also, for anyone who does understand the diabetes field, it is clear that there are indeed two types (though they can be misdiagnosed) as far as whether the pancreas still is working much, so yes, some adults could get type-1 diabetes related to a failure of the pancreas (and I'm sure he would acknowledge that). He is very clear that his approach does not cure type-1, but can still give type-1 diabetics a vastly improved quality of life, including a longer one with much less complications.
Do you still eat sugar, refined grains, and refined oils, or essentially, nutrient-free calories of any type?
Anyway, maybe you could do more of your own research, given how much money is on the line with conflicts of interest, in terms of making a profit out of selling you medication and related services?
Pretty much nobody would substantially profit by curing you. http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)"
Anyway, best of luck managing a difficult condition. My father took care of my mother's diabetes for more than a decade (with no significant complications) when she had diabetes and would even forget/deny she had it. But I still wish I knew then what I know now, about how it was most likely curable rather than having four finger sticks a day and three insulin shots a day (and I did that for a while for her after he died).
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting link. Here is a sci-fi story about even-cheaper-than-foreign-labor AI and robotics leading to unemployed US Americans ending up in "Terrafoam" cages: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
A great essay by Philip Greenspun on why US Americans, especially women, avoid science:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs in the sciences. Yet Summers, an economist, left one out: Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."
Posts I made to the p2presearch list concerning education (it would take years to read through all the embedded links on Gatto, Holt, Goodstein, Schmidt, Honigman, Lewellyn, etc.):
* [p2p-research] College Daze links (was Re: : FlossedBk, "Free/Libre and Open Source Solutions for Education")
* [p2p-research] The Higher Educational Bubble Continues to Grow
* [p2p-research] Rebutting Communique from an Absent Future (was Re: Information on student protests)
someday... From 1929: ..."
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred yards or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant.
Great point. Generally those putting their all into being good parents, good friends, and good citizens aren't putting their all into maximizing their bank accounts.
And what would our world be like without that "gift economy" of contributions to the present and the future?
The "rich" may often be free riders on all that voluntary "investment", in that sense.
"I had to come back to this point because it was so intriguing, why would I want to do this?"
Because an older version of economic "efficiency" in an economy suggest equality leads to greater happiness; see for why "Pareto" efficiency is mostly bunk as far as good policy:
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014
"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance everywhere "inefficient"? Why do they feel that corporate executives deserve no less than their multimillion-dollar "compensation" packages and workers no more than their meager wages? Here is a lively and accessible debunking of the two elements that make economics the "science" of the rich: the definition of what is efficient and the theory of how wages are determined. The first is used to justify the cruelest policies, the second grand larceny. Filled with lively examples--from food riots in Indonesia to eminent domain in Connecticut and everyone from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham to Larry Summers--Economics for the Rest of Us shows how today's dominant economic theories evolved, how they explicitly favor the rich over the poor, and why they're not the only or best options. Written for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary economic thinking--and why it is dead wrong--Economics for the Rest of Us offers a foundation for a fundamentally more just economic system."
Or:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/09/07/1519221/Researchers-Say-Happiness-Costs-75k
Or just google on the various justifications for a "basic income".
You have good points on refactoring. But a basic income, as well as the other changes (better subsistence, more gift giving, better planning) are indeed all just incremental changes to what we have now. We have social security and medicare and money for schooling (just only for the old and young, not everyone), we gardening and personal robotics, we have GNU/Linux and Wikipedia, we have government planning. We just can improve on all of them.
But, it is hard to improve things when people don't even admit the problems and systematically suppress discussion of improvements...
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
So, without an ability to incrementally improve, then we are more like to get occasional huge blowbacks and wars and such... And big failures. Which is your point.
"Name one other case where an invention or useful implement has preceded the theoretical framework to explain it."
Fire? :-)
Although it's been suggested somewhere that Rossi has taken money from a bunch of Greek-nationality investors who are now in Canada? One can take money from individuals even if not ask the general public.
I agree, only time will tell at this point. See my other comment to this story for what the catalyst might be related to though, connected to a previous research report from 1994.
And here are some more reasons I sent to Rossi: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation ..."
