Given that the more real work a person does in their life, the tougher or smarter they will tend to be on average.. What is this magical technique by which the workers will be safely and effortlessly culled?
> I don't consider terrorists on the other hand to even be human.
Irrelevant though this is to the subject at hand, that is a serious mistake. Terrorists on all sides of the world's conflicts are perfectly normal humans, just exactly as everyone in Nazi Germany was a perfectly normal human being. When we hide from the truth of that, we can miss warning signs and accidentally turn into terrorists ourselves.
There's a very simple, almost-free way to deal with this kind of behaviour.
Make all his damn personal information public domain. Address, phone numbers, banking details, etc. Or if you want to be super fair and even-handed, just pass it on to the people whose ID's he sold.
I figure the problem would just kind of quietly disappear on its own.
Your conclusion is valid, but I question the reasoning that leads to it. Antibiotic resistant diseases are winning the evolutionary arms race because they're better set up to evolve quickly than the human medical industry. There are parallels with the ad-wars, but I think you've confused the players.
On the one side, you have a few large corporations with last year's world-view and a big pile of cash, and on the other, millions of college students, hackers and tiny startup companies with a bit of spare time and enthusiasm.
And therein lies the answer to the original poster's question. Those who want their children ignorant of all but one worldview -don't- want them growing up able to think.
Or in their terms, "snared by Satan's subtle wiles". Somehow it never occurs to them that if he's so smart, maybe it's -they- that have been snared..:D
So it's not a subdivision of pedophilia then, is it? It's a paraphilia.
Also, this term refers only to those exclusively attracted to adolescents. The way you state it would classify pretty much the entire adult population of Earth as mentally ill, which is (While I personally am prepared to accept it) pretty much a contradiction in terms.
Those rules are not the ones written in the lawbooks. They might have started out that way, but they've had decades to evolve into a more efficient, organic system. People following all the written rules, IE: Learners and the recently licensed, fuck shit up way more than any courteous driver who happens, technically, to be 'speeding'.
It will be very interesting to see how the unwritten rules develop and grow when we are able to talk to our neighbours. Hopefully the laws will be adjusted to match the real life rules, but if not, at least we'll know the precise location of the nearest eight cops at all times.:)
I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned Card Export - It might not be free, but it's the best of all the improvements available.
Card Export simply turns the Palm into a standard SD card drive, accessible on pretty much any computer simply by plugging it in. Yeah, it should have built into PalmOS when USB cables first arrived. Pretty splash screens triumph over simple usability once again.
Palm reminds me of the Amiga story, ten years on. Clueless company completely fails to develop on massive runaway success, enthusiastic fanbase doubles machine's lifespan with creative hacking, eventually killed off by price, incompatibilities, and undeveloped OS as once-crappy competition out-evolves them. [Sighs]
Because government-run manned spaceflight has a 100% success rate, of course. NASA has lost two shuttles to the exact same stupidities in their management system, and what did spending all those tax dollars achieve? They got to kill more crew per explosion. Fantastic.
This isn't some get rich quick moneymaking scheme, although it could easily have that effect for its investors. Mike Melvill is risking his life in the service of his entire species, bootstrapping humanity off the homeworld and into immortality.
He is an adventurer and a pioneer hero, and your dismissive, belittling attitude dishonours him and everything that is best about or people, but most of all yourself.
Yeah, because the difference between copying and stealing are clearly a racial issue.
Sorry, but you're trying to paint someone else a bigot using your assumption that all shoplifters live in the ghettoes, and only rich white kids are computer literate?
Change the word 'Intellect' to 'Gender' above and it exactly matches the arguments of those who would cure homo- and/or transsexuality.
You are seeking drugs to assist in self-directed development, where the original poster was apparently pressured into medicating himself to fit his environment. Not analagous.
I expect and applaud vehement opinions on the part of society's casualties, and have deep suspicion of any who say "Trust me - it's for your own good"..
Re:Or the pessimistic view could be correct...
on
Christmas in 2050
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· Score: 1
Collapse of US educational establishment.
Isn't it a bit late to be calling that a prediction?
Well, some scientists and engineers -are- vegetarian, for a start, but I think the technology is under development mostly for the increased efficiency it promises. Growing wheat to feed animals, no matter how callously you are prepared to treat them, nor how inventively you reclaim 'usable' parts, requires vast amounts of time, space, energy and cash compared to growing the nice parts of animals directly in tanks of goop.
And then there's the potential for creativity, such as chimeric meat, extinct meat, fictional meat, and, er, forbidden meat..
You might wanna read the US Constitution sometime: It doesn't say "The People have these rights (yada yada)", it says "The Government does not, and must never have these powers (yada yada)". It does assume that People hold any right you care to imagine, unless specifically limited by a law. (A law which does not imply a power the Government does not have.)
