Sunday, September 25, 2005

A Quiet Country Market

It begins quietly. A couple drive into a country town to shop and look at the literature on display at the Vegetarian Festival. By accident they stumble on an outpost of The Coalition Against Civilization, an organization dedicated to an ideology called eco-primitivism. The harmless-looking vegetarians are passing out pamphlets looking for a few good species traitors, who would work towards "spreading and developing theories and practical means to bring about the destruction of civilization and defend what wilderness remains." For a real-life account, read Baron Boddisey's and Dymphna's description of their experiences in the Gates of Vienna.

Societies whose goal is the destruction of human civilization or even humanity itself have existed on the margins for some time. The Voluntary Human Extinction Project (VHEMT) argues it is not enough to reduce the population that is burdening Gaia. Humanity must disappear down to the last man, woman and child to "allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health". Theodore Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber, a trained mathematician of extremely high intelligence, embarked upon a terrorist program whose aims were put forth in the manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future. According to Wikipedia:

The main argument of Industrial Society and Its Future is that technological progress is undesirable, can be stopped, and in fact should be stopped in order to free people from the unnatural demands of technology, so that they can return to a happier, simpler life close to nature. Kaczynski argued that it was necessary to cause a "social crash", before society became any worse. He believes a collapse of civilization is likely to occur at some point in the future; thus, it is better to end things now, rather than later, because the further society develops, the more painful things will be when the collapse occurs. If it does not occur, he says, humans will have the freedom and significance of house pets, although they may be happy, in a society dominated by machines or an elite social class.

A paperback published some years ago, Rainbow Six, wove the threads of these urban-legend type ideas together and had a plot based around an environmentalist scheme to depopulate the world with a genetically engineered virus, so that the enlightened survivors could be free to enjoy nature without the stain of man excepting of course, the environmentalists themselves.

The desire to alter the relationship between man and the world isn't confined to the Coalition Against Civilization. One concept skimming right under the surface in the ocean of internet memes is the idea of the singularity. Glenn Reynolds has posted extensively on the subject, often relating it to advances in human life-extension and biotechnology. Singularity is described in Wikipedia as

a predicted future event when technological progress and societal change accelerate due to the advent of superhuman intelligence, changing our environment beyond the ability of pre-Singularity humans to comprehend or reliably predict. This event is named by analogy with the breakdown of modern physics knowledge near the gravitational singularity of a black hole.

Such consequences were discussed in the 1960s by I. J. Good, though the first use of the term singularity to describe technological progress was by John von Neumann in the 1950s. The Singularity was vastly popularized in the 1980s by Vernor Vinge. It is disputed when or if the Singularity will occur, but futurists most commonly estimate the third decade of the 21st century.

The consequences of a singularity are the precise opposite of the goals desired by the Voluntary Human Extinction Project (VHEMT). If VHEMT purposes to resolve the tension between man and the world by removing man, singularity puts humanity increasingly in charge of the natural world. In Ray Kurzweil's words:

An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense 'intuitive linear' view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The 'returns,' such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

Such were the perils encountered by Baron and Dymphna at the Vegetarian Festival. Maybe they should have shopped elsewhere. There's a reason why some supermarkets are called Safeway.

180 Comments:

Blogger al fin said...

The irony is that just when we as a human race are so close to making incredible gains toward eon-long goals and dreams, these quasi-luddites are trying to make cavemen out of a few humans, and exterminate all the rest. These naive people are desperately in need of a real education, not the rubbish they have clearly been exposed to.

9/25/2005 05:54:00 PM  
Blogger Cybrludite said...

I've yet to see any of these "back to the boonies" folks actually walk the walk. Go fig, living close to nature is hard living. It ages you fast, long before your time. You can't expect the narcissists on the left to actually do something that'd make themselves less attractive...

9/25/2005 06:01:00 PM  
Blogger Dymphna said...

no, Wretchard, *not* Safeway! Here, we have Whole Foods --lots of organic meat.