"The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioecenomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore.
Others calling to open source the eCat:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/11/open-source-the-e-cat/
By the way, the catalyst may be some variant on Potasium Carbonate:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GernertNnascenthyd.pdf
Mentioned here by "Sojourner Soo", with the abstract from 1994:
http://ecatnews.com/?p=1144
"Anomalous heat was measured from a reaction of atomic hydrogen in contact with potassium carbonate on a nickel surface. The nickel surface consisted of 500 feet of 0.0625 inch diameter tubing wrapped in a coil. The coil was inserted into a pressure vessel containing a light water solution of potassium carbonate. The tubing and solution were heated to a steady state temperature of 249 C using an FR heater. Hydrogen at 1100 psig was applied to the inside of the tubing. After the application of hydrogen, a 32 C increase in temperature of the cell was measured which corresponds to 25 watts of heat. Heat production under these conditions is predicted by the theory of Mills where a new species of hydrogen is produced that has a lower energy state then normal hydrogen."
In the 1950s (or maybe 1930s) a Princeton physicist was talking about some similar things (forget his name offhand).
Rossi could have ended almost all dispute by just running two eCats side-by-side, one with the catalyst and one without. Or even just one with the hydrogen and one without, where people picked the one getting the hydrogen. That would rule out many things. (Maybe not all, but a lot.) The fact that he has not done that, which would be relatively easy, makes me more suspicious that it really works (although people have invented explanations for why he has not done that).
What has been said by Steven Krivit is the suggestion that LENR (cold fusion) does work, but not as well as Rossi suggests it does (and he has been still trying to get it to work well).
Still, it is so hard to be an innovator in our society, that I could cut Rossi a lot of slack. Just maybe not a check yet. :-)
But sooner or later we will get cheap energy, one way or another, so many people are working towards it. Even just from solar:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
Or thorium, or hot fusion, or geothermal, or whatever...
But the eCat would be a great mobile power device.
Of course, if it does work, it is only one more reason we need to rethink our outlook on nature, technology, society, and economics:
htt
You make some interesting points, and it is true the government at all levels can indeed do various bad things for all sorts of reasons, but the problem is that coordination of some sort is so darn useful. For example, what are you going to do when someone pollutes your groundwater? Call the EPA? Who is going to prevent endless feuding between your neighbors with guns? The Justice Department? (At least, in places that still have a reasonable level of economic order.) Who is going to maintain the roads? Who is going to support really basic long-term research (under our current economic paradigm without a basic income)? Who is going to redistribute wealth to account for the fact that "the rich get richer"? Who is going to make sure that markets take in account externalities like pollution, local risks, and systemic risk?
Yes, in theory one can come up with less formal social organizations to do these things. But there is still some organization. And probably one then has voting or key decision makers with permissions, or people who defer to other people for various reasons and so on. Perhaps the best sci-fi story about such an alternative is James P. Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear, but even he admits that the story took it too far from what probably could be made to work in practice (but it's still an inspirational story you'd probably like).
So, one way or another, you end up with something like a "government" when you try to build a real society. Different forms of government may work better or worse for different cultures, times, situations, or personalities, but we still need some form of organization and agreement.
Something on the theory:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation."
Something on the practice:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. "
And health and community are important to happiness (but a US conservative typically might not want to admit that...)
The fact that some parts of governments in the USA may be doing a bad job, and may be captured by the interests they are supposed to regulate, does not mean all government is bad. Several European governments (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden) are doing better in many respects. We may need a more general paradigm shift in our socioeconomics though before our government can start working well again. But in general, the most thriving societies have both good government and a dynamic business exchange sector.
Actually, many of them were essentially self-employed farmers and craftspeople, so they had flexible schedules:
"Noam Chomsky: Wage Slavery = Chattle Slavery"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oztdRo9GLLk
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
"However, self-employment became less common as the artisan tradition slowly disappeared in the later part of the 19th century. In 1869 The New York Times described the system of wage labor as "a system of slavery as absolute if not as degrading as that which lately prevailed at the South""
Wonder why that fact was not emphasized in your history class? NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto says:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."
We have not just lost what we had. We have lost the memory of what we had...
