If you were a teacher and someone was spreading around animations of you being shot, would you want to teach the kid?
Yeah. I would.
Because it's totally normal behavior.
It's just kids.
In the olden days, I'd bet they just drew the teacher they didn't like, being hung, or something like that.
Kids just want to be free. This is a no-brainer.
Y'all are just getting so damn paranoid, and feeling like you have to have a universal system to attach to every damn situation, that you're choking the life out of everybody.
I fear that y'all will have nanotechnology in your hands. What'll you do with it? You'll force people to not think thoughts.
Today we're talking about stoping what people can write or draw. With nanotech, we're going to do the whole cybernetic hookup; I just know it. And then, it's clear: We're going to limit what people can imagine or think.
It'll start with monitoring people, to make sure that they aren't scanning buildings for security holes: "Looking at them funny." Or maybe it'll be monitoring mens eyes, to make sure that they don't look at a 17 year old for too wrong, or in the wrong way.
And then it'll move into our heads. There will be known patterns of imagining that have led to innocent deaths before: The man who's angry with his boss. (Or will the term change to "Zerg OverMind?") He plays the murder of his boss, over and over, in his mind.
In a healthy man in the present era, he will realize, "No, that's nonsense, but I must break out of this relationship," and seek another employer, or start a business, or something.
In this future we are eagerly looking forwards, too, though; In this future, such an imagination is criminal.
And what will be the result?
Men won't imagine such things. Indeed, it will eventually be rendered impossible to do so.
Scary road, folks. Scary road. Not one I'm willing to go down.
But you know, when I was 13, (which was pre-Columbine,) this sort of stuff was funny. Except only for kids.
Or was it?
My mom thought "Death Camp," a series of stories one of my friends wrote, in 7th grade, was pretty damn funny. She read each one, cover-to-cover. They were the story of a team of kids, who were imprisoned daily in a middle school, forced to eat terrible food, with mutant teachers trying to take over the kids minds. The kids amassed a ton of weapons (we were all playing Wasteland at the time, you see,) blew away the teachers, (who were shooting back, and conducting vile experiments on other students,) helped everyone escape, and then......took off in an SR-71 that happened to be parked on the 1/4-mile track?
At any rate: We had wonderful times coming up with the stories. We'd joke about them at lunch, and imagine how awesome it would be to finally get free of all that schooling. We'd egg on our star writer (my friend, who I shall not name, since he's actually around, writing on the Internet,) and he'd write out another episode in the story. It was 15 episodes total, I think, each around 4-6 pages long, typewritten out on computer.
We loved the stories. My mom thought they were cute.
And I really think there's something of value to the quest for freedom.
Now, come Junior year, Senior year in high school, we got the idea one lunch: "Oh! Let's re-read those old stories! Death Camp! Yah!" But, our friend told us, "No. I burned them."
"You burned them?!" "Yeah. I burned them." "But why?!"
"Because they were crap!"
And it's true. They were crap. But they were our crap, and we loved them. But, our friend just burned stuff after a year, generally; He was that sort of writer. "It's not good enough." (torch!)
Most of us are now well paid geeks. There's a stellar composer in our bunch. The author, despite graduating Pepperdine, and a number of other honors (including graduating Valadictorian from our high school) isn't doing so well; He's struggling with his English major, trying to figure out what to do with it.
But basically, we're all doing well, and we're all good people, and we're all contributing.
Now. Let me ask you. In the climate we see exhibited here today in this room (Slashdot.) In this room, of all places,... Now, I ask you to consider where we would have been, if the world had been post-Columbine.
I can tell you where we'd be: Nowhere. It's quite plausible we wouldn't have graduated from High School. We might be busted for conspiracy to commit murder. Perhaps we'd be looked over for GATE. Our healthy anti-authoritarianism would likely become genuine fear, and have become an intense, focused, directed anti-authoritarianism.
Frankly, I don't think I'd be able to type this today.
Now, I'm feeling done, but I realize something's left to be addressed. I wish it were clear and obvious, and didn't need to be said. Unfortunately, apparently, it does: "No." "No, we never intended to actually kill our teachers." It was just a story. It was just fantasy.