You're right about vegetarian festivals, though...and to think it all started with a trip to the library.

Innocents abroad, that's what we were. Had to hide our politically incorrect books between two novels so we wouldn't be spotted as subversives there in Li'l Kumquat.

PS Whole Foods is also considered a good stock investment by the "experts" and is an excellent place to work per the employees. Besides they have such wonderful freebies in each department -- you can have lunch for free whilst shopping.

9/25/2005 06:02:00 PM  
Blogger gumshoe said...

how are all those AI programs
coming along??

still some pretty basic stuff they can't handle,AFAIK.

Marshall McLuhan said
something to the effect that
all man's inventions are attempts to
"outer" all of the potentials
we have within ourselves...
hence his subtitle for "Understanding Media" was "The Extensions of Man".

we project how "awful" the singlarity would be based on the fact that it's...
1)
currently unknowable
and
2)
not here yet
and
3)
picturing the worst is
(in reasonable forms)
a human survival skill


would the Singularists
be dissapointed if,
instead of "going under",
mankind adapted to the new
world of "singular intelligence"??


as McLuhan also said,(paraphrased)
the Luddite path of trying to stop or reverse change is like setting yourself on the freeway facing oncoming traffic...
when/if you resist it by moving against the traffic you end up increasing the velocity at the collision.

9/25/2005 06:21:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

From the Species Traitor website:

"After 2 and a half years, Species Traitor no. 4 is finally available. This marks our first issue in book format and by far our best issue to date.

The issue opens with an indepth look at the social and ecological consequences of domestication and the collapse of civilizations (including our own). The bulk of the issue deals with rewilding and resisting. Too long have these been treated as antithetical tenets of reaction to our reality, but there's little truth to this. Rewilding and resisting are one in the same. They don't need to be different actions so long as they are rooted in the same interests. They go hand in hand. We have a number of articles about the high points and fused focuses of each with a number of practical applications to daily life. Whether we're talking about uprooting fiber optic cables, personal diets, expanding our awareness, physical resistance, or rebuilding community, the interest lies in the destruction of civilization and a return to wildness."


The collapse of Bolshevism deprived the panoply of fellow-travelers of the paradaisal vision they needed to function. To make it from one day to the next. The Worker's Paradise functioned as the Opiate of the Moonbats, vacuuming the truly insane from society and placing them in the custody of relatively functional cult leaders like Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot. Now that these worthies are gone, their former wards have all crawled out of the snakepit.

9/25/2005 06:39:00 PM  
Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

The mujahideen of the Great Islamic Jihad are honorary members of the Coalition Against Civilization. I'm interested in the natural convergence between the two groups, the Islamists and the hard-core destroy-the-industrial-world Left. They both have the same motive, after all -- exterminating four-fifths of the earth's population -- and after they seize power they can fight among themselves about who has to be killed.

My money's on the jihadis. Or it would be, if there were to be any money left after the Green-Islam Alliance ushers in the Perfect Utopia.

9/25/2005 06:45:00 PM  
Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

Wretchard, don't forget Ward Churchill. Don't you think he could function as a ruthless and charismatic leader of the moonbats? Maybe not on the order of Pol Pot -- but still, I could see him opening up some "Special Activities" camps for the incorrectly informed among us...

9/25/2005 06:54:00 PM  
Blogger Red River said...

Check this out:

http://www.dieoff.org/

This is the half-empty side of Kurzweil's half-full argument. Both sides use the same data to make their points.

A lot of people credit Vernor Vinge with coining the Singularity. But the idea was around way before - Von Neumann knew about as did some authors of some short SF stories - and I cannot find one short story in particular..

9/25/2005 07:06:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Baron,

It's an empirical fact that more cult members die at the hands of their cults than from 'outsiders'. Many millions of Communists were killed in Party purges, a number far greater than was achieved by the US Armed Forces, with its bombers, warships, tanks, artillery and machineguns, in fifty years of conflict.