As John Gardner says, every generation must learn again for itself what the words on the monuments mean...
"Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society"
http://books.google.com/books?id=U5hXpnwUmW4C
On solutions to any fossil fuel limits:
"GE: Solar Power Cheaper than Fossil Fuels in 5 years"
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
"I'm 28, in good health, and I'm already weary of this world."
While I understand the sentiment, and the other points you made on connections and Seneca are wise, you might still want to check your vitamin D levels and think about how you are eating and exercising. Some health tips I put together:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
http://www.terrywahls.com/
"In 2003 Terry Wahls, M.D., was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis and soon became dependent upon a tilt-recline wheelchair. After developing and using the Wahls Protocol, she is now able to walk through the hospital and commute to work by bicycle. She now uses intensive directed nutrition in her primary care and traumatic brain injury clinics. Dr. Wahls is the lead scientist in a clinical trial testing her protocol in others with progressive MS. "
Also:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/23/overcoming-multiple-sclerosis-through-diet.aspx
Her work was done In Iowa, so maybe a little better then Transylvania? :-)
See also my other comment to this article mentioning Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. John Cannell; with links here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
Perhaps there is some nutrients and vitamin D and such in the blood of young creatures? But you can get it from vegetables, sunlight, and other things instead of blood...
From Dr. Wahls' site:
========
I am a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A., where I teach internal medicine residents in their primary care clinics. I also do clinical research and have published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific abstracts, posters and papers.
In addition to being a doctor, I am also a patient with a chronic, progressive disease. I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis in 2000, just as I began working for the University. By 2003 I had transitioned to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. I underwent chemotherapy in an attempt to slow the disease and began using a tilt-recline wheelchair because of weakness in my back muscles. It was clear: eventually I would become bedridden by my disease. I wanted to forestall that fate asmy long as possible.
Because of my academic medical training, I know that research in animal models of disease is often 20 or 30 years ahead of clinical practice. Hoping to find something to arrest my descent into becoming bedridden, I used PubMed.gov to begin searching the scientific articles about the latest multiple sclerosis research. Night after night, I relearned biochemistry, cellular physiology, and neuroimmunology to understand the articles. Unfortunately, most of the studies were testing drugs that were years away from FDA approval. Then it occurred to me to search for vitamins and supplements that helped any kind of progressive brain disorder. Slowly I created a list of nutrients important to brain health and began taking them as supplements. The steepness of my decline slowed, for which I was grateful, but I still was declining.
In the fall of 2007, I had an important epiphany. What if I redesigned my diet so that I was getting those important brain nutrients not from supplements but from the foods I ate? It took more time to create this new diet, intensive directed nutrition, which I designed to provide optimal nutrition for my brain. At that time, I also learned about neuromuscular electrical stimulation and convinced my physical therapist to give me a test session. It hurt, a lot, but I also felt euphoric when it was finished, likely because of the endorphins my body released in response to the electrical stimulation. In December 2007, I began my intensive directed nutrition along with a program of progressive exercise, electrical stimulation, and daily meditation. The results stunned my physician, my family and me: within a year, I was able to walk through the hospital without a cane and even complete an 18-mile bicycle tour.
In 2007 I was losing my phone and keys and was afraid my chief of staff would soon be calling me
"Knowing people with multiple sclerosis, I can say it is a horrid disease, you gradually lose your functions over time. I believe there is some links to aspartame intake."
I would mod you back up, but then I could not reply. Hope this can help the people you know:
"Doctor Reverses MS in 9 Months by Eating These Foods "
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/23/overcoming-multiple-sclerosis-through-diet.aspx
There is a mention of avoiding aspartame there (I don't know how big a part of that it is), but there is also getting enough vitamin D, getting Omega 3s, getting enough iodine, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and more... Those for sure could make a difference for many people eating the Standard American Diet and avoiding the sun.
The website of that doctor in the video who cured herself by eating better:
http://www.terrywahls.com/
More health links by me:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
Much chronic disease in the USA will yield to dietary interventions and vitamin D (see Dr. Joel Fuhrman's website, too, and Dr. John Cannell's).