Clever stuff, and it held off the rot for a impressively long time.
What? Show me a happy, playful toddler and I'll show you a scientist. Humans are naturally intelligent, insatiably curious about how things work, and compelled to share things that they learn with those they identify as family, friends and tribe. Responding to those drives is what we call science, and applying the results to filling our other desires is technology, and that allows us to investigate further science in smaller, larger, slower, faster, and more complex aspects of the world around us than before.
Is there any reason to imagine that this process might stop before we have mapped the entire universe at every scale our collective musings can imagine?
... but some of the comments here do seem to be working on that assumption. From the site: "Our main goal is to get enough of the human race off the planet, as soon as possible, to ensure the future of mankind in case of overwhelming disaster."
There doesn't need to be a Singularity Point in order for this to be a good idea, people. Does it slip our minds that we already farking have the power to Nuke Ourselves Back into the Stone Age(tm), and even if progress has stopped accellerating as of 3am last night, (Any bets?) things are still set to get a lot more dangerous before they stabilise.
Seems to me that making a few colony vessels as an insurance policy against the Earth's possible suicide (You're asleep at the wheel if you think it can't happen) as soon as feasable is a sensible and prudent step to take. Provided, of course, that we also continue our efforts here on Earth to keep intelligence and information tech up to speed with our power and weapons capabilities.
Incidentally, do this societies goals remind anyone else of Iain Banks' SF background essay, "A Few Notes on the Culture"?
Please. That article has the usual mainstream fluff level of detail for technical reporting. Do you really trust them to use the phrase "totally robotic operation" and manage to mean anything worthwhile by it?
If -you- were to read the technical articles, you'd find that the Da Vinci system is a "computerized telemicromanipulator", which is "also known as the surgical robot" for no apparent reason other than to confuse the media.
IOW it's a pair of miniature robotic arms operated via exoskeletal controls and a stereo headset display that effectively magnifies the patient's heart from the surgeon's perspective, and enables keyhole incision heart surgery.
References to the surgical team being able to 'take over' if the machine fails refer simply to falling back on traditional, chest-splitting methods of access.
So, it was a good question. It -is- a human surgeon performing surgery with a very sophisticated set of tools, albeit one that will probably evolve helpful autonomous functions as the basic design is developed further.
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Given that the more real work a person does in their life, the tougher or smarter they will tend to be on average.. What is this magical technique by which the workers will be safely and effortlessly culled?
Irrelevant though this is to the subject at hand, that is a serious mistake. Terrorists on all sides of the world's conflicts are perfectly normal humans, just exactly as everyone in Nazi Germany was a perfectly normal human being. When we hide from the truth of that, we can miss warning signs and accidentally turn into terrorists ourselves.
Your original analogy is bang-on.
There's a very simple, almost-free way to deal with this kind of behaviour.
Make all his damn personal information public domain. Address, phone numbers, banking details, etc. Or if you want to be super fair and even-handed, just pass it on to the people whose ID's he sold.
I figure the problem would just kind of quietly disappear on its own.
Your conclusion is valid, but I question the reasoning that leads to it. Antibiotic resistant diseases are winning the evolutionary arms race because they're better set up to evolve quickly than the human medical industry. There are parallels with the ad-wars, but I think you've confused the players.
On the one side, you have a few large corporations with last year's world-view and a big pile of cash, and on the other, millions of college students, hackers and tiny startup companies with a bit of spare time and enthusiasm.
Who's going to be best at playing the viral game?
Or in their terms, "snared by Satan's subtle wiles". Somehow it never occurs to them that if he's so smart, maybe it's -they- that have been snared.. :D
Is there some sort of agreed defenition of the word 'natural' by which anything in existence could be declared an 'unnatural phenomenon'?
Also, this term refers only to those exclusively attracted to adolescents. The way you state it would classify pretty much the entire adult population of Earth as mentally ill, which is (While I personally am prepared to accept it) pretty much a contradiction in terms.
Well congratulations, Bubba. You jes done your bit to tilt a fucked up world a little closer to Hell for everybody. Smooth.
Guess it illustrates the OP's point nicely, though.
Those rules are not the ones written in the lawbooks. They might have started out that way, but they've had decades to evolve into a more efficient, organic system. People following all the written rules, IE: Learners and the recently licensed, fuck shit up way more than any courteous driver who happens, technically, to be 'speeding'.
It will be very interesting to see how the unwritten rules develop and grow when we are able to talk to our neighbours. Hopefully the laws will be adjusted to match the real life rules, but if not, at least we'll know the precise location of the nearest eight cops at all times. :)
I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned Card Export - It might not be free, but it's the best of all the improvements available.
