Although it is upsetting, this guy has a good point. Economy isn't about money, it is about power. All of the wonderful solutions to economic issues mentioned above also result in reducing the ability of individuals to accumulate power through economic activity. While these ideas work really well for consumers and for society in general, especially the aspect of preventing the accumulation of power, they are not favoured by those who currently hold power. The reasons they are not favoured by those currently in possession of accumulated power should be fairly clear.
All is not lost however, there are many ways to take that power from those people, and the beneficiaries of these ideas are numerous enough that if they decided to do so in unison, it would be trivial. I am not going to make any predictions about whether that is going to happen or not, many people like to be pessimistic about the human spirit, but there is certainly a chance. The main thing is the solutions are there, the problem can be solved.
So, it's okay in somebody else's back yard, but not his
I don't understand this perspective. I live in Germany where there are quite a few wind farms, and I think they are great. I wish I had one in my backyard. Giant cool epic piece of technology generating power for me, and the government pays well for the land. Also, in a century or two they will be old fashioned and trendy like the windmills in Denmark, and property values will rise anywhere near them. It is win win. Give me a windmill!
Lets face it, if it were real we would have noticed all the rich and successful people who got that way being precog, there would be government departments staffed by precogs predicting plane crashes, stock market crashes, crimes, weather, asteroids, etc. It's like aliens, who only ever visit when no-one else is watching:)
Just to play devils advocate here, this is a flawed argument. If one had precognitive abilities the amassing of power and wealth would be redundant. Also fame is a burden not a reward. In addition more spiritual people (most claims of esp include some form of spirituality) are generally less interested in wealth, power and fame, as these are really just used my the majority to fill an emotional hole, and spirituality fills the same hole. If, hypothetically, it were possible to train your focus and awareness to such a degree that you started seeing the future, or other people's thoughts, or distant events, I don't think your next move is going to be something as mindless and unfullfilling as the stock market or working in a government bureaucracy. At best you might expect to see some of these people in the arts, although law enforcement is not out of the question.
I will thank trade for just about every transmission of useful information in the last 10000 years if you will acknowledge the huge distinction between what modern people refer to as business and what actually spread the knowledge. Trade != Business != Corporations. They are three separate things, with some commonalities.
While you are right that his comment is idiotic, it is not because missing links were found, it is because modern biology does not consider it necessary for any link to even exist and they are therefore not missing. Google 'punctuated equilibrium' for details. Of course the term missing link was devised by naysayers to evolution before most prehuman ancestors were categorised so it is not entirely incorrect to say the missing links were found.
The German public cares a lot about privacy and security on the net. Germany also has copyright lobbies. They are trying to sneak this in as the former. As soon as the truth about it hits the media it will be ridiculed and dropped. Germany has a parliamentary system and it works ok (in comparison to some other systems I could name), a bill is being planned usually means a member bill and some of them are retarded, but they never come anywhere near becoming law.
My first suggestion would be to go back over the work of those who have studied this problem in depth. Recommended reading: Maria Montessori, Ivan Illich, Rudolph Steiner (That last one is a bit fruity but there are still some interesting ideas in it).
Having done that myself to a limited degree, I can identify numerous areas where improvement is possible. Firstly I think the concept that you learn X at age Y should be ditched. If you don't know how to read at age 5Y you should still be able to use the standard education system, as most information in modern society is less prevalent than reading, and there should be nothing stopping me from learning high school geography for example at 29, and nothing forcing me to learn it at 16.