Hope those people you know can benefit from this.
"All that can be done in a rational world is to oppose the hate when it makes itself manifest by its vile actions."
It's a little more complex than that. One can ask:
* What dysfunction leads to the hate, and can it be fixed before the hate manifests itself?
* If the hate is there, how can one prevent it from being acted on by the context around the hate?
* If the hate is being acted on, how can one respond to it effectively, given that acts claimed to be justified against those who hate can themselves be hateful and/or cause more hate?
All too often, the response to hate creates more hate. And violence begets violence. Dysfunction spreads like a disease. If one sees hate and violence as like a disease, what is the right response to it? One set of idea:
"Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World"
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-True-Peace-Violence-Community/dp/0743245202
In general, as a society, how can we move beyond black/white thinking, to thinking in color?
http://www.anwot.org/
Still, there remains truth in your point, that there are people who hate, who are damaged, and others need to figure out how to respond to that situation (even if the haters are responding in kind to previous hate). It's a big challenge. And there is often a conflict, that the permissive policies that sometimes might prevent hate might allow existing hate to persist. It's not an easy thing to deal with.
A general field can be seen as Peace Making. Morton Deutsch outlines some ideas here:
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audiodisplay/deutsch-m
Dealing with hate and dysfunction is a core theme of some North Eastern Native American culture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadodaho
http://www.amazon.com/Become-Human-Being-Tadodaho-Shenandoah/dp/1571743413
Ultimately, as Mr. Fred Rogers says, it's OK to have negative emotions like anger. The issue is what we do with them...
http://pbskids.org/rogers/songLyricsWhatDoYouDo.html
"Plagues cannot and will not wipe us out because of the way we humans work."
For what it is worth, I was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution for a time. :-) But it's also true I am not expert in the field. I know about the tradeoff you are talking about, but there are ways in which it does not always apply.
See this recent slashdot article and think again:
"Paper On Super Flu Strain May Be Banned From Publication"
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/29/0015216/paper-on-super-flu-strain-may-be-banned-from-publication
But yes, will it wipe out everyone? Maybe not. But even killing 10% of the USA's population would mean 30 million casualties. Is the US elite willing to risk that for some outdated notion of empire? Probably, but should the population let them?
For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
"The pandemic lasted from June 1918 to December 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27%, were infected."
That was not a plague *designed* to do the most damage...
Consider the implications of the US Army now thinking they may have a way to survive Ebola, and what it would mean if the weaponized it now (perhaps spread everywhere in a region by drones?):
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/08/25/222222/possible-treatment-for-ebola
Even if you were right about natural disease vectors (and the 1918 flu is a counter-example), diseases can be intentionally spread (like was done with smallpox contaminated blankets in North American by the invaders). Think about all the food the USA eats that now comes from China, for example...
Consider what happened to the Native Americans. They got hit by a rapid succession of various plagues imported by Europeans like Smallpox and Measles, to which they had not native resistance (most of those plagues coming out of European's associations with livestock). Each wave of plague wiped out some fraction of the population, wave after wave.
How many "Spanish Flu" attacks in a row do you want to see, each designed to wipe out 30% of the population as a delayed reaction? How many weaponized Ebola-variants dumped in water supplies by drones flying across borders? With then some misguided teenagers (or military professionals) in some country the USA has literally pissed on (as in the video in the article) in the past crowing on the internet about how l33t they are that they made it happen, and they think they and their family are safe from it for some reason (either having a cure or just being nowhere in the vicinity of a fast acting plague widely spread by a mechanical vector)?
And biotech is just one example. There can be computer plagues like Stuxnet that destroy critical infrastructure or even cause military system to attack local targets (like dams). There can be nasty nanotech or microrobotics. The issue is that our technological powers have increased greatly, but our politics and aspirations have not adjusted to that new reality. it is much easier generally to destroy than to create, especially when a group just picks the soft targets. Trying to run a civilization without a basic trust is much, much more expensive, and everyone loses if it gets to that point.