It was a fantasy that we needed, in some ways. We knew that there were ideological battles taking place in the school, we knew that teachers were throwing ideas at us. We knew that we were being graded on whether or not we conformed with ideas that were not necessarily true. We knew that things were complicated. We did not have the language to describe the kinds of things we were intuited. But our brains knew that there was a conflict taking place, and so when our brains reified what we were seeing, it did it in the language of violence: A struggle to get out. A struggle to be free.
We could not wax poetic about "cognitive dissonance," we could not talk about "ontologies," or "paradox." But we felt it, we knew it, and so we wrote it.
May God bless today's kids: They're in a far deeper prison than we were.
Congress thought the successful experiment was kind of neat, but shut it down, basically saying: "Nobody's really asking for this. People seem to be pretty excited about driving, actually." (paraphrasing.)
Businesses have wanted AHS for a very long time- for many decades, they've been working on the technology, and trying to get it sorted out. (Think: highway trucking.)
What's this have to do with Cell Phones?
People are starting to value their time more. In particular, they're starting to view that car trip as useable time. Whether people really do have access to that time or not, people are taking that time, by force, with their cell phone. And the result is: crashes, accidents.
I have had the very fortunate, (and rare,) benefit of being able to talk with two of the super-wealthy, (of which I am totally not one,) at long lengths, to my hearts content.
I will tell you what they taught me: "Value" is a very interesting concept, worth tracking. These people regularly trade in things that are utterly untrackable. Tax loopholes are the rule, not the exception. You get sufficient money $X, and you get to pay the people who study the tax rules full time, and let you know what maneuvers you can and cannot make. The tax system is constrained by laws. And everybody with power in this system is happy with the way things are. They are fine with the loopholes. They will not send these execs to jail, for figuring out how to exploit them. They do not want to send them to jail, for figuring out how to exploit the loopholes.
Yes, they can, will, and do deduct anything and everything that they can, however they can.
Here's another way of viewing it:
You and I, normal people, we get paid a salary. We are taxed on that salary. We live and breath and die by the presence or lack of presence of this money.
Some of us establish what we call a "bank account." The "smart ones" among us put money into this bank account. We save it up, we invest it, whatever.
That's how you and I live our lives, and that's how, what, 99% of people (?) live. This is "the program."
The super-wealthy do things very differently. I cannot tell you how they do it; I myself am not super-wealthy.
But the appearance to me, as an outsider, is like this:
The wealthy construct these magical AI satellite artifacts that they call "Corporations." These corporations circle around them, doing their AI magic, and make sure that whatever the constructor needs materializes before them.
"Salary" is not an issue. "Bank account" is not an issue. "Taxes" are not an issue. They don't think in those terms. Their "savings" programs are totally different than you and I's. I don't know how it works.
Some of these people have tried to communicate to me how these things work for them, and I simply do not understand their language.
As a programmer, I keep turning it into my language.
They stack up corporations like we stack up processes in a computer; They even have "shelf" corporations, which are corporations that they just hold around in case the need arises. They can say, "That's a great idea, I love it, and I've got the corporation already made for it; In fact, the last 3 weeks of work that we've been talking about this have actually been part of this shelved corporation." This is sort of like how we keep data structures around, rather than freeing them, because it's too much effort to malloc and initialize them again, later. This is a very "beginning" level idea for these guys. I was somewhat agitating my benefactor, by asking him about such trivialties; Listening to him talk was like: Being a 6 year old who thought there was something about Calculus that he could learn from someone, who also wanted to be able to teach said 6 year old Calculus -- vast distance at work.
(We talked a lot about the concept of "value;" He had some things he wanted me to figure out. I can't say that I understood more than 10% of what he was trying to help me to "catch.")
Watch that one dollar. These guys trade differently than you and I. They're in a totally different world.
I hate to reduce things to an argument over definitions, but this stuff seems a little fruity to me. I think a simpler definition of maturity is a willingness to accept responsibility for oneself and for others. By that definition, then we definitely do see a lot of immature, i.e.: irresponsible, behavior among adults - probably because irresponsibility no longer gets you eaten by lions and tigers and bears the way it did for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
It may be better to write out your own ideas first, before seeing the list, because the list is arranged in such a way, and with an eye to certain sort of details- if you're categorizing maturity on fundamentally different axes, that's not something you want to miss.
