Yar, We could have made a machine that prints whole homes from sand, and makes solar panels on the fly… for that kind of cash.
lowering the cost of housing in general…
vertical gardens… Aeroponics, aquaculture…
Solar gasifiaction…
Balance…
@Blue Print Random: I often wonder what the world would be like if the United States education budget were anywhere near as big as their defense budget. Would we all be too enlightened and technologically advanced for there to be a reason for war?
A super computer for every student and a star trek like replicator for every home.
Whispers
The final threat we are going to talk about in association with immersive tech doesn’t want to be found; it will wait and very quietly whisper into your ear — malware that speaks to the user, pushing them into either mind control or madness. The same can be done with subliminal messaging, hiding an almost completely transparent message into the eyes of the user, something that is less effective with normal tech, but without the ability to look away it becomes dangerous.
This is scary… 
I think the military’s already beat ya to the punch on that one. DARPA’s Sonic Projector creates a sound that only the target can hear so think twice the next time you think you’re hearing voices.
From Wired.com:
“The Air Force has experimented with microwaves that create sounds in people’s head (which they’ve called a possible psychological warfare tool)… Here’s the question of the day: if the military were to beam voices into somebody’s head, what would they say?”
Frightening power to wield I would imagine, especially as a “psychological warfare tool.” Makes ya think twice about that guy who shot up the Navy Yard a few years back who was quoted as believing he was targeted by the government for psychological warfare and had been trying to check in at a VA health clinic because he had been hearing voices.
Oh and it gets worse I recall reading elsewhere about this technology, apparently advertisers had been looking into it as a means to beam advertisements directly to people passing by vending machines and marketplaces. Good lord, not sure what’s worse, a government with this technology or a corporation. Six of one half dozen of the other I suppose and oh boy they both have it.
P.S. Say what you want about cooperation vs. competition, fact is that both advertisers and psychological warfare soldiers ruined the internet and now they’re gonna make real life even worse. They ate all the internet’s bandwidth, now you won’t even be able to have a quiet moment inside your own head.
A lot of homeless people (not all of them) tend to be either deadbeats, drug addicts, or both, around here there’s a lot that even refuse the offer of shelter and will use any money given by good-intentioned strangers to buy drugs. Give them a large house and their new abode will eventually turn into crap if they don’t bother to work in order to keep it clean and give it the needed upkeep.
Also, citing the Atari Jaguar vs. the Super Nintendo as a reason that the free market doesn’t work is a bad example, because Nintendo had a high quality games library and a controller that wasn’t rumored to be among the worst designs of all time (ask any gamer who’s seen a picture of it and they’ll get a look of disgust). What type of economy do you dream of where the best product is always the one available, one where the government makes everything and feeds, houses, clothes, and bathes you?
The homeless can always be for the Atari Jagaur vs Super Ninendo. So free market is an example.
Attachments
I have met people with masters degrees, who were talented as hell, but they don’t have “teeth”
Our society serves the self serving.
what happens to the the ones who help just because?
@Ace Dragon: I won’t go into my whole ideal except to link you to an article I wrote on the subject here. Suffice it to say that I believe in having no government at all, governments, given enough time, only ever become corrupt, even the forefathers of the United States recognized this and advised future citizens to look out for this inevitability. You can see it in the information revealed by Edward Snowden, the US government has been waging psychological war on their own citizens, the US government has declared war on their own citizens.
As far as homeless people are concerned, I don’t know what things are like in your neck of the woods, but I’ve known numerous homeless people in my area and find them to be rather friendly and quite intelligent. I remember one homeless friend of mine was a brilliant artist who sometimes tried to sell his paintings on street corners, but they’re not unlike any other group of people in so much as some of them are drug addicts and some of them aren’t. I find that people tend to point out a single drunk homeless person and then use it as an excuse to call all homeless people worthless so they can justify their lack of generosity.
It’s interesting, I think, people refuse homeless people claiming that they’re all a bunch of drug addicts who spend their money on little else, but they turn a blind eye to all their rich and famous celebrities who are constantly checking in and out of rehab. People won’t give a dime to a poor drug addict, but have no problem giving rich drug addicts boat loads of cash.
As for the Atari Jaguar, well that’s certainly a matter of opinion, not unlike the rest of this, but I had one and thoroughly enjoyed both it and it’s controller. The controller was quite similar to the XBox controller of today, unlike the Nintendo controller it was very comfortable and didn’t require cramping your hand to operate. As I understand it Jaguar developers actually praised their time working with it saying it was the easiest system to program. I’m sure more developers would have flocked to it if the customer base was there, but unfortunately Nintendo already had a strangle hold on review publications and retail outlets and used that leverage to strong arm Atari out of the market.