Which brings me to the second area, and in my mind the most important: No one should be forced to learn anything, learning should be self directed and interest based. This is where people often jump down my throat and say 'that would never work'. Ivan Illich has many strong arguments for this idea, but I usually go the route of disputing the objections. Axioms: people dont like learning, learning is necessary. Therfore: people must be forced to learn. The problem is axiom 1. People love learning, all animals do, it is called play. This is an artificial distinction in my opinion as play and education were basically synonymous for millions of years, until the education system was invented. If you take an average child before school age, they are generally full of question, always exploring and testing. Then you send them to school. Let's just say that it is not inconceivable that with a better education system people might enjoy learning. They might continue to learn throughout life and without the need for government funding or attendance legislation. The goal of learning should be to teach the value of learning. Another area that could be improved, and the primary one being discussed by other posts in this thread, is the relationship between teachers and education, in that it is clearly dysfunctional in the current system. All of us at one time or another have had teachers that made us worse at the subject they taught. This is not the teachers' fault alone, there are circumstances such as their own education, their working conditions, the attitudes of parents, students and other staff, personal life, health, etc. This is a failure of the system. The avenue I would pursue in rectifying this would be to look at reducing the role of teachers in the system. I am not suggesting their replacement by technology, whilst this seems attractive on the surface, it is severely limited and could even be counter-productive in many cases. I would look more in the direction of students teaching each other. Developing networks of people with similar interests and levels of understanding, and moving the role of teacher to a more passive one. Teachers should be there to oversee the learning, and make sure the correct teaching is being presented and that misconceptions/mistakes don't get caught up in the program. They should also be there as an expert, to demonstrate procedures and answer questions. The idea that the teacher has to regulate every step of the learning process is one of the reasons their role is currently not working. There are many more areas that need work and new ideas, but this is a post on slashdot, not a novel. Oh and Please don't go the addictive games route. If a game has to be addictive to get played then it has no value, if it had value it would not need to be addictive. Games as education is a great idea in general, just remove the word addictive from the sentence.
As someone living in one of those countries, I want innovation. If your country has no interest in participating that's fine, but don't presume to speak for everyone.
That's your answer? Ban collective bargaining rights and privatise education? The reasons why that is totally wrong are too numerous to mention. I realise that you are probably from the US where teachers not being fireable is a major problem, and where many schools perform poorly without any consequences. But even if you solved both of those problems, that only gets you on par with the standard school system functioning efficiently, like say in Germany. This is a system that was created over a century ago to create a society of workers to fuel the industrial revolution, which in turn was based on a system for the nobility to educate their children to rule over the peasants. The idea that new ideas are needed and better systems are possible is not restricted to the problems of your local elementary school. This is a worldwide issue and if your society is having problems getting the current system to work, you should be even more in favour of coming up with a new one.
Which two problems are those? Can you quote statistics, clinical studies or even a single example? Just in case you don't know LSD is totally non addictive, in fact it is the opposite of addictive as it is so strong it creates a respect in the user who then often stops taking it because they are cautious about the intensity. Anyone who habitually takes LSD does so because they love it, and could give up any time (barring psychological addiction, which can happen with anything including posting on news boards)
It works with most psychedelic drugs, and there are those without the downside you mentioned. Ibogaine is the current favourite among researchers. Also flashbacks from a single treatment are rarer than most drug side effects, and less severe than many. Given that substance addiction basically results in severe illness, death, harm to others, prison and insanity, I think a small risk of a minor flashback is a pretty acceptable side effect.
Yes this is old news, but I am glad it is finally getting reported, even if it is 50 years late. Alcholism does serious damage in society and the failure to use this technique is just another example of the horrific damage done by prohibition.
It should also be noted that this technique involved a certain type of therapy which is done while under the influence of the psychedelic, and part of the reason for the original suppression of these results was that anti-drug scientists who wanted to discredit the research did a study without the therapy. This basically amounted to shackling people on lsd to a bed alone and waiting. Naturally as this failed to work they claimed the other trial wasn't due to the drug at all. Since the 90's researchers have been working further along these lines using Ibogaine to get around prohibition and have discovered that it in fact works for virtually all addictive behaviour. There are clinics you an go to to get Ibogaine treatment for heroine and cocaine addiction.
tl:dr = LSD and other psychedelic drugs (with the correct therapy), whilst (relatively) harmless and non-addictive themselves, are the best cure so far found for all substance addiction. This has been known to the anti prohibition lobby for over 50 years but the results never make the mainstream media because they are controlled by those who profit from the war on drugs.
I have a friend who received a letter from lawyers claiming to represent the german copyright agency. He settled for over a thousand euros. It may have been one of those scam groups that just hope you don't challenge them. No way to tell now.
