females invest their time and effort in a child and a man and need to keep that unit intact to further their reproductive success. they cannot have another female enticing the male that other fruits lie elsewhere. open sexuality endangers their genes. therefore right there is incentive enough to punish any "slutish" females, ie, any females partaking of open enjoyment of sex. this is just too threatening to have in open society for their reproductive success
there are a number of other scenarios where, in terms of selfish genes, it makes sense to limit access to, enjoyment of, and open displays of sex
of course in a society such as ours, with birth control, and unlimited access to food, and disease control, etc., limiting sex is pointless. in fact, in such very recent rich societies, sexual attitudes have been liberating. but i'm not talking about behavior in such rare, barely recent societies. i'm talking about behavior in the vast majority of human experience in time and cultures: poor and suffering and scrambling. such that these sexual dilemnas are now pretty much hardwired in our emotional makeup. feelings of jealousy are unnecessary, and yet there they are nonetheless
just like it doesn't make sense that men are still attracted to large breasts. there's plenty of food, no need to be attracted to female bodies with a reproductive insurance policy of healthy tissue reserves. and yet we still are attracted to large female breasts. simply because we are hard wired that way. does it make sense anymore? no. it doesn't need to make sense now, its all about how we've been wired for survival in a different time and place
it's like listening to a creationist, or a ufo enthusiast
your particular brand of nutjobbery is this: everyone is essentailly a loving being, and it is culture that teaches us violence, and evil, and suffering. that none of these things are innate in ourselves
"Humans are naturally more cooperative than selfish. In fact, it is culture that emphasizes selfishness."
wow, just wow. what do you say to this sort of nonsense? its stupefying
i don't know if i have the depth of intellectual charity to stoop to the kindergarten level required to open your eyes to this particular huge blind spot, nor the time, nor the space in this thread. you're too far gone
but don't worry dude, take my nonresponsiveness to mean i have no way to back up my assertions and you've totally proved me wrong, yeah;-P
perhaps i can offer you simply this:
go into a classroom full of 3 year olds. watch their behavior for simply 15 minutes, no more. in that time, you will see the heights of kindness, and the pits of cruelty, all in that microcosm of humanity. because BOTH instincts towards selfish and altruistic behavior are INNATE, not taught
now i will hear from you how the cruel ones have already been corrupted by bad parents, and how they can still be taught to have sunlight come of their assholes, etc., etc., etc.
the lunatic fundamentalist fringe is not a valid representation of the majority of a religion. the majority of a religion look to their religion for exactly the kind of positive inspiration you identify as good
you SHOULD reject the shrill stupid shallow end of the religious fundamentalist wading pool. but you shouldn't believe the lie that they speak for all of the religious
are all atheists nihilist? no. most are humanists. in the same way, most religious people are not rabid brain dead fundamentalists
the biggest tragedy is that atheists look at the religious and see fundamentalist hypocritical wackjobs, and the religious look at atheists and see nihilistic self-absorbed assholes
when the truth is, most atheists are humanist and selfless, and most religious are moderate and tolerant
because people's selfish nature was still an aspect of the cogs in the machine, it still asserted itself: "why should i work when i will guaranteed a share of society no matter what?" everything ground to a halt. there was no motivation
whether or not you consider that a valid representation of communism, the fact is, communism attempted to nurture one side of human nature, and failed
human society and its rules must mirror the nature of the humans it is being imposed upon, or such as society will fail. human society and its laws must perform a balancing act
there is no such thing emphasizing one aspect over another. if you do, you will simply wind up with a revolution and be replaced
"Human nature has both positive and negative aspects. Culture and learning can emphasize one side or the other of this nature. What is so hard to understand about that?"
no: culture and learning do nothing, absolutely nothing to bring out the positive and repress the negative. mainly because your entire metric of what is positive and negative are complete bullshit. they are two sides of the same coin. selfishness can be good in some ways, and altruism can cause suffering in some ways. both must exist in balance, none dominating the other
repeat: you cannot change human nature with culture learning. it simply is what it is, a constant across all cultures and time periods
this appraoch does not impress anyone or sway anyone from their beliefs
proof positive: "i believe something different than you, and i think it is better. what i believe is {xyz}"
impresses someone. you offer them an alternative. its the difference between taking away, and offering something better. offering something better always works. taking away leads to a resistance fight
the problem with atheists is they only attack. they offer nothing superior. that is why atheism is doomed to eternally fail in the face of religion
again, its very simple: you never sway a single person by attacking their beliefs. you can meanwhile sway many people by offering a superior alternative to their beliefs
"Why do you feel so threatened by the idea that humans may have a natural, caring, cooperative side to their nature?"
i don't feel threatened by that, because that they have this side is 100% true, and something i am quite comfortable with and happy about, and something i never denied, want to deny, or have a reason to deny to have a sound understanding of human nature. but just as constant is humanity's selfish craven jealous side. see how that works?
the issue is that you think one side of human nature can come to dominate, and the other side just disappears
no, this is ironclad tomfoolery
but i'm wrong, because of vitamin b and myelin sheaths...
