The most Dangerous Addiction

[Diogenes]

The dystopian future Diogenes sees is very likely if we can't reverse the moral decay that has taken hold in much of society. The default order of human society, throughout history, is a few dominating the many. Only under the influence of a higher moral order has it been possible to climb to freedom and general prosperity in part of the world.

The availability of relatively cheep energy from practical fusion technology can't change the above.

Tyranny is the natural state of human government. People nowadays don't really appreciate this. What the founders created in 1787 was something different from all previous forms of government. It was artificial, and contrary to normal human instincts, yet it brought great benefits once people learned to accept it as a reasoned form of government.

Christian philosophy, is also quite contrary to human nature. The natural instinct is to hit back, not turn the other cheek. It is completely counter intuitive to man's primitive instincts, yet it works in ways no one could have imagined.

Both are highly successful counter intuitive methodologies that provide great benefits, but like the drug war, people can nowadays only see the faults because the benefits have become invisible.

This is why societies cycle. The current crop can't remember what things were like before.

[Diogenes]

The dystopian future Diogenes sees is very likely if we can't reverse the moral decay that has taken hold in much of society. The default order of human society, throughout history, is a few dominating the many. Only under the influence of a higher moral order has it been possible to climb to freedom and general prosperity in part of the world.

The availability of relatively cheep energy from practical fusion technology can't change the above.

The #1 cause of moral decay is what it always has been. Humans thinking with the right laws and sufficient force they can control human nature in private (it is difficult enough in the public sphere). An outlook generally referred to as totalitarianism.

This is too simplistic. The characteristics which cause societies to cycle are inherent in their nature. You suggest it is a desire for a nanny state that causes the problem, but you overlook the fact that prosperity creates the idle time necessary for these busybodies to involve themselves in other people's business.

Had they been working hard at living and surviving, they wouldn't have the time to worry about impositions on others. I have long ago come to the conclusion that prosperity is the dominant driving force behind liberalism. Look at all the rich bubble headed Hollywood types promoting liberalism. They can afford to be morons because they have the funds to do so. Were they seriously concerned about making a living, they would have less time to devote to their idiot pet causes.

The disease seems to have caught a few people around here. Pity. They are bringing into being the very thing they fear. We do live on "Forbidden Planet".

When you try to force people to do something they will do the opposite. Otherwise they will do as they dam well please. So you have to ask yourself "will opposition or indifference get you more of what you want?"

You keep suggesting that the stubborn children who like to play with fire are no threat to anyone but themselves, and I keep pointing out that this experiment has already ran, and the children ended up burning down a whole country.

[Diogenes]

Non of your efforts to explain them away are very reassuring.

They are not, and that is why feeding the already overfed nanny state larvae is no good.

The future I see is a Skynet enforced Aristocracy with those in power having absolute and total control over every living human on the planet.

Skynet is unavoidable, short of some kind of Amish sectarianism. The technologically empowered future is no Utopia, it's some freak mix of Dante's circles of Hell and biblical Eden. You cannot stop technology. It is coming.
Today people are addicted to the net. What happens when the net and video game interfaces get to the point they're all but indistinguishable? Nevermind if AI is on par.

Sooner than later the power afforded to any and all Men will be nothing short of potentially apocalyptic. Nanny staters ain't gonna vote anything but the same kind of crooks we get today. I don't get how you can simultaneously argue for the control of people for their own good via govt

This is YOUR characterization of my position. *MY* position is that dangerous irresponsibility needs to be controlled for the sake of everyone else whom it threatens.

Drug addicts are the smoldering embers of a conflagration just waiting to happen. China allowed legalized drugs. China was wiped out. Drug usage will not stop spreading if it is tolerated. Community after Community will fall like dominoes if the disease is allowed to grow. At least that is how I see it.

"because they can't help themselves" but not see just what kind of FUBAR govt-enabling (& therefore "skynet"-enabling) populace this same culture of govt is breeding.