Why is smoking always used as THE cancer example? It seems like a large percentage of people believe that if everyone stopped smoking there would be no more cancer. I have always maintained that vehicle exhaust is also a major factor, and without even needing studies of this kind: every ingredient in cigarette smoke that is carcinogenic is also present in both petrol and diesel exhaust fumes. A car engine, at high revolutions, puts out about as much CO and CO2 per second as a smoker does in a month. Diesel fumed are filled with myriad other nasty things (don't even get me started on older engines with faulty catalytic converters). We are banning smoking in bars and in parks even in some cases, and any article or discussion about cancer inevitably contains the words '...like smoking'. When someone complains about me smoking in the street in the centre of a busy metropolis surrounded by thousands of vehicle belching out fumes I am forced to supress a strong urge to hit them.
Yes smoking is bad and causes cancer, but can we at least cycle through complaining about, demonising and restricting the activities of some of the other millions of things that cause cancer? That is, if our concern really is about cancer. The next person to cough at me in the street gets their head shoved in front of the exhaust pipe of a bus.
This was one of the main things i believe Manning is alleged to have leaked. It shows a reuters journalist and some children (and the usual bunch of Iraqi civilians) being gunned down by an attack helicopter for no reason.
Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked. Add in the fact that bio-diesel forms of fuel are up and coming, and we will have no shortage of fuel sources for the foreseeable future.
This is only partly true. It just softens the peak a lot. The theory still stands, what was debunked is the theory that peak oil means running out. We will not run out of oil, but the price will still rise, and it will get very high. This also means the wars will still happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Although it is upsetting, this guy has a good point. Economy isn't about money, it is about power. All of the wonderful solutions to economic issues mentioned above also result in reducing the ability of individuals to accumulate power through economic activity. While these ideas work really well for consumers and for society in general, especially the aspect of preventing the accumulation of power, they are not favoured by those who currently hold power. The reasons they are not favoured by those currently in possession of accumulated power should be fairly clear.
All is not lost however, there are many ways to take that power from those people, and the beneficiaries of these ideas are numerous enough that if they decided to do so in unison, it would be trivial. I am not going to make any predictions about whether that is going to happen or not, many people like to be pessimistic about the human spirit, but there is certainly a chance. The main thing is the solutions are there, the problem can be solved.
Unless you live in Iran, then the US government will bomb you if you try and 'have it all'.
So, it's okay in somebody else's back yard, but not his
I don't understand this perspective. I live in Germany where there are quite a few wind farms, and I think they are great. I wish I had one in my backyard. Giant cool epic piece of technology generating power for me, and the government pays well for the land. Also, in a century or two they will be old fashioned and trendy like the windmills in Denmark, and property values will rise anywhere near them. It is win win. Give me a windmill!
...it means half of our reps would have less than average IQ
Yes that would indeed be a significant improvement
GPS?? Underground? Cool, so my scuba GPS is just around the corner too then.
Actually yes. I think that could be made to work for positioning systems.
Lets face it, if it were real we would have noticed all the rich and successful people who got that way being precog, there would be government departments staffed by precogs predicting plane crashes, stock market crashes, crimes, weather, asteroids, etc. It's like aliens, who only ever visit when no-one else is watching :)
Just to play devils advocate here, this is a flawed argument. If one had precognitive abilities the amassing of power and wealth would be redundant. Also fame is a burden not a reward. In addition more spiritual people (most claims of esp include some form of spirituality) are generally less interested in wealth, power and fame, as these are really just used my the majority to fill an emotional hole, and spirituality fills the same hole. If, hypothetically, it were possible to train your focus and awareness to such a degree that you started seeing the future, or other people's thoughts, or distant events, I don't think your next move is going to be something as mindless and unfullfilling as the stock market or working in a government bureaucracy. At best you might expect to see some of these people in the arts, although law enforcement is not out of the question.
Not if you are a sun worshipper
the human mind is nothing more than a bunch of electrochemical reactions going on in a head, sorry.
You really believe that? Wow.
