Brain Hacking I can see happening (taking control of someone's bionics), but doing the mindwipe is what I was taking aim at. TFA talks about rats getting their memories wiped, but I'd want to know more. Does the rat's basic personality stay intact? Did the rat relearn? Did the rat display the same actions after the removal of the enzyme?
(That'll teach me to take a moment and think before typing - let this be a lesson to you!)
Okay, this only holds true IF we are truly biological machines with advanced programming. If we actually do have a soul, then this whole idea goes out the window (and a whole lot of other, much bigger problems come in).
You make a very good point. I've been having to remind myself of that lately. I don't like that I tend to mock less focused people, because I don't want to be that kind of person. So I've been trying to ratchet back and look at people more holistically. If nothing else, then it'll make me an honestly better person.
THIS is why we need to go to the Moon and Mars and beyond... it is only through pushing through the boundaries to the unknown that we advance as a species. Otherwise, all we do is sit in self-induced stagnation endlessly trying to perfect ourselves.
Is that once you start going down that road, it is enormously difficult, if not impossible to come back to exploration again. I give you the Ming Dynasty as an example. Prior to the first Ming Emperor, China ruled the seas with its ships the size of our WWII aircraft carriers. They explored beyond the limits of the known world and kept going (granted, they did it because it was very profitable - I will readily concede that point). It was also a point of national pride. Then the first Ming Emperor came to the throne, a xenophobic agoraphobe who turned his entire nation inward to 'solve' the problem of foreign contamination. And it took China 1500 years to recover from that.
I could come up with more examples offhand but I'm going to summarize:
The problems you have listed are ENDEMIC to humanity. They will NEVER be solved, not in my lifetime, not in anyone's lifetime. There is no hope of solving them because if we start down that path, all we do is end up chasing our own tail. Humanity's progress and solutions have only occured when we pushed beyond our familiar boundaries into the unknown. So to make any real and effective attempt at solving the problems you named (while embracing the paradox that we will never be able to solve them completely), we HAVE to go to the moon, and we have to go to Mars. If we give up our Explorer spirit, we give up everything else and fall into a cycle of stagnation from which there is little hope of recovery.
Kudos to you for posting w/ your name. I agree, IF you can harness it then yes, it can be a wonderful thing. The sticky point is being able to harness it.
One is a man in Las Vegas who doesn't own a car (out of choice), and steadfastly refuses to believe that we landed on the moon. He doesn't give any real reason other than that it's his opinion that we didn't do it, we're not capable of doing it, and we're faking it. He does so calmly and succinctly, leading me to believe his ego is made of adamantium.
The other is a true gun-nut who continues to believe that any day now the United States Senate will pass a bill authorizing the UN to take control of our armed forces (and that Joe Biden was a sponsor of the bill). He insists that it was all a fake, and that he knows guys who ran the soundstage where it was all filmed.
Conversations with these two gentlemen are ALWAYS interesting.
I think that would work out very well: Congress dictates ONE tax for the internet in terms of sales tax. It's ludicrous to force anyone (even if they do have the resources) to have to divert resources to figure out fifty different sales taxes. Also, there is the risk of being double-taxed at stake (Company A pays sales tax wherever its accounting division is located, and passes it on to customer, and then customer has to pay sales tax again of his/her home state).
Please excuse me for being a paltry light user of Firefox... but aren't you an outlier in this particular case? The most tabs I ever have open on Firefox is three, maybe four. IMHO, you're a power user and while your comments are insightful, I have to wonder whether or not your insights are of relevance to the average user of Firefox? I'm all for improvement, but if the improvement is only noticeable when you've got 30+tabs open a day and are burning through close to a gig of RAM to keep everything operating... then what good is the improvement to the average user?
Read Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. You'll have to choke your way through the reincarnation scenes, but he does a pretty good job of showing what it would be like if Europe was wiped out by the plague and the Chinese filled the vaccuum.
Mod this up. Bigby's trolling in the classical sense, and he is correct to a degree (IMHO), although I'll disagree with starting after George Washington.
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming. This is a decision by the government, that apparently is backed by a majority of their citizens. We tend to forget here on/. that not everyone values freedom of the net like we do. We netizens are outnumbered by well-mannered, law-abiding individuals who aren't particularly net-savvy, don't understand the social dynamics of the net, and frankly don't want to. These people hear the stories about child porn websites, they read about "HACKERS!!!" (aka black hats) conducting cyber warfare in Estonia and other government institutions, and they see the power of porn in general on the net, and they are frightened by it. To them, having government institute censorship under 'reasonable' guidelines is the norm and should be enforced because that is the system they live in. They're sheeple. They don't want to take the time to understand the true nature of the issues at stake because to them, there is no need to. They live safe, secure lives. They perceive the internet to be an unregulated, dangerous place where their children could be psychologically damaged, their finances plundered, their identities stolen, and above all else, a world that is completely outside their own. Yes, politicians are going to take this to the limit. Yes, this is a dangerous trend. In order to fight this, we have to understand the basis of this, and the basis is that we are outnumbered by people who do value security and comfort above freedom, because that is how they choose to live their lives.
