Lots of cultures including extremely violent ones amounted to nothing. It hardly seems to be a factor, except to say that we can tick over quite nicely without privation. The Minoans in particular were very sophisticated for their time, However, I've often wondered if the hunter culture depicted in Predator, a highly advanced society that still conformed to apparently barbaric adulthood rituals was a nod in the direction of cultures deciding to embody the "no pain no gain" mantra. Introducing an artifical scarcity if you will.
Nonsense. People often become nonviolent in societies that one, have adequate amounts of food, two, have adequate amounts of water, and three perceive themselves as isolated from attack. For example, the Tahitian men, the Minoan men on Crete, and the Central Malaysian Semai were nonviolent during the period in their history when all three of these conditions prevailed.
In a mere couple of thousand years we've managed to move from "indoor plumbing lolwut" for most of the planet to space flight and fast cheap intercontinental travel. I'd say we're doing pretty well.
As for the great filter, one need only look at the number of mass extinctions that have occurred naturally. Even should the conditions for life as we know it be relatively common (as in life capable of interstellar exploration, not just subsisting under fifty kilometers of ice), the odds of intelligent life arising might be a tiny fraction of that. There could be an enormous array of variables in play, maybe local galactic conditions have only recently matured sufficiently to allow life to exist. Maybe we could simply be freak occurrences. Maybe nobody has managed to figure out FTL travel and they'll get round to us in a few millennia. Maybe nobody's got listening posts within the couple of light years it takes for our radio noise to peter out.
Am I saying the Drake Equation is almost certainly full of shit? Why yes I am.
Yeah plenty of competition in the social media space is important but I can't get much use out of G+. It comes across as a clumsy answer to a question nobody was really asking.
Chilling thought really, late developing civilisations struggling to develop an interstellar, even intergalactic presence, pitting their collective intelligences against the growing cold and dark and the slipknot of gravity. I wonder would we ever be able to excavate black holes to find their last transmissions.
Yeah I can confirm they're for real, although they've been on a hiatus for a while by the looks of things. I can't imagine funding for such a project would be easy to come by nor scale models! Do drop them a line though, by what they're saying that really looks like the key to space.
Meh I don't think there is an IT bubble. A bubble usually implies rapid inflation of prices without any reason behind them, like the dot bomb was based on companies with no income and not really great ideas. Google has plenty of income.
Solar microwave power satellites would provide all the clean energy you could wish for, but need a lot more orbital infrastructure before they can be deployed.
As for "destroying the land, rivers, climates and even the oceans", all of these remain merrily undestroyed. If you mean reducing the biodiversity around us you may have a point, but efforts are being made to preserve and protect as much as possible. Also, before we descend into a spiral of remorse a couple of points - protection of the biosphere and spacefaring are not mutually exclusive goals, in fact they are more complementary than anything else, and good old mother nature has been handing out mass extinctions like candy throughout the history of the planet without any help from people at all, so there's that.
It is pretty neat though, kinda reminds me of that scene in Aliens 4 where the general zaps a gelatin cube with a laser to turn it into a shot of what looked like whiskey.
Tech workers don't have a bad rep, outside of the minds of looney ideologues like Adria Richards. Construction workers have a bad rep. Tech workers have a reputation for being shy retiring introverts.
I ran a post apocalyptic RPG (CP2020 system) once where civilisation was destroyed by a network of satellites called "dark stars", these were basically stocked up with several score dedicated EMP devices which would be released at intervals determined by a complicated biblical code. The group had to find a way to take down the satellites, or at lest some of them, before the next pulse reset civilisation to near zero, which involved cracking the code (ie beating up a bunch of zealots plus sleuthery and research). Awesome game.
Just to mention two of your three objections to my comment are in fact objections to ideologies (and are hence the same objection), so we're in agreement there, and third I never said greed was the best of all possible motivations. However, if I may quote the great jester of our time, Terry Pratchett:
"A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys.
"We do not murder," he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane.
"We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage, or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the clink of evil's scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.
"No, we do it for the money.
And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for a great deal of money.
There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretense.
Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment."
Hmm, the problem I find is that when notes start getting too copious it can be difficult or almost impossible to find a particular bit that you were looking for, especially stretching over years. If pen and paper notebooks came with an automated search function I'd be happy!