Your post is nothing more than a bunch of black pixels
"..international sanctions against Iran due to its alleged program to develop nuclear weapons."
FTFY
Perhaps there's some important evidence I missed
I will thank trade for just about every transmission of useful information in the last 10000 years if you will acknowledge the huge distinction between what modern people refer to as business and what actually spread the knowledge. Trade != Business != Corporations. They are three separate things, with some commonalities.
While you are right that his comment is idiotic, it is not because missing links were found, it is because modern biology does not consider it necessary for any link to even exist and they are therefore not missing. Google 'punctuated equilibrium' for details. Of course the term missing link was devised by naysayers to evolution before most prehuman ancestors were categorised so it is not entirely incorrect to say the missing links were found.
The German public cares a lot about privacy and security on the net. Germany also has copyright lobbies. They are trying to sneak this in as the former. As soon as the truth about it hits the media it will be ridiculed and dropped. Germany has a parliamentary system and it works ok (in comparison to some other systems I could name), a bill is being planned usually means a member bill and some of them are retarded, but they never come anywhere near becoming law.
My first suggestion would be to go back over the work of those who have studied this problem in depth. Recommended reading: Maria Montessori, Ivan Illich, Rudolph Steiner (That last one is a bit fruity but there are still some interesting ideas in it).
Having done that myself to a limited degree, I can identify numerous areas where improvement is possible. Firstly I think the concept that you learn X at age Y should be ditched. If you don't know how to read at age 5Y you should still be able to use the standard education system, as most information in modern society is less prevalent than reading, and there should be nothing stopping me from learning high school geography for example at 29, and nothing forcing me to learn it at 16. Which brings me to the second area, and in my mind the most important: No one should be forced to learn anything, learning should be self directed and interest based. This is where people often jump down my throat and say 'that would never work'. Ivan Illich has many strong arguments for this idea, but I usually go the route of disputing the objections. Axioms: people dont like learning, learning is necessary. Therfore: people must be forced to learn. The problem is axiom 1. People love learning, all animals do, it is called play. This is an artificial distinction in my opinion as play and education were basically synonymous for millions of years, until the education system was invented. If you take an average child before school age, they are generally full of question, always exploring and testing. Then you send them to school. Let's just say that it is not inconceivable that with a better education system people might enjoy learning. They might continue to learn throughout life and without the need for government funding or attendance legislation. The goal of learning should be to teach the value of learning. Another area that could be improved, and the primary one being discussed by other posts in this thread, is the relationship between teachers and education, in that it is clearly dysfunctional in the current system. All of us at one time or another have had teachers that made us worse at the subject they taught. This is not the teachers' fault alone, there are circumstances such as their own education, their working conditions, the attitudes of parents, students and other staff, personal life, health, etc. This is a failure of the system. The avenue I would pursue in rectifying this would be to look at reducing the role of teachers in the system. I am not suggesting their replacement by technology, whilst this seems attractive on the surface, it is severely limited and could even be counter-productive in many cases. I would look more in the direction of students teaching each other. Developing networks of people with similar interests and levels of understanding, and moving the role of teacher to a more passive one. Teachers should be there to oversee the learning, and make sure the correct teaching is being presented and that misconceptions/mistakes don't get caught up in the program. They should also be there as an expert, to demonstrate procedures and answer questions. The idea that the teacher has to regulate every step of the learning process is one of the reasons their role is currently not working. There are many more areas that need work and new ideas, but this is a post on slashdot, not a novel. Oh and Please don't go the addictive games route. If a game has to be addictive to get played then it has no value, if it had value it would not need to be addictive. Games as education is a great idea in general, just remove the word addictive from the sentence.
As someone living in one of those countries, I want innovation. If your country has no interest in participating that's fine, but don't presume to speak for everyone.
