Disguised herd control for the masses 1984 style.

<3

Here's a question; if "moore's law of mad science" (the minimum iq required to destroy the world decreases with 1 point every 18months) is right, then how do we avoid total monitoring without incalculable danger to society?

I dont think anyone can really answer that conclusively.

Do we even choose our own destiny? Who is to say time isn't completely linear and we are all really just destined to do one thing or another. Obviously any form of control would be futile in this case.

And also just well lets face it, the odds some moron is gonna cause a cataclysm are infinitely smaller than the odds some extremely smart scientist develops a deadly virus strain which would wipe us all out for example.

In fact that's my number 1 doom for mankind scenario, screw all that war and climate shifting stuff, i'll take bets on that within 200 years there will not be a living soul left on this planet. Medicine would kill us all, sweet irony :-)

"Medicine would kill us all, sweet irony :-)"

Hehe, I can see it now; "genius female biologist takes relationship-problems out on everyone"

I wonder though, if a virus takes out say, 2 billion people by wiping out half of everyone living in urban areas plus some random rural people, what would the consequences be?

I guess we need some kind of superior intelligence to get us out of this mess - by which i mean machine intelligence (unpopular idea?)

You do realise that "law" was meant as a joke, right?

About your other post: getting "out of this mess" (even in a transcendent, metaphorical sense) through fantasized means is hardly unpopular. You shall find that it's in fact a very common trait among delusionnal people (machines saving us is not unpopular, it's just ridiculous; in fact I don't see how you can keep quoting Nietzsche without being aware how much this is a perfect example of slave morality, please take your pick.) Here is, however, a more unpopular (literally) solution : what if we had to get rid of 2 billion persons to get out of this mess?

Of course i know it's a joke. Doesn't prevent it from capturing a truth.

I'm also aware that intelligent machines "saving" us would be more like the machines taking over and taking command, if not viewed from a perspective that we evolve into them - in any case, the end of homo sapiens sapiens.

Applying the notion of slave or mastermorality on this is quite pointless; but if put in those terms we could say that the machines would be the new masters, and human the slaves by being dependent; or you could see the creation of the machine as a bridge to the ubermench, where creating intelligent machines would be the goal and purpose for existence.

"Here is, however, a more unpopular (literally) solution : what if we had to get rid of 2 billion persons to get out of this mess?"

Sure, that's another option. I'm sure lots of people who hate technology, its suffocating big industrious cities and its pollution of the environment would jump on that wagon any day now..

I guess i can see two different general viewpoints here; one is what we may call the gaia-buddhist view, where we live in harmony with the environment and let time pass as the seasons, in circle with no directionality whatsoever. Or we can take an techno-evolutionary perspective where the end is the stars and humans are just a stage and stepping-stone towards the journey from earth to explore the universe.

I'm not saying you endorse any of those views, i just think that's what the general dichotomy is building up to be, and a polarization will take care of the rest..

I would like to know your utopia though, what are you looking towards? What do you see happening? I don't think i'll understand you at all unless you at least answer these three basic questions;

-Where are we going?
-Where would you want us to go?
-How would you advice we get there?

I'm curious what truth an hypothesis based on such vague concepts as "iq", "destroying the world", and the arbitrary "18 months" can capture.

Applying the notion of slave or master morality is absolutely fundamental to the questions you're constantly asking yourself (and now asking me) here considering they are questions of values. There is absolutely no way you can turn around the concept of "Übermensch" the way you think : "creating intelligent machines" as the "goal and purpose for existence" is in no way a bridge toward it .In fact, it is absolutely the opposite, since the Übermensch (an altogether overly analyzed concept from Nietzsche which pretty much only appears in Also sprach Zarathustra) is the man that is freed from resentment and morality and accepts the Eternal return, "circle with no directionality whatsoever" as you call it, although I fail to see how a circle doesn't have a directionality; it is a change in man's perception of the world rather than in its ontology; it is not the contrary of "weak man" or "stupid man", but the contrary of "modern man" (see Ecce Homo for the exact explanation.)

You're creating a false dichotomy between luddites and technophiles while completely overlooking possible overlaps: nothing says the betterment of technology doesn't require to go through a stage of devolution, nothing says exploring the universe doesn't require a cut down on demographics to allow more spendings on actually expanding our knowledge. Your discourse presents technology as an end in itself rather than question the means to attain knowledge, if that is indeed what you're interested in.

