The "back to sleep" campaign for infants aims to prevent a terrible tragedy of two in a thousand infants dying suddenly in their sleep for reasons as not yet full understood (and this practice supposedly cuts that rate of sudden infant death syndrome - SIDS -- in about half). http://www.nichd.nih.gov/sids/
Basically, the entire process involves making infants uncomfortable -- put them on their backs instead of their stomachs, don't cover them, keep the room cold, don't co-sleep with them, and other things. But it is accepted that this distorts the backs of children's heads to be flatter, and also delays crawling development by a month or two in many children. If this was side-effects from a drug prescribed, we might question it more.
To be clear, I think it is worth to think about preventing SIDS, but one needs to ask about the costs in flattened heads and delayed developmental milestones to the other 998 out of 1000 babies. As someone else told us, the road to genius starts on the belly. We followed this back to sleep advice for our child and I regret it, especially as our child had trouble sleeping a lot in the first place, and following this well-meant advice probably just made that all worse.
Again, we made the mistake of following well-meant advice by medical practicioners to avoid the sun and had serious health consequences from that.
Ironically, the lack of sunlight seems also to have increased melanoma rates, since vitamin D helps in the immune system destroying cancer. Ways to avoid that: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
But these sorts of bad advice by the medical establishment have been great boons to mattress manufactures, the processed foods and animal products industries, and the medical industry.
Vaccinations are another problematical area where it is not always clear the risk is worth the rewards for specific vaccines, or that with all the conflicts of interest involved one can know who to really believe on all that. The story on the influenza vaccine's value keeps changing, for example. As I quote here:
Around 1987 I simulated cannibalistic robot by accident on a Symbolics 3600 in ZetaLisp+Flavors. It was perhaps one of the first simulations of self-replicating robots in a 2D sea of spare parts. The parts were something like a computer, a welder, a gripper, a battery, a radar, and another rock-like item. The first robot was programmed to collect parts to attach to itself to duplicate itself as two similar halves as a sort of repair process back towards and ideal, and then cut itself in two, and then each separate piece was supposed to go off and do the same. But I did not think it through all the way, and the first thing the original robot did as the copy started up was to start to cut the copy in two to reuse the parts because they were the closest available that were not in itself. So, the robot was both cannibalistic and killing its own offspring.
It goes to show how easy it is to make a mistake designing artificial life. I had to add a sense of "smell" to prevent that from happening, where the robots would set a smell on each item they used and would leave similar smelling items (in offspring) alone.
I gave a talk about the simulation around 1988 at a workshop on AI and Simulation at CHI+GI in Minnesota, and talked about how easy it was to make robots that were destructive and how much harder it would be to make them cooperative. Afterwards someone from the Army working with DARPA literally patted me on the back and told me to keep up the good work. And that was one reason I stopped working on it.:-)
And since then we have sadly seen the rise or an ironic use of military robots when robotics could otherwise bring us abundance (like President Obama authorizing a drone strike within days of taking office that allegedly lead to the deaths of three Pakistani children). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5575883.ece
But, to the army officer's credit back then, I don't know if he was more interested in the destructive or constructive aspects of what I had to say. And in truth, both construction and destruction are both related in this plane of existence. And we all need some security, the issue is how we go about getting it. An essay I wrote on that: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
I do believe robots will learn cooperation. The issue is more if humanity will be wiped out first and then later any robots (if they too survive) might be regretful, or whether we will co-evolve together somehow. As long as much of our R&D is mostly driven by short-term profit maximization and the push to privatize profits and to socialize risks and costs, I don't know...
