If you actually read what I wrote and thought about it, you might see aspects of that answer there. I'll try to be clearer.
Our current economic system in the USA, including rampant consumerism, is a construction from a certain way of thinking. People buy a lot of junk because other people driven by greed or their own scarcity fears see profit in convincing them to buy it.
If people in general were wealthier, they might not want so much junk (see the short story "The Midas Plague" by Frederick Pohl for example, where it was a sign of wealth to not have clutter around).
So, that is not as big an issue as you make it out. Thermal pollution, maybe. Noise pollution possibly. But that is what "zoning laws" and such are for.
Also, there is room for quadrillions of humans in the solar system, so we can easily go a thousand years of exponential growth before having capacity problems (even if Earth itself may reach aesthetic limits sooner). Right now industrial countries in general are not producing enough kids to keep up their populations (they may grow, but it is from immigration). So I don't even thing population growth is a big worry -- really, the big problem like in Italy has been convincing people to still have kids with all the distractions and also wealth disparities.
Still, the book "Midas World" built around the previously mentioned story did have a main character make a similar point to what you said, so I'm sure you would enjoy reading it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
Essentially, whenever a system does not seem to obey the second law of thermodynamics, we just invent new science.
And here is another essay by me sent to Andrea Rossi on why cold fusion information be made freely available because of a paradigm shift in economics from scarcity towards abundance: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
True, but there are five interwoven economies that can all acquire spoons in different ways::-) "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY "This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."
Legally, it may not be force. But is pretty much the social equivalent: http://familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/drugging_our_children/ "It should be noted that itâ(TM)s not just elementary and high schools that seem to need a drug to help them run smoothly, but preschools and day care centers also. As writer Robyn Suriano recently pointed out in the Orlando Sentinel,[xxvii] âoeThe drug [Ritalin] reached its heyday in the 1990s, after more children started attending day care. In a preschool, kids must follow instructions and behave just like older children in classrooms. Rambunctious ones are not easily tolerated in these surroundings, where workers must watch many children.â This is not to say that day care centers are necessarily bad, but there are a lot of inadequately staffed and equipped ones. These trap preschoolers in confining, boring situations for 10 hours a day and then complain when they act like the active, inquisitive, and needy young creatures that children just barely out of babyhood normally are. That drugs are used to remedy this situation is unconscionable, especially considering that Ritalinâ(TM)s label warns that the drug is only for those aged 6 and over. But âoeoff-labelâ prescription is legal, and itâ(TM)s happening. As a Wall Street Journal article reported,[xxviii] the use of prescription drugs to control toddlersâ(TM) behavior has increased dramatically in the past decade."
Why is this so common? http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/other-disorders/1289-what-do-i-do-when-a-teacher-says-my-child-needs-meds.gs "My daughter gets in trouble at school. The teacher says she is in high speed all the time, doesn't watch where she is going, knocks things over or trips over stuff. Her teacher says that she doesn't pay attention to her work, she does it fast all the time and it ends up messy. The teacher would like me to put her on medication to slow her down, but I refuse. I have told her teacher that I give her worksheets and reading to do at home, and she will sit down and do the homework, and does a fine job. What do you suggest I do?"
Much of this is just kids being kids, kids being vitamin D deficient (from being indoors so much), and kids eating junk food.
"The problem with Malthus is not the math, it's the model. Anyone can pick assumptions and make a model, and from there make predictions. Mathus erred in assuming that things would not change. An exponential curve is indistinguishable from a bell curve at the long tail beginning, so the evidence seemed to support his prediction."
I read that Malthus recanted his position in a later edition, but no one pays attention to that. http://conservapedia.com/Robert_Malthus "There were other contemporaries who accepted the Malthusian theory but regarded the policy recommendations as both harsh and ineffective. In a later edition of his Essay, Malthus admitted the probability that "having found the bow bent too much one way, I was induced to bend it too much the other, in order to make it straight." "
And also: http://factoidz.com/criticism-of-malthusian-theory-of-population/ "(v) Malthusian theory of population gave no proof of his assertion that population increased exactly in geometric progression and food production increased exactly in arithmetic progression. It has been rightly pointed out that population and food supply does not change in accordance with these mathematical series. Growth of population and food supply cannot be expected to show the precision or accuracy of such series. However, Malthus in the later edition of his book did not insist on these mathematical terms and only held that there was inherent tendency in population to outrun the means of subsistence. We have seen above that even this is far from being true."