Card Export simply turns the Palm into a standard SD card drive, accessible on pretty much any computer simply by plugging it in. Yeah, it should have built into PalmOS when USB cables first arrived. Pretty splash screens triumph over simple usability once again.
Palm reminds me of the Amiga story, ten years on. Clueless company completely fails to develop on massive runaway success, enthusiastic fanbase doubles machine's lifespan with creative hacking, eventually killed off by price, incompatibilities, and undeveloped OS as once-crappy competition out-evolves them. [Sighs]
Because government-run manned spaceflight has a 100% success rate, of course. NASA has lost two shuttles to the exact same stupidities in their management system, and what did spending all those tax dollars achieve? They got to kill more crew per explosion. Fantastic.
This isn't some get rich quick moneymaking scheme, although it could easily have that effect for its investors. Mike Melvill is risking his life in the service of his entire species, bootstrapping humanity off the homeworld and into immortality.
He is an adventurer and a pioneer hero, and your dismissive, belittling attitude dishonours him and everything that is best about or people, but most of all yourself.
Fuck off and die.
Yeah, because the difference between copying and stealing are clearly a racial issue.
Sorry, but you're trying to paint someone else a bigot using your assumption that all shoplifters live in the ghettoes, and only rich white kids are computer literate?
You think if Deputy Dawg had been completely confident that the peasant was unarmed, he would even have pretended to be civilised?
Change the word 'Intellect' to 'Gender' above and it exactly matches the arguments of those who would cure homo- and/or transsexuality.
You are seeking drugs to assist in self-directed development, where the original poster was apparently pressured into medicating himself to fit his environment. Not analagous.
I expect and applaud vehement opinions on the part of society's casualties, and have deep suspicion of any who say "Trust me - it's for your own good"..
Collapse of US educational establishment.
Isn't it a bit late to be calling that a prediction?
Well, some scientists and engineers -are- vegetarian, for a start, but I think the technology is under development mostly for the increased efficiency it promises. Growing wheat to feed animals, no matter how callously you are prepared to treat them, nor how inventively you reclaim 'usable' parts, requires vast amounts of time, space, energy and cash compared to growing the nice parts of animals directly in tanks of goop.
And then there's the potential for creativity, such as chimeric meat, extinct meat, fictional meat, and, er, forbidden meat..
You might wanna read the US Constitution sometime: It doesn't say "The People have these rights (yada yada)", it says "The Government does not, and must never have these powers (yada yada)". It does assume that People hold any right you care to imagine, unless specifically limited by a law. (A law which does not imply a power the Government does not have.)
Clever stuff, and it held off the rot for a impressively long time.
What? Show me a happy, playful toddler and I'll show you a scientist. Humans are naturally intelligent, insatiably curious about how things work, and compelled to share things that they learn with those they identify as family, friends and tribe. Responding to those drives is what we call science, and applying the results to filling our other desires is technology, and that allows us to investigate further science in smaller, larger, slower, faster, and more complex aspects of the world around us than before.
Is there any reason to imagine that this process might stop before we have mapped the entire universe at every scale our collective musings can imagine?
... but some of the comments here do seem to be working on that assumption. From the site: "Our main goal is to get enough of the human race off the planet, as soon as possible, to ensure the future of mankind in case of overwhelming disaster."
There doesn't need to be a Singularity Point in order for this to be a good idea, people. Does it slip our minds that we already farking have the power to Nuke Ourselves Back into the Stone Age(tm), and even if progress has stopped accellerating as of 3am last night, (Any bets?) things are still set to get a lot more dangerous before they stabilise.
Seems to me that making a few colony vessels as an insurance policy against the Earth's possible suicide (You're asleep at the wheel if you think it can't happen) as soon as feasable is a sensible and prudent step to take. Provided, of course, that we also continue our efforts here on Earth to keep intelligence and information tech up to speed with our power and weapons capabilities.
Incidentally, do this societies goals remind anyone else of Iain Banks' SF background essay, "A Few Notes on the Culture"?
Please. That article has the usual mainstream fluff level of detail for technical reporting. Do you really trust them to use the phrase "totally robotic operation" and manage to mean anything worthwhile by it? If -you- were to read the technical articles, you'd find that the Da Vinci system is a "computerized telemicromanipulator", which is "also known as the surgical robot" for no apparent reason other than to confuse the media. IOW it's a pair of miniature robotic arms operated via exoskeletal controls and a stereo headset display that effectively magnifies the patient's heart from the surgeon's perspective, and enables keyhole incision heart surgery. References to the surgical team being able to 'take over' if the machine fails refer simply to falling back on traditional, chest-splitting methods of access. So, it was a good question. It -is- a human surgeon performing surgery with a very sophisticated set of tools, albeit one that will probably evolve helpful autonomous functions as the basic design is developed further.