Sorry, there is always another statistics, for example that there is constantly growing break-up between "the elite" - rich aristocracy of the modern world - and "everybody else". Okey, we are living better now than decades/centuries ago - that's no surprise, it's called evolution. But what use to me my better life if in the same time I am no more than statistical noise dot in the life of some CEO or politician? We are no more than cheap commodity of life - even us, skilled technicians, programmers, engineers.
And no, it's not always been like that - look at the history of US, of Australia, even some European countries. Hell, even in Ancient Greece and in the Roman Republic common people had more voice than they do now in some First-World countries. In Russia (before Ivan the Terrible) there was the city of Novgorod, ruled by pretty modern-looking parliament. And even in the darker times, under harsh and oppressive regimes, every intelligent tyrant and dictator very well knew to fear their populace. Nowadays in the First-World, or in the Third-World with their "brown people" the picture is mostly the same - chase the money, fuck everything and everyone else. Who chases and fucks better than everyone else is praised as most successful member of society. So, the "masses" are living better, but political system is degrading into oppressive stupidity, and not some "fascism", "socialism", or any other -ism. And that is depressing.
But, of course, it is only my own point of view. If you are one of the people who feel directly benefiting from the corporations and their ways - well, good for you. You are the successful product of modern society, congratulations! I, personally, don't feel that way (and no, that's no hysteria) - my own happiness comes from other sources, not directly connected to current social rat races.
Nope, sorry, incorrect conclusion. First off - I am not an utilitarian in the common sense of this word. They tend to be not very happy people, and I consider myself pretty happy with my life. And, more importantly, I don't think that everything could be measured - at least in some absolute, quantitative scale. About your thought experiments:
1. It is always a dead end to presume that some enforced "method of making everyone more happy / lawful / less aggressive" will make some long-term success. Look - all world religions, Inquisition, French Revolution and their guillotine, communists and their Red Terror - all of them were trying to make the world a better place for all humans, disregarding some simple truths about the nature of the man. So even if there was some way to enforce these "happy pills", in the long term it would create so much dissent among the ones who would not take them (or develop an antidote), that all system would crumble. You'd have to enforce those pill on the enforcers, making them weaker than the dissenters, or make them an exclusion, among with yourself and your "inner circle", creating grounds for horrible crimes and abuses of the systems. Human nature can't stand this for long - history shows us that time over time, you only have to watch closely.
2. Again, considering human nature, slavery is "incompatible" with high productivity, and again history teaches us that. No matter how well fed and cared is your slave (or oppressed and terrorized), he would never be as motivated and productive as a free man. Look at recent history, USA and USSR. Even though many scientists in USSR were living in closed cities, their level of life was much higher than one of an ordinary soviet citizen. They were living in perfect prisons, they had all the resources of USSR at their disposal, and yet in the end they kept lagging behind their Western colleagues - especially in electronics - because they had no freedom, and no way of taking any side-steps from their dictated research plan.
So no, in both cases a real utilitarian would see the long-term ineffectiveness of these measures, and would dismiss them on sight. They were tried - and failed - for many times, and that is quite the "measurable result", don't you think?
Oh yes, lift out of poverty all that yacht-building firms, golf clubs, nice restaurants and boutiques. Oh, yes, there is also all that poor CEO's, their friends and families, vast army of starving lawyers, Congressmen and Senators, struggling to feed their children, all that brave and absolutely altruistic police forces, political party activists, who don't even own their last shirt to give to the poor and so on. Yes, think of all that people, who live only by the goodwill of the honest and caring Corporations...
Oooh... so much strong words, so little sense. "Ad hominem" - check, "logical fallacy" - check, "strawman" - check... slashdot-buzzword combo of the day! If only there was some message along with all that emotions...
Spot on. Most of the hard and uneasy questions of morale and philosophy can be boiled down to simple "how does it work" and "how should it work". Yes, there is more than one way to skin the cat (rule the country or implement new features in the code), but there are obviously less buggy, more buggy and non-working ones. And experience in IT gives many of us good sense of which is which, even if we are not absolute experts in the field.
Well, while Faramir character had been changed by director's will, it can be argued that he became even more interesting and deep person. It's really simple to put two brothers on two sides of good-bad (or light-dark) scale. It's far more interesting to watch two really similar characters go through really similar inner turmoils and achieving drastically different results. "Noble human" role is filled with Aragorn, while Boromir and Faramir are representing true free will of humans in Middle-Earth.
Honestly amused - why have you found Warrior Within not as good as SoT or TT? I personally consider it the best one in the trilogy. Did Dahaka runs turn you off?