Oh and: LMAO@"basic questions"

It's just expressing that as you get more powerful technology it's easier to hurt more people. Just like before you had access to a machine-gun it was pretty hard to kill 50 people in your local school. Humble truth.

Hehe, we read Nietzsche very differently my friend! I agree that the overman would in a sense accept eternal return, and deny at least conventional morality and might judge resentment as beneath himself. But overman is something more symbolic, something unattainable; it is something one can long for, a goal, an ideal within yourself, a value.. If you want an opposite of overman i'd say "the last man"; the one who has stopped dead and found happiness, who does not know longing and creation - only peace and quiet.. Nietzsche loves those who do not know how to live for the today ;)

I'm creating a false dichotomy huh? Well, as i tried to point in my last post i think and predict that they will polarize like that, into those two general camps. I'll agree with overlapping etc.

Stage of devolution and more spendings on actually expanding knowledge - i'm all for that if it helps us not destroy and wipe-out each other! Just give me some sort of picture on how this might play out; ripping two words, namely "basic questions" out of a 19 word sentence and consequently lolling at them won't help me understand you. I'm trying to help you help me understand you x)

I'd pose them again;
-what do you see happening now in the world now foreward? (this may be completely different from what i see)
-what would you see happening in the world now forward? (we might have different utopias)
-what do you think would be needed get there? (might have different means to the same goals)

If it's just expressing that, then it should be called "The fact that more powerful guns are more powerful", and it should be called a tautology. Calling itself a "law", I think it is trying to be more than that, however whatever it is expressing is hardly more than uninteresting hypothesis.

We read Nietzsche very differently. In fact I doubt that you could keep your current fascination for the modern world, science, technology and progress if you shared his views in the slightest, unless you distorted them to suit your needs, which is something I find most annoying about modern "nietzscheans."

I guess you'll find that thinking in terms of dichotomies usually leads to an impoverishment of your reasoning. Try some nuance sometimes, not just black and white.

I'm not here to explain how the future is going to play out, I'm not interested in that. Anything and anyone pretending to study the future is full of shit to me. The questions you ask would require complete essays I don't have the time to write; they are hardly "basic" questions.

It's not a tautology if you add the prediction that more powerful guns will become available - which is part of what it is trying to express.

Hardly matters what i personally think when i'm interested in predicting the future now does it? I really have a hard time seeing where you are coming from here. My interests lie in what will happen in the future - what does the future hold? I can't see how that is not interesting...

If someone sees a war coming up where the dichotomy is between black and white, then they are quite right to point that out even if it is a stupid black vs white war - and they have some knowledge if they are right..

I can perhaps see where you are going by drawing an analogy between me and my brother; he's pretty interested in politics and convincing the layperson about some random view whereas i always complain that he speaks overly rhetorically just to convince people etc. instead of finding truth above the "spectacle"; i'd much rather have him have the world serve his purpose rather than the other way around - "be above it!" and all that.

But to me the future is different; it is something real and factual which is going to happen regardless of what i do. I'm always in the spectator role. I know Nietzsche hates blind science, does not care much for what the every-dayman would label "progress" - and is much more interested in establishing new values and higher goals instead of just reaching for yet another industrial means..

You automatically assume that i have fascination for the modern world, science and progress.

What if i found, in my crystall-ball of the future, that the future will bring more of these things? What is the rebel to do against a superior enemy? Reflect on why things turn out the way they will perhaps? (one option i like). Retreat to solitude to find my own world and my own individual values? (another option i like). Try to peer more acutely into the future out of curiosity? (yet another option i like). And so forth..

Nietzsche didn't only speak of the present and his transcendent joy of life and his creative goals and reevaluation of all values; he also spoke of tendencies and future hazards and pitfalls (e.g. the last man).. Doubt my Nietzsche-knowledge all you wish - i know in my heart that i share much of his world-view.

Here's my boiled down Nietzsche;

"The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal."

You can't boil down Nietzsche to a single aphorism.

i love esr
<3 <3 <3

Oh, but I just did!