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1 "As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
I tend to agree the money could be better allocated, as could the time of many of the students. I wrote a related essay about Pricneton University a couple years ago, and most of it could probably also apply to MIT:
"Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease " http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html "We are witnessing a historic end to scarcity of many things (maybe not all, but enough to be a new global Renaissance). But is Princeton University helping prepare either students or the rest of society for these changes? Or is it instead an institution under stress, crashing into these trends instead of moving with them? Or is it perhaps conflicted in how it sees itself and its future, and so trying to do both these conflicting approaches at once?:-) "
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation "So, when you think about the financial aspects of your innovation, please consider that fundamental things may change with cheap energy. Please consider how the scarcity-based economic model we all grew up with still govern so much about how innovations such as cold fusion are created, discussed, and distributed. Please consider that a scarcity-based economic model, and all the thinking and fiat-dollar-based financial conflict that relates to it, may be made obsolete very quickly by the rapid spread of a cold fusion [or other] innovation. "
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?pagenumber=2
"Commentary: China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016 [based on PPP]...
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
"There are two systems in collision," said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU's Stern business school. "They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism." What we have seen, he said, is "a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That's very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages."
The next chapter of the story is just beginning...."
http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ "Upon publication of Disciplined Minds, the American Institute of Physics fired author Jeff Schmidt. He had been on the editorial staff of Physics Today magazine for 19 years....
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict âoeideological discipline.â
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professionalâ(TM)s lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue oneâ(TM)s own social vision in todayâ(TM)s corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."
How can we "make use of the web so it connects people together and breaks down barriers more than it builds them up"?
"Rakontu is free and open source software that small groups of people can use together to share and work with their stories. It's for people in neighborhoods, families, interest groups, support groups, work groups: any group of people with stories to share. Rakontu members build shared "story museums" that they can draw upon to achieve common goals."
My wife and I are working on version 2.0 (in Java, semantic-desktop oriented). The design documents are linked there.
Related book on why so many police officers take to planting evidence and forcing inaccurate confessions:
"Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986 "Why do people refuse to admit mistakes - so deeply that they transform their own brains? They're not kidding themselves: they really believe what they have to believe to justify their original thought.
There are some pretty scary examples in this book. Psychologists who refuse to admit they'd bought into the false memory theories, causing enormous pain. Politicians. Authors. Doctors. Therapists. Alien abduction victims.
Most terrifying: The justice system operates this way. Once someone is accused of a crime - even under the most bizarre circumstances - the police believe he's guilty of something. Even when the DNA shows someone is innocent, or new evidence reveals the true perpetrator, they hesitate to let the accused person go free.,,,"
And progressively that can lead police officers down a route of progressive desensitization where they start planting evidence on more and more people until they plant evidence on anyone they have any suspicions about...
Dr. Fuhrman: IMT & EndoPAT Accurately Predict
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
·
· Score: 1
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/IMT_EndoPAT.aspx "Traditional testing such as angiography and stress tests only measure blockages in the arteries and will miss non-obstructing vulnerable plaques which are the cause of the majority of heart attacks and strokes....
Intima-media thickness (IMT) scanning uses ultrasound technology and is a simple procedure that is noninvasive, painless, and free of radiation. It can predict risk of heart attack or stroke better than an angiogram. IMT is measured by taking pictures of your carotid artery using an ultrasound probe on your neck. This measurement predicts your risk of a future heart attack or stroke.
Assessing endothelial dysfunction with an EndoPAT machine is also very helpful in that it will pick up the earliest stages of cardiovascular disease. It also is simple, noninvasive, and involves no radiation. Sensors are placed on your fingers which measure the dilation of the blood vessels in your fingers while a blood pressure cuff on your arm inflates and deflates.
By using the results of these tests in combination with a medical history, physical exam and blood work physicians are able to more accurately assess risk without the risks of traditional testing methods."
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...."
So what is the problem you are so worried about? There is room for quadrillions of people living in space habitats in the solar system, too. Why be such a doomster? Renewable energy is now close to the price of fossil fuels, but without the environmental costs (where fossil fuel companies privatize short-term profits and socialize long-term costs). We mainly have social problems, not technical ones. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
Have you really studied the technical possiblities for making the world work for everyone, and further, making the solar system work for quadrillions of people? We do have some big problems, but we have billions of people to help solve them. It's problematical to on the one hand say humans are a geological force and then on the other to deny that such a powerful force could be used to some benefit if we had the social will to do so. Thin film solar, wind generators, moving away from meat consumption, grinding up rocks for fertilizer, and maybe even cold fusion, are all parts of the solutions. http://remineralize.org/ http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog#177 http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
It is people who have used their creativity to come up with those sorts of ideas...
