I can't speak for the US but if I extrapolate a trend based on German politicians' decisions in fields that I well versed in I have to come to the conclusion that they are utterly clueless. It wouldn't be as bad as it is if they'd be aware of that and would actually do some research......but listening to some lobbyist or listening to some secretary of state who's lobbying for his "day job" or doing what the uninformed public is demanding is probably easier.
What I'd like to see is if there's any research being done about the effect that all these technological and medical advancements have on humans as a species.
Let's assume mankind will make it another 100 years and fix all social and environmental issues of our time, the next "big thing" will be having to counter the effects introduced by our humanitarian efforts.
Natural selection among humans has completely stopped. In general, this is certainly a good thing.
But it does have a huge downside. Due to our medicine, mankind is becoming more and more prone to illness. Bad eyes, bad ears, bad immune systems... they're no factor anymore and are propagating.
Social nets make it possible that the, let's say, "not so smart" people are breeding exponentially faster than the "smarter" ones. While intelligence isn't solely a "gene-thing" it seems to be suggested that the "potential" is limited by genes.
Technology empowers the less intelligent, the less skillful, the less creative to be just as successful as the rest of the population.
Now, again. I don't want it to appear that I'm against medicine, social behavior or technology... but due to those three evolution seems to be currently working against us and it's admittedly a very scary thought to me.
This whole issue seems to be a big taboo. Most likely due to the terrible and misguided ways that were employed in our past to solve this.
I'd be interested to see if there's research being done on these issues and to get to know if there's anything that can be done to address them.
Did you actually read what you yourself linked to?
The 1976 report does not predict global cooling. It says "It might get colder, it might get warmer. We don't know yet what the human impact might be other than there seems to be one."
On 2nd read, not sure if it became clear and can't seem to edit the previous post, so here an addendum:
If your boss googles "your" name, finds out that there is a porn star with that name and concludes that since you have the same name you therefore must be a porn star... then the underlying problem is not someone using that name, but your boss being an idiot.
If your boyfriend googles "your" name, finds out that there is a porn star with that name and concludes that since you have the same name you therefore must be a porn star... then the underlying problem is not someone using that name, but your boyfriend not knowing you at all and having some severe trust issues.
That's also my answer to the question: Keep a low profile with "real" information on the net and making sure individuals/companies you converse with follow data privacy (basic human right in Europe! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_privacy) is a given at any time.
If you want to fight those scams, educate the people and feed them some common sense.
Wouldn't setting up a web-presence to "tell the truth" be counter-effective since it would only enable "name-scammers" to actually fill those accounts with (more) accurate information?
In any case, the really disturbing thing here isn't that some scammers created an account using "your" name. Even if it's a rare one, it's unlikely that there's just one of "you". Even if there actually is just one, with ~7 billion people on this planet you should by default assume that there are more (mankind needs NAMEv6 ^.^). But this brings me to my point:
The disturbing thing is that - [intellectually] in the year 2008 people in general still seem to have trouble understanding the nature of the internet and are still taking everything there at face value and - [socially] that according to the OP even (potential) friends believe something solely because of some name they read somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately not just ordinary people.
I can't speak for the US but if I extrapolate a trend based on German politicians' decisions in fields that I well versed in I have to come to the conclusion that they are utterly clueless. It wouldn't be as bad as it is if they'd be aware of that and would actually do some research... ...but listening to some lobbyist or listening to some secretary of state who's lobbying for his "day job" or doing what the uninformed public is demanding is probably easier.
What I'd like to see is if there's any research being done about the effect that all these technological and medical advancements have on humans as a species.
Let's assume mankind will make it another 100 years and fix all social and environmental issues of our time, the next "big thing" will be having to counter the effects introduced by our humanitarian efforts.
Natural selection among humans has completely stopped. In general, this is certainly a good thing.
But it does have a huge downside. Due to our medicine, mankind is becoming more and more prone to illness. Bad eyes, bad ears, bad immune systems... they're no factor anymore and are propagating.
Social nets make it possible that the, let's say, "not so smart" people are breeding exponentially faster than the "smarter" ones. While intelligence isn't solely a "gene-thing" it seems to be suggested that the "potential" is limited by genes.
Technology empowers the less intelligent, the less skillful, the less creative to be just as successful as the rest of the population.
Now, again. I don't want it to appear that I'm against medicine, social behavior or technology... but due to those three evolution seems to be currently working against us and it's admittedly a very scary thought to me.
This whole issue seems to be a big taboo. Most likely due to the terrible and misguided ways that were employed in our past to solve this.
I'd be interested to see if there's research being done on these issues and to get to know if there's anything that can be done to address them.
Did you actually read what you yourself linked to?
The 1976 report does not predict global cooling. It says "It might get colder, it might get warmer. We don't know yet what the human impact might be other than there seems to be one."
So in essence:
1976: We don't know yet.
Today: We're fairly certain it's global warming.
On 2nd read, not sure if it became clear and can't seem to edit the previous post, so here an addendum:
If your boss googles "your" name, finds out that there is a porn star with that name and concludes that since you have the same name you therefore must be a porn star ... then the underlying problem is not someone using that name, but your boss being an idiot.
If your boyfriend googles "your" name, finds out that there is a porn star with that name and concludes that since you have the same name you therefore must be a porn star ... then the underlying problem is not someone using that name, but your boyfriend not knowing you at all and having some severe trust issues.
That's also my answer to the question: Keep a low profile with "real" information on the net and making sure individuals/companies you converse with follow data privacy (basic human right in Europe! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_privacy) is a given at any time.
If you want to fight those scams, educate the people and feed them some common sense.
Wouldn't setting up a web-presence to "tell the truth" be counter-effective since it would only enable "name-scammers" to actually fill those accounts with (more) accurate information?
In any case, the really disturbing thing here isn't that some scammers created an account using "your" name. Even if it's a rare one, it's unlikely that there's just one of "you". Even if there actually is just one, with ~7 billion people on this planet you should by default assume that there are more (mankind needs NAMEv6 ^.^). But this brings me to my point:
The disturbing thing is that
- [intellectually] in the year 2008 people in general still seem to have trouble understanding the nature of the internet and are still taking everything there at face value and
- [socially] that according to the OP even (potential) friends believe something solely because of some name they read somewhere.