!!!
congratulations, with that bullshit, you achieved crackpot status
dude, go start your utopia. why are you wasting your time trying to convince me, i'm obviously a harpy of the culture of famine, or whatever the appropriate bullshit verbiage is
go dude. start your utopia. stop wasting your time here in the culture of war with the unenlightened like me
that at the time of the agricultural revolution, when food forever more became reliable rather than a mad scramble, suddenly we all got locked into famine thinking
i'm sorry, but this is stupid
but you don't have to listen to me. history is replete with utopianists. go close your eyes about human nature, make believe everything will be magically bountiful with the right "insights" (ie, delusions) about humanity... go found your utopia... and it always fails
because human nature is fixed in all the awful ways you wish to magically explain away, even though all of humanity has always behaved these awful ways in every time period, in every culture, and will behave so forever more. these negative aspects of human nature are not in flux as you think they are, nor are they bound to be influenced by these artifical constructs you represent here which just seem to be some sort of fantasy wish fulfillment
we are rich in the west today. as such, we have more sex than our poorer ancestors, and just as much sex as the roman emperors. western prudishness is very much been defeate by the relative richness of our lives compared to the past or other cultures, or did you mix the 1960s?
in the past, the rich also had rich sex lives. that rich people can escape social mores is not an amazing concept. nor is it true that there was some magical past when all love was free. the average roman was most definitely not having the sex life of caligula. you cannot draw conclusions about the lives of past poor people from the decadence of past rich people
it has good, bad, and uly qualities. that some of human nature's qualities are ugly or bad does not mean they magically go away, or ever will go away. they are constants, across all time and all cultures. things like envy, jealousy: these are natural aspects of our psychology. ther are not taught to children, they are inherent in how our brains work. they are self-apparent and self-creating. do i like envy and jealousy? no, but i accept them as inescable quantities in the people around me. wishing them away will not go away. furthermore, my view of human nature i balanced, not bleak. there is plenty good about human nature to balance out the bad
and you wish to babble about "the culture of feast and sharing" versus "the culture of famine and war". huh? whatever those constructs are, as most charitably as i can say it is, if such things exist, they are contemporaneous. there is no magical replacement of one or the other. we are our own best friends, and our own worst enemies, all at the same time
it's not like there once was a time in human history when love was free and sex was easy. there have always been social limits on sex for as long as we have been social apes. sure, we don't have to fight and scrounge for food anymore, but this has only been true for the last century. which, not coincidentally, the last century has seen a relaxation of sexual mores. the other hundreds of thousands of years of human history has been a desperate fight for resources for you and your children against the neighbors and their kids.
prudish social conservatism is not some newfangled judeochristian invention, it is simply human nature. the gut human reaction at seeing someone more successful than you procreatively or materially is anger, and this anger is evolutionarily advantageous: to work hard at limiting your fellow man's success and enjoyment in life, so that you may have some success yourself.
so sex is is fun, sex is pleasurable, sex is good, sex is harmless... unless it is someone else having it. then it is bad. is this selfish? absolutely. and evolutionarily advantageous. and therefore hardwired into how our brains function: there is no way the neighbor's children are going to get more bananas than my children, so there is no way the neighbors are going to freely have sex without my approval
in this perverse way, the urge to prevent other people from enjoying sex is the same urge underlying the desire for social justice, for equality: you can't have more than me, its not fair. community standards on sex is simply the most primitive form of birth control. no, that's not "just say no", that's "you have sex and i'll punish you, because your children are taking resources from my children"
scientists try to scare us about global warming, but nature has a way to balance things out, we don't have to do anything to fight global warming:
with hotter temperatures, vampires get more sun, thus dying off. with less vampires to prey on pirates, pirate numbers explode, thus lowering global temperatures. with global temperatures down, vampires get less sun, rebound in population, and begin keeping piurate populations in check again
the next time i would suggest that if you wish to impress someone else with your beliefs, you start by offering them an alternative faith system, your own, rather than simply denying the validity of their beliefs
no religious individual is impressed with someone simply denying the tenets of their beliefs. they can, however, be swayed when you offer them a positive alternative
i understand now that you are not a nihilist. but you approach a conversation as if you were a nihilist
if you wish to be more compelling in your life, do not merely attack other people's beliefs. instead offer them something superior. i think you will find far less resistance and far more civilty
that was a wonderful example of what atheists do best: destroy anyone else's reason for having faith in anything, while offering nothing superior of your own
faith in the stupidest of beliefs is still better than no belief at all. animists in indonesia who believe the flat earth stands on the back of a turtle have a more compelling belief system than an atheist
the funny thing about atheists is that without someone else's belief to denigrate, they would have no reason to exist on their own, independently. atheists are parasital in their motivation
a valid belief system is something that is proof positive. that is, it stand on its own, and need reference no other belief system. meanwhile, all of atheism is only created and posed in reference to someone else's belief system, it is proof negative. as such, it has no substance of its own, and is therefore essentially meaningless and pointless. the basic tenets of atheism are logical challenges to someone else's belief system. which means they are derivative and secondary