http://www.textfiles.com/news/hackpape.hac "As much as an essay, this is a story. It is a true story of people paying $9,000 a year to lose elements of their humanity. It is a story of the breaking of wills and of people. It is a story of addictions, and of misplaced values. In a large part, it is my own story.... In the middle of Stanford University there is a large concrete- and-glass building filled with computer terminals. When one enters this building through the glass doors, one steps into a different culture. Fifty people stare at terminal screens. Fifty faces connected to 50 bodies, connected to 50 sets of fingers that pound on 50 keyboards ultimately linked to a computer. If you go further inside, you can discover the true addicts: the members of the Establishment. These are the people who spend their lives with computers and fellow "hackers". These are the members of a subculture so foreign to most outsiders that it not only walls itself off but is walled off, in turn, by those who cannot understand it. The wall is built from both sides at once.... Even if we ignore the costs to society as a whole, we have to look at the costs to the people involved. The computer is a modifier of personalities. It is highly addictive. People who gain this addiction for a period of several months tend never to give it up. And the symptoms are very sad...."
That was from 1980, when I first read it in high school (on a timeshared computer terminal.:-) It was a good warning, even as it ignores that certain types of people (especially introverts) may be more attracted to certain forms of activity, whether as a bookworm or a hacker. Too bad it did not mention vitamin D deficiency disease and vegetable deficiency disease and the need for treadmill workstations (among other good things it does say.:-)
It's the final irony of the whole space shuttle system that the space shuttles are not being left docked at the International Space Station to increase it's usable area. The whole premise of the system was flawed from the start -- launch massive amounts of well-tested hardware into space, and rather than leave it there where it may be useful in the future, bring it back to Earth when you could get the crew back in a tiny capsule. And from everyone who watches this old house or has ever tried to repair something very complicated, often it costs more to refurbish something like a space shuttle to use it again than to build it from scratch as new.
Anyway, the device is still very impressive. My family built the LEGO model of one recently, and it really helped me understand the amazing engineering that went in to it. If only we had used each one once and left it in orbit (with the external tank in orbit, too), we'd have a space infrastructure in near earth orbit 100X what we have, and that would all be raw material to reuse for new projects out there. And each new one produced over the last thirty years would have been better and better...
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/05/swedish-skeptics-confirm-nuclear-process-in-tiny-4-7-kw-reactor
http://www.nanosolar.com/power-plants/technology-advantages
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead? "
Other ways to deal with bullies:
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying
Here is why the current approach pushed in schools just makes more:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying/201011/rational-alternative-the-national-school-anti-bullying-p
Maybe what made the USA strong decades ago was a progressive tax rate that went past 90%? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
The "back to sleep" campaign for infants aims to prevent a terrible tragedy of two in a thousand infants dying suddenly in their sleep for reasons as not yet full understood (and this practice supposedly cuts that rate of sudden infant death syndrome - SIDS -- in about half).
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/sids/
Basically, the entire process involves making infants uncomfortable -- put them on their backs instead of their stomachs, don't cover them, keep the room cold, don't co-sleep with them, and other things. But it is accepted that this distorts the backs of children's heads to be flatter, and also delays crawling development by a month or two in many children. If this was side-effects from a drug prescribed, we might question it more.
To be clear, I think it is worth to think about preventing SIDS, but one needs to ask about the costs in flattened heads and delayed developmental milestones to the other 998 out of 1000 babies. As someone else told us, the road to genius starts on the belly. We followed this back to sleep advice for our child and I regret it, especially as our child had trouble sleeping a lot in the first place, and following this well-meant advice probably just made that all worse.
Other bad advice from the medical establishment has been to avoid the sun, which has led to widespread vitamin D deficiency probably leading to increased autism rates and other health issues.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201104/autism-and-vitamin-d/
Again, we made the mistake of following well-meant advice by medical practicioners to avoid the sun and had serious health consequences from that.