The process takes on many names. Criticism Self Criticism. Rectification meetings. Reeducation camps. Cults are organized insanity and paranoia. A guy like Ward Churchill exists because the cult hasn't taken over yet. The day it does he will be among its first victims.

9/25/2005 07:09:00 PM  
Blogger Red River said...

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/scifi/works/stories/microgod.htm

"Some day the Neoterics, after innumerable generations of inconceivable advancement, will take down their shield and come forth. When I think of that I feel frightened."

T. Sturgeon -

"The Microcosmic God"

A very good SF Short Story.

9/25/2005 07:10:00 PM  
Blogger Red River said...

Wretchard:

"It's an empirical fact that more cult members die at the hands of their cults than from 'outsiders'."

Battered Wife Syndrome:

"The battering syndrome is not a disease per se because it cuts across socioeconomic and diagnostic categories."

and

From Wikipedia:

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

"Battered wife syndrome is a recognized psychological condition to describe a woman who, because of constant and severe physical abuse by a male partner, becomes depressed and unable to take any independent action that would allow her to escape the abuse."

There are common threads between the Left, which blames everyone but the perpetrator, and the Battered Wife, who blames herself and no one else.

9/25/2005 07:16:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

I came out of the (Whole-Foods) grocery to find a man in a PETA t-shirt trying to negotiate with my 95-lb. hound in my car.

It's a non-starter. For the dog, if not the PETA guy. Why does the PETA man think he can negotiate with those pearly whites and high decibels?

I shared with him that the barking sound meant that she didn't want him to approach the car. He assured me it was "natural." He was helping me know my dog better.

Just like Liberals, (err, Progresives) are helping us understand History better.

As Dogs are to PETA People, History is to Progressive/Lib/Left/et.al.

9/25/2005 07:24:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

More common threads between between the left, BWS, the singularists, the anti-humans, and the jihad: Submission to a inhuman higher power. Har. The left may be through with the Trinity, but the Trinity is not through with the left.

9/25/2005 07:27:00 PM  
Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

Wretch, I agree with you. The minute Al Qaeda defeats the West and the Caliph assumes power, the knives will emerge and insufficiently Islamic heads will roll. And those at a slight power disadvantage will always be found "insufficiently Islamic", by some strange coincidence. The blood of Muslims will run knee-deep in the souks of the Caliphate.

So you assume that Churchill doesn't have the nads to pull off a putsch and become the Dear Leader if the opportunity ever presented itself?

Did you check out Kevin Tucker, the leader of Species Traitor? Photo here. Does he look like he's got the wherewithal to line 'em up next to the mass graves, blow their brains out, and kick the still-twitching bodies into the pit? Maybe...

9/25/2005 07:30:00 PM  
Blogger ex-democrat said...

tony - on that same theme i highly recommend Herzog's new movie "Grizzly Man" documenting the life and last gruesome moments of grizzly-lover and certifiable back-to-naturist Tim Treadwell.
He just LOVED those grizzlies - and they LOVED him so much they ate his liver (and all) washed down with a fine (bear-equivalent of) chianti.

9/25/2005 07:35:00 PM  
Blogger Red River said...

Baron,

I doubt he can cut up a whole fryer.

I looks like he cut himself shaving and is now afraid of razors.

And what is THAT on his head? Is that his hair?

Makes we want to put on a coon skin cap and go to his next meeting.

9/25/2005 07:39:00 PM  
Blogger ex-democrat said...

baron - do you think the san diego PD might beinterested in these two?
http://www.blackandgreen.org/images/sandiego1.jpg
http://www.blackandgreen.org/images/sandiego2.jpg

9/25/2005 07:42:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Baron, was there ever a more harmless, indistinct, watery-eyed weak-chinned visage than that of country schoolteacher Heinrich Himmler?

9/25/2005 07:45:00 PM  
Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

ex-democrat -- I recognize that second one; it's the oen at the colaitionagainstcivilization.org page.

9/25/2005 07:48:00 PM  
Blogger Red River said...