Thanks for the challenging reply. And you indeed have a good point about cells and gravity, although mammals spin around so much, it's not clear how essential that is. More research is needed.
"It's been shown over and over that giving out hand-outs encourages abuse and laziness."
What would you say if someone said you had to start paying $10,000 a month for breathable air supply? You'd say that was not fair, right? You would question the "mythology" behind that enclosure of the atmospheric commons you depend on, right? http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
So, why should you have to pay for access to the fruits of industrial commons and agricultural commons given the government has said all the land has been privatized (or is government owned and effectively off-limits for personal use)?
A basic income is a right, not a hand-out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit "Douglas disagreed with classical economists who divided the factors of production into only land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny these factors in production, he believed the âoecultural inheritance of societyâ was the primary factor. Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization. Consequently, mankind does not have to keep âoereinventing the wheelâ. âoeWe are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.â"
So, sure, some of wealth is work. But most is not. So, one half the GDP could be a basic income, and the other half would motivate those who needed motivating by money. That would be a basic income of US$2000 per month per citizen, leaving a GDP from 1993 or so to motivate those who needed motivation. Weren't people motivated enough to do a lot of stuff in 1993?
Also, when welfare is only for the sick and disabled, you get "jurisgenic disease" from only getting money when you seem sick or disabled, so you have an incentive to think that way. It's very sad.
People help children. Does that destroy them? Eventually, they want to contribute to their communities (most of them, eventually, if they are not sick physically or mentally in some way).
Our society is becoming so productive that it only takes a very few to provide for the many, given technology is an amplifier. It may take thousands of people to contribute to Debian GNU/Linux, but it provide software for billions of people. Related by me: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
On how robots (or AI or better design or voluntary social networks) are going
"True again, except that we have to build giant structures with radiation shielding and artificial gravity, no easy feat."
Yes, but with automation to help we could do that. If we can learn to live in zero gravity, other possibilities open up like Marshall Savage talked about in the Millennial Project with Asgard habitats that were basically bubbles with a two meter thick layer of water at the surface between two layers of transparent plastic. http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard http://oceania.org/images/plate6.jpg http://oceania.org/images/plate7.jpg
There are at least four ways I know of in theory to support good bone health in space (even assuming astronauts in space were not just vitamin D deficient since the RDA was ten times too low). People can wear clothes designed to provide resistance. People can live in a liquid environment that provides resistance (possibly breathing an oxygen enriched liquid) -- since whales do OK in effectively zero G. People could take (hypothetical) medicines to prevent bone loss. People could have their DNA altered. http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Liquid_breathing_to_resist_bone_loss
We seem to know answers to the social problems (stuff like a basic income, unschooling and life-long learning, advanced conflict resolution techniques, and so on). The problem seems more putting them into practice against entrenched interests ranging from short-sighted billionaires (of the 1%) with a narrow sense of self, to public school unions, to those who profit from war, to the rest of us (99%) and social inertia with fear of change even as our technosphere is quickly changing. I think we could easily do much better socially than this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Inside
As for scams and Rossi's Cold Fusion E-Cat device, I agree it is very suspicious -- it's just at the edge of plausibility, and he could easily dispel any doubt with some better testing. But in general, whether that pans out (we'll know soon), we have lots of energy alternatives, being developed including thorium power, hot fusion, solar PV, solar thermal, and more. http://www.caelusgreenroom.com/2011/05/26/torresol-opens-world%E2%80%99s-first-molten-salt-c-s-p-plant-ecoseed/
I was a Senior Associate with the Space Studies Institute in the late 1980s (just meant I gave them money). I thought the space power idea was interesting then and it might have made sense then -- even though I suggested to Gerry O'Neill (I took a class with him) that we should build self-replicating space habitats instead -- he called *me* a dreamer.:-) He saw that we would have a slow industrial expansion into space driven by capitalism (which I now think is baloney because we will be moving beyond money soon enough with 3D printers and robotics and s
"Obviously, in China, young people carry their old people like burdens while they're trying to manage their own families. That's not so great, either."