Ironically, the lack of sunlight seems also to have increased melanoma rates, since vitamin D helps in the immune system destroying cancer. Ways to avoid that:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
The four food groups was another scam that has lead to a lot of bad health. Better advice:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
But these sorts of bad advice by the medical establishment have been great boons to mattress manufactures, the processed foods and animal products industries, and the medical industry.
Iodine may be another similar issue:
http://www.lmreview.com/articles/view/iodine-the-next-vitamin-d-part-I/
Remember, doctors used to recommend smoking and push infant formula, too. Example:
http://www.old-time.com/commercials/1940's/More%20Doctors%20Smoke%20Camels.html
And they helped cretae institutions that persecuted those who suggested otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm
Vaccinations are another problematical area where it is not always clear the risk is worth the rewards for specific vaccines, or that with all the conflicts of interest involved one can know who to really believe on all that. The story on the influenza vaccine's value keeps changing, for example. As I quote here:
Around 1987 I simulated cannibalistic robot by accident on a Symbolics 3600 in ZetaLisp+Flavors. It was perhaps one of the first simulations of self-replicating robots in a 2D sea of spare parts. The parts were something like a computer, a welder, a gripper, a battery, a radar, and another rock-like item. The first robot was programmed to collect parts to attach to itself to duplicate itself as two similar halves as a sort of repair process back towards and ideal, and then cut itself in two, and then each separate piece was supposed to go off and do the same. But I did not think it through all the way, and the first thing the original robot did as the copy started up was to start to cut the copy in two to reuse the parts because they were the closest available that were not in itself. So, the robot was both cannibalistic and killing its own offspring.
It goes to show how easy it is to make a mistake designing artificial life. I had to add a sense of "smell" to prevent that from happening, where the robots would set a smell on each item they used and would leave similar smelling items (in offspring) alone.
I gave a talk about the simulation around 1988 at a workshop on AI and Simulation at CHI+GI in Minnesota, and talked about how easy it was to make robots that were destructive and how much harder it would be to make them cooperative. Afterwards someone from the Army working with DARPA literally patted me on the back and told me to keep up the good work. And that was one reason I stopped working on it. :-)
And since then we have sadly seen the rise or an ironic use of military robots when robotics could otherwise bring us abundance (like President Obama authorizing a drone strike within days of taking office that allegedly lead to the deaths of three Pakistani children).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5575883.ece
But, to the army officer's credit back then, I don't know if he was more interested in the destructive or constructive aspects of what I had to say. And in truth, both construction and destruction are both related in this plane of existence. And we all need some security, the issue is how we go about getting it. An essay I wrote on that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
I do believe robots will learn cooperation. The issue is more if humanity will be wiped out first and then later any robots (if they too survive) might be regretful, or whether we will co-evolve together somehow. As long as much of our R&D is mostly driven by short-term profit maximization and the push to privatize profits and to socialize risks and costs, I don't know...
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
"As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
I tend to agree the money could be better allocated, as could the time of many of the students. I wrote a related essay about Pricneton University a couple years ago, and most of it could probably also apply to MIT: :-) "
"Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease "
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"We are witnessing a historic end to scarcity of many things (maybe not all, but enough to be a new global Renaissance). But is Princeton University helping prepare either students or the rest of society for these changes? Or is it instead an institution under stress, crashing into these trends instead of moving with them? Or is it perhaps conflicted in how it sees itself and its future, and so trying to do both these conflicting approaches at once?