P.S. That’s not to say that Atari didn’t engage in similar practices when they had the opportunity, but nonetheless the Jaguar was far more powerful than its competitors at the time.
P.P.S. And don’t act as though companies don’t try to strong arm superior products out of the market. I caught a show about ice cream on the History channel a while ago. Apparently when Ben & Jerry’s first tried to sell their product in grocery stores Pillsbury literally paid super markets not to carry Ben & Jerry’s. I mean literally just gave them money not to carry the product, they didn’t even sugar coat the bribery. Heh, sugar coat, no pun intended (you know because it’s ice cream) 
And good lord we’re talking on a forum for users of the Blender software and you’re gonna act as though Autodesk hasn’t tried to put a lid on Blender? Come on. That’s not to say that Blender is or is not superior to 3D Studio Max, I wouldn’t know, but it’s competition and certainly undercuts the price of 3DSM by quite a bit.
@atr1337 A lot of the evidence that one would collect from modern (past 6,000 or so years) behaviors is the product of a coercive system that is incoherent with respect to the overarching natural processes. Often they are taken as human nature though it’s not the case. The complexity of Gift Economics is merely a mirror of those overarching processes. Centralized systems are subject to a great deal of entropy due to the notion of “Externalities” in reference to natural law. This even results in existential risk. The idea of “Survival of the Fittest” has poisoned the porridge. If the system works upon the same principals as known reality then it is the simplest solution and the best bet for survival.
I prefer to liken it to the ant colony, a system entirely based upon reality, known or unknown, but not at all like our own system. Regardless of how annoying they might be at a picnic ants are one of the most successful species on the planet.
The colony itself works together as a whole, so well in fact it could be said that the whole colony is not unlike an organism in itself. However, this ‘organism’ is merely constructed of many individuals who work individually on their own, but it just so happens that it often ends up that multiple individuals desire the same goal and end up working together, not by command or decree, but by coincidence more or less.
Most species of ant have a variety of types, each colony has a queen who, unlike our society, does not control the colony by any means, worker ants, nursery ants and warrior ants. Warrior ants were born as warrior ants, they have a thicker carapace than the others and stronger mandibles to aid them in battle, they were born this way. The other ants were born into their individual roles too, worker ants tend to dig and scour for food while nursery ants tend to the little antlings in the colony.
Each type of ant was born specifically to fulfill a role that the colony needs, none of the existing ants try to tell the other ants what they believe they should be or do. None of the existing ants give out orders or look down upon ants that aren’t similar to themselves. Worker ants don’t look down upon the queen because she sits around all day and warrior ants don’t make fun of worker ants because they’re not beef cakes like them.
The queen ant does not issue laws or commands to the rest of the colony, there are no supervisors or managers. Each ant only seeks out that which they desire to seek out and it just so happens that together their individual desires benefit the whole colony. Each ant was born to be the ant that they are, no ant interviewed them, no ant gave another an F in digging or an A in fighting, each one was born with a specific purpose and that purpose was not determined by their fellow ants.
The ant is one of the most successful species on the planet.
P.S. I like to refer to the ant colony as a Multi-Complex Multi-Cellular Organism or MC2O for short. Where a complex multi-cellular organism is an organism constructed from multiple single celled organisms a Multi-Complex Multi-Cellular organism is an organism constructed from multiple complex multi-cellular organisms.
P.P.S The complex multi-cellular organism is not all that dissimilar in its construction. It’s really just a collection of single celled organisms that are all just doing their own thing, but luckily for us each of their ‘own things’ just so happen to form a symbiotic function which results in the complex multi-cellular organism. Each cell was born to be the cell that it is, a neuron does not try to make a blood cell transmit electrical impulses and a muscle cell does not interview a skin cell to determine if it should be a muscle cell, the skin cell was born a skin cell and needs no other cell to tell it so.
In my area, most of the intelligent people have already taken the opportunity to get shelter whether that is one run by the city, one of the local charities, or one that is a home owned by a relative, the type of people I talk about are those who don’t take those opportunities and remain under bridges or in parks.