Ex-democrat,

Its worse than that. I know the Yellowstone Thorofare ranger and he had some info on that attack.

The following is pretty close, but whitewashes what bears are and what was on the tape when Tim and Amee died.

http://www.katmaibears.com/grizzlyattack.htm

Peter Capstick in "Return to the Long Grass" points out that it is the healthy Lions that eat people, not the infirm.

Some people cannot accept that bears and lions kill. They also cannot accept that humans can and will do the same thing.

9/25/2005 07:49:00 PM  
Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

Yow! I hvae dyslxeia. Here's a better lnik: Coalition Against Civilization.

Buddy, looks can definitely fool ya. Actually, I was thinking that he might be just the right type of guy...

9/25/2005 07:55:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

9/25/2005 07:55:00 PM  
Blogger jj mollo said...

Human nature being what it is, I'm reluctant to expect that we will make wise choices as the "singularity" approaches. Innovation has kept us ahead of the Malthusian curve for a long time, but at some point the nature of the game will change so that we may lose our position as players. I can see why that prospect makes some people panic.

This world has been a precious and beautiful thing. I don't want it to be lost either, but I am placing my shaky hopes in the possibility that we will somehow come out on the other side relatively unscathed. Our power over nature will be enhanced and our control of ourselves will be such that we can go back and repair the damage we are now doing. To think that the best option is a world emptied of humanity is a frightening thing, despair beyond my imagining. Be assured, though, that Islamofascism is not the only dangerous cult on the planet.

9/25/2005 07:56:00 PM  
Blogger desert rat said...

Himmler's owlish look never appears evil, in the taped archives.
Cannot always tell a book by it's cover.

9/25/2005 07:58:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

From SFGate, March 5, 2005 (snip)

"The Davises were at Animal Haven Ranch, in a canyon 30 miles east of Bakersfield, to celebrate the birthday of Moe, a 39-year-old chimpanzee who was taken from their suburban Los Angeles home in 1999 after biting off part of a woman's finger.
The couple had brought Moe a cake and were standing outside his cage when Buddy and Ollie, two of the four chimpanzees in the adjoining cage, attacked St. James Davis, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game. Moe was not involved in the attack.
Dr. Maureen Martin of Kern Medical Center told KGET-TV of Bakersfield that the monkeys chewed most of Davis' face off and that he would require extensive surgery in an attempt to reattach his nose. Chealander told The Bakersfield Californian that the chimps also tore off Davis' testicles and foot."


Read the article. You will recognize the Davises. Animal loving, peacefully green, and since this was incident #2 for them, invincible in that peculiar way.

9/25/2005 08:09:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Going for Greeting Cards:

As Dogs Bite PETA People ,,,

History eats the roadside remains of Progressive/Lib/Left/et.al. People.

------------

Arguing with Liberals
-- is like --
Playing Football with Girls
-- DON'T DO IT ! __

9/25/2005 08:10:00 PM  
Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

Just in case y'all didn't pick it up over at Gates: I scanned in the entire pamphlet,
A Primitivism Primer. Everyone should go in there and poke around. Lots of interesting nuggets to be found.

9/25/2005 08:14:00 PM  
Blogger ex-democrat said...

my completely unqualified impression is that treadwell was mentally ill - perhaps as a result of his prior drug problem. however, where does that end and moonbattery start?
herzog, by the way, wasn't buying any of it.

9/25/2005 08:15:00 PM  
Blogger Jesse Clark said...

The environmentalists in Rainbow Six, if I recall correctly, meet quite an ironic fate. Their South American compound destroyed, they are given exactly what they wanted in the first place: Total immersion in nature without the interference of outsiders. Left standing naked in the Amazon with no food, no water, and no defense against the hostile environment surrounding them, surely aware of their fate, it was a beautiful stroke of justice.

9/25/2005 08:19:00 PM  
Blogger Charles said...