As i've told MSimon, it is the people who stubbornly insist on using drugs that are to blame for speeding the approach of a police state. Their conduct CANNOT be tolerated because it will cause massive amounts of death if it is.

If drugs are allowed, we will get a police state even faster. Mao's ascendance was the result of China's collapse because of massive drug addiction. We put up with legalized drugs, we get another Mao.

Bear in mind, we are discussing hard drugs, not pot. Pot's only nasty side effect is sapping the incentive out of people. Not a dire threat, as long as usage of it doesn't lead to the harder stuff.

--

I haven't explained away anything, but if I would I'd probably start with major life extension as one good first step towards adequate maturity if Man should survive. There's just too little wisdom trickled down into average people's minds nowadays, within the available lifespan, to yield a future-proof public.
Post-scarcity also ought to happen in roughly the same timeframe to quell nuclear/bio/cyber bitch fights.

That's my take on an optimistic effort, on what we should do hoping for the best. My private expectation is that the world will unavoidably keep getting more and more frick up, with an ever increasing fractalism of good and bad, use and abuse, wisdom and ignorance, cosmically powerful tech versus that same tech's impossibly opaque mechanisms (viz today's "geek" wizards) etc etc. This increasing complexity is the one trend I do "believe" in as the lot of human civilization at least until it's reprogrammed e.g. via future biotech.

My private plan is to find some way to weather the coming storm with as much life extension as possible, and to get as far away as possible from this crazed beehive of a planet... That's not a broken record pie in the sky dream, it's the only thing I would recommend if someone asked what the most foolproof plan were for the future - considering not any single dimension (political, mass-psychological, economic, tech, etc) on its own in a vacuum, but all of them as they are mixed in practice.

Good plan. I have always thought along similar lines.

They are uninhibited by any social or moral constraints.

Ironic but not worth arguing at this point - I find it just as unscrupulous to perpetuate people's tendency to the path of least resistance such as today's over-reliance on government. I find it insidious to keep people chained to each other and government, for no reward other than feeding that same government and idle cradle-to-grave brain-dead consumeristic lifestyle.

The Universe is out there waiting for us to grow into it and call it our own the same way we made most of this planet's territory, resources, etc, ours.

Mars beckons. We just have to build the bridge. Polywell (or other) and VASIMR (or other. Mach perhaps?) seem to be the components we need.

[MSimon]

And speaking of the "majority" about 56% of Americans favor pot legalization. Roughly 20% are unsure or indifferent and about 26% give or take are definitely in the prohibitionist camp. This "majority" of which you speak is a local phenomenon. You need to get out more.

52% thought Barack Obama was the best choice for this Nation's government. I'll not be concerning myself with what the stupid half of the country thinks is a good idea.

The Vote needs to be restricted to taxpayers only, and photo I.D. ought to be a self evident requirement.

Thank you very much for pointing out that 0 got elected.

It looks like the experiment will start in Colorado. And if it doesn't work out we can always do what is being done with 0 - vote differently.

[MSimon]

B,

It is the people who stubbornly insist that their bodies are their own that are in the wrong? You might as well blame alcohol users for the ills of alcohol prohibition.

I maintain it is control freaks like you that are leading to a total control regime. Now that is a novel idea. Control freaks leading to more control. Who would have ever thunk that?

Just as who would ever think that people in chronic pain would chronically take pain relievers.

Both ideas defy logic and reason don't they? /sarc (for the sarc challenged)

[tomclarke]

If you want to continue discussing the pros and cons of various religions (or non-religion), I'd prefer you find another forum entirely. This sort of thing can be pure poison to a community such as ours.

Some people need to be smacked over the head repeatedly before they get the message. For some unknown reason, it is okay for Simon to pollute one thread after another (hundreds of them now) with his sociopathic views of drug abuse, but Joe has laid down the law and said we're not going to see the same happen with religion. Yet here we have another thread polluted by people pushing the boundaries.