Also, these are pictures of the Atari Jaguar controller, this design was widely panned by critics because it resembled a brick with a region of smaller buttons below what would otherwise be a sensible design (gamers wanted a controller that can easily fit in their hands and not overwhelmed with buttons). Nintendo may have had the upper hand in their ability to secure exclusives, but the superior system in the eyes of players isn’t always the one with the most bits.
Also, a system where there’s no government or higher authority would mean a society governed by Survival of the Fittest (the guy with the biggest gun is the one who lives). I also don’t think you could even make a human society work like an ant colony because they don’t have a high sense of morality and free will like humans do (power abhors a vacuum and eventually an heirarchy will develop that might promote freedom or oppress because some will want others to help them make decisions and represent them in a larger issue). Also in the way of promoting the ideal of the ant colony, you advocate that humanity takes a drone-like state where they receive a pre-determined program for their entire life (you essentially have no free will or even a sense of humanity, but I guess the world would then be at peace :rolleyes:)
I think a world driven by the advancement of technology, that had law, would be best.
If all compete there is loss,
If your collaborating and competing you can achieve greatness. (mine is better, here is how I did it)
I suppose you and I will just have to disagree on the subject of the Jaguar controller, I found it quite comfortable, especially compared to others at the time. Moreover the games themselves were quite nice. While the game play of both Doom and Wolfenstein was the same as any other version, the graphics made even the PC version look antiquated. Shortly before their demise Atari had developed and planned to bring to market an affordable virtual reality headset for the Jaguar, prototypes were running Doom, can you imagine playing Doom with a virtual reality headset two decades before Oculus?
I fail to see how running the human race like an ant colony would devolve anyone into a drone, the ants offer nothing but free will, they do only what they want to do. No one decides when the hive needs a new tunnel, instead a single ant simply decides that he wants to dig a new tunnel and others join in if they so choose. The queen does not delegate tasks, she does not decide how many warriors or workers the hive needs, this is all decided by nature.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” -Mao Zedong
The world is already ruled by Anarchy, always has been. It is already true, and the system under which we live, that the guy with the biggest gun is the guy who dictates the rules. The police like to say they are the law, but that’s not at all true, the police hold absolutely no influence in a situation in which they are out gunned.
Take a look at the US and Russia for instance. For all intents and purposes Edward Snowden broke the law, but the US cannot touch him because they lack the fire power to invade Russia and take him. Edward Snowden broke no real laws, the only laws he broke were figments of the imagination, if they were not figments of the imagination then they could not have been broken.
The laws of physics are the only real laws for they simply cannot be broken. The laws of the US only hold power among those who believe they hold power. The laws of Russia only hold power among those who believe they hold power. Russia cannot force their laws upon US citizens because the US has the fire power to stop them. The US cannot force their laws upon Russian citizens because Russia has the fire power to stop them.
You say a society without government falls under the rule of the “The guy with the biggest gun survives,” but even with government this is the rule we live under, how fortunate for us that no one individual or group of individuals hold the biggest gun. This is where MAD comes into play, Mutually Assured Destruction. No one entity governs the world because no one entity holds the biggest gun, several entities hold the biggest gun, nukes, as it is.
At any rate it matters not at all which ‘code of laws’ a person subscribes to. The ultimate rule and the absolute only governing body is nature. Nature holds the biggest guns and always will. Everything we do must conform to the laws of physics, it matters not how smart you are, it matters not how big your gun is, try to break the laws of physics and you will pay dearly. There is no order more powerful than nature, nature is the end all be all.
Humble yourself before the almighty. Humble yourself before the awesome power of the one and only nature, learn those rules and be true to those rules and find reward. Attempt to overthrow that king the one and only, attempt to replace the almighty with yourself and you will know his name is the lord when he lays his wrath upon thee. There is no rule other than his, there is no rule other than the rule of nature, the laws of physics. Even under the rule of others there is no rule to supersede that of his. Natures rule is perfect, infallible, unmistakable and always true and just.
All others who claim to create laws are liars, their laws are nothing, only nature’s law exists. All others who claim to issue justice are liars, only nature’s law is just for only nature’s law is true.
Right, nature decides what the ant will do for the remainder of his life, running the human race like that implies that you are born for a singular purpose decided by your genetics and that’s what you will do for life. You might be able to decide how you’re going to do it, but forget about taking up another job, hobby, or line of work. (when was the last time you observed a soldier ant help to gather food?).