Stairway to heaven
By James Langton
(Filed:
25/09/2005)
Space may still be the final frontier, but getting there could
soon be almost as simple as stepping into the office lift at the start of the
day.

click here for space elevator picture


The race is on to build the first "space elevator' - long
dismissed as science fiction - to carry people and materials into orbit along a
cable thousands of miles long.
In a significant step, American aviation regulators have just
given permission for the opening trials of a prototype, while a competition to
be launched next month follows in the wake of the $10 million (£5.6 million) "X
Prize'', which led to the first
developed craft leaving the Earth's atmosphere
, briefly, last year.
Supporters of the elevator concept promise a future in space that
is both cheap and accessible, and contrast it to Nasa's announcement last week
that it will be relying on 40-year-old technology from the Apollo programme
for
its $105 billion plan to return to the Moon by 2018
. The companies behind
the space elevator say they will be able to lift material into orbit for as
little as $400 a pound, compared with $20,000 a pound using existing
rockets.
That would open up the possibility of tourists visiting a sky
hotel in stationary orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth, with a view previously
enjoyed only by astronauts.
It would also allow for far cheaper travel to the Moon and other
planets within the solar system, since most of the energy required by rockets is
used simply to escape Earth's gravity.
Russian scientists first envisaged a fixed link to space, and the
idea was popularised by the British sci-fi writer and vision-ary, Arthur C
Clarke, in his 1978 novel, The Fountains of Paradise.
The theory behind the space elevator is deceptively simple. With
a base station on Earth and an orbiting satellite, solar-powered "climbers'',
each carrying up to 20 tons, would crawl up a single cable into space over
several days. The cable would be held up by the rotation of a 600-ton satellite
counter-weight, much like a heavy object at the end of a spinning rope.
Until recently, the concept seemed doomed by the technology
available, not least finding a material strong enough to make such a long cable,
able to withstand extreme temperatures.
Scientists now believe that a material known as carbon nanotubes
could be bound together to make a ribbon, rather than a cable, three-feet across
but just half the width of a pencil.
Nanotubes, which are microscopic cylinders of carbon, are
currently being developed by a number of companies, including GE and IBM. In one
experiment, a sheet of nanotubes one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair
could support 50,000 times its own mass.
"Elevator 2010'', which is to be launched on October 21 in
California, will offer an annual first prize of $50,000 for the best design for
both a tether - or ribbon - and a lightweight climber. It is being run by the
Spaceward Foundation, which promotes space exploration, and has the backing of
Nasa, which has given $400,000 in prize money. At least 10 teams will take part
in the first contest.
Brad Edwards, a board member of the foundation, says the initial
development could be ready "in the next couple of years", with the elevator
itself being built in another decade.
"We are talking about getting this up in about 15 years,'' Dr
Edwards predicted.
A rival design is being produced in Seattle by the LiftPort
Group, which is counting down to a first voyage into space on April 12, 2018.
The Federal Aviation Authority last week cleared an experiment by LiftPort that
would use a mile-long tether attached to a balloon, something the company calls:
"A critical step.''
Fears that an aircraft would crash into the elevator ribbon is
just one concern. Space debris and terrorism are others.
Developers propose a floating base station near the equator, more
than 400 miles from the nearest flight path.
Should the 800-ton ribbon break, it would either fly into space
or fall back to the ground in fragments that would, in theory, hit no harder
than a sheet of paper.

9/25/2005 08:20:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

I'd speculate that "St. James" is a first name Mr. Davis gave himself, and that he had worked for many years on making himself as non-threatening as possible, being certain, in that familiar stolidly blank affect, that passivity is the key to ending world violence. I'd further speculate that chimps (which the writer mistakenly calls 'monkeys'), sharing as they do 99% of our own DNA, are quite capable of generating the emotion called "contempt".

9/25/2005 08:21:00 PM  
Blogger ledger said...

Al Zarqawi looking for a few good species traitors...