UH. Being in personal contact with Joe from time to time - I can tell you that he is more or less indifferent to what goes on in General. If you hate my thread hijacking show some self discipline and don't respond. Or keep your viewing habits to technical topics.

I started that thread. It was fair. It was only borderline news when discussing philosophy of science - once it had drifted to religion, and specifically islamophobia, there was no hope!

[MSimon]

B,

It is the people who stubbornly insist that their bodies are their own that are in the wrong? You might as well blame alcohol users for the ills of alcohol prohibition.

I maintain it is control freaks like you that are leading to a total control regime. Now that is a novel idea. Control freaks leading to more control. Who would have ever thunk that?

Just as who would ever think that people in chronic pain would chronically take pain relievers.

Both ideas defy logic and reason don't they? /sarc (for the sarc challenged)

Well I meant Diogenes not B. But I'm sure you all knew that.

Tom - Islamophobia does have some merit. Depending on the region you live in. Some of them have strange ideas about infidels and their worthiness to live.

[Diogenes]

I started that thread. It was fair. It was only borderline news when discussing philosophy of science - once it had drifted to religion, and specifically islamophobia, there was no hope!

Heaven forfend that a thread topic should ever drift! Whoda thunk that such a thing could happen?

[tomclarke]

B,

It is the people who stubbornly insist that their bodies are their own that are in the wrong? You might as well blame alcohol users for the ills of alcohol prohibition.

I maintain it is control freaks like you that are leading to a total control regime. Now that is a novel idea. Control freaks leading to more control. Who would have ever thunk that?

Just as who would ever think that people in chronic pain would chronically take pain relievers.

Both ideas defy logic and reason don't they? /sarc (for the sarc challenged)

Well I meant Diogenes not B. But I'm sure you all knew that.

Tom - Islamophobia does have some merit. Depending on the region you live in. Some of them have strange ideas about infidels and their worthiness to live.

I'm not debating merit of islamophobia, tho generally I go with Frank Herbert and "Fear is the mind-killer", but it is not right thing for news thread here. Might also say same of christophobia.

Tom

[GIThruster]

Might also say same of christophobia.

Only the grossly uninformed or atheists with an agenda would say the same things about Christianity and Islam. Plenty of us have pointed out the multitude of salient distinctions and you're still playing that pipe, Tom. When it comes to religion, you don't seem an honest man at all.

[Diogenes]

I guess here is as good a place to post this as anywhere.

Biblical-Type Floods Are Real, and They're Absolutely Enormous

Long before the discovery of the scablands, geologists dismissed the role of catastrophic floods in interpreting European geology. By the end of the 19th century such ideas not only were out of fashion but were geological heresy. When J Harlen Bretz uncovered evidence of giant floods in eastern Washington in the 1920s, it took most of the 20th century for other geologists to believe him. Geologists had so thoroughly vilified the concept of great floods that they could not believe it when somebody actually found evidence of one.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-au ... y-enormous


My purpose in posting this is to point out that the "group think" stubborn denial of scientifically provable claims has a long history in science across several scientific disciplines.

Disputing what the majority think is not "anti-Science", It is in fact one of the means by which Science often advances.

[GIThruster]

It has only been the last few decades that geologists have admitted to what they call "catastrophism" as opposed to "uniformitarianism". As with Evolution, geological uniformitarianism makes perfect sense--until you look at the physical evidence. Then you're forced to admit these catastrophic changes over time. Both these theories originally lacked explanatory power because they did not account for enormous amounts of physical evidence and yet they were adopted as the scientific view, only later to find the earlier view better accounted for the facts. (Stories of the Earth being only 6,000 years old notwithstanding, which was always silly on its face. IIRC, that view didn't come out until about 1900 with the original publishing of "The Fundamentals" and the birth of Christian Fundamentalism as a response to literary criticism in theology.)