[and after skipping over the forum rule breaking political commentary]
Humble yourself before the almighty. Humble yourself before the awesome power of the one and only nature, learn those rules and be true to those rules and find reward. Attempt to overthrow that king the one and only, attempt to replace the almighty with yourself and you will know his name is the lord when he lays his wrath upon thee. There is no rule other than his, there is no rule other than the rule of nature, the laws of physics. Even under the rule of others there is no rule to supersede that of his. Natures rule is perfect, infallible, unmistakable and always true and just.
All others who claim to create laws are liars, their laws are nothing, only nature’s law exists. All others who claim to issue justice are liars, only nature’s law is just for only nature’s law is true.
Explicit governance according to what is claimed by natural law would be even worse than the claimed ‘anarchy’ you think we’re living in, starting with…
- -If there was a reasonable assumption that a women had a fault in her genetics, you would have justification to sterilize her because evolution cannot be impeded with inferior offspring.
- -You could theoretically get away with murder if you had ample reason the victim had faulty genetics or that your genetics made you predisposed to violent acts and you’re just acting according to what nature meant for you to be.
- -Genetic testing could categorize people into a pre-determined path of life that is said will utilize his genes the best, this means even though you can do with it what you want, you still have to follow that pre-determined career path. If one said you had to work in manufacturing because of your natural bent to react quickly and have larger muscles, that is the thing you must do for life.
- -Thousands of prisoners (who might be violent) must be set free because chances are it was due to their genetic chemistry and not something they could control.
Of course, the 20th century has already seen the death of millions through people trying to implement their own order inspired by what was thought to be the knowledge we had on how natural law works. While some aspects of natural law would indeed be not to be violated for the betterment of society, there are other aspects which are downright dangerous to be seen as preferable to our current systems of authority.
Anyway, it seems like from that last part that you go as far as to worship nature, do you refer to planet Earth as Gaia as well?
I believe you misunderstand. What determines whether you will like pizza or dislike pizza? What determines whether you will enjoy baseball or find it boring?
The ant colony has no need for the warrior ant to help gather food, that is the worker ants job and the worker ant only does it because that’s what he wants to do. No ant decides how many worker ants are necessary or how many warrior ants are necessary, the queen births as many as are necessary and whatever she births is exactly what the colony needs.
You misunderstand what I’m saying here. What you want to do, what you enjoy doing is your purpose. Some are born artists, others are born mathematicians, some are born hunters and others born mechanics. No one analyzes their genes to determine what they should or should not be, it is simply what they enjoy doing and so they do it.
No one analyzes the genes of a person to tell them if they should or should not like pizza so why should they analyze a person’s genes to determine if they should or should not like programming?
There is no reasonable assumption that a woman had a fault in her genes, the genes she is born with were given to her by nature and therefore the genes she is supposed to have and the genes that the human race has a need for regardless of whether they knew it or not. Human’s, like ants, are not smart enough to determine what types of people are necessary and what types are not. The ants do not determine if another ant should or should not be a worker, in the same manner the human is not smart enough to determine if a woman should or should not program. If the ant wants to dig then the ant was meant to dig, if the woman wants to program then the woman was meant to program.
You would not murder someone based upon the assumption that they had faulty genes because there is no such thing as faulty genes, only faulty assumptions.
You cannot make a person like hot dogs, neither can you make a person enjoy programming, at the same time you cannot make a person dislike hot dogs, neither can you make a person dislike programming. All of this is written in their own genetic code, a code that was not written by you or I, but by nature.
You assume that if we are what we are that people should take it upon themselves to read a babies genes and then tell them whether they are worth something or worth nothing, but this is not at all the case. The person decides for themselves what they are, it is what they want to be, what they enjoy. Like the ant colony the human race is not smart enough to determine what people society needs and what people they do not, what nature provides us with is exactly what we need.
One does not make a flower grow, one allows a flower to grow.
P.S. As far as skipping forum rules, I suppose I should be placed in jail, have my hands cut off or otherwise be stoned to death for disobeying your almighty, infallible, unbreakable rules… Highness.
P.P.S. You act as though there’s something wrong with admiring nature, act as though you are smarter than nature, but it was nature that created you, not the other way around. We all came from nature, a nature that created flight before we were born, a nature that created nuclear fusion long before we had any idea what atoms were, a nature that created the brain long before the computer was a figment of someone’s imagination. What’s wrong with admiring nature, nature is our creator.
Nature created the heavens and the earth. What have you created? A few pop sickle sticks and cap guns?
-Ants don’t have a strong sense of morality or a strong sense of right and wrong like people do
-Ants do not have a developed ability to construct a system of beliefs like people do
-Ants do have the sophisticated minds needed to conduct studies of nature, develop advanced technologies, and write long forum posts stating an opinion.