Health tips by me, the most important of which for most technology people is curing vitamin D deficiency (and which I could only learn about by hypertext-supporting networks and Google): http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208
"Or Asimov predicting that robots/androids would be nearly human-like in their behavior and complexity at the same time that computers still filled whole buildings and would need specially trained people to translate instructions into code and readouts from ticker tape."
Good ironic catch.
I've been rereading some of "I, Robot" aloud to my kid, and what is interesting is that Isaac Asimov suggested robots would understand speech before they were able to talk, whereas things have gone the other way around, it's much easier to get a computer to say things than to get it to understand things. So, for example, Robby the robot is very human in its ability to understand whatever a kid says, and to mime gestures and such, but can't say anything, and the only robot that can talk is the size of a room and does not do it well.
Anyway, it's an example of how we can be right about some things and wrong about others. Ultimately, Isaac Asimov does start to explore deep issues of what it means to be "human" and further, what it means to take care of someone else without destroying their identity as self-actualizing (as his robots begin to fade away).
I can wonder if he might have written different stuff (robots being banned on Earth to preserve jobs) if he had grown up in a more communist/socialist system?
There is a picture of me on my site with a robot that I presented at the Albert Einstein Science Centennial, where Isaac Asimov gave a talk and later called me a "rotten kid" after I told him about "The Golden Age of the 70s".:-)
By the way, I like J.D. Bernal, who you can add to your list, for this from the 1920s: http://www.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."
On #7, Chinese is becoming the single most dominant language on the web (you just probably can't see it). Also, diversity can be good in big enough systems. Currencies work better generally when they are managed by accountable organizations; Jane Jacobs suggested that ideally each city should have its own currency; why not now, with computers it would be so easy to convert between them?
We need a "basic income" and other changes (gift economy, better local subsistence with 3D printing, better participatory governmental planning) to deal with the changes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
In general, people living longer is not going to have as much effect on the population as how many kids people have -- and that amount is falling with industrialization; in Italy, every woman has about 1.2 kids but would need to have 2.1 kids to keep the population from declining. The entire industrialized world has this problem (but not as bad as Italy in most places).
Just think of all the people around to pass on wisdom to the next generation.
AC wrote: "I want to retire at 65 and keep on living off my pension for 85 years more, while me, my generation mates and all our sons and grandsons fight one another for this world's scarce resources and the few remaining uncontaminated spots... That sounds a terrific idea."
Great advice. #7 probably should include vitamin D supplements, too. My health advice, which includes psychological and social aspects (like Blue Zones, because to an extent, health is a product of a healthy community): http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208
Modern medicine is terrible at handling chronic diseases, often the disease of kings from eating too many rich foods. If you put the excellent trauma medicine and infection control medicine of today together with a good lifestyle with healthy eating, as Dr. Fuhrman suggests in Eat to Live, we may see a big increase in lifespans. It's sad that with all these relatively cheap low hanging fruits and vegetables etc., people are still focusing *first* on proprietary expensive magic bullets.
Yest, 95% accuracy has always been the bane of speech systems (even 99% accuracy can be a problem). It just costs a lot of time to correct things, especially when they are not obvious typos but are similar looking real words. This has been a problem with speech to text from the start. That is why I believe ultimately, rather than for dictation, speech is best used in a more conversational way, interpreting what is said, and with back-and-forth questioning and feedback.
I wrote up some conceptual ideas for an even more conversational system (running a display wall for use in creating new designs and new patents). When my supervisor went on vacation, made a display wall mockup with nine think pads (a bit like a Jeopardy wall:-) to test a bit of that. Boy was my supervisor surprised when he came back from vacation -- luckily I was not in the lab when he saw it the first time.:-) And now, a decade later, there is Watson.