I know, just thought it was useful for this discussion, like.. it's not even the angle from where i look, but ok.. lets say it's the angle from whence a good deal of light shines xP

Science, modernity, technology and progress being covered in roughly 90% of your posts, added to the fact that you keep mentionning the same NYT non-fiction bestsellers, I think I can safely assume you're quite fascinated by those subjects and in agreement with them, considering you never oppose any counterpoint to the position they offer.

I never said dichotomies were wrong, I said they lead to an impoverishment of reasoning. If someone says a war happens between two camps, he's not wrong (unless there are more than two), but he certainly isn't insightful. Besides, an example isn't a demonstration.

You can't reflect on something that has not happened. The future isn't a object of study because you have no data about it whatsoever. If you study trends, you're studying the past, not the future. Assuming things have to keep happening the way they have is just poor epistemology. I don't understand how you could be a "spectator" in the future unless you're not part of it either. I didn't say that the way things will unfold in the future isn't going to be interesting, I said I wasn't interested in cooking up fake a priori explanations of that.

I think you lack a quality Nietzsche asked from his readers: to know how to read.

Yes, i'm fascinated with what i think is happening - computers getting better, biology merging with nano-technology and all that. It's interesting because the consequences are unpredictable. It's like getting an invention like telephone, lightbulb, airplane every other day, with computers, rockets to the moon, nanotechnology, internet, dna-sequencing..

Nietzsche in his time said himself "The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw." - Well, i see them as premises too, and i'd like to draw some conclusions!

"I never said dichotomies were wrong, I said they lead to an impoverishment of reasoning"

And i never said you said they were wrong. I was trying to illustrate how dichotomies do not always lead to impoverished reasoning. If i say that a group of people X will polarize their views against Y because there is a polarizable dichotomy, then that is as clear as it gets. Massmentality is rarely nuanced.

"cooking up fake a priori explanations" "learn how to read"

These are much in the person who looks. You can't read what you don't understand. Nietzsche was probably talking of reading whole books. Here we are discussing on the surface of our individual world-views, i'm not in the least surprised that we can't fully understand each-other - in fact anything else would be strange.

Fake a priori explanations also depends on the person looking. The intelligent design people still think we need more "facts" to sort out the "mystery" of the past; 9/11-truthers still think we need more facts to explain the collapse of tower7 or whatever; moon hoax people think we need more facts regarding that to say for sure whether it happened or not; some people still think there is a good chance there is a god - all degrees of certainty where people differ in their sureness depending on perspective.

Likewise some people won't believe the future until it hits them in the face; so lets keep it to perspective and viewpoints rather than claim a lack of facts. Some 40 years or whatever with Moore's law is sufficient for some to assume that it will continue (at least until any forseeable physical hard-limit), others think we should not assume anything like that more than 2 years or perhaps even 6 months ahead..Depends on a lot of factors how willing one is to see into or assume a set future.. Anyways, i'd be happy to have this discussion on msn rather than here, i'm sure we'd sort out a lot of stuff more quickly ;)

I never said you said I said dichotomies are wrong. You never said I said you said I said dichotomoies are wrong, let's keep doing that for 300 more posts! No, I was just pointing out that you weren't addressing my point by saying they were right.

As he was a philologist, I can assure you Nietzsche was not talking about reading whole books to get a general grasp of their content, but about the very act of understanding what you read as you read it.

Evolution/Intelligent design, the 9/11 "conspiracy", the moon "hoax", the (non)existence of god, have all happened already, consequently whoever studies them is studying them a posteriori, based on a (possibly insufficient, but anyhow existing) body of evidence. Not so for the future.

You should realise the whole concept of "laws" and "trends" is inherited from the belief a deity (for "natural laws") or man (for trends) set rules to order nature just like he set rules to govern human morality (which is why the same word "law" is used for both). Human trends are just kept alive thanks to human effort toward maintaining those trends in themselves most of the time, rather than the sign of an underlying order.

Well, in this case it's about understanding you. And i have no idea how to approach that task.

You seem to disregard any attempt to predict the future.
You seem to abolish the utility of thinking in trends and laws.

I can see how they were all in the past, but we're talking about degrees here, we trust the future just as much as the past; if some event that hurt me in the past seems to be coming up in the future i trust my past memory that it was unpleasant just as much as i trust that i will need to do a certain maneuver towards the future to avoid it; i can be sure in various degrees both ways.