Oh, please, use correct historical examples, not just pulled out of... somewhere. Quoting Wiki: "In 1986, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had over 19 million members or approximately 10% of the USSR's adult population." So belonging to the Party was like joining your local golf club - except that club had spanned over whole country. You couldn't get any high-level job if you weren't a Party member, sure, but even paranoid Soviet government couldn't view 90% of it's own people as "enemies of the state". It was more like today's 99% vs 1%, except that in USSR the line was much more blurred.
And, by the way, to find and put to trial "enemy of the state" from within the Party had always been much more entertaining form of Soviet "bread and circuses", than local trials of some small-time blue-collar non-Party member. Main battle for the power - using KGB methods, fake trials and so on - had always fought within the Party, and not between Party- and non-Party-members.
Well... no, actually. Stasi would have used FB data sometimes, but their main tactic was:
a) to find out real dissenters, and not some hot air blowers, and that can be reliably done only with live contact - infiltration or simple report from anonymous concerned citizen;
and b) to create aura of terror and respect for the powers-to-be, which, again, required live contact - guns, uniforms and intimidating questions don't work quite right over the Internet. And that's not even saying anything about deep cold basements, where the real "work with people" had occurred.
Simply put, all FB data is not such a great source of terror and obedience as the "willing confession of the enemy of the State" right before his execution. It helps, sure, but it never was and unlikely ever will be the main instrument of oppressive police force.
Ah yes, if only he could have outright said something like "Do not kill" and his friends in social networks could reliably quote him on that. Oh, wait...
On the other hand, considering WinME and Vista, it's not really hard to predict that the next MS OS will be... somewhat disappointing. So why mention it more than once?
Point is, with advancement of remote scanning techniques your iris could be just as easily picked from distance as any RFID - no need for physical contact as with the physical key, for example. So, unless you are planning on wearing some advanced sunglasses all the time, your iris essentially becomes "something you have", nothing more.
Still, China IS changing after Tiananmen - they are just doing it very-very slowly, with a couple of decades per step, just like they used to. Maoism was somewhat unnatural considering the speed of changes throughout the country, it was similar only to changes of First China Emperor Shi Huan Di, who ended the war of Seven Kingdoms, uniting them into one Celestial Empire. And Chinese Government knows it's istory very well - they don't want anything even remotely similar to "mass uprisings" or full-scale civil war. So at least they are doing something to address people's concerns.
Better example would be Russia, where everything is quite in the opposite - our Government does everything to stomp over common people and piss them off by all means possible. That's because our leaders, unlike China's, are mostly unintelligent thugs or short-sighted unprincipled crooks and thieves. They are somewhat like your most notorious CEO's, except on an even lower moral level. And if we had small arms in the hands of common people... well, several years from now we could face a new 1917 - many people in US doesn't know that our Civil War was almost as devastating as WWII, and in some aspects even more frightening. So for now the majority of our population (and I among them) considers armed conflict with Government a really bad idea, but every day we more and more feel the need to do something - thus raising political awareness among our friends and relatives. I think that for now it is the best solution for the US too - we are just in the deeper shit-hole and sinking much faster, so we have to be more active about it.
To be fair, WoW still has a very thought-out and detailed universe (absurd and eclectic to some extent, but not too much), with great characters, interesting plots and great "theatrical experiences" in key moments - especially starting from WotLK. Of course it's not some "deep" game like Heavy Rain, but still, if you care to read and listen (and notice all of the small details) you would find it far from mindless grind-factory it is sometimes portrayed as.
And again, there are a lot of books and various fan-art about Warcraft universe - not as much as DnD or even Warhammer, but still. If WoW had no soul, it wouldn't attract so much artists. Hell, this game even has it's own rock-band (ETC 90L) - not so many titles can say that.
Simple solution - import several thousands "engineers" from India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, etc. Then watch all these old and proud geeks join army of hobos and lunatics, while counting profits and pushing new, even more restrictive laws. You think people with money would hesistate for even a minute?
Simple answer - import engineers from India, Pakistan or Eastern Europe. Cheaper, dirtier, but no "firm moral points" - it's all just about the wage. And all "hardcore geek elite" guys will just join the army of blubbering homeless people - even Stallman will look good around them. Noone ever won big battle without weapons - and modern day engineers don't have such a big arsenal as they like to think. Sadly.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, there is always another statistics, for example that there is constantly growing break-up between "the elite" - rich aristocracy of the modern world - and "everybody else". Okey, we are living better now than decades/centuries ago - that's no surprise, it's called evolution. But what use to me my better life if in the same time I am no more than statistical noise dot in the life of some CEO or politician? We are no more than cheap commodity of life - even us, skilled technicians, programmers, engineers.
