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I disagree with your proposed alternate allocations. LHC and other research on very small things Has yet to provide actionable information, and could've been

I disagree with your proposed alternate allocations. LHC and other research on very small things Has yet to provide actionable information, and could've been less of a boondoggle if the US had just funded their own damn apparatus years ago instead of killing the projecting. More telescopes in space Are basically pointless if you aren't intending to go anywhere. Encouraging trend of cheaper compute This is something that is getting increasingly hard to accomplish. We'd be better off spending that money rewriting existing utilities to be cleaner and less wasteful in their use of processing cycles. Brain to computer interfaces Very, very, very bad idea. Once this works, we've got a massive box of philosophical and psychological issues to deal with--reality becomes suspect and meaningless. Medicine Mostly worthless. We've got the technology to save lives and solve health issues, but either politics or capitalism work directly against it. As long as there's a buck to be made convincing people to be unhealthy, we lose. Even with better medicine, what do we do with all the extra people? Where do they go, since we're not going to space?

jessaustin 12y ago
>Brain to computer interfaces Very, very, very bad idea. Once this works, we've got a massive box of philosophical and psychological issues to deal with--reality becomes suspect and meaningless. Sure, there are all sorts of bizarre risks inherent in this, but is there any possibility that this won't happen? It seems all the trends point this way?
- Ygg2 12y ago
  Surely, Snowden's revelation point to much darker trends.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    I don't think we really disagree, but what do you mean, specifically? I foresee the eager adoption of brain-computer interfaces by significant portions of the population (possibly including myself), and all sorts of problems ensuing from that. I think those problems might well include evil shit devised by our various enforcement agencies, and I won't be surprised if Snowden's whistleblowing successors reveal just that.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Brain to computer interfaces > Very, very, very bad idea. Once this works, we've got a massive box of philosophical and psychological issues to deal with--reality becomes suspect and meaningless. Objective reality is suspect anyway, since all the methods of accessing it are subjective. Brain to computer interfaces may draw more visibility to this long-known philosophical problem, but it doesn't fundamentally change the landscape.
rwallace 12y ago
> reality becomes suspect and meaningless If you're going to get that hung up on philosophy, reality is already suspect and meaningless. This observation dates back at least to Descartes. His solution involved the ontological argument for the existence of God. My solution is to not get that hung up on philosophy. Take your pick.

jessaustin 12y ago

>Brain to computer interfaces Very, very, very bad idea. Once this works, we've got a massive box of philosophical and psychological issues to deal with--reality becomes suspect and meaningless. Sure, there are all sorts of bizarre risks inherent in this, but is there any possibility that this won't happen? It seems all the trends point this way?

Ygg2 12y ago
Surely, Snowden's revelation point to much darker trends.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  I don't think we really disagree, but what do you mean, specifically? I foresee the eager adoption of brain-computer interfaces by significant portions of the population (possibly including myself), and all sorts of problems ensuing from that. I think those problems might well include evil shit devised by our various enforcement agencies, and I won't be surprised if Snowden's whistleblowing successors reveal just that.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Brain to computer interfaces > Very, very, very bad idea. Once this works, we've got a massive box of philosophical and psychological issues to deal with--reality becomes suspect and meaningless. Objective reality is suspect anyway, since all the methods of accessing it are subjective. Brain to computer interfaces may draw more visibility to this long-known philosophical problem, but it doesn't fundamentally change the landscape.

rwallace 12y ago

> reality becomes suspect and meaningless If you're going to get that hung up on philosophy, reality is already suspect and meaningless. This observation dates back at least to Descartes. His solution involved the ontological argument for the existence of God. My solution is to not get that hung up on philosophy. Take your pick.