An Apple recruiter contacted me a couple years ago (I am on a patent related to that PSA work) but I was not interested back then (who knows, I might be now). But I figured something like Siri was in the air, because that's essentially the kind of thing we were working on back then.
I asked Ted Nelson once about that story when he visited at IBM Research when I was there around 2001 and he said yes, that story is where he had gotten the name "Xanadu" for his hypertext work, but he had forgotten the full name of the story until I reminded him of it.
Please read it to see what has been shaping our present and probably hopefully our future.
And with OWS, the rest of Sturgeon's predictions may be beginning to come true (about people teaching each other how to get better and better at freedom).
Another relative here, in the USA.:-) Send me an email if you want, my address is easy to find.
She was my father's aunt IIRC. I only met her once that I can recall, when my father and I visited her home around 1985. But she might have been at some get together or other other times we visited that does not stick out in my mind. I don't remember her speaking English and I do not know that much Dutch. They talked and I went for a walk around the area. I was overdressed in a overcoat and hat, and some neighborhood kids pointed at me and said "gangster" and chased me a bit, and I went into a store to avoid them. So, that's mostly what I remember of that visit.:-)
I feel diet and lifestyle (and the extent to which genes may interact with interests and habits) have a lot to do with this though. So does very early life experiences. Even being born premature might have had some value, in that the slower we grow perhaps the slower we age? Not having kids may have been a factor too? Also, there is a lot to be said for a positive outlook on life however you get that.
Slashdot Mirror
If you actually read what I wrote and thought about it, you might see aspects of that answer there. I'll try to be clearer.
Our current economic system in the USA, including rampant consumerism, is a construction from a certain way of thinking. People buy a lot of junk because other people driven by greed or their own scarcity fears see profit in convincing them to buy it.
If people in general were wealthier, they might not want so much junk (see the short story "The Midas Plague" by Frederick Pohl for example, where it was a sign of wealth to not have clutter around).
See also this book by James P. Hogan on life in a world with abundant energy and a different form of society:
"Voyage From Yesteryear"
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
Also, with enough energy, one can deal with environmental pollution by recycling (like with plasma furnaces). Our technology can improve, too:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101221233228/http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/dpg/slim.cfm
So, that is not as big an issue as you make it out. Thermal pollution, maybe. Noise pollution possibly. But that is what "zoning laws" and such are for.
Also, there is room for quadrillions of humans in the solar system, so we can easily go a thousand years of exponential growth before having capacity problems (even if Earth itself may reach aesthetic limits sooner). Right now industrial countries in general are not producing enough kids to keep up their populations (they may grow, but it is from immigration). So I don't even thing population growth is a big worry -- really, the big problem like in Italy has been convincing people to still have kids with all the distractions and also wealth disparities.
Still, the book "Midas World" built around the previously mentioned story did have a main character make a similar point to what you said, so I'm sure you would enjoy reading it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
https://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/93edc128d5cd0054
Essentially, whenever a system does not seem to obey the second law of thermodynamics, we just invent new science.
And here is another essay by me sent to Andrea Rossi on why cold fusion information be made freely available because of a paradigm shift in economics from scarcity towards abundance: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
Great points and you might like this: http://ecatsite.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/dr-george-miley-replicates-patterson-names-rossi/
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/some-of-rossi%E2%80%99s-cold-fusion-results-reportedly-replicated
By me on why the results should be freely released, btw: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
"There is no spoon"
True, but there are five interwoven economies that can all acquire spoons in different ways: :-)
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."