If you won't consider the biotech point (maybe I'm wrong, I hope so), here are some robot related comments I wrote to someone else the other day in response to them sending me a link about the Willow Garage PR2:
Thanks for the comments. Yes, that site could be a lot better. I want it to be hosted in the best and fanciest peer-to-peer distributed semantic tools (that I help write), but until then I've ended up with the lowest of the low plain HTML. :-) Shoemaker's children, I guess. :-)
You're right about potential new bottlenecks, but there is a big difference between, say, people not getting enough food to eat and people not getting enough attention, like Abraham Maslow talked about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
We now probably have enough as a global society, even with a big population, that we probably don't need to ration the basics (if we did not divert 90%+ of our resources to competition, guarding, and warfare -- example, every checkout clerk is a guard, teachers are mostly guards, lawyers are mostly guards, much medicine is now defensive, etc.). Even if we do not, we will be there very soon with new energy sources, with new materials, with 3D printing, and with robotics in general. Potentially, we could support quadrillions of simultaneous human lives with the resources in the solar system, each having access to far more energy and matter than a typical Earth-dweller.
Instead of doing that, the USA has seeded Iraq with depleted uranium? Makes no long-term sense.
"Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116
"Horror Of US Depleted Uranium In Iraq Threatens World"
http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm
"Iraq Depleted Uranium Contamination Linked To Illness, Deformities & Death"
http://consciouslifenews.com/iraq-depleted-uranium-contamination-linked-to-illness-deformities-death/114318/
"The report also states that total deformities are around 11 times the world average, and that the number is rising. The report is the first study done on births during 2010, and it shows "unprecedented levels" of birth deformities [in Falluja], which suggests that the longer adults are exposed to the contamination, the more their children will be affected by the DU."
As Bucky Fuller said, whether it will be "Utopia or Oblivion" will be a touch-and-go relay race up to the very end.
Will people still have the equivalent of a military? Well, it's true that most organisms have some way to avoid predators or to consume other organisms or external resources or to compete in various ways, so yes, I can't disagree. Something I wrote on that theme:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
"... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see *both* the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality
"Its a nice rosy thought but we really don't have the unlimited energy you speak of; or if we do we haven't the ability to transport it where we need it and concentrate it enough for many of the applications our society has come to depend on."
"GE: Solar Power Cheaper than Fossil Fuels in 5 years"
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
Also, maybe:
"NASA seriously believes in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)"
http://mnispel.net/neengineer/?p=320
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2832338/posts
And:
http://energyfromthorium.com/
And there are others. Energy is not a big issue if we want to solve that. Lack of imagination, will, and social consensus is more of the problem:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
As well as the diversion of most of our resources into guarding, competition, and war...
As to your quote, I answer it with another quote: "The woods would be pretty quiet if no bird sang there but the best." :-)
Also, who is to judge what "best" is?
Clearly, even third rate is soon going to be enough to create WMDs (like the biotech, nanotech, or microrobotic equivalent of what script kiddies do with computers). So, we still need to figure out a way to make a world that works better and better for more and more people (including by reducing violence through healthier nutrition); see for example:
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat: Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
Also, if the brains of the masses are dulled in the 21st century, it is in large part because the "best" put in place systems to make them that way through compulsory schooling; see John Taylor Gatto's writings:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?"
How much our resources do you think are currently consumed by guarding, competition, and warfare? I'd suggest over 90%... See for example:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. Ther
I also mention three other aspects that are important too besides a basic income (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning). More on all that by me:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
If you look at the hard data yourself, you will see that US governments (federal, state, local) together spend about US$600 per month per capita on welfare, unemployment, and schooling. If that money was given directly to every citizen, a family of four would be getting US$2400 per month (tax free) which for many would be enough to live on and homeschool in an area of the country with a low cost of housing (especially as both parents could still do additional work or subsistence gardening activities and would have time to be frugal and would have less stress leading to recreational shopping therapy).