Given that humans sustain e.g. moore's law simply by having it as an ideal that propels them, that does not make it any less real. If there is no underlying law at all, that would imply that the ideals people have is the most real thing. And then we are back to the study of human ideals and predicting human behavior and so forth if one is curious about the future.

Even if we speak of transhumanism as a religion with a distorted world-view, it might still have a huge impact on the future like any religion has had in the past.

I don't see what you'd have people like me do in this situation? As i understand the people in support of transhumanism very well, i figure talking and trying to understand people who are not is one thing i can do to better understand what will happen when that mentality clashes with other world-views and ideals.

Are you in opposition to the fatalism? the determinism? the unwarranted sureness?

It's not about understanding me. This is beginning to sound kind of gay, so stop it.

I abolish the "utility" of thinking altogether. Thinking, and by thinking I mean philosophical thinking, was never meant to be useful, because it wasn't meant to reach practical knowledge. You can think in trends and laws, make predictions all you want, but you're not doing philosophy, you're doing politics or economy.

There is a qualitative difference between the past and the future that can't be made up for : you have a representation of what the past is through sensory memory but you don't have any representation of the future; essentially you're just guessing something won't hurt, but you're not guessing it did when it happened in the past. You have no reason to be sure about anything happening in the future, but I'm just restating basic Hume analyses here, so I'll stop.

I was not contesting the reality of Moore's law, or any trend, I was contesting the term "law". The most "real" thing is not people's ideals, but the manifestation of their trying to achieve them, which doesn't follow any "law" as far as I know.

Transhumanism might have a huge impact. Or it may not. And no one can know about that.

What I'd "have you doing" is reconsider your values by reading some more seminal texts, and by seminal I mean older than 10 years old, preferably from Greece. I believe the question of intelligent machines is best summed up by Dijkstra when it says "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

Yes.. Hume, Hume, i've read lots of Hume, i know that line of reasoning, i still think your effort to downplay the possibilities of seeing into the future is overly skeptical.

"their trying to achieve them, which doesn't follow any "law""

And with the prediction without value, i'm beginning to see where you are going with this.. Perhaps reading some of the ancient greek philosophers would be a good idea; i've always downplayed them and focused on the post-enlightenment ones.

Maybe i am too much inline with the time-as-arrow and progress-as-exponential paradigm to see the beauty of the flat-eternal-condition of perpetual-growth-and-decay..

I'm trapped in possibilities and visions of the future though; i'm just that way by nature, trying to figure out the world and what is going to happen next; my perspective often with resolution leaving me excluded.. I weigh the world every now and then, but i always return to the mountain-peaks, peering out over the landscape, watching everyone living their lives - even myself. It's strange.

http://www.singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2007

if you wanna burn your eyes out i guess xD

I guess I don't.

i'll let you know if any of them might be interesting to you x)

In the masterful modern work 2girls1cup, the feminist genre is reexamined through a series of reversals of expectations. The prevalent ideologies of our culture are filtered through the lens of the pornographic genre - and, in true modern form - the work tends to raise more questions than it answers.

The opening image, that of the stenciled "MFX 1209" suggests a confusing misunderstanding - the 1209 seems as some sort of date, yet the aesthetic of the number lends itself to a futuristic association. This blurring of past and future, mixed with the confusion of the assumed-to-be acronym primes the audience for the confusion to come.

The first image with the two primary characters (who, for the sake of this reading, I will consider to be the "2girls" that are referred to in the title) is seemingly innocuous - the cross-cultural, lesbian interaction defines the equal-rights (both feminine and racial) within the genre of pornography.

The gentle background music lulls the audience to sleep, and the timely but gradual change into the next shot at :11 goes by largely unnoticed by the audience. The eyes are immediately drawn to the "Cup" (also presumed to be that mentioned in the title), the inversion of the phallus and perhaps one of the most overarcing symbols for feminine spirituality and sexuality in antiquity.

The gentle piano concerto will continue as the cup is suddenly and ironically filled with a steaming shot of fecal matter from the anus of our primary character. In this way, the masculinist, derogatory nature of the pornographic genre returns in a surprising, explosive manner. The fecal matter "penetrates" the sacred chalice, which raises a number of interesting questions. Many of these questions pertains to lesbian sexuality - is womanly love possible without the masculine grotesque? Is the pornographic genre doomed to exist within the realm of humiliating acts, even when the only participants are an innocuous 2 girls, and 1 cup? The later image of the two characters attempting to kiss through the feces of the masculine grotesque (as well as the literal feces) will only support this theme.