IMHO, this is something we as humans have to grapple with ourselves. To me, I experience moral squeamishness when I consider possessing the ability to pre-select my (potential) child's genetic traits. Pre-selecting against genetic problems that would make the would-be embryo unable to live unsupported (and there's a whole spectrum here) is one thing. But to decide if I want a girl with brown hair and blue eyes or a boy with brown eyes and blond hair, and oh, I want him/her to be athletic and have a better than average predisposition towards a high IQ? That's where I get squeamish. Who am I to determine what my child is going to be like to that degree? Yes, those are my genes being mixed with that of the mother's. Yes, that will be my child. But do I have the right to rob my child of the experiences he/she is going to have growing up? If I make my child 'better than average' along with everyone else, am I not just making my child 'average'? I'm tall, overweight, and have bad eyesight. My life experiences have been unavoidably biased around these genetic issues, and I wouldn't trade them in for anything. Those experiences are part of what makes me 'me'. To deny my child that kind of uniqueness and condemn him/her to a life of mediocrity masquerading as 'being designed better than your neighbor's kid' would be wrong to me.
Yes, even now I'd have to say that the benefits outweighed the dangers. Before I got the lasik done, I could only see about four feet in front of me and then everything was a hopeless blur. Afterwards of course, I could see perfectly.
The two biggest benefits though were: 1) I was 20 when I had it done, and so that meant for a vast majority of my twenties, I didn't have to wear contacts or lenses. I got to live life as someone who had perfect eyesight and never once had to worry about falling asleep with the lenses in, or breaking glasses; 2) even now with the keratoconus, I still see well enough during the daytime that I can ride a bike or do chores or read or play video games (which I couldn't before the lasik). At night I can't see much compared to when I have visual aids, but that's fine with me. So when I get depressed about the keratoconus issue, all I have to do is go for a run in the early morning as the dawn comes up without my glasses or lenses, and realize that I couldn't have done that before the lasik. My eyesight is STILL better.
Hope that helps.
I had Lasik done when I was 20, back in the late 90s. Six good years of eyesight later, I started to develop an abnormality in my right now. Now, in my early thirties, I've been diagnosed with keratoconus in my right eye, and I might possibly have it in my left. While Lasik doesn't explicitly cause keratoconus, we also didn't know back in the 90's that some people might have corneas with hidden defects that might not take too well to a laser shaving off a couple of layers.
So if they can come up with a way to take stem cells and create whole new corneas to replace damaged ones, then I for one will be anxiously awaiting the day when it becomes available in the United States (about ten years from now most likely, given the FDA's restrictions). I'd like to have normal eyes again, and not worry about one day having to undergo a corneal transplant. So this is AWESOME that they can do that. More power to stem cell research!!!!
When I read the Manifesto, my takeaway was that Marx was really railing against Corporatism instead of Capitalism. My opinion of him was that he wasn't mad at Capitalism per say, he was mad at the social structures people created when they participated in corporate activities that demeaned and abused the workers. Why didn't he just say Corporatism instead of Capitalism? My guess is that he didn't know how else to describe the enemy he was writing about. Michael Crichton writes in The Great Train Robbery that the Victorians were the first 'modern' civilization and they were the first to grapple with all the current social issues we have right now with urbanization, capitalism, etc. The very concept of 'Corporatism' probably hadn't been invented yet and Marx had to work with the concepts at hand. When people work for a corporation, they tend to be subsumed within an amoral entity that reflects the sum total of its individual components. Thus being in the corporate environment tends to decrease our empathy for our fellow humans and in Marx's time, would lead to the abuses he saw.
That is a sight I would pay a lot of money to see: canine contraceptive salesmen attempting to make it to your front door past hordes of copiously fornicating man-eating Rottweilers... (you started it, I finished it, we're both going to Hell now)
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Brain Hacking I can see happening (taking control of someone's bionics), but doing the mindwipe is what I was taking aim at. TFA talks about rats getting their memories wiped, but I'd want to know more. Does the rat's basic personality stay intact? Did the rat relearn? Did the rat display the same actions after the removal of the enzyme? (That'll teach me to take a moment and think before typing - let this be a lesson to you!)