http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/jobfree.html
With more involved parenting, and more neighbors with free time for being involved in their communities, most neighborhoods will be much better place to grow up in, and there will be less juvenile delinquency and fewer kids wanting to act out by hurting others. See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
The graph you point to, indicating rising government over the next few decades up to about one-half the GDP, is pretty meaningless in the sense that it must depend on a lot of unstated assumptions all subject to political action. Also, some things like health spending may drop greatly as people understand health better; see the links I assembled here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
Besides, what is wrong with redistributing one half the GDP as a basic income (and health insurance)? That would amount to about US$2000 per month as a right of citizenship right now (more if the economy grew more), and to make up for the effective enclosure of the land and of the copyright commons and for pollution suffered from industry and so on. I think that could make a lot of sense, and so do many others:
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
The remaining half of the GDP would be about as big as the total US GDP around 1995, which seemed big enough to motivate anyone who needed motivating by money back then. :-)
Alaska has something called a Permanent Fund that is somewhat like that (Sarah Palin helped grow it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
Also, right now the US governments spend more per capita for medical care than other countries require to give all their citizens generally better health care outcomes than in the USA.
So, the numbers easily work out. It is the ideology that is the problem. See: ..."
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"Justifications for elites and social hierarchy goes all the way back to the pharaohs.
The fact is, our current socioeconomic system is falling apart (see other links I've posted in this thread) -- and one consequence of that is increased domestic violence and increased warfare. I have collected more details here:
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
So, the status quo is failing, and increasingly at risk from WMDs from alienated people. We ne
"There will be no advanced technology building in that society in the long run, it's going to be an economic disaster as fewer and fewer will work, and eventually people will refuse to work for others, all while those, who actually create jobs will obviously move their investments somewhere, where this insane policies will not apply. The economy will be destroyed."
But the economy is already being destroyed by structural unemployment resulting from robotics and other automation; see:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
So, the economy you are talking about defending is already history in that sense.
"People will build viruses and release them just because they will be able to and nothing will prevent them, no amount of wealth in the world will stop them, and the more resources they will have in their hands the more "interesting" experiments they will be able to devise."
The people distributing the viruses were lacking some sort of moral awareness. More wealth in the hands of parents can let them raise their children better. It can allow communities to create more interesting opportunities for kids than widespread destruction. More distributed wealth means more people can work on defenses or deal with emergent problems. More wealth distributed means fewer kids growing up with brains damaged by poor nutrition. And so on. But I agree there will always be problems. But we can still probably reduce the frequency a lot.
A basic income is more likely to break the current world of (wage) slaves and masters we have than to create one:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
But I also mention three other aspects that are important too (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning).
Things like compulsory schools and wage-slave workplaces are also main distribution points for plagues, given most people do not have the option to stay home for a long time. We should move beyond such security problems.
You might like these links that support your first point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
Basically, GDP has doubled or tripled over the past four decades, but real wages have been flat for most workers (with all the benefits going to 1% or so of the population). Rather than give money to workers to buy stuff as wages, the money has been provided as loans.
Had there not been the housing bubble etc., there would have been a financial crisis a decade ago. But now people have reached the end of what they can borrow under current standards, and the whole system is in great distress. It will likely get worse without some major interventions and policy changes, but these are resisted because they go against the dominant political/economic ideology of the USA.
Another factor, that you began to get at with leverage, is that the real economy of people's needs (like food and frost avoidance) is dwarfed by the amount of money in the "casino economy" related to speculation and so on (as mentioned in the video series "Money as Debt"). So, the real economy can not function to correct itself for many people because price signals are effectively broken for many real goods for meeting the needs of real people.
See also:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
Unless the engineering was more sophisticated. :-)
Like retroviruses, or growing compatible organs from scratch using 3D printing, or whatever.
There are probably levels of sophistication in genetic engineering.
One promise of nanotech is also to do the same -- modify every existing cell.
Star Trek sometimes does that with the "Transporter" too.
Whie I like your general points on the movie, if Gattaca's biotech was so advanced, why could the protagonist not just alter his own DNA etc.? Or maybe Gattaca's biotech was not really as advanced as one might think?
Except that the only reason that people in Al Qaeda were not considered overly dangerous nutcases and turned in by their neighbors (or otherwise were pressed to reform by their wives and cousins etc.) is that there is a lot of anti-Western sympathy based on the USA having supporting various oppressors in the region.