I have also yet to see a study that shows that ants by nature choose to stay in their positions because they’re not needed elsewhere and not because they’re following what their genetics designed them to do. This assumes that the ant brain is just as sophisticated as a human’s despite its tiny size and more simplistic structure (ants are still very sophisticated in what they do, but I think most people would strongly disagree that they are an equal to humanity on every front).
Look, I like being in nature as much as the next guy (we’ve gone on a lot of hiking trips for instance), but I do not admire it to the point where I make it into a pseudo-religion and think that humans would be much better off if we rejected all semblance of the unique traits of humanity and lived like the animals instead.
P.S. As far as skipping forum rules, I suppose I should be placed in jail, have my hands cut off or otherwise be stoned to death for disobeying your almighty, infallible, unbreakable rules… Highness.
All I can say here is that I was not the one who made up the forum rules here (the one that bans political discussion), if you decide that the forum rules don’t apply to you, the administration likewise has no obligation to allow you to remain an active member.
The ecosystem has evolved seamlessly and worked in absolute perfection for billions of years. Where there was a need for flowers to be pollinated nature created bees, where there was a need for the ground to be aerated nature created worms, where there was a need for plankton to be regulated nature created whales. On the other hand our empires, our ecosystems, only ever last but a short time before their exquisite demise. If I were to worship something I would much rather worship Nature’s perfection than man’s imperfection.
I’m not suggesting that we live like animals, maybe to some degree. The lion does not live like the butterfly and the hummingbird does not live like the hawk. Each aspect of nature’s ecosystem has a specific place and purpose that is perfect in its design, why should the human race be any different?
Why should the human race be any different? Where nature sees a need for a programmer nature creates a programmer, where nature sees a need for a farmer nature creates a farmer.
As far as being banned from the site, I fear not the retribution of man, this is who I am and if that gets me stoned than so be it.
P.S. And no I don’t refer to it as Gaia, but then again a rose by any other name would still smell just as sweet.
There’s little I can say here without breaking the forum rules myself, but I will just say that the theology I subscribe to explains the perfection in nature in a different way than assuming there’s some ethereal cosmic intelligence that somehow, over eons of time, it knows exactly when a problem is manifesting itself followed by knowing exactly what the best solution is (hence why I mentioned this type of belief about nature as a pseudo religion due to how it would appear to be closer to resembling a supernatural process rather than just natural).
Noting about this, being that you said that nature created when necessity struck rather than saying it rolled the dice a few million times and somehow got something useful, hence my view that your posts seem to indicate an apparent belief in a cosmic intelligence.
Also, I don’t worship humanity just as I don’t worship nature, but the forum rules would probably not allow me to go into further detail of what exactly I believe.
On this as well…
I was thinking about what you said about nature being a system of infallible perfection and I have to say, the very fact that the human race in its current state exists at all pokes a big hole in that notion.
In a sense, you talk about how current human society and how current human thinking is inherently full of flaws and simply cannot last, yet the human race you say was created by nature, an entity that is incapable of imperfection. How then, could a system of perfection and infallibility create a species that’s currently shot through with imperfection complete with a highly fallible mind. A perfect system by nature would, at the least, have a very hard time creating something that messes with the balance it carefully constructed over millions of years by introducing massive heaps of imperfection, corruption, and destruction.
In a sense, you point to nature creating the ant, a species that is fully capable of creating a perfect society that cannot readily make mistakes or sow the seeds for its downfall. Yet it’s the same system that created humans, who in turn is claimed to be incapable of creating a perfect society and therefore are born experts of creating civilizations rife with the seeds for its downfall (which is what eventually happens as shown throughout history). Can you really claim nature to still be a perfect system when you factor all this in?
Applied psychology can be a powerful weapon,
or a tool for the betterment of all society,
ant’s probably don’t really understand that they are helping the whole,
they do so because they are chemically compelled to do so.
Humans don’t help the whole race, the help themselves which occasionally helps all, unless they are given the means,
most humans don’t think outside their own existence.
Want to compel people to do the right thing?
Reward people in a manner the appreciate,
not one that only punishes the bad.
“profit” is a motive, but so is ego,
if one betters life for all, then they “profit” and they are recorded in history as the one that did so…
“I made it better for me, so now it’s better for all”
as far as theology or beliefs are concerned, you can do whatever you wish, however
> your rights end at the next mans nose.