The text for the presentation is here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
Legally, it may not be force. But is pretty much the social equivalent:
http://familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/drugging_our_children/
"It should be noted that itâ(TM)s not just elementary and high schools that seem to need a drug to help them run smoothly, but preschools and day care centers also. As writer Robyn Suriano recently pointed out in the Orlando Sentinel,[xxvii] âoeThe drug [Ritalin] reached its heyday in the 1990s, after more children started attending day care. In a preschool, kids must follow instructions and behave just like older children in classrooms. Rambunctious ones are not easily tolerated in these surroundings, where workers must watch many children.â This is not to say that day care centers are necessarily bad, but there are a lot of inadequately staffed and equipped ones. These trap preschoolers in confining, boring situations for 10 hours a day and then complain when they act like the active, inquisitive, and needy young creatures that children just barely out of babyhood normally are. That drugs are used to remedy this situation is unconscionable, especially considering that Ritalinâ(TM)s label warns that the drug is only for those aged 6 and over. But âoeoff-labelâ prescription is legal, and itâ(TM)s happening. As a Wall Street Journal article reported,[xxviii] the use of prescription drugs to control toddlersâ(TM) behavior has increased dramatically in the past decade."
Why was a bill like this needed and sabotaged:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=21803
Why is this so common?
http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/other-disorders/1289-what-do-i-do-when-a-teacher-says-my-child-needs-meds.gs
"My daughter gets in trouble at school. The teacher says she is in high speed all the time, doesn't watch where she is going, knocks things over or trips over stuff. Her teacher says that she doesn't pay attention to her work, she does it fast all the time and it ends up messy. The teacher would like me to put her on medication to slow her down, but I refuse. I have told her teacher that I give her worksheets and reading to do at home, and she will sit down and do the homework, and does a fine job. What do you suggest I do?"
Much of this is just kids being kids, kids being vitamin D deficient (from being indoors so much), and kids eating junk food.
"There is no way for the parent to know if issues in the classroom are from poor learning on the child's side or poor teaching on the teacher's side."
Or just because the whole idea of compulsory school is broken:
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html (A bit too business focused though and expands school instead of contracts it)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html
Their accomplishments for humanity are in their actual work...
"The problem with Malthus is not the math, it's the model. Anyone can pick assumptions and make a model, and from there make predictions. Mathus erred in assuming that things would not change. An exponential curve is indistinguishable from a bell curve at the long tail beginning, so the evidence seemed to support his prediction."
I read that Malthus recanted his position in a later edition, but no one pays attention to that.
http://conservapedia.com/Robert_Malthus
"There were other contemporaries who accepted the Malthusian theory but regarded the policy recommendations as both harsh and ineffective. In a later edition of his Essay, Malthus admitted the probability that "having found the bow bent too much one way, I was induced to bend it too much the other, in order to make it straight." "
See for the quote:
http://books.google.com/books?id=KRQAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA427&lpg=PA427
And also:
http://factoidz.com/criticism-of-malthusian-theory-of-population/
"(v) Malthusian theory of population gave no proof of his assertion that population increased exactly in geometric progression and food production increased exactly in arithmetic progression. It has been rightly pointed out that population and food supply does not change in accordance with these mathematical series. Growth of population and food supply cannot be expected to show the precision or accuracy of such series. However, Malthus in the later edition of his book did not insist on these mathematical terms and only held that there was inherent tendency in population to outrun the means of subsistence. We have seen above that even this is far from being true."
More: http://www.google.com/#q=malthus+"Later+edition"
A general issue is that while problems can grow exponentially, so can solutions. Example:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
AC wrote: An interesting take on the problem from zerohedge: "Student Loan Bubble To Exceed $1 Trillion: "It's Going To Create A Generation Of Wage Slavery" And Another Taxpayer Bailout"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/student-loan-bubble-exceed-1-trillion-its-going-create-generation-wage-slavery-and-another-taxp
Yes, indeed. See also my:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html
Solutions on my site or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-November/005584.html
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-November/006005.html
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html
As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/
Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
Or to invent the computer mouse?
http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/vision-highlights.html
Or to create terrific participatory democracies?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010
Or to move beyond war by thinking better?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.anwot.org/
Or maybe even to have cold fusion?
http://pesn.com/2011/09/14/9501913_Rossis_One_Megawatt_Reactor_Gets_A_New_E-Cat_Model/
The human imagination (empowered by education and health and access to basic resources) is indeed the ultimate resource.
