5 ms·

Terraforming Ourselves: What sort of world do we want to live in?

44 points by Hooke 8y ago

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Well, what we want to live in, and how we implement what we want are two very different ideals. I still see money being the center of the US economy. In fact, money also allows criminal misdeeds... Go away. Money means I can be educated at a much higher quality than the lesser classes. Money also guarantees that my illnesses are taken care of much better. Today, the money floodgates are open for ISPs to start extracting more Mooney from the masses, for what should be a public good. Today represents a step back in the democratization of communication. All so some board of directors and shareholders can make a buck. My future; my science fiction; my wishes: are like that of Star Trek (Tos, TNG, Ds9..etc). The necessities to live should be part of citizenship. Obviously we don't have infinite matter or energy- but humans don't need infinite of either. Credits are a simple way to allocate the costs of goods/energy. There's pockets of people doing work here to make all society better, but I see a stark reversion to a "I got mine and FUCK you" culture. I, personally, don't know how to fix that.
- zip1234 8y ago
  A Star Trek ideal would be nice but I don't see it happening. Government is just too slow and inefficient to provide such things effectively. Food is a necessity, but you don't have to look that far back in history to find a government trying to provide that for its people and see the problems. For one of the worst cases of this ever, take a look at the Great Leap Forward in China. Millions died from famine.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    > A Star Trek ideal would be nice but I don't see it happening. Government is just too slow and inefficient to provide such things effectively. That's because tbis government was formed before the idea of post scarcity could actually be implemented. There was also the idea that citizens and government were in opposition with each other. > Food is a necessity, but you don't have to look that far back in history to find a government trying to provide that for its people and see the problems. For one of the worst cases of this ever, take a look at the Great Leap Forward in China. Millions died from famine. I'd be very wary in citing governmental propaganda. Capitalism also has great costs, including over suffering and death of humans and the destruction of the environment. Except in capitalist countries (USA) it gets turned around to blame the individual for having $bad_thing done to them. You also seem to implicitly think that I would want socialism/communism. In a way, yes. But most Marxists want the standard 'governmental control of the factories'. In the end, the citizens end up trading corporate master for govt master. Instead, I find that I agree much more with cooperatives. Democracy, one voice one vote, is generally considered good - why not also apply that to our workplaces rather than a dictatorship? I see that much more of a way forward, than some idiotic overthrow for more of the same.
    - zip1234 8y ago
      I didn't mean to say that you wanted socialism/communism. That was just the most obvious example of nationalizing such a basic need, food. I don't mean to say that a capitalist society has no costs. Capitalism definitely has some tradeoffs for sure. I'm not certain that environmental destruction is as much a capitalist thing as it is a human thing. Human history leads me to believe the latter.
- CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
  Money actually provide some nice features for certain decentralized optimization problems. Agree with you on how things could be a lot more community driven than the current approaches though. From thinking about the commons based approaches that has proven to work so well in information systems. I stumbled upon Henry George and geo-libertarianism. That line of thinking provides some promising ways to move things in the right direction. Even if keeping money around. In essence take the commons as the natural state, everything belongs to everyone. To create private or public propert from that, you first need to figure out how to compesate for the lost commons. From there flows interesting ideas such as land value taxation and public dividends. Fully internalizing the cost (to the commons) of private ownership also should dampen the hoarding problem so evident in capitalism.
neom 8y ago
Somewhat tangentially, never the less: I've never tried DMT or Ayahuasca (although curious) - however having spent 3/4 hours reading about the experiences people have had, I wonder if collectively we should discuss that as a direction for transformation we should be exploring. I've read Gene Roddenberry used a lot of substances, and imo -ST is pretty damn beautiful.
delbel 8y ago
> Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind who rose from the designer of an app for ranking women by attractiveness into the autocrat of the parallel world through which we receive all our news, is gearing up for new technological initiatives to reshape education and dating. Do you feel cyberpunk yet? Good. If we must terraform ourselves, let’s demand a say in what we become, and make it something warmer and humbler than anyone’s utopian dreams of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. Published on: June 1, 2018 Alexi Sargeant is a theater director and cultural critic who writes from New York City. huh?
erentz 8y ago
Brings to mind a good book by Peter Frase called “Four Futures”. It’s a quick read. But sums up very well something we seem to have real trouble with - imagining the possible futures we could have. And importantly what we seem incapable of doing these days, based on that deciding to take actions that put us on a course for the future we prefer. There’s a disheartening lack of vision out there. Edit: because of its short nature the audio book version is a good use of any built up audible credits.
- aalleavitch 8y ago
  This is one of the reasons I desperately want Banks’ Culture novels to get more popular. I think it’s a positive vision of the future that would resonate really well with this generation. I’ve even been tossing around the beginnings of a TV script for Consider Phlebas, though I’m not a real writer so I’m not sure it’ll go anywhere.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    I have good news for you. http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/consider-phlebas/55461/amazon-to-adapt-sci-fi-novel-consider-phlebas-for-tv http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/consider-phlebas/55461/amazon...