That said, MIT has done a lot of amazing stuff, and I'm glad for the free software that has come out of there, as well as ideas like FabLabs fostered by the Center for Bits and Atoms. Some really great stuff does go on at MIT -- it's an issue of cost-effectiveness and institutional outlook and a law of diminishing returns weighed against the value of centralization through the MIT brand. It's hard to invest money well; MIT is a "safe" choice in that sense, even if there might be lots of better options out there. In general though, the whole idea of college is more and more problematical these days. See my comments with further links here:
"[p2p-research] Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future (was Re: Information on student protests)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
"So, when you think about the financial aspects of your innovation, please consider that fundamental things may change with cheap energy. Please consider how the scarcity-based economic model we all grew up with still govern so much about how innovations such as cold fusion are created, discussed, and distributed. Please consider that a scarcity-based economic model, and all the thinking and fiat-dollar-based financial conflict that relates to it, may be made obsolete very quickly by the rapid spread of a cold fusion [or other] innovation. "
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?pagenumber=2 ... ..."
"Commentary: China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016 [based on PPP]
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
"There are two systems in collision," said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU's Stern business school. "They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism." What we have seen, he said, is "a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That's very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages."
The next chapter of the story is just beginning.
See also:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
What tinkerers related to science and technology can do though?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ ...
"Upon publication of Disciplined Minds, the American Institute of Physics fired author Jeff Schmidt. He had been on the editorial staff of Physics Today magazine for 19 years.
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict âoeideological discipline.â
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professionalâ(TM)s lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue oneâ(TM)s own social vision in todayâ(TM)s corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."
Also by a physicist:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
More links collected by me:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html
http://www.artificialscarcity.com/ more and more... :-)
(my site.
Alternatives:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/4f49f5fc25b8b3e9
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
We need to transition to a model where enterprise is more and more about dealing with real scarcities (either local or global).
http://www.rakontu.org/
How can we "make use of the web so it connects people together and breaks down barriers more than it builds them up"?
"Rakontu is free and open source software that small groups of people can use together to share and work with their stories. It's for people in neighborhoods, families, interest groups, support groups, work groups: any group of people with stories to share. Rakontu members build shared "story museums" that they can draw upon to achieve common goals."
My wife and I are working on version 2.0 (in Java, semantic-desktop oriented). The design documents are linked there.
...Encounters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlXzdA echoes your advice.
Related book on why so many police officers take to planting evidence and forcing inaccurate confessions: ,,,"
"Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986
"Why do people refuse to admit mistakes - so deeply that they transform their own brains? They're not kidding themselves: they really believe what they have to believe to justify their original thought.
There are some pretty scary examples in this book. Psychologists who refuse to admit they'd bought into the false memory theories, causing enormous pain. Politicians. Authors. Doctors. Therapists. Alien abduction victims.
Most terrifying: The justice system operates this way. Once someone is accused of a crime - even under the most bizarre circumstances - the police believe he's guilty of something. Even when the DNA shows someone is innocent, or new evidence reveals the true perpetrator, they hesitate to let the accused person go free.
And progressively that can lead police officers down a route of progressive desensitization where they start planting evidence on more and more people until they plant evidence on anyone they have any suspicions about...
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/IMT_EndoPAT.aspx ...
"Traditional testing such as angiography and stress tests only measure blockages in the arteries and will miss non-obstructing vulnerable plaques which are the cause of the majority of heart attacks and strokes.
Intima-media thickness (IMT) scanning uses ultrasound technology and is a simple procedure that is noninvasive, painless, and free of radiation. It can predict risk of heart attack or stroke better than an angiogram. IMT is measured by taking pictures of your carotid artery using an ultrasound probe on your neck. This measurement predicts your risk of a future heart attack or stroke.
Assessing endothelial dysfunction with an EndoPAT machine is also very helpful in that it will pick up the earliest stages of cardiovascular disease. It also is simple, noninvasive, and involves no radiation. Sensors are placed on your fingers which measure the dilation of the blood vessels in your fingers while a blood pressure cuff on your arm inflates and deflates.
By using the results of these tests in combination with a medical history, physical exam and blood work physicians are able to more accurately assess risk without the risks of traditional testing methods."
See also:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/HeartDisease.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/success/SuccessStory.aspx?id=143
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-cardiovascular-disease.html
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.
But, see also on money as a bad motivator for creative work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Some deeper issues:
http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
My own saga: :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
My essay: http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
What about the space program and space habitats? There is room for quadrillions of humans in space...
http://space.mike-combs.com/
Besides, the Earth itself is very deep. And who needs much copper these days? We use fiber optics, which is mostly sand...