Thanks for the challenging reply. And you indeed have a good point about cells and gravity, although mammals spin around so much, it's not clear how essential that is. More research is needed.
I think you have not yet gotten the mindshift about post-scarcity though, sorry. Even regular economics can take us very far with enough cheap energy, that we almost certainly will have soon from fusion or thorium power if nothing else:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt
"It's been shown over and over that giving out hand-outs encourages abuse and laziness."
What would you say if someone said you had to start paying $10,000 a month for breathable air supply? You'd say that was not fair, right? You would question the "mythology" behind that enclosure of the atmospheric commons you depend on, right?
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
So, why should you have to pay for access to the fruits of industrial commons and agricultural commons given the government has said all the land has been privatized (or is government owned and effectively off-limits for personal use)?
A basic income is a right, not a hand-out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
"Douglas disagreed with classical economists who divided the factors of production into only land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny these factors in production, he believed the âoecultural inheritance of societyâ was the primary factor. Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization. Consequently, mankind does not have to keep âoereinventing the wheelâ. âoeWe are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.â"
So, sure, some of wealth is work. But most is not. So, one half the GDP could be a basic income, and the other half would motivate those who needed motivating by money. That would be a basic income of US$2000 per month per citizen, leaving a GDP from 1993 or so to motivate those who needed motivation. Weren't people motivated enough to do a lot of stuff in 1993?
Also, when welfare is only for the sick and disabled, you get "jurisgenic disease" from only getting money when you seem sick or disabled, so you have an incentive to think that way. It's very sad.
On motivation in the information age:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html
On moving beyond money:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
People help children. Does that destroy them? Eventually, they want to contribute to their communities (most of them, eventually, if they are not sick physically or mentally in some way).
Our society is becoming so productive that it only takes a very few to provide for the many, given technology is an amplifier. It may take thousands of people to contribute to Debian GNU/Linux, but it provide software for billions of people. Related by me:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
On how robots (or AI or better design or voluntary social networks) are going
"True again, except that we have to build giant structures with radiation shielding and artificial gravity, no easy feat."
Yes, but with automation to help we could do that. If we can learn to live in zero gravity, other possibilities open up like Marshall Savage talked about in the Millennial Project with Asgard habitats that were basically bubbles with a two meter thick layer of water at the surface between two layers of transparent plastic.
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard
http://oceania.org/images/plate6.jpg
http://oceania.org/images/plate7.jpg
There are at least four ways I know of in theory to support good bone health in space (even assuming astronauts in space were not just vitamin D deficient since the RDA was ten times too low). People can wear clothes designed to provide resistance. People can live in a liquid environment that provides resistance (possibly breathing an oxygen enriched liquid) -- since whales do OK in effectively zero G. People could take (hypothetical) medicines to prevent bone loss. People could have their DNA altered.
http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Liquid_breathing_to_resist_bone_loss
Obviously, more research is needed for all of them. The big thing is that it is not clear if mammals always need gravity for babies to develop in a healthy way. Example: http://www.welcometospaceblog.com/2011/09/babies-in-space.html
I would agree we should solve our problems on Earth first, rather than export a tragic way of thinking. Related ideas (the last two by me):
http://www.anwot.org/
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
We seem to know answers to the social problems (stuff like a basic income, unschooling and life-long learning, advanced conflict resolution techniques, and so on). The problem seems more putting them into practice against entrenched interests ranging from short-sighted billionaires (of the 1%) with a narrow sense of self, to public school unions, to those who profit from war, to the rest of us (99%) and social inertia with fear of change even as our technosphere is quickly changing. I think we could easily do much better socially than this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Inside
As for scams and Rossi's Cold Fusion E-Cat device, I agree it is very suspicious -- it's just at the edge of plausibility, and he could easily dispel any doubt with some better testing. But in general, whether that pans out (we'll know soon), we have lots of energy alternatives, being developed including thorium power, hot fusion, solar PV, solar thermal, and more.