44 points by Hooke 8y ago

Well, what we want to live in, and how we implement what we want are two very different ideals. I still see money being the center of the US economy. In fact, money also allows criminal misdeeds... Go away. Money means I can be educated at a much higher quality than the lesser classes. Money also guarantees that my illnesses are taken care of much better. Today, the money floodgates are open for ISPs to start extracting more Mooney from the masses, for what should be a public good. Today represents a step back in the democratization of communication. All so some board of directors and shareholders can make a buck. My future; my science fiction; my wishes: are like that of Star Trek (Tos, TNG, Ds9..etc). The necessities to live should be part of citizenship. Obviously we don't have infinite matter or energy- but humans don't need infinite of either. Credits are a simple way to allocate the costs of goods/energy. There's pockets of people doing work here to make all society better, but I see a stark reversion to a "I got mine and FUCK you" culture. I, personally, don't know how to fix that.

zip1234 8y ago
A Star Trek ideal would be nice but I don't see it happening. Government is just too slow and inefficient to provide such things effectively. Food is a necessity, but you don't have to look that far back in history to find a government trying to provide that for its people and see the problems. For one of the worst cases of this ever, take a look at the Great Leap Forward in China. Millions died from famine.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  > A Star Trek ideal would be nice but I don't see it happening. Government is just too slow and inefficient to provide such things effectively. That's because tbis government was formed before the idea of post scarcity could actually be implemented. There was also the idea that citizens and government were in opposition with each other. > Food is a necessity, but you don't have to look that far back in history to find a government trying to provide that for its people and see the problems. For one of the worst cases of this ever, take a look at the Great Leap Forward in China. Millions died from famine. I'd be very wary in citing governmental propaganda. Capitalism also has great costs, including over suffering and death of humans and the destruction of the environment. Except in capitalist countries (USA) it gets turned around to blame the individual for having $bad_thing done to them. You also seem to implicitly think that I would want socialism/communism. In a way, yes. But most Marxists want the standard 'governmental control of the factories'. In the end, the citizens end up trading corporate master for govt master. Instead, I find that I agree much more with cooperatives. Democracy, one voice one vote, is generally considered good - why not also apply that to our workplaces rather than a dictatorship? I see that much more of a way forward, than some idiotic overthrow for more of the same.
  - zip1234 8y ago
    I didn't mean to say that you wanted socialism/communism. That was just the most obvious example of nationalizing such a basic need, food. I don't mean to say that a capitalist society has no costs. Capitalism definitely has some tradeoffs for sure. I'm not certain that environmental destruction is as much a capitalist thing as it is a human thing. Human history leads me to believe the latter.
CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
Money actually provide some nice features for certain decentralized optimization problems. Agree with you on how things could be a lot more community driven than the current approaches though. From thinking about the commons based approaches that has proven to work so well in information systems. I stumbled upon Henry George and geo-libertarianism. That line of thinking provides some promising ways to move things in the right direction. Even if keeping money around. In essence take the commons as the natural state, everything belongs to everyone. To create private or public propert from that, you first need to figure out how to compesate for the lost commons. From there flows interesting ideas such as land value taxation and public dividends. Fully internalizing the cost (to the commons) of private ownership also should dampen the hoarding problem so evident in capitalism.

neom 8y ago

Somewhat tangentially, never the less: I've never tried DMT or Ayahuasca (although curious) - however having spent 3/4 hours reading about the experiences people have had, I wonder if collectively we should discuss that as a direction for transformation we should be exploring. I've read Gene Roddenberry used a lot of substances, and imo -ST is pretty damn beautiful.

delbel 8y ago

> Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind who rose from the designer of an app for ranking women by attractiveness into the autocrat of the parallel world through which we receive all our news, is gearing up for new technological initiatives to reshape education and dating. Do you feel cyberpunk yet? Good. If we must terraform ourselves, let’s demand a say in what we become, and make it something warmer and humbler than anyone’s utopian dreams of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. Published on: June 1, 2018 Alexi Sargeant is a theater director and cultural critic who writes from New York City. huh?

erentz 8y ago

Brings to mind a good book by Peter Frase called “Four Futures”. It’s a quick read. But sums up very well something we seem to have real trouble with - imagining the possible futures we could have. And importantly what we seem incapable of doing these days, based on that deciding to take actions that put us on a course for the future we prefer. There’s a disheartening lack of vision out there. Edit: because of its short nature the audio book version is a good use of any built up audible credits.

aalleavitch 8y ago
This is one of the reasons I desperately want Banks’ Culture novels to get more popular. I think it’s a positive vision of the future that would resonate really well with this generation. I’ve even been tossing around the beginnings of a TV script for Consider Phlebas, though I’m not a real writer so I’m not sure it’ll go anywhere.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  I have good news for you. http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/consider-phlebas/55461/amazon-to-adapt-sci-fi-novel-consider-phlebas-for-tv http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/consider-phlebas/55461/amazon...