I'm surprised we haven't already started to see reasonably large scale sten gun manufacture by criminal groups - easy to make and powerful. Especially in places like the UK where it's much more difficult to get firearms.
I'm not sure why there's all this hand wringing over corporate influence on the political process, I'd much prefer corporations having a say than some of the more powerful ideological interests that influence politicians.
I say this because corporations are basically greedy.
Greed doesn't care about your skin colour, your gender, your nationality, greed isn't interested in reframing the social dialogue in order to deconstruct gender roles that are constantly evolving anyway, greed won't murder you or drive you out of a job because you think the wrong way or hold the wrong opinion. All greed cares about is its own self interests. I trust greed, I know what it is and what it wants, and I can reasonably reliably predict what it's going to do next. Greed is in fact the great equaliser that is the holy grail of most progressive politics.
I mean putative corporate dystopias can hardly hold a candle to some of the actual real life ideological dystopias which have existed.
And so I don't get worried about corporations influencing governments. As long as they're kept at one anothers' throats (capitalism) things are working more or less the way they should.
Thick and rich as soup in a pub on the shores of Galway bay my friend, the only way Guinness was ever meant to be served. I wouldn't touch the tinned stuff with someone else's.
Ah, you appear to be confusing "people interested in high tech" with "fanatical zealots of a dualistic ideology". One of these is actually progressive, the other is not.
I'd be very happy with an open source equivalent to Publisher 98 to be honest. I know there are alternatives but they don't have the useability and functionality of good old Publisher.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of cultures including extremely violent ones amounted to nothing. It hardly seems to be a factor, except to say that we can tick over quite nicely without privation. The Minoans in particular were very sophisticated for their time, However, I've often wondered if the hunter culture depicted in Predator, a highly advanced society that still conformed to apparently barbaric adulthood rituals was a nod in the direction of cultures deciding to embody the "no pain no gain" mantra. Introducing an artifical scarcity if you will.
Something to contemplate.
Our behaviour can not cope without scarcity.
Nonsense. People often become nonviolent in societies that one, have adequate amounts of food, two, have adequate amounts of water, and three perceive themselves as isolated from attack. For example, the Tahitian men, the Minoan men on Crete, and the Central Malaysian Semai were nonviolent during the period in their history when all three of these conditions prevailed.
We deserve death.
Sure. You first.
In a mere couple of thousand years we've managed to move from "indoor plumbing lolwut" for most of the planet to space flight and fast cheap intercontinental travel. I'd say we're doing pretty well.
As for the great filter, one need only look at the number of mass extinctions that have occurred naturally. Even should the conditions for life as we know it be relatively common (as in life capable of interstellar exploration, not just subsisting under fifty kilometers of ice), the odds of intelligent life arising might be a tiny fraction of that. There could be an enormous array of variables in play, maybe local galactic conditions have only recently matured sufficiently to allow life to exist. Maybe we could simply be freak occurrences. Maybe nobody has managed to figure out FTL travel and they'll get round to us in a few millennia. Maybe nobody's got listening posts within the couple of light years it takes for our radio noise to peter out.
Am I saying the Drake Equation is almost certainly full of shit? Why yes I am.
Yeah plenty of competition in the social media space is important but I can't get much use out of G+. It comes across as a clumsy answer to a question nobody was really asking.
I sometimes need to print business documents out for legal purposes.
Then fax them.
Chilling thought really, late developing civilisations struggling to develop an interstellar, even intergalactic presence, pitting their collective intelligences against the growing cold and dark and the slipknot of gravity. I wonder would we ever be able to excavate black holes to find their last transmissions.
Yeah I can confirm they're for real, although they've been on a hiatus for a while by the looks of things. I can't imagine funding for such a project would be easy to come by nor scale models! Do drop them a line though, by what they're saying that really looks like the key to space.
Meh I don't think there is an IT bubble. A bubble usually implies rapid inflation of prices without any reason behind them, like the dot bomb was based on companies with no income and not really great ideas. Google has plenty of income.
Uncomplicated maybe but I don't know if I'd call fishing around in other peoples toilets and hauling heavy boilers easy...
Solar microwave power satellites would provide all the clean energy you could wish for, but need a lot more orbital infrastructure before they can be deployed.