http://www.caelusgreenroom.com/2011/05/26/torresol-opens-world%E2%80%99s-first-molten-salt-c-s-p-plant-ecoseed/
I was a Senior Associate with the Space Studies Institute in the late 1980s (just meant I gave them money). I thought the space power idea was interesting then and it might have made sense then -- even though I suggested to Gerry O'Neill (I took a class with him) that we should build self-replicating space habitats instead -- he called *me* a dreamer. :-) He saw that we would have a slow industrial expansion into space driven by capitalism (which I now think is baloney because we will be moving beyond money soon enough with 3D printers and robotics and s
"We already desperately need to update laws surrounding social security, welfare and incarceration."
Yes, and a basic income would help with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
"Obviously, in China, young people carry their old people like burdens while they're trying to manage their own families. That's not so great, either."
When people have six kids or so, it is not as much of a burden when the kids carry the elderly. Part of the problem is we are experiencing a "Peak Population" crisis.
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html
But Japan aims to solve that with robotics...
Thanks for being part of making the 1980s happen!
My wife and our little "labor of love" venture in the 1990s:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/
Sorry about your loss.
Health tips by me, the most important of which for most technology people is curing vitamin D deficiency (and which I could only learn about by hypertext-supporting networks and Google):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208
There are plenty of resources to go around though, especially when you consider we could support quadrillions of people in space habitats in the solar system. But some causes for optimism:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/dpg/slim.cfm
And maybe even:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/
If we had any real resource problems, why are so many people out of work? :-)
Real solutions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#
The human imagination is truly the "ultimate resource", so the more the merrier IMHO: :-)
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
You've of course read "True Names" no doubt about what an older woman is up to on the net: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
"Or Asimov predicting that robots/androids would be nearly human-like in their behavior and complexity at the same time that computers still filled whole buildings and would need specially trained people to translate instructions into code and readouts from ticker tape."
Good ironic catch.
I've been rereading some of "I, Robot" aloud to my kid, and what is interesting is that Isaac Asimov suggested robots would understand speech before they were able to talk, whereas things have gone the other way around, it's much easier to get a computer to say things than to get it to understand things. So, for example, Robby the robot is very human in its ability to understand whatever a kid says, and to mime gestures and such, but can't say anything, and the only robot that can talk is the size of a room and does not do it well.
Anyway, it's an example of how we can be right about some things and wrong about others. Ultimately, Isaac Asimov does start to explore deep issues of what it means to be "human" and further, what it means to take care of someone else without destroying their identity as self-actualizing (as his robots begin to fade away).
I do think Isaac Asimov foresaw the economic problems posed by robotics in a capitalist society, like Marshall Brain has:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I can wonder if he might have written different stuff (robots being banned on Earth to preserve jobs) if he had grown up in a more communist/socialist system?
But, there are solutions for capitalism besides banning robots, such as a "basic income", like I talk about at my site and elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
There is a picture of me on my site with a robot that I presented at the Albert Einstein Science Centennial, where Isaac Asimov gave a talk and later called me a "rotten kid" after I told him about "The Golden Age of the 70s". :-)
"Which would be cool if I had any clue what the 90% of world's population, the unemployed, will be doing with all that time."
"Employment" is a fairly recent idea. What was everyone doing thousands of years ago before "employment"?
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
By the way, I like J.D. Bernal, who you can add to your list, for this from the 1920s:
http://www.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."
On #7, Chinese is becoming the single most dominant language on the web (you just probably can't see it). Also, diversity can be good in big enough systems. Currencies work better generally when they are managed by accountable organizations; Jane Jacobs suggested that ideally each city should have its own currency; why not now, with computers it would be so easy to convert between them?
Cold fusion may be happening:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/
More of a problem is addiction to "supernormal stimuli":
http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
We need a "basic income" and other changes (gift economy, better local subsistence with 3D printing, better participatory governmental planning) to deal with the changes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
Aren't those all true now? :-)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson
"The future is already here â" it's just not very evenly distributed."