[choff]

Same with eugenics, whole institutions and hundreds of scientists supported the social hygiene laws, in fact universities changed the names of the research departments from eugenics to genetics only after the horrors of WW2 were discovered.

Before the war researchers in North America were worried about falling behind the Germans in eugenics.

[tomclarke]

Might also say same of christophobia.

Only the grossly uninformed or atheists with an agenda would say the same things about Christianity and Islam. Plenty of us have pointed out the multitude of salient distinctions and you're still playing that pipe, Tom. When it comes to religion, you don't seem an honest man at all.

I think you mean that when it comes to religion I have different opinions from you.

If you read my statement I'm not commenting on religion - it was a meta-comment, saying that either of these two topics had the same inflammatory characteristics.

When we were talking religion, I never said that Islam & Christianity are identical - they are different religions, from different cultures. I never said the situation re terrorism now is identical between the two. I specifically said that many of the things often associated with Islam (but strongly denied by well eduacted Islamic scholars) a version of Sharia law that enshrines nomadic cultural mores - I find profoundly objectionable.

I also said that Jesus's moral teachings were pretty good, any version of Christianity based on just them would be excellent. However Christianity is not just the teachings of Christ, it is them + the OT + the Paulian books + Revelations + (usually) the idea that these religious writings are all literally true.

Now, modern Christian scolars will similarly have unobjectionable ways of dealing with all this, and not require literal truth.

You see the parallels? Also I agree that Christain is a more mature religion that Islam, and the less literal more sensible readings hold more sway. But not exclusively so. I note the required literal reading of the Quran but this is similar to Christianity 300 years ago.

I also agree that the "passive sacrifice" aspect of Christianity is less worrisome than the "active sacrifice" equivalent in Islam. But Christianity has had its share of religious wars so you cannot simply say Islam is violent, Christianity nonviolent.

All great religions encompass both profound morality and great immorality. The idea that Islam is "the evil religion" is stupid because many many non-evil people profoundly believe it in the West. I would say the same of Christianity as interpreted in the dark ages. Many very nasty things went on in its name, but equally it was strongly believed by so many people, and many of them were good, taking what was best from their religion.

In summary, I'm not here being post-modern and saying Cristianity and Islam are equal, it is all a mattr of opinion. I'm saying that there are things I do and don't like about both, because one side my be more apparent then the other at the moment is not enough for me to label Christianity a guaranteed force for good or Islam an intrinsically evil religion.

And a lot of Christian and Islamic religious leaers would agree with the above.

[tomclarke]

It has only been the last few decades that geologists have admitted to what they call "catastrophism" as opposed to "uniformitarianism". As with Evolution, geological uniformitarianism makes perfect sense--until you look at the physical evidence. Then you're forced to admit these catastrophic changes over time. Both these theories originally lacked explanatory power because they did not account for enormous amounts of physical evidence and yet they were adopted as the scientific view, only later to find the earlier view better accounted for the facts. (Stories of the Earth being only 6,000 years old notwithstanding, which was always silly on its face. IIRC, that view didn't come out until about 1900 with the original publishing of "The Fundamentals" and the birth of Christian Fundamentalism as a response to literary criticism in theology.)

I'll just deal with evolution. It is true, and expected, taht evolutionary theory has changed. Musch of teh original remains (as you would expect of a good theory) but some bits have been tweaked and some things added (emphasis on population fitness, genetics).

That is the hallmark of a highly successful theory. In fact the idea that a theory should never change, or that change in parts invalidates the original, is a peculiarly religious and unscientific one.

You can always with hindsight argue that scientists should work out new theories quicker, but that is neither fair nor even proper. For every right new theory resisted till there is very strong evidence there are many wrong new theories with similar support. Of course, with hindsight, it seems obvious...

Here is the wiki page on arguments against evolution, it makes remarkably interesting reading as a summary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution

These internet myths and partial factoids can be detected simply by doing some detailed research. Go for it if you want.