You don't get a storm without the heat dynamics behind it... Seeds of evil may exist in the hearts of all people, along with good (see Thich Nhat Hahn's writings), but what emerges has a lot to do with circumstances (as well as culture and individual upbringing). That is part of what is meant by winning "hearts and minds" overseas, a battle the USA has been losing (to the extent it is even trying).
The USA also has had a lot of anti-whatever hate groups, as has Europe. The difference is that those societies in the past have generally been functional enough in various ways that people don't let them grow that much, and also in decades in the past it was a lot harder to project power internationally (like with the KKK). But sometimes the social forces have been there to let hate groups rise (like the Nazis). It is better to prevent fires than to have to fight them. And when you do fight fire, it is generally best to fight it with water (not more fire).
"It used to be that national security consisted of making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now it requires that as few people as possible hate you."
A lot of people, like presumable the non-sarcastic GP, don't get that.
I write about this in my essay here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
Within twenty years (if not sooner), I'd expect any disgruntled alienated teenager will be able to download plagues off the internet, tinker with them, and produce them at home. We need to build a society that works a lot better for everyone before then. One only needs to think about teens making computer viruses (which have had real costs to so many people) over the last twenty years and imagine the same happening in the biological realm. Why should it not?
Consider this slashdot article from earlier today as just one example of dropping biotech costs:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/01/13/2353220/a-dna-sequencer-cheap-enough-for-some-doctors-offices
Nanotech, robotics, computer software, and other advanced technologies pose similar problems in their own way.
A "basic income" (Social Security and Medicare for all from birth) is part of building a world of advanced technology more likely to flourish in the 21st century, as would be improving the gift economy, as is better planning, and making improved subsistence technologies widely accessible (a double-edged sword, true).
Our technologies have become too powerful to allow a global society to have so much inequality, suffering, disease, poverty, ignorance, hatred, and cruelty. We need to move to a new socioeconomic paradigm ASAP. We will still have problems, but they will be more manageable.
There is a lot more on my website about this.
It is ridiculous, for example, to worry about Iran developing a nuclear bomb when they could easily develop plagues. The USA was very lucky that blowback from invading Iraq did not include tens of millions of US Americans dying from ethnically-targeted plagues (whatever the costs to the country being invaded). The USA may not be so lucky next time. And the same goes for attacking smaller and smaller organizations as time goes by. We need to completely rethink our security posture to emphasize intrinsic security and mutual security.
The Foresight Institute also has some good thinking on this in the past, in terms of empowering everyone to deal with emerging threats. It's like the playing fields has totally changed, but the USA still is still preparing to win at Major League baseball when everyone else is now playing pickup games of soccer everywhere.
A big problem is that the USA has so much military equipment (especially nukes and probably other stuff), that if it falls apart politically and economically (which is how it has been heading), it may well take the rest of the world with it. And it is completely ironic, because so much of our energy goes into competition and guarding, that we could
"Dr. Fuhrman Cures Type 2 Diabetes - But Drug Companies Object"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_GInjBeQU
Still, true, some few people might have another immune disorder affecting the pancreas. Also, for anyone who does understand the diabetes field, it is clear that there are indeed two types (though they can be misdiagnosed) as far as whether the pancreas still is working much, so yes, some adults could get type-1 diabetes related to a failure of the pancreas (and I'm sure he would acknowledge that). He is very clear that his approach does not cure type-1, but can still give type-1 diabetics a vastly improved quality of life, including a longer one with much less complications.
Do you get the right amount of vitamin D?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/diabetes-and-endocrine-diseases/
Do you eat enough vegetables?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
Do you still eat sugar, refined grains, and refined oils, or essentially, nutrient-free calories of any type?
Anyway, maybe you could do more of your own research, given how much money is on the line with conflicts of interest, in terms of making a profit out of selling you medication and related services?
Pretty much nobody would substantially profit by curing you.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)"
Anyway, best of luck managing a difficult condition. My father took care of my mother's diabetes for more than a decade (with no significant complications) when she had diabetes and would even forget/deny she had it. But I still wish I knew then what I know now, about how it was most likely curable rather than having four finger sticks a day and three insulin shots a day (and I did that for a while for her after he died).
And it is mostly all ironic too... http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gatto/gatto-arch.html