Okay, this only holds true IF we are truly biological machines with advanced programming. If we actually do have a soul, then this whole idea goes out the window (and a whole lot of other, much bigger problems come in).
You make a very good point. I've been having to remind myself of that lately. I don't like that I tend to mock less focused people, because I don't want to be that kind of person. So I've been trying to ratchet back and look at people more holistically. If nothing else, then it'll make me an honestly better person.
THIS is why we need to go to the Moon and Mars and beyond... it is only through pushing through the boundaries to the unknown that we advance as a species. Otherwise, all we do is sit in self-induced stagnation endlessly trying to perfect ourselves.
Oh come on, mod this up. This is FUNNY!
Is that once you start going down that road, it is enormously difficult, if not impossible to come back to exploration again. I give you the Ming Dynasty as an example. Prior to the first Ming Emperor, China ruled the seas with its ships the size of our WWII aircraft carriers. They explored beyond the limits of the known world and kept going (granted, they did it because it was very profitable - I will readily concede that point). It was also a point of national pride. Then the first Ming Emperor came to the throne, a xenophobic agoraphobe who turned his entire nation inward to 'solve' the problem of foreign contamination. And it took China 1500 years to recover from that. I could come up with more examples offhand but I'm going to summarize: The problems you have listed are ENDEMIC to humanity. They will NEVER be solved, not in my lifetime, not in anyone's lifetime. There is no hope of solving them because if we start down that path, all we do is end up chasing our own tail. Humanity's progress and solutions have only occured when we pushed beyond our familiar boundaries into the unknown. So to make any real and effective attempt at solving the problems you named (while embracing the paradox that we will never be able to solve them completely), we HAVE to go to the moon, and we have to go to Mars. If we give up our Explorer spirit, we give up everything else and fall into a cycle of stagnation from which there is little hope of recovery.
Kudos to you for posting w/ your name. I agree, IF you can harness it then yes, it can be a wonderful thing. The sticky point is being able to harness it.
One is a man in Las Vegas who doesn't own a car (out of choice), and steadfastly refuses to believe that we landed on the moon. He doesn't give any real reason other than that it's his opinion that we didn't do it, we're not capable of doing it, and we're faking it. He does so calmly and succinctly, leading me to believe his ego is made of adamantium. The other is a true gun-nut who continues to believe that any day now the United States Senate will pass a bill authorizing the UN to take control of our armed forces (and that Joe Biden was a sponsor of the bill). He insists that it was all a fake, and that he knows guys who ran the soundstage where it was all filmed. Conversations with these two gentlemen are ALWAYS interesting.
I think that would work out very well: Congress dictates ONE tax for the internet in terms of sales tax. It's ludicrous to force anyone (even if they do have the resources) to have to divert resources to figure out fifty different sales taxes. Also, there is the risk of being double-taxed at stake (Company A pays sales tax wherever its accounting division is located, and passes it on to customer, and then customer has to pay sales tax again of his/her home state).
Please excuse me for being a paltry light user of Firefox... but aren't you an outlier in this particular case? The most tabs I ever have open on Firefox is three, maybe four. IMHO, you're a power user and while your comments are insightful, I have to wonder whether or not your insights are of relevance to the average user of Firefox? I'm all for improvement, but if the improvement is only noticeable when you've got 30+tabs open a day and are burning through close to a gig of RAM to keep everything operating... then what good is the improvement to the average user?
Read Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. You'll have to choke your way through the reincarnation scenes, but he does a pretty good job of showing what it would be like if Europe was wiped out by the plague and the Chinese filled the vaccuum.
Mod this up. Bigby's trolling in the classical sense, and he is correct to a degree (IMHO), although I'll disagree with starting after George Washington.
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming. This is a decision by the government, that apparently is backed by a majority of their citizens. We tend to forget here on /. that not everyone values freedom of the net like we do. We netizens are outnumbered by well-mannered, law-abiding individuals who aren't particularly net-savvy, don't understand the social dynamics of the net, and frankly don't want to. These people hear the stories about child porn websites, they read about "HACKERS!!!" (aka black hats) conducting cyber warfare in Estonia and other government institutions, and they see the power of porn in general on the net, and they are frightened by it. To them, having government institute censorship under 'reasonable' guidelines is the norm and should be enforced because that is the system they live in. They're sheeple. They don't want to take the time to understand the true nature of the issues at stake because to them, there is no need to. They live safe, secure lives. They perceive the internet to be an unregulated, dangerous place where their children could be psychologically damaged, their finances plundered, their identities stolen, and above all else, a world that is completely outside their own. Yes, politicians are going to take this to the limit. Yes, this is a dangerous trend. In order to fight this, we have to understand the basis of this, and the basis is that we are outnumbered by people who do value security and comfort above freedom, because that is how they choose to live their lives.