[Iowahawk gets message from Al Zarqawi]:

...I know it's been long-time-no-post, but I gotta tell you it's a little hard to keep up with the blogging when you're getting a daily enema from infidel Tomahawks. I knew that war is supposed to be hell but dude -- this one is starting to totally... suck... after taking in the nards in Tal Afar last week, let's just say the martyr recruiting has gone a little slow. And speaking of 'a little slow,' can we talk about this latest busload of a**wipes from Damascus? Jeez, I thought the Saudis were stupid, but these Syrians take the F&%#%$@ baclava. Send one of these choads on a simple martydom operation against a Bagdhad collaborator elementary school, and they're like, "Durrrr, a thousand pardons effendi, I got lost! Doyyyy, can I have a martyrdom car with OnStar?" Then you end up having to print out MapQuest directions for them, which totally chews up printer cartridges, and they end up smeared along some desert freeway because they mistook the detonator button for cruise control... between us, it was almost a relief when Team Satan and their Iraqi puppets greased a couple hundred of my lovable losers last week . 'Thinning the herd,' if you know what I mean, and I suppose it probably raised our average insurgent IQ ten points. To 67...

...I mean, Zarkman does his five-a-day. Zarkman volunteers at the madrassa. Whenever there's a village homo who needs stoning, Zarkman brings his A-game high heat. And what thanks does Zarkman get? A g*dd*mned infidel peanut gallery of hash pipe Trustafarians and skanky Code Pink insurgent groupies too unsightly for Sig Eps Pig Night, that's what. That, plus a smoldering "safehouse" full of Syrian martyr-tards whose families all expect one of my famous personalized thank-you notes:

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. _AL-DURRA____:

"Please find enclosed a Ziploc containing the remains of your martyr _TARIQ____. Though he is now frollicking in Paradise, his comrades and I will always remember him for his ___POKEMON COLLECTION____. Thanks to his holy sacrifice, we are one step closer to __EXTERMINATING THE JEWS___.

"Yours in Sharia,
Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi"

Okay, I know, form letters are cold... you try writing 300 of these things a week while trying to stay ahead of the crusader missiles
...


See: Al Zarqawi's post

9/25/2005 08:36:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Can we think of Kurzweil's 'Singularity' as the other end of the conceptual spectrum from 'Intelligent Design' ?

The latter theory (intelligent design) assumes that some non-physical agent intervenes to create Order within random processes.

The former theory (singularity) assumes some non-physical pattern arises out of random processes to create Order.

Creative Design v. Singularity

9/25/2005 09:17:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

The Last Temptation of Dylan.
In the documentary, "Hard Rain" also becomes the soundtrack to JFK's assassination, interrupted by the sound of Jack Ruby's gun.
But here is one place where the movie takes a dodge:
We see Dylan accepting an award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after Nov. 22, 1963.
Scorsese reads portions of Dylan's speech aloud—sounding nothing like Dylan, but a lot like the psycho he played in Taxi Driver—but he leaves out the kicker, when Dylan tells the stunned crowd that he identified with Lee Harvey Oswald.
This incident is no secret—it's in every Dylan biography, including Robert Shelton's authorized one—but apparently PBS (or Apple or Starbucks) were apprehensive about a hero quite that transgressive.

The whitewashing doesn't end with that moment:
Where, in this rock 'n' roll biopic, are the sex and drugs? The only mention of these essential Dylanesque tropes comes from the lewd, crude, and dangerous Peter Yarrow (usually seen on PBS in telethons with his partners in crime Paul and Mary), who wistfully recalls, "Everyone wanted to get high with Bobby. Everyone wanted to sleep with Bobby." Where's that documentary?

9/25/2005 09:40:00 PM  
Blogger Chester said...

"Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreau is a pretty good look at the idea of the singularity, with different scenarios: Heaven (represented by Kurzweil), Hell (espoused by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems), and Prevail -- which seems to say that either way, we'll all muddle through.

The first chapter, which discussed what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is up to these days is well worth the cost of the book.

The rest of the work makes for an interesting case study in "scenario planning."

9/25/2005 10:00:00 PM  
Blogger Fat Man said...