The excited but hesitant tonguing suggests a sort of apprehension on the part of the lead characters, but by :25, any hope for redemption has been lost. This transition from playful tonguing to full fecal consumption happens as suddenly as the transition to the original defecatory act - why do these central thematic moments happen offstage? There is no dramatic dialogue, neither character gives voice to the greater internal struggles that surely must precede the decision to consume another's feces. This central thematic crux is internalized in both the characters, and thus is obscured from the audience's perception as well.

This notion of blurring will evolve into a diluting and contamination of sorts by :40, where the vomit of disgust begins to obscure even the original thematic feces of the work. It is worth noting that the secondary character does not vomit into the cup (while our original character does), yet vomits directly onto the other woman. This further develops the motif of the masculine invading lesbian relationships - does one woman have a monopoly on the feminine cup, while the other woman becomes masculine, and begins to fill the role of the oppressor as she symbolically vomits down onto the kneeling lover? Even this notion isn't safe from the postmodern genre-confusion, as the roles are reversed and the other's mouth is vomited into in return.

It is hard to read this work in any constructive manner, as evidenced by the final image of the piece. The characters present themselves to the audience, effectively breaking the fourth wall. The difficulties of untangling the thematic mess of the genre to find sentence are reflected in the physical mess on the characters faces. Hopefully, with further examination and daring works such as 2girls1cup, we will be able to break free of many of these domineering and ultimately oppressing ideological structures which are maintained by societal forces, genre restrictions, and our own perceptions of reality.

rofl. awesome

http://www.outie.net/forums/attach/2girls1cupessay.jpg

rofl2

Hi,

http://www.corrupt.org/data/files/pentti_linkola/
http://www.penttilinkola.com/pentti_linkola/ecofascism/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentti_Linkola

I've come across some of his texts in what seemed to be somewhat poor translations, and although I'll refrain from taking a definite stance on his ideas for I haven't read enough yet, some of his analyses were definitely spot on and his political suggestions perfectly valid, however shocking they may appear to the layman. An overall very interesting and untimely thinker as far as I can tell.

you're dawning on me like clearing of morning mist x)

i'm also beginning to see what nietzsche meant by holding contemporary tensions and contradictions in one's head ;)

Hope I can somehow get rich off people pissing their lives away.

Hope u can read, too =)

Which MMO(s) do you play?

Not very active in Entropia these days, playing more Warcraft 3 tbh.

3d internet, liek in futurama! :)) .. saw this coming miles away :p

Who cares, we'll all be chinese (or dead but that's quite the same) in 20 years anyway...

Our only hope is that technology manages to bring our mind into a game so we can live forever in a virtual europa.

Nice one, i like the Second Life approach tbh, they offer a lot of creative freedom to the participant . MindArk are much more restrictive and thats probably why the Chinese picked them in the frist place.

I tested Second Life for like a few hours, and that was so boring, I couldn't find something interesting to do... I spent like 2 hours to stuff my char with some "pimp" accessories and then uninstalled it.

is the "game" itself for free ? never really cared about it.

SL is not really a game, more like 3D internet with built-in tools for creating new stuff. There are no Kobolds telling you to bring ten pig tails =)

it actually worries me, why so many people are willing to delve into a virtual world, are they not happy with our own?

I don't think the world is the problem, it's more about their role in it. There are tons of people who have pretty common lifes or even crappy ones (I would easily put myself in the common case) and while some will just work harder to change their real life statut, some other will just give up and take the easy way with the virtual world.

Better this than to commit suicide or whatever.

"Better this than to commit suicide or whatever."

I disagree.

internet tough guy detected

What? I said "I disagree" and you call me a "tough guy"? Yeah that's the type of shit that goes on at wrestling matches.

"Can you smell what The Rock is debatin'?!"

dont keep us waiting then ^^

not sure if I really got it but it sounds quite interesting (although rather scary)

CHINESE AND KOREANS JUMP ONTO ANYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY BANDWAGON, they thrive off trends.

a trend like tv was a trend that is now fading x)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSqNx7vJLDE

seen that like 2 days ago lol