As for "destroying the land, rivers, climates and even the oceans", all of these remain merrily undestroyed. If you mean reducing the biodiversity around us you may have a point, but efforts are being made to preserve and protect as much as possible. Also, before we descend into a spiral of remorse a couple of points - protection of the biosphere and spacefaring are not mutually exclusive goals, in fact they are more complementary than anything else, and good old mother nature has been handing out mass extinctions like candy throughout the history of the planet without any help from people at all, so there's that.
http://www.maglaunch.com/
It is pretty neat though, kinda reminds me of that scene in Aliens 4 where the general zaps a gelatin cube with a laser to turn it into a shot of what looked like whiskey.
Tech workers don't have a bad rep, outside of the minds of looney ideologues like Adria Richards. Construction workers have a bad rep. Tech workers have a reputation for being shy retiring introverts.
I ran a post apocalyptic RPG (CP2020 system) once where civilisation was destroyed by a network of satellites called "dark stars", these were basically stocked up with several score dedicated EMP devices which would be released at intervals determined by a complicated biblical code. The group had to find a way to take down the satellites, or at lest some of them, before the next pulse reset civilisation to near zero, which involved cracking the code (ie beating up a bunch of zealots plus sleuthery and research). Awesome game.
Just to mention two of your three objections to my comment are in fact objections to ideologies (and are hence the same objection), so we're in agreement there, and third I never said greed was the best of all possible motivations. However, if I may quote the great jester of our time, Terry Pratchett:
"A thumb pressed against two fingers, and the lean figure of Dr Cruces, head tutor, looming over the startled boys.
"We do not murder," he said. It was a soft voice; the doctor never raised his voice, but he had a way of giving it the pitch and spin that could make it be heard through a hurricane.
"We do not execute. We do not massacre. We never, you may be very certain, we never torture. We have no truck with crimes of passion or hatred or pointless gain. We do not do it for a delight in inhumation, or to feed some secret inner need, or for petty advantage, or for some cause or belief; I tell you, gentlemen, that all these reasons are in the highest degree suspect. Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the clink of evil's scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language.
"No, we do it for the money.
And, because we above all must know the value of a human life, we do it for a great deal of money.
There can be few cleaner motives, so shorn of all pretense.
Nil mortifi, sine lucre. Remember. No killing without payment."
He paused for a moment.
"And always give a receipt," he added. "
Hmm, the problem I find is that when notes start getting too copious it can be difficult or almost impossible to find a particular bit that you were looking for, especially stretching over years. If pen and paper notebooks came with an automated search function I'd be happy!
I'm surprised we haven't already started to see reasonably large scale sten gun manufacture by criminal groups - easy to make and powerful. Especially in places like the UK where it's much more difficult to get firearms.
I'm not sure why there's all this hand wringing over corporate influence on the political process, I'd much prefer corporations having a say than some of the more powerful ideological interests that influence politicians.
I say this because corporations are basically greedy.
Greed doesn't care about your skin colour, your gender, your nationality, greed isn't interested in reframing the social dialogue in order to deconstruct gender roles that are constantly evolving anyway, greed won't murder you or drive you out of a job because you think the wrong way or hold the wrong opinion. All greed cares about is its own self interests. I trust greed, I know what it is and what it wants, and I can reasonably reliably predict what it's going to do next. Greed is in fact the great equaliser that is the holy grail of most progressive politics.
I mean putative corporate dystopias can hardly hold a candle to some of the actual real life ideological dystopias which have existed.
And so I don't get worried about corporations influencing governments. As long as they're kept at one anothers' throats (capitalism) things are working more or less the way they should.
I'm starting to think the increasingly shitty summaries are some form of cry for help.
Of course I haven't actually read the summary so I wouldn't know.
Thick and rich as soup in a pub on the shores of Galway bay my friend, the only way Guinness was ever meant to be served. I wouldn't touch the tinned stuff with someone else's.
*contemplatively sips Guinness*
Oh they remember a lot more than that about him... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ah, you appear to be confusing "people interested in high tech" with "fanatical zealots of a dualistic ideology". One of these is actually progressive, the other is not.
I'd be very happy with an open source equivalent to Publisher 98 to be honest. I know there are alternatives but they don't have the useability and functionality of good old Publisher.