I would assume the VHEMT people are like the Shakers, a self-limiting phenomenon. Unlike the Shakers, they probably won't leave any nice antiques.

9/25/2005 10:02:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"placing them in the custody of relatively functional cult leaders"
---
Any comments on that clip would be appreciated.
My mind boggles.
Even more than usual.
Hope Dr. Sanity stops by.

9/25/2005 10:29:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Robert Schwartz 10:02 PM -
LOL!

9/25/2005 10:30:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Tony,
Mind sharing what year you were in Afghanistan?

9/25/2005 10:34:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Isn't an "Anarchist Workshop" a contradiction in terms?

9/25/2005 10:44:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"Then you end up having to print out MapQuest directions for them, which totally chews up printer cartridges, and they end up smeared along some desert freeway because they mistook the detonator button for cruise control... " :-)

9/25/2005 10:55:00 PM  
Blogger Mike H. said...

Baron@19:30, does Kevin remind you of a certain non-functioning unit from Tikrit. Uday?

9/25/2005 11:11:00 PM  
Blogger Pascal said...

W.

Don't forget the Church of Euthanasia who's motto is "Save the Planet:
Kill Yourself," and professes its four pillars: suicide · abortion · cannibalism · sodomy.

9/26/2005 12:45:00 AM  
Blogger Fabio said...

I don't know about you, but the idea of lowering the barriers between men and machines is more thrilling than scary to me.

9/26/2005 02:51:00 AM  
Blogger truepeers said...

There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.

-You can either argue that there are often ruptures in the fabric of human history, or that there never are, but it is nonsense to suggest that some unique, historically unprcedented kind of transformation is possible. Purely mythological. I am continually amazed by the propensity of intelligent people to talk nonsense when under the influence of the pervasive cult of technology. We idolize things, but new things are not themselves the basis of historical evolution (which is not to deny the truth that, increasingly, what happens in the natural world depends on us and our technological powers).

I challenge anyone here to name one technology that has ever been adapted and continuously used by humans that did not first require some ethical evolution to make the technological creation and assimilation possible. Of course you can't do it, because humans simply can't adapt any technology that they are not first socially/ethically organized to allow. For example, you can't bring banking or modern science to hunter-gatherers, unless they are first prepared to stop being hunter-gatherers.

In other words, if you want to understand history, you have to understand the basis of human historicity which is not in the first place technological, or geographical, or demograpic or merely economic, but rather ethical. Our ability to understand and organize ourselves always comes first, because we only keep ourselves from killing each other off by responding to the necessity for evolution in our ethical systems. This is the paradox of freedom.

So I am sympathetic to what Verc has said. And as for machine intelligence surpassing human intelligence what could that possibly mean? Machines don't have intelligence anything like the kind of intelligence humans have, and never will unless the machine in question is more human than machine, i.e. a cyborg, and is conscious of itself and its own mortality, thus able to understand the paradoxical basis of our transcendent, immortal, sign system and culture. It is positively queer that Kurzweil thinks he can become immortal and still remain human. Don't trust such a man's ideas of history.

I would, if there were any point, put money down that no machine will ever pass the Turing test. As I joked at another blog, if I were running the test I would begin with a question like: "why are, or is it true that, there are no atheists in fox-y-holes!!" When a macine can mediate the paradoxes of religion and a possibly offensive but not entirely coherent punning, and respond clearly within the context of my conversation, then I will admit that everything I know is wrong. And I have only done this once before. Unlike machines, humans probably can't have more than one major conversion in their lives, and so the progress of technology has to bide its time accordingly.

9/26/2005 03:01:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Fabio,

This goes to the heart of the problem: we are obsessed with negating our humanity, whether by wiping ourselves off the planet, melding with machinery, or transforming ourselves by social engineering into the New Man. It's the lure of power. I used to wonder why Tolkien described the slaves of power as being "eaten up by it". People, animals and the earth itself were distorted by power in Tolkien's universe, which although it starts as a means, elevates itself to an end -- the only end. It's heroes are those with the strength to reject it.