The Earth gets something like 10000X times more energy every day than we use that day in our civlization.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
So what is the problem you are so worried about? There is room for quadrillions of people living in space habitats in the solar system, too. Why be such a doomster? Renewable energy is now close to the price of fossil fuels, but without the environmental costs (where fossil fuel companies privatize short-term profits and socialize long-term costs). We mainly have social problems, not technical ones. See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
Have you really studied the technical possiblities for making the world work for everyone, and further, making the solar system work for quadrillions of people? We do have some big problems, but we have billions of people to help solve them. It's problematical to on the one hand say humans are a geological force and then on the other to deny that such a powerful force could be used to some benefit if we had the social will to do so. Thin film solar, wind generators, moving away from meat consumption, grinding up rocks for fertilizer, and maybe even cold fusion, are all parts of the solutions.
http://remineralize.org/
http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog#177
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
It is people who have used their creativity to come up with those sorts of ideas...
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-392
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
Good questions. Keep exploring There are answers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
http://johncr8on.com/projects/21st-century-institutions/
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
Stagnant (even declining) real wages for three decades in the USA for most workers while productivity has doubled or tripled. Who go the benefits? Whose life became more precarious?
http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap
See also though:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=channel
http://www.textfiles.com/news/hackpape.hac ... In the middle of Stanford University there is a large concrete- and-glass building filled with computer terminals. When one enters this building through the glass doors, one steps into a different culture. Fifty people stare at terminal screens. Fifty faces connected to 50 bodies, connected to 50 sets of fingers that pound on 50 keyboards ultimately linked to a computer. If you go further inside, you can discover the true addicts: the members of the Establishment. These are the people who spend their lives with computers and fellow "hackers". These are the members of a subculture so foreign to most outsiders that it not only walls itself off but is walled off, in turn, by those who cannot understand it. The wall is built from both sides at once. ... Even if we ignore the costs to society as a whole, we have to look at the costs to the people involved. The computer is a modifier of personalities. It is highly addictive. People who gain this addiction for a period of several months tend never to give it up. And the symptoms are very sad. ..."
"As much as an essay, this is a story. It is a true story of people paying $9,000 a year to lose elements of their humanity. It is a story of the breaking of wills and of people. It is a story of addictions, and of misplaced values. In a large part, it is my own story.
That was from 1980, when I first read it in high school (on a timeshared computer terminal. :-) It was a good warning, even as it ignores that certain types of people (especially introverts) may be more attracted to certain forms of activity, whether as a bookworm or a hacker. Too bad it did not mention vitamin D deficiency disease and vegetable deficiency disease and the need for treadmill workstations (among other good things it does say. :-)
See also:
"Supernormal stimuli: how primal urges overran their evolutionary purpose"
http://books.google.com/books?id=HQlg3rQquUoC
And:
"How to escape The Pleasure Trap !"
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
And:
"Rat Park: A study on the role of stress as the cause of addictive-seeming behavior"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
It's the final irony of the whole space shuttle system that the space shuttles are not being left docked at the International Space Station to increase it's usable area. The whole premise of the system was flawed from the start -- launch massive amounts of well-tested hardware into space, and rather than leave it there where it may be useful in the future, bring it back to Earth when you could get the crew back in a tiny capsule. And from everyone who watches this old house or has ever tried to repair something very complicated, often it costs more to refurbish something like a space shuttle to use it again than to build it from scratch as new.
Anyway, the device is still very impressive. My family built the LEGO model of one recently, and it really helped me understand the amazing engineering that went in to it. If only we had used each one once and left it in orbit (with the external tank in orbit, too), we'd have a space infrastructure in near earth orbit 100X what we have, and that would all be raw material to reuse for new projects out there. And each new one produced over the last thirty years would have been better and better...
See also my comment:
"Jeff Bezos' Shot At Space: Both CATS and DOGS are needed... "
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=5821178