And no, it's not always been like that - look at the history of US, of Australia, even some European countries. Hell, even in Ancient Greece and in the Roman Republic common people had more voice than they do now in some First-World countries. In Russia (before Ivan the Terrible) there was the city of Novgorod, ruled by pretty modern-looking parliament. And even in the darker times, under harsh and oppressive regimes, every intelligent tyrant and dictator very well knew to fear their populace. Nowadays in the First-World, or in the Third-World with their "brown people" the picture is mostly the same - chase the money, fuck everything and everyone else. Who chases and fucks better than everyone else is praised as most successful member of society. So, the "masses" are living better, but political system is degrading into oppressive stupidity, and not some "fascism", "socialism", or any other -ism. And that is depressing.
But, of course, it is only my own point of view. If you are one of the people who feel directly benefiting from the corporations and their ways - well, good for you. You are the successful product of modern society, congratulations! I, personally, don't feel that way (and no, that's no hysteria) - my own happiness comes from other sources, not directly connected to current social rat races.
Nope, sorry, incorrect conclusion. First off - I am not an utilitarian in the common sense of this word. They tend to be not very happy people, and I consider myself pretty happy with my life. And, more importantly, I don't think that everything could be measured - at least in some absolute, quantitative scale. About your thought experiments:
1. It is always a dead end to presume that some enforced "method of making everyone more happy / lawful / less aggressive" will make some long-term success. Look - all world religions, Inquisition, French Revolution and their guillotine, communists and their Red Terror - all of them were trying to make the world a better place for all humans, disregarding some simple truths about the nature of the man. So even if there was some way to enforce these "happy pills", in the long term it would create so much dissent among the ones who would not take them (or develop an antidote), that all system would crumble. You'd have to enforce those pill on the enforcers, making them weaker than the dissenters, or make them an exclusion, among with yourself and your "inner circle", creating grounds for horrible crimes and abuses of the systems. Human nature can't stand this for long - history shows us that time over time, you only have to watch closely.
2. Again, considering human nature, slavery is "incompatible" with high productivity, and again history teaches us that. No matter how well fed and cared is your slave (or oppressed and terrorized), he would never be as motivated and productive as a free man. Look at recent history, USA and USSR. Even though many scientists in USSR were living in closed cities, their level of life was much higher than one of an ordinary soviet citizen. They were living in perfect prisons, they had all the resources of USSR at their disposal, and yet in the end they kept lagging behind their Western colleagues - especially in electronics - because they had no freedom, and no way of taking any side-steps from their dictated research plan.
So no, in both cases a real utilitarian would see the long-term ineffectiveness of these measures, and would dismiss them on sight. They were tried - and failed - for many times, and that is quite the "measurable result", don't you think?
Ah yes, if only Manna was written by someone like Alfred Bester or even Philip K. Dick... But still it has some uncomfortably valid points.
Yep, only read it a few days ago myself. Somewhat naive, but somewhat uncomfortably possible view on our future.
Oh yes, lift out of poverty all that yacht-building firms, golf clubs, nice restaurants and boutiques. Oh, yes, there is also all that poor CEO's, their friends and families, vast army of starving lawyers, Congressmen and Senators, struggling to feed their children, all that brave and absolutely altruistic police forces, political party activists, who don't even own their last shirt to give to the poor and so on. Yes, think of all that people, who live only by the goodwill of the honest and caring Corporations...
Sorry, I'm beginning to feel sick.
Oooh... so much strong words, so little sense. "Ad hominem" - check, "logical fallacy" - check, "strawman" - check... slashdot-buzzword combo of the day! If only there was some message along with all that emotions...
Spot on. Most of the hard and uneasy questions of morale and philosophy can be boiled down to simple "how does it work" and "how should it work". Yes, there is more than one way to skin the cat (rule the country or implement new features in the code), but there are obviously less buggy, more buggy and non-working ones. And experience in IT gives many of us good sense of which is which, even if we are not absolute experts in the field.
Well, while Faramir character had been changed by director's will, it can be argued that he became even more interesting and deep person. It's really simple to put two brothers on two sides of good-bad (or light-dark) scale. It's far more interesting to watch two really similar characters go through really similar inner turmoils and achieving drastically different results. "Noble human" role is filled with Aragorn, while Boromir and Faramir are representing true free will of humans in Middle-Earth.
Again.. this ignores the fact that no one can find this rule in the TOS.
I am sure it is in the new TOS as of right now. Pray that Twitter don't alter the TOS any further.
Out of mod points, pity.
Honestly amused - why have you found Warrior Within not as good as SoT or TT? I personally consider it the best one in the trilogy. Did Dahaka runs turn you off?
This. Pity I just ran out of mod points.
Oh, please, use correct historical examples, not just pulled out of... somewhere. Quoting Wiki: "In 1986, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had over 19 million members or approximately 10% of the USSR's adult population." So belonging to the Party was like joining your local golf club - except that club had spanned over whole country. You couldn't get any high-level job if you weren't a Party member, sure, but even paranoid Soviet government couldn't view 90% of it's own people as "enemies of the state". It was more like today's 99% vs 1%, except that in USSR the line was much more blurred.
And, by the way, to find and put to trial "enemy of the state" from within the Party had always been much more entertaining form of Soviet "bread and circuses", than local trials of some small-time blue-collar non-Party member. Main battle for the power - using KGB methods, fake trials and so on - had always fought within the Party, and not between Party- and non-Party-members.
Well... no, actually. Stasi would have used FB data sometimes, but their main tactic was:
a) to find out real dissenters, and not some hot air blowers, and that can be reliably done only with live contact - infiltration or simple report from anonymous concerned citizen;
and b) to create aura of terror and respect for the powers-to-be, which, again, required live contact - guns, uniforms and intimidating questions don't work quite right over the Internet. And that's not even saying anything about deep cold basements, where the real "work with people" had occurred.
Simply put, all FB data is not such a great source of terror and obedience as the "willing confession of the enemy of the State" right before his execution. It helps, sure, but it never was and unlikely ever will be the main instrument of oppressive police force.
Ah yes, if only he could have outright said something like "Do not kill" and his friends in social networks could reliably quote him on that. Oh, wait...
Nice haiku!
On the other hand, considering WinME and Vista, it's not really hard to predict that the next MS OS will be... somewhat disappointing. So why mention it more than once?
I wonder, will someday this default signature change to something more honest, like
"Sent from the phone that author of this message is temporarily using with permission from benevolent and mighty Apple Co.
P.S. We own the copyright on the message too."
Point is, with advancement of remote scanning techniques your iris could be just as easily picked from distance as any RFID - no need for physical contact as with the physical key, for example. So, unless you are planning on wearing some advanced sunglasses all the time, your iris essentially becomes "something you have", nothing more.
If the entire species is going to die, I'd be pretty enthusiastic about anything that might help.
Now that's some first-grade misanthropy here, cheers and welcome to the club! Oh, wait...
Still, China IS changing after Tiananmen - they are just doing it very-very slowly, with a couple of decades per step, just like they used to. Maoism was somewhat unnatural considering the speed of changes throughout the country, it was similar only to changes of First China Emperor Shi Huan Di, who ended the war of Seven Kingdoms, uniting them into one Celestial Empire. And Chinese Government knows it's istory very well - they don't want anything even remotely similar to "mass uprisings" or full-scale civil war. So at least they are doing something to address people's concerns.
Better example would be Russia, where everything is quite in the opposite - our Government does everything to stomp over common people and piss them off by all means possible. That's because our leaders, unlike China's, are mostly unintelligent thugs or short-sighted unprincipled crooks and thieves. They are somewhat like your most notorious CEO's, except on an even lower moral level. And if we had small arms in the hands of common people... well, several years from now we could face a new 1917 - many people in US doesn't know that our Civil War was almost as devastating as WWII, and in some aspects even more frightening. So for now the majority of our population (and I among them) considers armed conflict with Government a really bad idea, but every day we more and more feel the need to do something - thus raising political awareness among our friends and relatives. I think that for now it is the best solution for the US too - we are just in the deeper shit-hole and sinking much faster, so we have to be more active about it.
To be fair, WoW still has a very thought-out and detailed universe (absurd and eclectic to some extent, but not too much), with great characters, interesting plots and great "theatrical experiences" in key moments - especially starting from WotLK. Of course it's not some "deep" game like Heavy Rain, but still, if you care to read and listen (and notice all of the small details) you would find it far from mindless grind-factory it is sometimes portrayed as.
And again, there are a lot of books and various fan-art about Warcraft universe - not as much as DnD or even Warhammer, but still. If WoW had no soul, it wouldn't attract so much artists. Hell, this game even has it's own rock-band (ETC 90L) - not so many titles can say that.
Why, here in Russia you can predict it with 146% accuracy!
... to filter out such words as "marijuana" and "bing"...
While I do agree that Bing is a shitty search engine, calling to filter it out like an illegal drug is a bit of overkill to my taste.
Simple solution - import several thousands "engineers" from India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, etc. Then watch all these old and proud geeks join army of hobos and lunatics, while counting profits and pushing new, even more restrictive laws. You think people with money would hesistate for even a minute?
Simple answer - import engineers from India, Pakistan or Eastern Europe. Cheaper, dirtier, but no "firm moral points" - it's all just about the wage. And all "hardcore geek elite" guys will just join the army of blubbering homeless people - even Stallman will look good around them. Noone ever won big battle without weapons - and modern day engineers don't have such a big arsenal as they like to think. Sadly.