There are probably a zillion ways of describing maturity; I'm interested in discovering different maps of the space.
Funny you should bring up clothing; It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Particularly: "How can I explain Second Life dress habits? How can I explain my own personal desire to dress how I feel?"
Note that I dress geek conservative, which is to say: "Backpack." It consists of cheap shoes, t-shirt, blue jeans, and a backpack. The t-shirt is upgradable to a shirt known as "nicer," or "nice." I do not dress goth, or otherwise stylized. This is to say: I'm hardly fashionable.
The traditional reasons given for dressing up include: narcissism, to fit peer stereotype, manipulation.
But I've been questioning that lately; I don't think it truely fits what I see, in these goth communities, and so on. I think it can be those things, but I don't think that's truely it. In fact, where I do see those things, it's more in the "traditional" or "conservative" spheres; not the youth scenes. (Or, I suppose I should say, youthful scenes.)
I'm thinking about putting together an essay: "The Moral Virtue of Narcissism."
The basic idea, I'm developing in my head, is this: Dress-up has roots in communication. It's a way of communicating: "This is what I'm thinking, this is how I feel, this is what I aspire to, this is what I value, this is what I aim for, this is what's going on for me." It can be connected with the virtues of sincerity, and appreciation, and beauty.
If communication is valuable, then why not dress-up?
"Cats," says Pamela. "He was hoping to trade their uploads to the Pentagon as a new smart bomb guidance system in lieu of income tax payments. Something about remapping enemy targets to look like mice or birds or something before feeding it to their sensorium. The old kitten and laser pointer trick."
Manfred stares at her, hard. "That's not very nice. Uploaded cats are a bad idea."
I think that women already think that they are outsiders. So, I don't think we're changing anything by offering integration work. If women are working in the field, but suffer the problems you are describing (feeling inferior, feeling the succeeded just because they were women, and so on,) then that is a step up. Once women have found a role in the system, and women are steadily going through the system, then we can deal with those problems. "Okay, you feel inferior. Why is that?" "Well, X did blah blah, and I did only blah blah, but I got more credit." "Okay, so then, what will it take to improve this situation? Did you feel that you were slacking off?" (And so on.)
I don't think this is very hamfisted, frankly speaking. I think that this is rather gentle: "We're going to reserve X% seats for women." Now, if X is something like, say, 50%, you have a problem. That would be hamfisted. No, you want to start with small, achievable, realistic goals.
Can we make this attractive enough, so that we have 7% women, instead of, say, 4%, or whatever.
You are right: There will be some people who will resist. "93% are men, and I didn't get in. It's not because I suck, it's because I wasn't a girl."
If it were (again,) to use the ham-fisted scenario, of 50% women, all of a sudden, by force, then we have problems. If a great achiever wasn't able to get in, and there are massive hoards of women streaming in who haven't a clue (which would have to be the case, to meet quota,) I agree: That would be a problem.
But, again, I don't think that the ham-fisted way is the correct way to do this. There are much fairer ways to do it.
Intersting point; I agree....your worth as a human being is directly guaged by how much money you make.
It's not total: We do value interesting achievments; I don't know that Mark Twain or Richard Feynmann were very wealthy. But those are in the realm of the very famous. Not much less than "very famouse," and we're back to: money is how you are going to be valued.
In this light, we actually punish people who do not make much money, but work to help the environment, or to help other people, or whatever. "Interesting, but ultimately futile: If that person made more money, they could do so much more." Which is also true.
It may well be that people in general are right: The people to be admired are those who get a lot of money, and then do good things with it.
In short, some young people think that science is a good career for the same reason that they think being a musician or actor is a good career: "I can't decide if I want to be a scientist like James Watson, a musician like Britney Spears, or an actor like Harrison Ford."
Philip's argument makes good sense to me.
The article was noting that teaching Science isn't very rewarding, either:
"What happens is that the system tends to beat them down," Padilla said. "Working conditions are poor, it's a difficult job, and the pay isn't that great."
So, I would say that, on the face of it, Science just doesn't pay, and a lot of us are really interested in getting paid.
What does pay? Perhaps research, (which Vernor Vinge called "Search & Analysis," and noted was at "the heart of the economy,") perhaps technology, perhaps being a system administrator, or being a mechanic, or something like that. Perhaps being a business person or a manager. I wouldn't really know; I've not asked the question "How do I make more money?" deeply enough.
But answering the question "How does the natural world work?" doesn't seem to be where the money is at. "How do I make this better?" seems to be only a little bit closer.
I would prefer that we asked the question: "How do we make the world a more satisfying place for all people in it, and ensure that nature grows healthier and healthier?" Unfortunately, the pay isn't so good. Perhaps the questions necessary child is: "How do we make this pay?"
People certify themselves through their communities, and through the general public.
You trust that they are who they say they are, because you trust the communities, or because you trust the general public.
I can certify for you that I am the person who's website is at http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/. Would you like me to do so, as a point of demonstration?
If people start abusing "the organization" (and I'm really not sure what organization you are talking about,) that simply means that you need better research methods. People abuse the banks through forging signatures. But we still use signatures.
There are several very promising technologies, in the works, that will largely automate many of these checks. They will, of course, be attacked and comprimised. But nobody every claimed to have a flawless, perfect, security system. There is always substrate, there is always context, there is always an attackable outside.
Would it make any difference if you could see the person's last 5 years of activity online, as well as place of residence and information about where they work, can see all the forums they post too, know that you can hound them on said forums, and have given them a lengthy legal contract to sign?
I think you are basically right, (that this is discriminatory, that regulators attention will be caught,) but I think there's nothing that can be done about it.
It's like the requirement that alternative currencies be pegged to the US dollar: "Good luck." Just imagine World of Warcraft struggling to peg Gold to the dollar. And every other virtual world, every other virtual currency. (Is World of Warcraft Gold taxable income? Are Lindens?)
Relevance(*) -- The games are talking about the world I live in, and the things that are happening in it. So in that sense, they're relevant to me.
Insight -- I've learned a lot from these games that have kept me up at night, thinking. Mei Ling rocks my world.
Authenticity -- The games strike me as authentic, somehow.
Humor --...and they're fun.:)
I don't know about Splinter Cell, because I've never played it. Is it relevant, does it have interesting things to think about, does it address the player, is it fun? If so, you've got a Splinter Cell fan waiting to happen here.
Speaking as someone who is committing money to a community bank with roughly $2,000 in it, I think the thing is that people trust their own culture, and are more willing to accept risks and lend money within their own culture. People tell each other things amongst themselves, that they do not necessarily tell the banks.
If you lose, it was "for the cause," anyways. If you win, you've aided the cause.
The bank might not even be willing to talk with you.
I know a girl, she's going to college. She needs $50,000 for 4 years of loans. The banks aren't talking with her, and her parents are opposed to her going to college out-of-state. (Read: The parents want to keep her near, to better control her.)
If my culture were just a wee bit more organized, I'm sure we'd have her in her preferred college. (UCSD, I believe.) As it is, we only have $2,000 amongst ourselves.
If only she were going to college in 4 years...
You may also want to check out the concept of Internet Bonding. Basically, if you can look at all the things a person does online, says online, follow the ups & downs in their life, and so on: You can do interesting things with that. You can better evaluate risk. So, if you're operating within your culture, things get a lot easier on you.
In the case of this girl, she has an easy time explaining to us who she is, where she's coming from, and so on: You can see her last few years of work online. "Trustworthy!" we say, "Get that woman her CS degree!"
Re:Tech for Sustained Human Space Colonization
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Back to the Moon
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· Score: 1
Actually, I think discarding bodies entirely is even better, but nobody will go for that today; We may have to wait 40 years before a society that can defend itself decides that that is not a controversial way to go, and has the technology to do it.
Personally, I think we should go for that as quickly as possible. NASA should study cybernetics, not how to make spaceships with showers and treadmills in them.
Slashdot Mirror
Did he broadcast? The article kept saying that it was on his personal computer.
If you were a teacher and someone was spreading around animations of you being shot, would you want to teach the kid?
Yeah. I would.
Because it's totally normal behavior.
It's just kids.
In the olden days, I'd bet they just drew the teacher they didn't like, being hung, or something like that.
Kids just want to be free. This is a no-brainer.
Y'all are just getting so damn paranoid, and feeling like you have to have a universal system to attach to every damn situation, that you're choking the life out of everybody.
I fear that y'all will have nanotechnology in your hands. What'll you do with it? You'll force people to not think thoughts.
Today we're talking about stoping what people can write or draw. With nanotech, we're going to do the whole cybernetic hookup; I just know it. And then, it's clear: We're going to limit what people can imagine or think.
It'll start with monitoring people, to make sure that they aren't scanning buildings for security holes: "Looking at them funny." Or maybe it'll be monitoring mens eyes, to make sure that they don't look at a 17 year old for too wrong, or in the wrong way.
And then it'll move into our heads. There will be known patterns of imagining that have led to innocent deaths before: The man who's angry with his boss. (Or will the term change to "Zerg OverMind?") He plays the murder of his boss, over and over, in his mind.
In a healthy man in the present era, he will realize, "No, that's nonsense, but I must break out of this relationship," and seek another employer, or start a business, or something.
In this future we are eagerly looking forwards, too, though; In this future, such an imagination is criminal.
And what will be the result?
Men won't imagine such things. Indeed, it will eventually be rendered impossible to do so.
Scary road, folks. Scary road. Not one I'm willing to go down.
I'll take a statistically regular (increasing population) Columbine every 5 years, and a continuously decreasing percentage of violence every year, over the world without crime, but also without imagination.
I don't want to be your cyborg.
So, the question remains: Did you ever say "I'm going to kill that SOB!" ...even though you weren't going to?
I honestly don't remember, but my memory tells me: A lot of students said that sort of thing. At least back in my days.
Would we be better off suspending them all? It's not clear to me that the answer is yes.
Frankly, I'm shocked at the Slashdot response.
I agree. This stuff isn't funny.
...took off in an SR-71 that happened to be parked on the 1/4-mile track?
... Now, I ask you to consider where we would have been, if the world had been post-Columbine.
But you know, when I was 13, (which was pre-Columbine,) this sort of stuff was funny. Except only for kids.
Or was it?
My mom thought "Death Camp," a series of stories one of my friends wrote, in 7th grade, was pretty damn funny. She read each one, cover-to-cover. They were the story of a team of kids, who were imprisoned daily in a middle school, forced to eat terrible food, with mutant teachers trying to take over the kids minds. The kids amassed a ton of weapons (we were all playing Wasteland at the time, you see,) blew away the teachers, (who were shooting back, and conducting vile experiments on other students,) helped everyone escape, and then...
At any rate: We had wonderful times coming up with the stories. We'd joke about them at lunch, and imagine how awesome it would be to finally get free of all that schooling. We'd egg on our star writer (my friend, who I shall not name, since he's actually around, writing on the Internet,) and he'd write out another episode in the story. It was 15 episodes total, I think, each around 4-6 pages long, typewritten out on computer.
We loved the stories. My mom thought they were cute.
And I really think there's something of value to the quest for freedom.
Now, come Junior year, Senior year in high school, we got the idea one lunch: "Oh! Let's re-read those old stories! Death Camp! Yah!" But, our friend told us, "No. I burned them."
"You burned them?!" "Yeah. I burned them." "But why?!"
"Because they were crap!"
And it's true. They were crap. But they were our crap, and we loved them. But, our friend just burned stuff after a year, generally; He was that sort of writer. "It's not good enough." (torch!)
Most of us are now well paid geeks. There's a stellar composer in our bunch. The author, despite graduating Pepperdine, and a number of other honors (including graduating Valadictorian from our high school) isn't doing so well; He's struggling with his English major, trying to figure out what to do with it.
But basically, we're all doing well, and we're all good people, and we're all contributing.
Now. Let me ask you. In the climate we see exhibited here today in this room (Slashdot.) In this room, of all places,
I can tell you where we'd be: Nowhere. It's quite plausible we wouldn't have graduated from High School. We might be busted for conspiracy to commit murder. Perhaps we'd be looked over for GATE. Our healthy anti-authoritarianism would likely become genuine fear, and have become an intense, focused, directed anti-authoritarianism.
Frankly, I don't think I'd be able to type this today.
Now, I'm feeling done, but I realize something's left to be addressed. I wish it were clear and obvious, and didn't need to be said. Unfortunately, apparently, it does: "No." "No, we never intended to actually kill our teachers." It was just a story. It was just fantasy.
It was a fantasy that we needed, in some ways. We knew that there were ideological battles taking place in the school, we knew that teachers were throwing ideas at us. We knew that we were being graded on whether or not we conformed with ideas that were not necessarily true. We knew that things were complicated. We did not have the language to describe the kinds of things we were intuited. But our brains knew that there was a conflict taking place, and so when our brains reified what we were seeing, it did it in the language of violence: A struggle to get out. A struggle to be free.
We could not wax poetic about "cognitive dissonance," we could not talk about "ontologies," or "paradox." But we felt it, we knew it, and so we wrote it.
May God bless today's kids: They're in a far deeper prison than we were.
There was a successful AHS demonstration I believe in the 1930's, and most recently a successful demonstration in 1998. (another report)
Congress thought the successful experiment was kind of neat, but shut it down, basically saying: "Nobody's really asking for this. People seem to be pretty excited about driving, actually." (paraphrasing.)
Businesses have wanted AHS for a very long time- for many decades, they've been working on the technology, and trying to get it sorted out. (Think: highway trucking.)
What's this have to do with Cell Phones?
People are starting to value their time more. In particular, they're starting to view that car trip as useable time. Whether people really do have access to that time or not, people are taking that time, by force, with their cell phone. And the result is: crashes, accidents.
So this may be a data point towards AHS.
This idea is totally not new.
The only problem is, last time we simulated it, humanity ended up enslaved by robots.
I have had the very fortunate, (and rare,) benefit of being able to talk with two of the super-wealthy, (of which I am totally not one,) at long lengths, to my hearts content.
I will tell you what they taught me: "Value" is a very interesting concept, worth tracking. These people regularly trade in things that are utterly untrackable. Tax loopholes are the rule, not the exception. You get sufficient money $X, and you get to pay the people who study the tax rules full time, and let you know what maneuvers you can and cannot make. The tax system is constrained by laws. And everybody with power in this system is happy with the way things are. They are fine with the loopholes. They will not send these execs to jail, for figuring out how to exploit them. They do not want to send them to jail, for figuring out how to exploit the loopholes.
Yes, they can, will, and do deduct anything and everything that they can, however they can.
Here's another way of viewing it:
You and I, normal people, we get paid a salary. We are taxed on that salary. We live and breath and die by the presence or lack of presence of this money.
Some of us establish what we call a "bank account." The "smart ones" among us put money into this bank account. We save it up, we invest it, whatever.
That's how you and I live our lives, and that's how, what, 99% of people (?) live. This is "the program."
The super-wealthy do things very differently. I cannot tell you how they do it; I myself am not super-wealthy.
But the appearance to me, as an outsider, is like this:
The wealthy construct these magical AI satellite artifacts that they call "Corporations." These corporations circle around them, doing their AI magic, and make sure that whatever the constructor needs materializes before them.
"Salary" is not an issue. "Bank account" is not an issue. "Taxes" are not an issue. They don't think in those terms. Their "savings" programs are totally different than you and I's. I don't know how it works.
Some of these people have tried to communicate to me how these things work for them, and I simply do not understand their language.
As a programmer, I keep turning it into my language.
They stack up corporations like we stack up processes in a computer; They even have "shelf" corporations, which are corporations that they just hold around in case the need arises. They can say, "That's a great idea, I love it, and I've got the corporation already made for it; In fact, the last 3 weeks of work that we've been talking about this have actually been part of this shelved corporation." This is sort of like how we keep data structures around, rather than freeing them, because it's too much effort to malloc and initialize them again, later. This is a very "beginning" level idea for these guys. I was somewhat agitating my benefactor, by asking him about such trivialties; Listening to him talk was like: Being a 6 year old who thought there was something about Calculus that he could learn from someone, who also wanted to be able to teach said 6 year old Calculus -- vast distance at work.
(We talked a lot about the concept of "value;" He had some things he wanted me to figure out. I can't say that I understood more than 10% of what he was trying to help me to "catch.")
Watch that one dollar. These guys trade differently than you and I. They're in a totally different world.
I hate to reduce things to an argument over definitions, but this stuff seems a little fruity to me. I think a simpler definition of maturity is a willingness to accept responsibility for oneself and for others. By that definition, then we definitely do see a lot of immature, i.e.: irresponsible, behavior among adults - probably because irresponsibility no longer gets you eaten by lions and tigers and bears the way it did for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Here's something interesting:
Figure for yourself which of these descriptions of maturity most matches your own ideas..!
It may be better to write out your own ideas first, before seeing the list, because the list is arranged in such a way, and with an eye to certain sort of details- if you're categorizing maturity on fundamentally different axes, that's not something you want to miss.
There are probably a zillion ways of describing maturity; I'm interested in discovering different maps of the space.
Fascinating!
:)
I appreciate your analysis of the presently conventional understanding of maturity.
Hey, not to pull you into something, but you might want to check out: LiteracyOfHumanNature, (a page of a couple of us yacking on CommunityWiki,) and these moving answers to the question: "What is a mature human being?"
I resist statements of just what is and is not a mature human being; But I find value in these stories.
Funny you should bring up clothing; It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Particularly: "How can I explain Second Life dress habits? How can I explain my own personal desire to dress how I feel?"
Note that I dress geek conservative, which is to say: "Backpack." It consists of cheap shoes, t-shirt, blue jeans, and a backpack. The t-shirt is upgradable to a shirt known as "nicer," or "nice." I do not dress goth, or otherwise stylized. This is to say: I'm hardly fashionable.
The traditional reasons given for dressing up include: narcissism, to fit peer stereotype, manipulation.
But I've been questioning that lately; I don't think it truely fits what I see, in these goth communities, and so on. I think it can be those things, but I don't think that's truely it. In fact, where I do see those things, it's more in the "traditional" or "conservative" spheres; not the youth scenes. (Or, I suppose I should say, youthful scenes.)
I'm thinking about putting together an essay: "The Moral Virtue of Narcissism."
The basic idea, I'm developing in my head, is this: Dress-up has roots in communication. It's a way of communicating: "This is what I'm thinking, this is how I feel, this is what I aspire to, this is what I value, this is what I aim for, this is what's going on for me." It can be connected with the virtues of sincerity, and appreciation, and beauty.
If communication is valuable, then why not dress-up?
-- Accelerando
Hm; I interpret the situation very differently.
I think that women already think that they are outsiders. So, I don't think we're changing anything by offering integration work. If women are working in the field, but suffer the problems you are describing (feeling inferior, feeling the succeeded just because they were women, and so on,) then that is a step up. Once women have found a role in the system, and women are steadily going through the system, then we can deal with those problems. "Okay, you feel inferior. Why is that?" "Well, X did blah blah, and I did only blah blah, but I got more credit." "Okay, so then, what will it take to improve this situation? Did you feel that you were slacking off?" (And so on.)
I don't think this is very hamfisted, frankly speaking. I think that this is rather gentle: "We're going to reserve X% seats for women." Now, if X is something like, say, 50%, you have a problem. That would be hamfisted. No, you want to start with small, achievable, realistic goals.
Can we make this attractive enough, so that we have 7% women, instead of, say, 4%, or whatever.
You are right: There will be some people who will resist. "93% are men, and I didn't get in. It's not because I suck, it's because I wasn't a girl."
If it were (again,) to use the ham-fisted scenario, of 50% women, all of a sudden, by force, then we have problems. If a great achiever wasn't able to get in, and there are massive hoards of women streaming in who haven't a clue (which would have to be the case, to meet quota,) I agree: That would be a problem.
But, again, I don't think that the ham-fisted way is the correct way to do this. There are much fairer ways to do it.
What it clearly isn't, is supremacist.
Racism and sexism and all these other discriminations are perfectly acceptable, and even commendable in many cases, such as this one.
The problems these kinds of integration efforts solve are:
Ha!
My best friend from college; He just completed his PhD in Physics.
He's now (literally) joining a monastary.
So, there's our answer.
If you work to be a CEO instead of a Scientist, you can moot your entire life's savings in a single week's pay.
No wonder science is doing so poorly: Nobody cares, and it's basically irrelevant.
