Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity.
The really curious thing is how things will pan out in these respects:
The more technological advance, the less interdependence between people, and speculatively the less incentive there will be to impose rules on others so long as they're not affecting you. So in some middle-term future, if (again speculative but not far fetched at all IMO) we get ever more cultural divergence along with geographical divergence (IE like minded populations going their separate ways into space), how would these anti-technologists justify any friction with pro-technologists when the latter have negligible footprint on either the AT's or nature (Earth or any land on other worlds)?
That's a great set of quotes to get a vehement discussion going!
The amazing thing is that this kind of argument is, actually, winning the dim-witted over in the West.
It relates to another topic which is the use of money/wealth. I also raised it before in the context of these people I call 'medaevalists', due to their penchant for seeminly wanting to go back to a time where we used grass for clothes and our hands to wipe our asses and eat our food (plus, no plumbing...).
These people should be rounded up and dumped in the middle of a big forest somewhere and told to get on with it... The lack of Darwinian evolution is currelty failing sociesty at several levels these days...
Their [mis]understanding of the nature of money and *why* technology and centres of wealth develop is actually the *cause* of many current hardships, not the solution.
IMHO, this is a sign of degeneration. Some people think it is a sign of the decline of western civilization. The lack of evolutionary pressure and natural selection is bringing about all sorts of self destructive things.
IMHO, it is a necessity to bring about evolutionary pressure again by moving on to a more demanding environment. Space could be that environment, as could be the bottom of the oceans.
Skipjack wrote:Jccarlton, we dont aggree on a lot of things usually, but on this one, I am totally on the same page with you and Msimon too.
Such people have to be called by what they are. Sociopaths and potential mass murderers, that promote genocide.
Would you support filing a complaint at the International Criminal Court against these persons and their groups for Attempted Genocide?
Skipjack wrote:IMHO, this is a sign of degeneration. Some people think it is a sign of the decline of western civilization. The lack of evolutionary pressure and natural selection is bringing about all sorts of self destructive things.
IMHO, it is a necessity to bring about evolutionary pressure again by moving on to a more demanding environment. Space could be that environment, as could be the bottom of the oceans.
How would that light a fire under their ass? They would still have the same material comforts and consequent complacency.
Now that I am safely past that age, I have wondered if it might not be benficial to humanity if people were to be cast into the wild between their 17th(?) and 20th(?) birthdays without technological aids just to let them REALLY know how good they have it in society.
"Think of it as evolution in action". (My apologies to Niven and Pournelle)
Maybe they could opt out at the cost of never being recognized as an adult. Hmmm.
KitemanSA wrote:Now that I am safely past that age, I have wondered if it might not be benficial to humanity if people were to be cast into the wild between their 17th(?) and 20th(?) birthdays without technological aids just to let them REALLY know how good they have it in society.
"Think of it as evolution in action". (My apologies to Niven and Pournelle)
Maybe they could opt out at the cost of never being recognized as an adult. Hmmm.
Kids used to do that as a matter of course, it was called "camp" with the added benefit of tons of poison ivy, peer hazing, etc.
Today, parents are utterly paranoid about letting their kids wander around the countryside alone.
That's a regression to tribal rites of passage. Not that we don't have rites of passage of our own.
The objective is renewed selective pressure as Skipjack and Chrismb point out, without stone age methods. Military service to earn citizenship is halfway good but fails because it doesn't guarantee any intellectual pressure. Intellectual fitness is the difference between healthy living and some runaway degeneracy enabled by technological progress, like Orwell and Huxley speculated.
I am not sure what he wanted to mean: maximum levels o minimun levels?.
If it means to set maximum leves of mortality (and the maximun is as near as possible to zero), I agree :)
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
- Professor Maurice King
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
KitemanSA wrote:Now that I am safely past that age, I have wondered if it might not be benficial to humanity if people were to be cast into the wild between their 17th(?) and 20th(?) birthdays without technological aids just to let them REALLY know how good they have it in society.
"Think of it as evolution in action". (My apologies to Niven and Pournelle)
Maybe they could opt out at the cost of never being recognized as an adult. Hmmm.
Kids used to do that as a matter of course, it was called "camp" with the added benefit of tons of poison ivy, peer hazing, etc.
Except camp has seldom been without technological aid and has NEVER been do-or-die for 3 years. Slightly different concept, don't-cha-know!
Skipjack wrote:IMHO, this is a sign of degeneration. Some people think it is a sign of the decline of western civilization. The lack of evolutionary pressure and natural selection is bringing about all sorts of self destructive things.