the essential thing about religion that atheists do not recognize is that religion promulgates its beliefs into the next generation, and can impress nonbelievers and believers in another religion. as such, it lives, and it grows through the ages. meanwhile, whatever an atheist believes in will simply fade to dust and wormfood when an atheist dies
dear atheists: your children will not be atheists, nor will you ever turn someone else into an atheist
because as soon as you have created a belief system that compels your children or other people into your belief system, you are no longer an atheist. you now have a religion;-)
absence of meaning, has no meaning. its braindead obvious, but atheists are apparently unaware of the essential dead end nature of their professed "belief", such as their antibelief is
no one works hard at anything without their eyes on some idea of profit. you have a weak model of human nature and what motivates it
absolutely every single bit of human progress in all of human history was motivated by money, sex, or power. we're not ascetic monks you know. well, even then, even a monk transcibing letters in chaste poverty still has an idea of "profit" in his mind: power over his own humanity
what i have come to realize is that god is real. atheists do not understand why the idea of god ever took hold of mankind or why the idea of god still has viability in today's day and age. the reason is because the rabid fruitcakes of religious fundamentalism do not hold a monopoly on the meaning and significance of god, but this is the idea of god that atheists are always pilloring and attacking. thats a red herring, a strawman, a corrupt perverse interpretation of god that the defenders and attackers argue about, endlessly and pointlessly
the real, initial manifestatation of god, such as it occured and continues to occur to real religious savants and gurus, is that god is nothing more than a manifestation of our desire to be better than ourselves. such that when you talk about god, you are doing nothing but taliking in cipher: you are talking about a better version of us, worth working for, believing in, having faith in
this is why it is important to believe in god: not because there is an invisible skyman throwing thunderbolts at us because of stone tablets with 10 rules on it, but because it is important to believe in something greater more powerful more just and more intelligent than a monkey with an overclocked cranium: us, in our future. that is god: us, in the future
atheism in this sense then is simply falling off the applecart. to give into cynicism and nihilism is simply to be of low character and low imagination and weak willpower, to believe we can be no better, to see no reason to make better of the world around us, to believe our failings permanently trap us in mediocrity. a wise man once said (george carlin, timely enough) that if you scratch a cynic, you find a failed idealist. a failed idealist is merely someone of not enough willpower to retain faith, in us, against the odds. an atheist is, in fact, a static, empty, pointless person who is worse than the most rabid stupid religious fundamentalist. i hate religious fundamentalists. but at least a rabid religious fundamentalist is working for a vision of the future. a moronic, stupid vision of the future, but working for a future he is nonetheless. an atheist meanwhile, is not worth hating, or even considering. an atheist simply accepts mediocrity as reality, and ceases to see value in the search for a better world. it susually a triumph of lazy selfishness and narcissistic self-absorption more than anything else
people of faith are the only ones who are going to build something more just and wise than the mess we find ourselves in today. simply because you have to have faith in the first place to have a reason to work hard against all proof to the contrary about our greatnes and destiny. simply affix the idea of god in your head, and you have that idea marketed and packaged in a psychological formation that is easy to digest, retain, and continue into the next generation. this is the true meaning of religion. unfortunately, that message tends to mutate and drift over time and wind up in the hand sof utter stupid assholes like religous fundamentalists over time, but again, a derivative confused form of faith is still better than no faith at all
it is important not to accept the essential failings of mankind. it is also important to accept that the rabid fruitcakes of religious fundamentalism do not hold a monopoly on the meaning and significance of god. to be painfully aware of how essentially flawed we are, and yet will yourself still to work hard at making us stupid tribal monkeys better, is not an exercise in futility, as a nihilist would suggest, but an exercise in strength of faith, in the betterment and essential goodness of mankind
and this why what it means to be human can never be reproduced in any computer. or, rather, much as i have completely coopted and manipulated the meaning of "god" to my own ends, if a nonbiological entity that thought like us were ever to be made by us, it itself would identify itself as human, and thereby null and voiding any meaningful separ
someone figures out how to search better than them. that's what brought google here: they did search better than the juggernauts of 1999: yahoo, altavista, etc.
if google is smart, they will remain focused on their core competency, and not get distracted with secondary pursuits, and have their entire relevancy stolen from them from under their feet. but the thing is, google is human endeavour. all human endeavours make mistake and fade
it may indeed take a decade or two, but there will come a time when google's lustre will fade to black. perhaps it will be in a time when the very idea of "internet search" is an antiquated concept. what i just said, that "internet search" might lose its relevancy, may seem to put the date of google's death many decades from now, but it actually brings google's date of death much closer
if you consider the pace of technological change, that could be only a decade away, when the concept of "internet search" is antiquated. you may consider that statement preposterous, but lets put it this way: if someone came up to you in 1988 and said the most darling company in the entire world in 2008 would be dedicated to something called "internet search", you would just stare at them like they were a maniac
there are 10,000 wannabe sites that no one visits today
linkedin and craigslist are a product of serendipity and luck as much as good programming, well positioned to satisfy an unspoken need, etc.
such that if you wind up at the incredibly long odds of being offered a large sum of money for a much smaller amount of work one code, for gods sake, dont be a fool and take the pile of money
meanwhile you advise at that point to stick it out to reach for even much longer odds instead
no, that's not an insult or to call AI a pseudoscience
what i mean is: the ancient alchemists goal was to turn lead into gold. which they thought possible, because they did not perceive magic in gold, it was just stuff. surely, with the right manipulations, some stuff could be turned into other stuff, right?
and from that basic fantasy thought came the groundwork for centuries of hard work, the discovery of the fields of chemistry, physics, all the subfields...
such that one day in the middle of the last century, some dudes with some extra time at a cyclotron said "hey, why don't we bombard some lead atoms, i have a feeling about what the decay product will be (snigger)"
and there, as a completely forgotten afterthought, was a fulfillment of the ancient alchemist's original goals, many generations before
to me, i think this is the fate of AI: it will be a formative motivation. just as the ancient alchemist's looked at gold and saw just stuff, we look at the brain and just see neurons. and all of the ffort to replicate the human brain will spawn incredibly sophisticated fields of information science we can only begin to grasp at the foundations of right now. look at databases, for example: that's an effort at mimicking the brain. and look at all of the unintended and beneficial consequences of database reesearch, as a superficial example of what i am saying about unintended benefits being better than the original goal
so perhaps, many centuries from now, some researchers will say "hey, remember the turing test"? and they will giggle, and make something that is exactly what we now envisage as the ultimate fruit of AI research, a thinking computer brain
but in that time period, such a thing will be but an after thought, and much as the rewards of physics and chemistry so dwarf the fruits of turning lead into gold, so whatever these as-of unimagined fields of inquiry will reward mankind with will turn the search for a thinking computer into an equally forgettable sideshow
the search for AI will lead to much more rewarding and expansive fields of knowledge than we can imagine now. jsut like the guys arguing about "phlogiston" could never imagine things like organic chemistry and radiochemistry. just imagine: fields of inquiry more rewarding than thinking computers. that's a future i want to glimpse, and looking for AI will lead us there
everything, all sites, including google, fade and die
the question is, as you ride the wave of success to the top, how do you know when to get off the ferris wheel and claim your prize? how do you when you have peaked?
of course, no one knows, no one can know. but as you ride that tiny ripple into a tsunami of success, you begin to think your own shit smells like roses. you begin to believe your own hype. mainly because everyone you meet feeds it to you
such that, your own ability to perceive your true measure of success gets warped and kaleidoscopes, and you begin to take on the stink of megalomania
no, the thing to do, with something like say, youtube, which was started in early 2005 and sold for gabazillions in late 2006, is to indeed, sell out
because at the point the youtube dudes sold out, the ratio of the amount of reward they were getting to the amount of effort they exerted was already so huge, it would be stupid not to sell out
sure, they could have kept going with youtube, just as you say
but luckily they took of whiff of their shit, and noticed there were no roses to be smelled. good for them
what i mean by that is, your generation bought into facebook, and the generation after you hasn't bought into it yet. they will be exposed to some other options, and eventually congeal around one of the other dozens of new muscular contenders to facebook that are always out there
the obvious question is, why don't they just use facebook?
the obvious answer to that is, everyone wants to be special, and part of the "in" group. and the "in" group always uses something new and exclusive and different. its a false sense of superiority, but its a false sense of human superiority that is a basic human character flaw we all share: the need to feel special: "oh, i'm not on facebook, i'm on {xyz}." oooh {xyz}! so cool and new and different and exciting!
welcome to the reality of social groups and cliques
and so, as soon as something goes mainstream, the search begins for the next new "it" tool. in endless succession, for all time
but facebook has al lthese great apps you say?
dude: it doesn't matter if facebook has the best suite of online social netowrking and contact management apps that have ever been built or ever could be built on the web for all time. facebook has gone mainstream. that is all that is needed to know to announce its eventual inevitable decline and death knell
the reason that this law doesn't apply to sites like google is that google isn't a SOCIAL NETWORKING site. a social networking site must be constantly fed new blood, or it dies. google climbed to the top of the internet search heap, and stayed there, simply because it did a better job at search. google would have never had existed were yahoo or altavista improve its search. to defeat google, someone just has to build better search (if possible)
to defeat facebook, meanwhile, all one has to do is wait. wait and watch one of those little scrawny weeds in the corner there to grow into a tree
Slashdot Mirror
follow you did
to the complete dissolution of your entire point
i am teh winnar!
flawless victory!