If you had scientific aspirations, you'd be far better served to become a CEO, and then trivially sponser the research of 50 scientists.
Becoming a CEO is a better way to do science, than studying science in school.
Or am I wrong? Is there a fault in this logic?
Intersting point; I agree. ...your worth as a human being is directly guaged by how much money you make.
It's not total: We do value interesting achievments; I don't know that Mark Twain or Richard Feynmann were very wealthy. But those are in the realm of the very famous. Not much less than "very famouse," and we're back to: money is how you are going to be valued.
In this light, we actually punish people who do not make much money, but work to help the environment, or to help other people, or whatever. "Interesting, but ultimately futile: If that person made more money, they could do so much more." Which is also true.
It may well be that people in general are right: The people to be admired are those who get a lot of money, and then do good things with it.
People certify themselves through their communities, and through the general public.
You trust that they are who they say they are, because you trust the communities, or because you trust the general public.
I can certify for you that I am the person who's website is at http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/. Would you like me to do so, as a point of demonstration?
If people start abusing "the organization" (and I'm really not sure what organization you are talking about,) that simply means that you need better research methods. People abuse the banks through forging signatures. But we still use signatures.
There are several very promising technologies, in the works, that will largely automate many of these checks. They will, of course, be attacked and comprimised. But nobody every claimed to have a flawless, perfect, security system. There is always substrate, there is always context, there is always an attackable outside.
Hm,..
Would it make any difference if you could see the person's last 5 years of activity online, as well as place of residence and information about where they work, can see all the forums they post too, know that you can hound them on said forums, and have given them a lengthy legal contract to sign?
Would that make a difference?
I think you are basically right, (that this is discriminatory, that regulators attention will be caught,) but I think there's nothing that can be done about it.
... where will the regulators go, from there?
It's like the requirement that alternative currencies be pegged to the US dollar: "Good luck." Just imagine World of Warcraft struggling to peg Gold to the dollar. And every other virtual world, every other virtual currency. (Is World of Warcraft Gold taxable income? Are Lindens?)
Or it's like trying to tax trades on Warcraft.
It'll attract the attention of regulators, but...
Personally, I see Organized Culture as our likely destination.
I don't know about Splinter Cell, because I've never played it. Is it relevant, does it have interesting things to think about, does it address the player, is it fun? If so, you've got a Splinter Cell fan waiting to happen here.
Hmm...
Speaking as someone who is committing money to a community bank with roughly $2,000 in it, I think the thing is that people trust their own culture, and are more willing to accept risks and lend money within their own culture. People tell each other things amongst themselves, that they do not necessarily tell the banks.
If you lose, it was "for the cause," anyways. If you win, you've aided the cause.
The bank might not even be willing to talk with you.
I know a girl, she's going to college. She needs $50,000 for 4 years of loans. The banks aren't talking with her, and her parents are opposed to her going to college out-of-state. (Read: The parents want to keep her near, to better control her.)
If my culture were just a wee bit more organized, I'm sure we'd have her in her preferred college. (UCSD, I believe.) As it is, we only have $2,000 amongst ourselves.
If only she were going to college in 4 years...
You may also want to check out the concept of Internet Bonding. Basically, if you can look at all the things a person does online, says online, follow the ups & downs in their life, and so on: You can do interesting things with that. You can better evaluate risk. So, if you're operating within your culture, things get a lot easier on you.
In the case of this girl, she has an easy time explaining to us who she is, where she's coming from, and so on: You can see her last few years of work online. "Trustworthy!" we say, "Get that woman her CS degree!"
I agree with the other guy.
Here's a deeper, fuller explanation. Basically, our next job is to be able to grow plants in space.
Actually, I think discarding bodies entirely is even better, but nobody will go for that today; We may have to wait 40 years before a society that can defend itself decides that that is not a controversial way to go, and has the technology to do it.
Personally, I think we should go for that as quickly as possible. NASA should study cybernetics, not how to make spaceships with showers and treadmills in them.
Oh, wait- they are..!
Therefore, I will rent a PS3, and rent MGS4.
One weekend aught be more than enough.
I was always more intrigued with the holodeck.
Who needs to run about the ship, when all you need is in the holodeck?
Fooling sensory systems has got to be cheaper than actually positioning physical molecules.