Right now about 50% of US land goes to produce animal products which are overall killing us with bad fats:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/
And we can always grow food indoors using cheap energy and rock dust:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt
"Why is the Food Outlook Made to Seem Gloomy?"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
In general, people living longer is not going to have as much effect on the population as how many kids people have -- and that amount is falling with industrialization; in Italy, every woman has about 1.2 kids but would need to have 2.1 kids to keep the population from declining. The entire industrialized world has this problem (but not as bad as Italy in most places).
Just think of all the people around to pass on wisdom to the next generation.
AC wrote: "I want to retire at 65 and keep on living off my pension for 85 years more, while me, my generation mates and all our sons and grandsons fight one another for this world's scarce resources and the few remaining uncontaminated spots... That sounds a terrific idea."
We need a basic income or other changes that make things fair for everyone, not just benefits for the old or young.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
Great advice. #7 probably should include vitamin D supplements, too. My health advice, which includes psychological and social aspects (like Blue Zones, because to an extent, health is a product of a healthy community):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208
Modern medicine is terrible at handling chronic diseases, often the disease of kings from eating too many rich foods. If you put the excellent trauma medicine and infection control medicine of today together with a good lifestyle with healthy eating, as Dr. Fuhrman suggests in Eat to Live, we may see a big increase in lifespans. It's sad that with all these relatively cheap low hanging fruits and vegetables etc., people are still focusing *first* on proprietary expensive magic bullets.
Yest, 95% accuracy has always been the bane of speech systems (even 99% accuracy can be a problem). It just costs a lot of time to correct things, especially when they are not obvious typos but are similar looking real words. This has been a problem with speech to text from the start. That is why I believe ultimately, rather than for dictation, speech is best used in a more conversational way, interpreting what is said, and with back-and-forth questioning and feedback.
I worked for a time as a contractor at IBM Research doing embedded speech around 1999 on the IBM Personal Speech Assistant:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=940752
I wrote up some conceptual ideas for an even more conversational system (running a display wall for use in creating new designs and new patents). When my supervisor went on vacation, made a display wall mockup with nine think pads (a bit like a Jeopardy wall :-) to test a bit of that. Boy was my supervisor surprised when he came back from vacation -- luckily I was not in the lab when he saw it the first time. :-) And now, a decade later, there is Watson.
An Apple recruiter contacted me a couple years ago (I am on a patent related to that PSA work) but I was not interested back then (who knows, I might be now). But I figured something like Siri was in the air, because that's essentially the kind of thing we were working on back then.
... envisioned the internet and SmartPhones and more in 1952: http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51
I asked Ted Nelson once about that story when he visited at IBM Research when I was there around 2001 and he said yes, that story is where he had gotten the name "Xanadu" for his hypertext work, but he had forgotten the full name of the story until I reminded him of it.
Please read it to see what has been shaping our present and probably hopefully our future.
And with OWS, the rest of Sturgeon's predictions may be beginning to come true (about people teaching each other how to get better and better at freedom).
Another relative here, in the USA. :-) Send me an email if you want, my address is easy to find.
She was my father's aunt IIRC. I only met her once that I can recall, when my father and I visited her home around 1985. But she might have been at some get together or other other times we visited that does not stick out in my mind. I don't remember her speaking English and I do not know that much Dutch. They talked and I went for a walk around the area. I was overdressed in a overcoat and hat, and some neighborhood kids pointed at me and said "gangster" and chased me a bit, and I went into a store to avoid them. So, that's mostly what I remember of that visit. :-)
I feel diet and lifestyle (and the extent to which genes may interact with interests and habits) have a lot to do with this though. So does very early life experiences. Even being born premature might have had some value, in that the slower we grow perhaps the slower we age? Not having kids may have been a factor too? Also, there is a lot to be said for a positive outlook on life however you get that.
Related resources on healthy diet:
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
Fasting (like for lent) which often connects to religion (and eating less in the past from being less wealthy) can also help:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting.html
And on getting enough vitamin D (and she was out and about plus maybe got some from herring she liked):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx
Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext
Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene
Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/walkingwhileworking
Community level ideas for health: