This kind of soothsaying is all that it takes for some people, even some who are convinced that the government is doing something terribly wrong, to go back to sleep.
The truth about our culture is that we are rewarded for going along with it in at every small turn. The truth is that every day you go through your routine, just relaxing and sitting down to eat with your family without even mentioning anything that's wrong with the social situation strongly conditions you all to accept it; every aspect of it.
People are unwilling to imagine what can be done with the kind of power that total surveillance could offer an entity. And they are much less willing to voice any such conjecture for fear of their reputation.
Yet the threat is there for every one of us. As 'technology' progresses, what is required of us in our service to society and our lives in general is narrowed down further and lessened. Perhaps our bodies will never be obsolete in service to society, but many of our faculties have been obsoleted since the beginning of civilization. How much of your instinctual behavior can you give up before you reach a critical point and lose your identity? Before everything you are starts to fall apart? This is what every one of us should be reflecting on thoroughly each and every day. I think that most people, if they really pressed this question, would realize there is a very real danger to survival in going on the way things are.
Make no mistake: even the group of leaders with the best intentions would eventually fall prey to the temptation to use this data from total surveillance to 'guide economic efficiency'. The 'easy fixes' to the system that this data can provide is too valuable to resist, regardless of the trade-offs in freedom for all people, especially the politically unaware.
Total surveillance is the real-life version of the One Ring and our society has decided to keep it and use it.
Bringing democracy back into the hands of simple good people ("hobbits") is our only hope now. If some one says anything like "you must be educated to vote properly" you must treat them viciously, especially if it is yourself! In governance there is no substitute for the good intentions of people who live a simple life and care most about happiness. None at all.
Uh...wow...what exactly is going on with you? We have a real casualty of institutionalization here. How is it that you know any of this garbage you claim?
It's also ridiculous to suggest that Slashdot matters enough for anyone to waste effort on "slanting discussions."
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. SLASHDOT EXISTS TO CREATE "SLANTED DISCUSSIONS". Obviously it's worth the effort to some one to present information in a particular way otherwise this site would not exist.
And anyway, do you not believe in AI or something? Even if some matters are not worth sending a human to muddle up, an AI could be deployed at a fraction of the cost to have at least some effect. And the potential for that effect grows with every day.
...a guy would hammer a show about 4 whiney women.
Instead of "hammering" it, he should just realize he is not part of the target audience, and watch something else. I don't enjoy watching Teletubbies, but I don't give it a bad review because I am not a three year old.
Yeah except there is something wrong with that kind of programming, that guy hammering on it perceives that fact, and is acting on it. The lack of enjoyment is a clue to a rational conclusion. That kind of show is pure garbage. It is destructive to a person's wellbeing.
The exact same comment was made for TV, the car, the locomotive, and the music of Beethoven. I wouldn't be surprised if it was made for math and the written language as well. We somehow all survived.
NO. WRONG. Are you like, retarded? None of that stuff is even comparable. And if it is, I don't think anyone is interested in reading the voluminous account of the mental gymnastics required to make them so.
The same comment WAS made for the TV....and it remains to be seen that ANY of us have survived. Define survival. There are countless casualties of TV. There are people who have no personality, only a congealed amalgam of affectations. And there are people who eschew all that. To be honest, the average 'productive member of society' is deep in the former end of this spectrum of soullessness: Parroting lines from all kinds of shows ("SICK REFERENCES BRO, HAHALOL"), making vicarious experiences centerpieces of daily conversation, et cetera.
Make no mistake, smart phones are making retarded people. If you care about your children, you will keep them far away from that shit. Move somewhere where people are like-minded. There is no need to become melodramatic and fear social rejection. Give your children the environment they need to keep their god-given faculties about them at any cost.
hahahahahhaha oh god you want an encore? *picks the mic back up again*.sociopath What is that? How is it defined? How do you make one? What is the specific pattern of events that causes one to reach this threshold? I mean seriously. You are a dang old joke. You can't use a label like that in your right mind. It's just a word that some people use for other people when they lose hard and can't handle the process of reflecting on their own failures. Just like all ambiguous labels. It is little small men who talk like this. Why don't you just call sociopaths 'doodybumbum peepants'?.We call them 'instinctual' creatures, not emotional. WHO IS WE???? WHY???? What is the connection between instinct and emotion? You are implying with your tone that there is none..Except for the fact that reason is not automatic Actually it is. Everything you do in life is training your personal machine. If you enforce reason, you will become reasonable automatically. If you enforce emotion, you will become emotional automatically. The proportions of such responses according to various events depends on the pattern of enforcement of both. Simply put: to be rational or irrational is a choice. The ancestors that brought humanity to where it is chose reason. Those with free will choose reason.
i can't even address the rest of your garbage. You're brainless. Absolutely brainless. If it's not what is popular, you won't adopt it. You won't try it. You will fight it tooth and nail.
DO you have a brain?.brendansstudentloans.com I don't think that's ironic. Yeah, you probably don't.
I think I have a succinct translation of this article: PLEASE fight among each other for no reason, we would really like influencing your point of view through our programming to be not quite so difficult
No no nononono no NO What is with this phrase? Why is it popular? Probably because it's the biggest easiest fucking cop-out in history. Animals are emotional creatures. What distinguished human from animal is reason. Humans are rational creatures by nature. Some humans act like animals and are completely immersed in their emotion at all times, always ignoring purpose and never reasoning. Not so much the ones that are successful. Not so much the ones that command corporations. And the nature of an industry-leading corporation reflects this.
The only emotions that are valuable are those that support purpose. All other emotion is precluded by rules, protocol, and other concrete structures. The stuff of corporations. Humans are not fully in control of corporations. That is why corporations exist: to hold humans to their purpose, to their goals, so they do not err so much. To allow the best sides of each personality of power to attract each other to aid their common purpose. To create accountability. To create objectivity.
Is this what you do? Whenever you are confronted with an opposing point of view you put on your blinders, ignore the other point of view, and recite your simple toy version of a point of view? Why do you bother responding? Do you think you're doing some kind of good deed by evangelizing your dogma? You are making absolutely no effort to reach the other side. You are simply wasting your time mentally masturbating and giving yourself credit for human interaction.
You're a joke. Really.
If you think a corporation like Pfizer is comparable to any small business you have a serious problem with your ability to think. Like cognitive dysfunction. Have you never noticed that patterns take on unique characteristics as they scale? Are you seriously denying this fundamental law of reality?
Why is this utterly ridiculous kind of false expression accepted in society? I get that people love to invent reasons to feel good and lap this shit up, but surely there are enough people of intelligence around that could point out that this is completely false and insidious in intent?
Corporations exist to nullify the interference of human emotion in business. That is their cardinal purpose. So be offended at falsehoods like this if you value your humanity.
Isn't that just giving people the bends in the most extreme way possible? Essentially causing the sensation of burning fire in every corner of their insides?
Uh have you missed the "family dysfunction" phenomenon? Pervasive single parenthood? ETC??????
The real problem is that we have here people with no tolerance for anything different from themselves unless the state tells them to accept it. People who completely define their identity from a media-mandated template. Robots. Machines made of flesh that are incapable of asking meaningful questions because of their constant distraction with simple pleasures.
What "rights" can such people really have? They have no self-interest, only the illusion of it. All they want is to fit in and they will make a compromise in any category if asked. Just as long is the loss can be assuaged by a flood of meaningless pleasure.
Have you missed the reports of the total surveillance state? Have you not bothered to imagine the possible uses of this data? Have you not bothered to draw any judgements accordingly? Do you not see the racial and economic discrimination in the justice system? Do you not see the media inundating our children with violence and sexuality? What does the law matter? Life is a function of society and law is but a subset. One civilization may manifest directives in law, another may manifest them in culture, yet the directives may be very similar if not fundamentally identical.
Perhaps you live comfortably and close your eyes to tyranny, but others are still suffering without hope.
The great failure of the middle class is in their proclivity for assumption about the lives of others. They have the resources to find out the unseen the truth, yet do not use them. They have the experience to feel the truth, yet choose to forget it. And so all hope for freedom dies in their hands unheeded.
Most people have no hope to truly contribute to society, to make anything original or innovative. They have no opportunity because they are not nurtured with resources and discipline. The lower class receives only discipline, and the middle class receives only resources. A similar scheme is found everywhere. Within the fundamentals, the discipline enforced by "islamists" and the west is the same: unconstructive pruning of behavior to keep the commoners in line with the interests of their rulers.
Why would you say that is what "Islamists" want for the world? Because the news told you?
Your myopic view is worthless.
People below a certain class are all considered "property with no rights" (according to the simplistic definition you imply) in all present societies (that I am aware of).
Your entire point seems built on the assumption that somehow things are fundamentally different on the "Islamist" world (whatever that word means). Can you support this?
I doubt it. "Women are property with no rights, gays should be stoned to death, people who leave the faith are executed by family members". It is exceedingly easy to find parallels for these in western society. Just because the penalty is abstracted beyond obvious death doesn't mean its just as bad, so to speak.
IF what you claim is true, all that can be said of it is that "Islamist" nations people are executed by the community, and in the west people are left by the community to execute themselves.
What this really means is that there is a group of people who are encroaching upon a wealthier and better-connected group of people's interest. And the FBI, serving its purpose, is being used as a tool to prevent competition.
Yeah your little outburst there really speaks to the soundness of your state of mind.
There is literally no evidence for anything you claim. You are trying to argue your belief based on data that you are not supplying. "The best weapon" "puts the nation as a whole at risk" "the policy must be" "my life at risk"
You are totally insane. You have no support for any of this. You are just freaking out.
Slashdot Mirror
This kind of soothsaying is all that it takes for some people, even some who are convinced that the government is doing something terribly wrong, to go back to sleep.
The truth about our culture is that we are rewarded for going along with it in at every small turn.
The truth is that every day you go through your routine, just relaxing and sitting down to eat with your family without even mentioning anything that's wrong with the social situation strongly conditions you all to accept it; every aspect of it.
People are unwilling to imagine what can be done with the kind of power that total surveillance could offer an entity. And they are much less willing to voice any such conjecture for fear of their reputation.
Yet the threat is there for every one of us. As 'technology' progresses, what is required of us in our service to society and our lives in general is narrowed down further and lessened. Perhaps our bodies will never be obsolete in service to society, but many of our faculties have been obsoleted since the beginning of civilization. How much of your instinctual behavior can you give up before you reach a critical point and lose your identity? Before everything you are starts to fall apart? This is what every one of us should be reflecting on thoroughly each and every day. I think that most people, if they really pressed this question, would realize there is a very real danger to survival in going on the way things are.
Make no mistake: even the group of leaders with the best intentions would eventually fall prey to the temptation to use this data from total surveillance to 'guide economic efficiency'. The 'easy fixes' to the system that this data can provide is too valuable to resist, regardless of the trade-offs in freedom for all people, especially the politically unaware.
Total surveillance is the real-life version of the One Ring and our society has decided to keep it and use it.
Bringing democracy back into the hands of simple good people ("hobbits") is our only hope now.
If some one says anything like "you must be educated to vote properly" you must treat them viciously, especially if it is yourself! In governance there is no substitute for the good intentions of people who live a simple life and care most about happiness. None at all.
?????
yes I suppose humor is the best if not the only way to draw attention to this issue and make people care
How can you say something so completely stupid after seeing the public reaction to the unveiling of total surveillance?
Before you reply, check to make sure you read what I actually wrote rather than what you assume an idiot would write
But this effort turned out to be a waste, since the two are identical in this case
Uh...wow...what exactly is going on with you? We have a real casualty of institutionalization here.
How is it that you know any of this garbage you claim?
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
SLASHDOT EXISTS TO CREATE "SLANTED DISCUSSIONS".
Obviously it's worth the effort to some one to present information in a particular way otherwise this site would not exist.
And anyway, do you not believe in AI or something? Even if some matters are not worth sending a human to muddle up, an AI could be deployed at a fraction of the cost to have at least some effect. And the potential for that effect grows with every day.
...a guy would hammer a show about 4 whiney women.
Instead of "hammering" it, he should just realize he is not part of the target audience, and watch something else. I don't enjoy watching Teletubbies, but I don't give it a bad review because I am not a three year old.
Yeah except there is something wrong with that kind of programming, that guy hammering on it perceives that fact, and is acting on it.
The lack of enjoyment is a clue to a rational conclusion.
That kind of show is pure garbage. It is destructive to a person's wellbeing.
The exact same comment was made for TV, the car, the locomotive, and the music of Beethoven. I wouldn't be surprised if it was made for math and the written language as well. We somehow all survived.
NO. WRONG.
Are you like, retarded?
None of that stuff is even comparable. And if it is, I don't think anyone is interested in reading the voluminous account of the mental gymnastics required to make them so.
The same comment WAS made for the TV....and it remains to be seen that ANY of us have survived. Define survival. There are countless casualties of TV. There are people who have no personality, only a congealed amalgam of affectations. And there are people who eschew all that. To be honest, the average 'productive member of society' is deep in the former end of this spectrum of soullessness: Parroting lines from all kinds of shows ("SICK REFERENCES BRO, HAHALOL"), making vicarious experiences centerpieces of daily conversation, et cetera.
Make no mistake, smart phones are making retarded people. If you care about your children, you will keep them far away from that shit. Move somewhere where people are like-minded. There is no need to become melodramatic and fear social rejection. Give your children the environment they need to keep their god-given faculties about them at any cost.
hahahahahhaha oh god .sociopath .We call them 'instinctual' creatures, not emotional. .Except for the fact that reason is not automatic
you want an encore?
*picks the mic back up again*
What is that? How is it defined? How do you make one? What is the specific pattern of events that causes one to reach this threshold? I mean seriously. You are a dang old joke. You can't use a label like that in your right mind. It's just a word that some people use for other people when they lose hard and can't handle the process of reflecting on their own failures. Just like all ambiguous labels. It is little small men who talk like this. Why don't you just call sociopaths 'doodybumbum peepants'?
WHO IS WE???? WHY???? What is the connection between instinct and emotion? You are implying with your tone that there is none.
Actually it is. Everything you do in life is training your personal machine. If you enforce reason, you will become reasonable automatically. If you enforce emotion, you will become emotional automatically. The proportions of such responses according to various events depends on the pattern of enforcement of both.
Simply put: to be rational or irrational is a choice. The ancestors that brought humanity to where it is chose reason. Those with free will choose reason.
i can't even address the rest of your garbage. You're brainless. Absolutely brainless.
If it's not what is popular, you won't adopt it. You won't try it. You will fight it tooth and nail.
DO you have a brain? .brendansstudentloans.com
I don't think that's ironic. Yeah, you probably don't.
AHAHAHAHAHahahahahahaha
okay if you say so
Aimed...you mean...like a weapon?
I think I have a succinct translation of this article: PLEASE fight among each other for no reason, we would really like influencing your point of view through our programming to be not quite so difficult
No no nononono no NO
What is with this phrase? Why is it popular? Probably because it's the biggest easiest fucking cop-out in history.
Animals are emotional creatures.
What distinguished human from animal is reason. Humans are rational creatures by nature.
Some humans act like animals and are completely immersed in their emotion at all times, always ignoring purpose and never reasoning. Not so much the ones that are successful. Not so much the ones that command corporations. And the nature of an industry-leading corporation reflects this.
The only emotions that are valuable are those that support purpose. All other emotion is precluded by rules, protocol, and other concrete structures. The stuff of corporations. Humans are not fully in control of corporations. That is why corporations exist: to hold humans to their purpose, to their goals, so they do not err so much. To allow the best sides of each personality of power to attract each other to aid their common purpose. To create accountability. To create objectivity.
*drops the mic*
And how is that not a subset of nullifying interference of human emotion?
WOW
Is this what you do? Whenever you are confronted with an opposing point of view you put on your blinders, ignore the other point of view, and recite your simple toy version of a point of view? Why do you bother responding? Do you think you're doing some kind of good deed by evangelizing your dogma? You are making absolutely no effort to reach the other side. You are simply wasting your time mentally masturbating and giving yourself credit for human interaction.
You're a joke. Really.
If you think a corporation like Pfizer is comparable to any small business you have a serious problem with your ability to think. Like cognitive dysfunction.
Have you never noticed that patterns take on unique characteristics as they scale? Are you seriously denying this fundamental law of reality?
Get help.
Who is "we"?
How can a corporation have feelings?
Why is this utterly ridiculous kind of false expression accepted in society?
I get that people love to invent reasons to feel good and lap this shit up, but surely there are enough people of intelligence around that could point out that this is completely false and insidious in intent?
Corporations exist to nullify the interference of human emotion in business. That is their cardinal purpose. So be offended at falsehoods like this if you value your humanity.
Isn't that just giving people the bends in the most extreme way possible? Essentially causing the sensation of burning fire in every corner of their insides?
especially female programmers
what the fuck
Uh have you missed the "family dysfunction" phenomenon? Pervasive single parenthood? ETC??????
The real problem is that we have here people with no tolerance for anything different from themselves unless the state tells them to accept it. People who completely define their identity from a media-mandated template. Robots. Machines made of flesh that are incapable of asking meaningful questions because of their constant distraction with simple pleasures.
What "rights" can such people really have? They have no self-interest, only the illusion of it. All they want is to fit in and they will make a compromise in any category if asked. Just as long is the loss can be assuaged by a flood of meaningless pleasure.
This is western society.
"I don't want to be downmodded for my animalistic defense display but NANANANA you're wrong *stomps on ground and throws things*"
Have you missed the reports of the total surveillance state? Have you not bothered to imagine the possible uses of this data? Have you not bothered to draw any judgements accordingly?
Do you not see the racial and economic discrimination in the justice system?
Do you not see the media inundating our children with violence and sexuality?
What does the law matter? Life is a function of society and law is but a subset. One civilization may manifest directives in law, another may manifest them in culture, yet the directives may be very similar if not fundamentally identical.
Perhaps you live comfortably and close your eyes to tyranny, but others are still suffering without hope.
The great failure of the middle class is in their proclivity for assumption about the lives of others. They have the resources to find out the unseen the truth, yet do not use them. They have the experience to feel the truth, yet choose to forget it. And so all hope for freedom dies in their hands unheeded.
Most people have no hope to truly contribute to society, to make anything original or innovative. They have no opportunity because they are not nurtured with resources and discipline. The lower class receives only discipline, and the middle class receives only resources. A similar scheme is found everywhere. Within the fundamentals, the discipline enforced by "islamists" and the west is the same: unconstructive pruning of behavior to keep the commoners in line with the interests of their rulers.
doesn't mean its *NOT* just as bad*
Why would you say that is what "Islamists" want for the world? Because the news told you?
Your myopic view is worthless.
People below a certain class are all considered "property with no rights" (according to the simplistic definition you imply) in all present societies (that I am aware of).
Your entire point seems built on the assumption that somehow things are fundamentally different on the "Islamist" world (whatever that word means).
Can you support this?
I doubt it. "Women are property with no rights, gays should be stoned to death, people who leave the faith are executed by family members". It is exceedingly easy to find parallels for these in western society. Just because the penalty is abstracted beyond obvious death doesn't mean its just as bad, so to speak.
IF what you claim is true, all that can be said of it is that "Islamist" nations people are executed by the community, and in the west people are left by the community to execute themselves.
Distraction from the fact that he was suspected of murder
What this really means is that there is a group of people who are encroaching upon a wealthier and better-connected group of people's interest. And the FBI, serving its purpose, is being used as a tool to prevent competition.
Mod up the truth.
Now we can have long boisterous drawn-out laugh
Yeah your little outburst there really speaks to the soundness of your state of mind.
There is literally no evidence for anything you claim. You are trying to argue your belief based on data that you are not supplying.
"The best weapon"
"puts the nation as a whole at risk"
"the policy must be"
"my life at risk"
You are totally insane. You have no support for any of this. You are just freaking out.