it doesn't help to turn into a spastic hysterical twit. it might falsify your claims that a calm nurturing altruism is your dominant nature
(snicker)
females invest their time and effort in a child and a man and need to keep that unit intact to further their reproductive success. they cannot have another female enticing the male that other fruits lie elsewhere. open sexuality endangers their genes. therefore right there is incentive enough to punish any "slutish" females, ie, any females partaking of open enjoyment of sex. this is just too threatening to have in open society for their reproductive success
there are a number of other scenarios where, in terms of selfish genes, it makes sense to limit access to, enjoyment of, and open displays of sex
of course in a society such as ours, with birth control, and unlimited access to food, and disease control, etc., limiting sex is pointless. in fact, in such very recent rich societies, sexual attitudes have been liberating. but i'm not talking about behavior in such rare, barely recent societies. i'm talking about behavior in the vast majority of human experience in time and cultures: poor and suffering and scrambling. such that these sexual dilemnas are now pretty much hardwired in our emotional makeup. feelings of jealousy are unnecessary, and yet there they are nonetheless
just like it doesn't make sense that men are still attracted to large breasts. there's plenty of food, no need to be attracted to female bodies with a reproductive insurance policy of healthy tissue reserves. and yet we still are attracted to large female breasts. simply because we are hard wired that way. does it make sense anymore? no. it doesn't need to make sense now, its all about how we've been wired for survival in a different time and place
it's like listening to a creationist, or a ufo enthusiast
your particular brand of nutjobbery is this: everyone is essentailly a loving being, and it is culture that teaches us violence, and evil, and suffering. that none of these things are innate in ourselves
"Humans are naturally more cooperative than selfish. In fact, it is culture that emphasizes selfishness."
wow, just wow. what do you say to this sort of nonsense? its stupefying
i don't know if i have the depth of intellectual charity to stoop to the kindergarten level required to open your eyes to this particular huge blind spot, nor the time, nor the space in this thread. you're too far gone
but don't worry dude, take my nonresponsiveness to mean i have no way to back up my assertions and you've totally proved me wrong, yeah ;-P
perhaps i can offer you simply this:
go into a classroom full of 3 year olds. watch their behavior for simply 15 minutes, no more. in that time, you will see the heights of kindness, and the pits of cruelty, all in that microcosm of humanity. because BOTH instincts towards selfish and altruistic behavior are INNATE, not taught
now i will hear from you how the cruel ones have already been corrupted by bad parents, and how they can still be taught to have sunlight come of their assholes, etc., etc., etc.
zzz...
the lunatic fundamentalist fringe is not a valid representation of the majority of a religion. the majority of a religion look to their religion for exactly the kind of positive inspiration you identify as good
you SHOULD reject the shrill stupid shallow end of the religious fundamentalist wading pool. but you shouldn't believe the lie that they speak for all of the religious
are all atheists nihilist? no. most are humanists. in the same way, most religious people are not rabid brain dead fundamentalists
the biggest tragedy is that atheists look at the religious and see fundamentalist hypocritical wackjobs, and the religious look at atheists and see nihilistic self-absorbed assholes
when the truth is, most atheists are humanist and selfless, and most religious are moderate and tolerant
it emphasized altruism over selfishness
and utterly failed
because people's selfish nature was still an aspect of the cogs in the machine, it still asserted itself: "why should i work when i will guaranteed a share of society no matter what?" everything ground to a halt. there was no motivation
whether or not you consider that a valid representation of communism, the fact is, communism attempted to nurture one side of human nature, and failed
human society and its rules must mirror the nature of the humans it is being imposed upon, or such as society will fail. human society and its laws must perform a balancing act
there is no such thing emphasizing one aspect over another. if you do, you will simply wind up with a revolution and be replaced
"Human nature has both positive and negative aspects. Culture and learning can emphasize one side or the other of this nature. What is so hard to understand about that?"
no: culture and learning do nothing, absolutely nothing to bring out the positive and repress the negative. mainly because your entire metric of what is positive and negative are complete bullshit. they are two sides of the same coin. selfishness can be good in some ways, and altruism can cause suffering in some ways. both must exist in balance, none dominating the other
repeat: you cannot change human nature with culture learning. it simply is what it is, a constant across all cultures and time periods
proof negative: "what you believe is wrong!"
this appraoch does not impress anyone or sway anyone from their beliefs
proof positive: "i believe something different than you, and i think it is better. what i believe is {xyz}"
impresses someone. you offer them an alternative. its the difference between taking away, and offering something better. offering something better always works. taking away leads to a resistance fight
the problem with atheists is they only attack. they offer nothing superior. that is why atheism is doomed to eternally fail in the face of religion
again, its very simple: you never sway a single person by attacking their beliefs. you can meanwhile sway many people by offering a superior alternative to their beliefs
do you understand? its rather simple
i said human nature was good bad and ugly
"Why do you feel so threatened by the idea that humans may have a natural, caring, cooperative side to their nature?"
i don't feel threatened by that, because that they have this side is 100% true, and something i am quite comfortable with and happy about, and something i never denied, want to deny, or have a reason to deny to have a sound understanding of human nature. but just as constant is humanity's selfish craven jealous side. see how that works?
the issue is that you think one side of human nature can come to dominate, and the other side just disappears
no, this is ironclad tomfoolery
but i'm wrong, because of vitamin b and myelin sheaths...
!!!
congratulations, with that bullshit, you achieved crackpot status
dude, go start your utopia. why are you wasting your time trying to convince me, i'm obviously a harpy of the culture of famine, or whatever the appropriate bullshit verbiage is
go dude. start your utopia. stop wasting your time here in the culture of war with the unenlightened like me
(snicker)
that at the time of the agricultural revolution, when food forever more became reliable rather than a mad scramble, suddenly we all got locked into famine thinking
i'm sorry, but this is stupid
but you don't have to listen to me. history is replete with utopianists. go close your eyes about human nature, make believe everything will be magically bountiful with the right "insights" (ie, delusions) about humanity... go found your utopia... and it always fails
because human nature is fixed in all the awful ways you wish to magically explain away, even though all of humanity has always behaved these awful ways in every time period, in every culture, and will behave so forever more. these negative aspects of human nature are not in flux as you think they are, nor are they bound to be influenced by these artifical constructs you represent here which just seem to be some sort of fantasy wish fulfillment
to be more precise, i find your historical anecdotes to be petarded
we are rich in the west today. as such, we have more sex than our poorer ancestors, and just as much sex as the roman emperors. western prudishness is very much been defeate by the relative richness of our lives compared to the past or other cultures, or did you mix the 1960s?
in the past, the rich also had rich sex lives. that rich people can escape social mores is not an amazing concept. nor is it true that there was some magical past when all love was free. the average roman was most definitely not having the sex life of caligula. you cannot draw conclusions about the lives of past poor people from the decadence of past rich people
it has good, bad, and uly qualities. that some of human nature's qualities are ugly or bad does not mean they magically go away, or ever will go away. they are constants, across all time and all cultures. things like envy, jealousy: these are natural aspects of our psychology. ther are not taught to children, they are inherent in how our brains work. they are self-apparent and self-creating. do i like envy and jealousy? no, but i accept them as inescable quantities in the people around me. wishing them away will not go away. furthermore, my view of human nature i balanced, not bleak. there is plenty good about human nature to balance out the bad
and you wish to babble about "the culture of feast and sharing" versus "the culture of famine and war". huh? whatever those constructs are, as most charitably as i can say it is, if such things exist, they are contemporaneous. there is no magical replacement of one or the other. we are our own best friends, and our own worst enemies, all at the same time
it's not like there once was a time in human history when love was free and sex was easy. there have always been social limits on sex for as long as we have been social apes. sure, we don't have to fight and scrounge for food anymore, but this has only been true for the last century. which, not coincidentally, the last century has seen a relaxation of sexual mores. the other hundreds of thousands of years of human history has been a desperate fight for resources for you and your children against the neighbors and their kids.
prudish social conservatism is not some newfangled judeochristian invention, it is simply human nature. the gut human reaction at seeing someone more successful than you procreatively or materially is anger, and this anger is evolutionarily advantageous: to work hard at limiting your fellow man's success and enjoyment in life, so that you may have some success yourself.
so sex is is fun, sex is pleasurable, sex is good, sex is harmless... unless it is someone else having it. then it is bad. is this selfish? absolutely. and evolutionarily advantageous. and therefore hardwired into how our brains function: there is no way the neighbor's children are going to get more bananas than my children, so there is no way the neighbors are going to freely have sex without my approval
in this perverse way, the urge to prevent other people from enjoying sex is the same urge underlying the desire for social justice, for equality: you can't have more than me, its not fair. community standards on sex is simply the most primitive form of birth control. no, that's not "just say no", that's "you have sex and i'll punish you, because your children are taking resources from my children"
scientists try to scare us about global warming, but nature has a way to balance things out, we don't have to do anything to fight global warming:
with hotter temperatures, vampires get more sun, thus dying off. with less vampires to prey on pirates, pirate numbers explode, thus lowering global temperatures. with global temperatures down, vampires get less sun, rebound in population, and begin keeping piurate populations in check again
see the beauty and wonder of the natural world?
merely arguing against someone else's beliefs is not a belief system, just as you say
furthermore, if something is not a belief system, it is not compelling, it ceases to exist
what you care about deserves more than that
at making an impression
you impress by offering a superior belief
you get nowhere merely attacking a belief
you are a humanist
and therefore i have no argument with you
the next time i would suggest that if you wish to impress someone else with your beliefs, you start by offering them an alternative faith system, your own, rather than simply denying the validity of their beliefs
no religious individual is impressed with someone simply denying the tenets of their beliefs. they can, however, be swayed when you offer them a positive alternative
i understand now that you are not a nihilist. but you approach a conversation as if you were a nihilist
if you wish to be more compelling in your life, do not merely attack other people's beliefs. instead offer them something superior. i think you will find far less resistance and far more civilty
that was a wonderful example of what atheists do best: destroy anyone else's reason for having faith in anything, while offering nothing superior of your own
faith in the stupidest of beliefs is still better than no belief at all. animists in indonesia who believe the flat earth stands on the back of a turtle have a more compelling belief system than an atheist
the funny thing about atheists is that without someone else's belief to denigrate, they would have no reason to exist on their own, independently. atheists are parasital in their motivation
a valid belief system is something that is proof positive. that is, it stand on its own, and need reference no other belief system. meanwhile, all of atheism is only created and posed in reference to someone else's belief system, it is proof negative. as such, it has no substance of its own, and is therefore essentially meaningless and pointless. the basic tenets of atheism are logical challenges to someone else's belief system. which means they are derivative and secondary
the essential thing about religion that atheists do not recognize is that religion promulgates its beliefs into the next generation, and can impress nonbelievers and believers in another religion. as such, it lives, and it grows through the ages. meanwhile, whatever an atheist believes in will simply fade to dust and wormfood when an atheist dies
dear atheists: your children will not be atheists, nor will you ever turn someone else into an atheist
because as soon as you have created a belief system that compels your children or other people into your belief system, you are no longer an atheist. you now have a religion ;-)
absence of meaning, has no meaning. its braindead obvious, but atheists are apparently unaware of the essential dead end nature of their professed "belief", such as their antibelief is
no one works hard at anything without their eyes on some idea of profit. you have a weak model of human nature and what motivates it
absolutely every single bit of human progress in all of human history was motivated by money, sex, or power. we're not ascetic monks you know. well, even then, even a monk transcibing letters in chaste poverty still has an idea of "profit" in his mind: power over his own humanity
i myself am no longer an atheist
what i have come to realize is that god is real. atheists do not understand why the idea of god ever took hold of mankind or why the idea of god still has viability in today's day and age. the reason is because the rabid fruitcakes of religious fundamentalism do not hold a monopoly on the meaning and significance of god, but this is the idea of god that atheists are always pilloring and attacking. thats a red herring, a strawman, a corrupt perverse interpretation of god that the defenders and attackers argue about, endlessly and pointlessly
the real, initial manifestatation of god, such as it occured and continues to occur to real religious savants and gurus, is that god is nothing more than a manifestation of our desire to be better than ourselves. such that when you talk about god, you are doing nothing but taliking in cipher: you are talking about a better version of us, worth working for, believing in, having faith in
this is why it is important to believe in god: not because there is an invisible skyman throwing thunderbolts at us because of stone tablets with 10 rules on it, but because it is important to believe in something greater more powerful more just and more intelligent than a monkey with an overclocked cranium: us, in our future. that is god: us, in the future
atheism in this sense then is simply falling off the applecart. to give into cynicism and nihilism is simply to be of low character and low imagination and weak willpower, to believe we can be no better, to see no reason to make better of the world around us, to believe our failings permanently trap us in mediocrity. a wise man once said (george carlin, timely enough) that if you scratch a cynic, you find a failed idealist. a failed idealist is merely someone of not enough willpower to retain faith, in us, against the odds. an atheist is, in fact, a static, empty, pointless person who is worse than the most rabid stupid religious fundamentalist. i hate religious fundamentalists. but at least a rabid religious fundamentalist is working for a vision of the future. a moronic, stupid vision of the future, but working for a future he is nonetheless. an atheist meanwhile, is not worth hating, or even considering. an atheist simply accepts mediocrity as reality, and ceases to see value in the search for a better world. it susually a triumph of lazy selfishness and narcissistic self-absorption more than anything else
people of faith are the only ones who are going to build something more just and wise than the mess we find ourselves in today. simply because you have to have faith in the first place to have a reason to work hard against all proof to the contrary about our greatnes and destiny. simply affix the idea of god in your head, and you have that idea marketed and packaged in a psychological formation that is easy to digest, retain, and continue into the next generation. this is the true meaning of religion. unfortunately, that message tends to mutate and drift over time and wind up in the hand sof utter stupid assholes like religous fundamentalists over time, but again, a derivative confused form of faith is still better than no faith at all
it is important not to accept the essential failings of mankind. it is also important to accept that the rabid fruitcakes of religious fundamentalism do not hold a monopoly on the meaning and significance of god. to be painfully aware of how essentially flawed we are, and yet will yourself still to work hard at making us stupid tribal monkeys better, is not an exercise in futility, as a nihilist would suggest, but an exercise in strength of faith, in the betterment and essential goodness of mankind
and this why what it means to be human can never be reproduced in any computer. or, rather, much as i have completely coopted and manipulated the meaning of "god" to my own ends, if a nonbiological entity that thought like us were ever to be made by us, it itself would identify itself as human, and thereby null and voiding any meaningful separ
someone figures out how to search better than them. that's what brought google here: they did search better than the juggernauts of 1999: yahoo, altavista, etc.
if google is smart, they will remain focused on their core competency, and not get distracted with secondary pursuits, and have their entire relevancy stolen from them from under their feet. but the thing is, google is human endeavour. all human endeavours make mistake and fade
it may indeed take a decade or two, but there will come a time when google's lustre will fade to black. perhaps it will be in a time when the very idea of "internet search" is an antiquated concept. what i just said, that "internet search" might lose its relevancy, may seem to put the date of google's death many decades from now, but it actually brings google's date of death much closer
if you consider the pace of technological change, that could be only a decade away, when the concept of "internet search" is antiquated. you may consider that statement preposterous, but lets put it this way: if someone came up to you in 1988 and said the most darling company in the entire world in 2008 would be dedicated to something called "internet search", you would just stare at them like they were a maniac
there are 10,000 wannabe sites that no one visits today
linkedin and craigslist are a product of serendipity and luck as much as good programming, well positioned to satisfy an unspoken need, etc.
such that if you wind up at the incredibly long odds of being offered a large sum of money for a much smaller amount of work one code, for gods sake, dont be a fool and take the pile of money
meanwhile you advise at that point to stick it out to reach for even much longer odds instead
that's called pushing your luck, hubris
no, that's not an insult or to call AI a pseudoscience
what i mean is: the ancient alchemists goal was to turn lead into gold. which they thought possible, because they did not perceive magic in gold, it was just stuff. surely, with the right manipulations, some stuff could be turned into other stuff, right?
and from that basic fantasy thought came the groundwork for centuries of hard work, the discovery of the fields of chemistry, physics, all the subfields...
such that one day in the middle of the last century, some dudes with some extra time at a cyclotron said "hey, why don't we bombard some lead atoms, i have a feeling about what the decay product will be (snigger)"
and there, as a completely forgotten afterthought, was a fulfillment of the ancient alchemist's original goals, many generations before
to me, i think this is the fate of AI: it will be a formative motivation. just as the ancient alchemist's looked at gold and saw just stuff, we look at the brain and just see neurons. and all of the ffort to replicate the human brain will spawn incredibly sophisticated fields of information science we can only begin to grasp at the foundations of right now. look at databases, for example: that's an effort at mimicking the brain. and look at all of the unintended and beneficial consequences of database reesearch, as a superficial example of what i am saying about unintended benefits being better than the original goal
so perhaps, many centuries from now, some researchers will say "hey, remember the turing test"? and they will giggle, and make something that is exactly what we now envisage as the ultimate fruit of AI research, a thinking computer brain
but in that time period, such a thing will be but an after thought, and much as the rewards of physics and chemistry so dwarf the fruits of turning lead into gold, so whatever these as-of unimagined fields of inquiry will reward mankind with will turn the search for a thinking computer into an equally forgettable sideshow
the search for AI will lead to much more rewarding and expansive fields of knowledge than we can imagine now. jsut like the guys arguing about "phlogiston" could never imagine things like organic chemistry and radiochemistry. just imagine: fields of inquiry more rewarding than thinking computers. that's a future i want to glimpse, and looking for AI will lead us there
everything, all sites, including google, fade and die
the question is, as you ride the wave of success to the top, how do you know when to get off the ferris wheel and claim your prize? how do you when you have peaked?
of course, no one knows, no one can know. but as you ride that tiny ripple into a tsunami of success, you begin to think your own shit smells like roses. you begin to believe your own hype. mainly because everyone you meet feeds it to you
such that, your own ability to perceive your true measure of success gets warped and kaleidoscopes, and you begin to take on the stink of megalomania
no, the thing to do, with something like say, youtube, which was started in early 2005 and sold for gabazillions in late 2006, is to indeed, sell out
because at the point the youtube dudes sold out, the ratio of the amount of reward they were getting to the amount of effort they exerted was already so huge, it would be stupid not to sell out
sure, they could have kept going with youtube, just as you say
but luckily they took of whiff of their shit, and noticed there were no roses to be smelled. good for them
what i mean by that is, your generation bought into facebook, and the generation after you hasn't bought into it yet. they will be exposed to some other options, and eventually congeal around one of the other dozens of new muscular contenders to facebook that are always out there
the obvious question is, why don't they just use facebook?
the obvious answer to that is, everyone wants to be special, and part of the "in" group. and the "in" group always uses something new and exclusive and different. its a false sense of superiority, but its a false sense of human superiority that is a basic human character flaw we all share: the need to feel special: "oh, i'm not on facebook, i'm on {xyz}." oooh {xyz}! so cool and new and different and exciting!
welcome to the reality of social groups and cliques
and so, as soon as something goes mainstream, the search begins for the next new "it" tool. in endless succession, for all time
but facebook has al lthese great apps you say?
dude: it doesn't matter if facebook has the best suite of online social netowrking and contact management apps that have ever been built or ever could be built on the web for all time. facebook has gone mainstream. that is all that is needed to know to announce its eventual inevitable decline and death knell
the reason that this law doesn't apply to sites like google is that google isn't a SOCIAL NETWORKING site. a social networking site must be constantly fed new blood, or it dies. google climbed to the top of the internet search heap, and stayed there, simply because it did a better job at search. google would have never had existed were yahoo or altavista improve its search. to defeat google, someone just has to build better search (if possible)
to defeat facebook, meanwhile, all one has to do is wait. wait and watch one of those little scrawny weeds in the corner there to grow into a tree