That's your answer? Ban collective bargaining rights and privatise education? The reasons why that is totally wrong are too numerous to mention. I realise that you are probably from the US where teachers not being fireable is a major problem, and where many schools perform poorly without any consequences. But even if you solved both of those problems, that only gets you on par with the standard school system functioning efficiently, like say in Germany. This is a system that was created over a century ago to create a society of workers to fuel the industrial revolution, which in turn was based on a system for the nobility to educate their children to rule over the peasants. The idea that new ideas are needed and better systems are possible is not restricted to the problems of your local elementary school. This is a worldwide issue and if your society is having problems getting the current system to work, you should be even more in favour of coming up with a new one.
Which two problems are those? Can you quote statistics, clinical studies or even a single example? Just in case you don't know LSD is totally non addictive, in fact it is the opposite of addictive as it is so strong it creates a respect in the user who then often stops taking it because they are cautious about the intensity. Anyone who habitually takes LSD does so because they love it, and could give up any time (barring psychological addiction, which can happen with anything including posting on news boards)
It works with most psychedelic drugs, and there are those without the downside you mentioned. Ibogaine is the current favourite among researchers. Also flashbacks from a single treatment are rarer than most drug side effects, and less severe than many. Given that substance addiction basically results in severe illness, death, harm to others, prison and insanity, I think a small risk of a minor flashback is a pretty acceptable side effect.
Yes this is old news, but I am glad it is finally getting reported, even if it is 50 years late. Alcholism does serious damage in society and the failure to use this technique is just another example of the horrific damage done by prohibition.
It should also be noted that this technique involved a certain type of therapy which is done while under the influence of the psychedelic, and part of the reason for the original suppression of these results was that anti-drug scientists who wanted to discredit the research did a study without the therapy. This basically amounted to shackling people on lsd to a bed alone and waiting. Naturally as this failed to work they claimed the other trial wasn't due to the drug at all. Since the 90's researchers have been working further along these lines using Ibogaine to get around prohibition and have discovered that it in fact works for virtually all addictive behaviour. There are clinics you an go to to get Ibogaine treatment for heroine and cocaine addiction.
tl:dr = LSD and other psychedelic drugs (with the correct therapy), whilst (relatively) harmless and non-addictive themselves, are the best cure so far found for all substance addiction. This has been known to the anti prohibition lobby for over 50 years but the results never make the mainstream media because they are controlled by those who profit from the war on drugs.
I have a friend who received a letter from lawyers claiming to represent the german copyright agency. He settled for over a thousand euros. It may have been one of those scam groups that just hope you don't challenge them. No way to tell now.
Why is smoking always used as THE cancer example? It seems like a large percentage of people believe that if everyone stopped smoking there would be no more cancer. I have always maintained that vehicle exhaust is also a major factor, and without even needing studies of this kind: every ingredient in cigarette smoke that is carcinogenic is also present in both petrol and diesel exhaust fumes. A car engine, at high revolutions, puts out about as much CO and CO2 per second as a smoker does in a month. Diesel fumed are filled with myriad other nasty things (don't even get me started on older engines with faulty catalytic converters). We are banning smoking in bars and in parks even in some cases, and any article or discussion about cancer inevitably contains the words '...like smoking'. When someone complains about me smoking in the street in the centre of a busy metropolis surrounded by thousands of vehicle belching out fumes I am forced to supress a strong urge to hit them.
Yes smoking is bad and causes cancer, but can we at least cycle through complaining about, demonising and restricting the activities of some of the other millions of things that cause cancer? That is, if our concern really is about cancer. The next person to cough at me in the street gets their head shoved in front of the exhaust pipe of a bus.
This was one of the main things i believe Manning is alleged to have leaked. It shows a reuters journalist and some children (and the usual bunch of Iraqi civilians) being gunned down by an attack helicopter for no reason.
Crop rotation has been around for hundreds of years
Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked. Add in the fact that bio-diesel forms of fuel are up and coming, and we will have no shortage of fuel sources for the foreseeable future.
This is only partly true. It just softens the peak a lot. The theory still stands, what was debunked is the theory that peak oil means running out. We will not run out of oil, but the price will still rise, and it will get very high. This also means the wars will still happen.
It's not racism.
It's indifference and self-centeredness.
Don't forget imperialism
No
That's a pity, I think there's still at least one there that we could do without