Mod parent up for the second sentence. You summed it up perfectly, sir. I agree, in a sense having sex is "playing God".
IMHO, this is something we as humans have to grapple with ourselves. To me, I experience moral squeamishness when I consider possessing the ability to pre-select my (potential) child's genetic traits. Pre-selecting against genetic problems that would make the would-be embryo unable to live unsupported (and there's a whole spectrum here) is one thing. But to decide if I want a girl with brown hair and blue eyes or a boy with brown eyes and blond hair, and oh, I want him/her to be athletic and have a better than average predisposition towards a high IQ? That's where I get squeamish. Who am I to determine what my child is going to be like to that degree? Yes, those are my genes being mixed with that of the mother's. Yes, that will be my child. But do I have the right to rob my child of the experiences he/she is going to have growing up? If I make my child 'better than average' along with everyone else, am I not just making my child 'average'? I'm tall, overweight, and have bad eyesight. My life experiences have been unavoidably biased around these genetic issues, and I wouldn't trade them in for anything. Those experiences are part of what makes me 'me'. To deny my child that kind of uniqueness and condemn him/her to a life of mediocrity masquerading as 'being designed better than your neighbor's kid' would be wrong to me.
I KNEW I should have listened to that ambiguously gay repressed cartoon fundamentalist!
As opposed to fucking sighted? Either way, you're still fucking... I'd keep living for that
Yes, even now I'd have to say that the benefits outweighed the dangers. Before I got the lasik done, I could only see about four feet in front of me and then everything was a hopeless blur. Afterwards of course, I could see perfectly. The two biggest benefits though were: 1) I was 20 when I had it done, and so that meant for a vast majority of my twenties, I didn't have to wear contacts or lenses. I got to live life as someone who had perfect eyesight and never once had to worry about falling asleep with the lenses in, or breaking glasses; 2) even now with the keratoconus, I still see well enough during the daytime that I can ride a bike or do chores or read or play video games (which I couldn't before the lasik). At night I can't see much compared to when I have visual aids, but that's fine with me. So when I get depressed about the keratoconus issue, all I have to do is go for a run in the early morning as the dawn comes up without my glasses or lenses, and realize that I couldn't have done that before the lasik. My eyesight is STILL better. Hope that helps.
I had Lasik done when I was 20, back in the late 90s. Six good years of eyesight later, I started to develop an abnormality in my right now. Now, in my early thirties, I've been diagnosed with keratoconus in my right eye, and I might possibly have it in my left. While Lasik doesn't explicitly cause keratoconus, we also didn't know back in the 90's that some people might have corneas with hidden defects that might not take too well to a laser shaving off a couple of layers. So if they can come up with a way to take stem cells and create whole new corneas to replace damaged ones, then I for one will be anxiously awaiting the day when it becomes available in the United States (about ten years from now most likely, given the FDA's restrictions). I'd like to have normal eyes again, and not worry about one day having to undergo a corneal transplant. So this is AWESOME that they can do that. More power to stem cell research!!!!
I laughed until I hiccup'ed on this one. You are a dead man sir... but I must imagine the punishment you will receive will be worth it.
aw crap... I missed that. :-P
If I had points, I'd mod you up, sir.
That's a good point you make. I'm going to have to check Korten out. Thank you for the recommendation and your insight.
When I read the Manifesto, my takeaway was that Marx was really railing against Corporatism instead of Capitalism. My opinion of him was that he wasn't mad at Capitalism per say, he was mad at the social structures people created when they participated in corporate activities that demeaned and abused the workers. Why didn't he just say Corporatism instead of Capitalism? My guess is that he didn't know how else to describe the enemy he was writing about. Michael Crichton writes in The Great Train Robbery that the Victorians were the first 'modern' civilization and they were the first to grapple with all the current social issues we have right now with urbanization, capitalism, etc. The very concept of 'Corporatism' probably hadn't been invented yet and Marx had to work with the concepts at hand. When people work for a corporation, they tend to be subsumed within an amoral entity that reflects the sum total of its individual components. Thus being in the corporate environment tends to decrease our empathy for our fellow humans and in Marx's time, would lead to the abuses he saw.
That is a sight I would pay a lot of money to see: canine contraceptive salesmen attempting to make it to your front door past hordes of copiously fornicating man-eating Rottweilers... (you started it, I finished it, we're both going to Hell now)