Galadriel fades and Aragorn holds fast to the Gift of Men, which Arwen at first does not understand, but in the end she does: "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. ... Nay, lady, I am the last of the Numenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days ... now, therefore, I will sleep."

9/26/2005 03:09:00 AM  
Blogger Mr.Atos said...

Self-loathing is the vilest of human traits, as it breeds the most deplorable human perversities conceived. There was a time, when it was confined to individuals with a razor blade, or cultists with kool-aid. Sadly, now it is being embraced in the vacuum of paganism, under the cover of an amoral maelstrom of existential nihilism, in the minds of the progressively enlightened to be implemented as public policy. Self genocide!

How might a thing that hates itself with such malevolent perfection, be honestly assumed to love anything else?.. Gaia included?

9/26/2005 05:48:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Wretchard,

Re: Your response to Fabio.

Thank you for this comment, as I wasn't sure what the theme of the original post was.

"This goes to the heart of the problem: we are obsessed with negating our humanity, whether by wiping ourselves off the planet, melding with machinery, or transforming ourselves by social engineering into the New Man."

I would say that this is accurate as far as the Veggie-Commies are concerned, but I'm not sure it applies to Singularity folks. After all, few people who follow the progress of the singularity are actually doing anything about it. They're just sitting back and watching market forces at work, as Intel inevitably moves to the next process shrink and neuroscientists in Europe work towards real-time models of the human brain. I also don't think that Kurzweil has ever made any predictions that basic human emotions (hate, fear, greed, love, camraderie) would be overcome by the singularity. In fact, the whole point of the singularity is that you _can't_ make any reliable predictions.

"I used to wonder why Tolkien described the slaves of power as being "eaten up by it". People, animals and the earth itself were distorted by power in Tolkien's universe, which although it starts as a means, elevates itself to an end -- the only end. It's heroes are those with the strength to reject it."

Ah, but Tolkien was rejecting the advancement of technology, just at the Earth First people do. He lusted after a simpler time, when men lived a simple life in tune with nature. "It's no bad thing to want a simple life." I understand why he felt this way, as by all accounts WWI was hell on earth, but that doesn't change the fact that he was a reactionary anti-progressive.

People who hate people (or just love grizzly bears more) are overcome with negating humanity. I would say the majority of the human race is pretty pro-human though. Glenn Reynolds is definately pro-human, but he also thinks the singularity is coming. All those pro-human humans will be technologically empowered too in the coming decades, and I expect the race will survive and continue being human.

All the Singularity means is that Shakespeare will be performed in the Sea of Tranquility and Tolkien read by the light of a binary star. Although predictions are hard to make, I expect we'll still be human in most ways.

9/26/2005 06:12:00 AM  
Blogger RWE said...

In Vernor Vinge's Singlularity concept in his novels, the event was marked by the almost total disappearance of Man from Earth. A few people missed it by virtue of a crude form of time travel that resulted in their accidently skipping over the Signularity. Those still on Earth cannot figure out where everyone else went, whether destroyed by some outside force, escaped into alternate realities or outer space, or into some giant Virtual Reality - Or maybe they simply found a door into Heaven.
So, other than it presumably being based on rapidly accelerating technology, even the characters of the novels did not know what the Singularity was.
History tends to show that people get what they want but not what they aimed for and almost never in the way that they planned. Ronald Reagan is still hated by the Anti-War Left - and yet he did more to end the type of war they claimed to fear the most than anyone in history; he was the most effective anti-nuclear weapons activist imaginable. Relative to the Cold War world of 1975 we have already passed through a Singularity. And those who claimed to hope for it the most are the ones who cannot see it - and would have prevented it if they could have.
So perhaps there have been and will be many singularities - and those most atuned to the aspect of each will "Time Travel" right past them.
P.S., these blogger filter words remind me of the Serbian who went to have a vision test. When asked if he could read the first line on the chart he replied "Read it? I know him!"

9/26/2005 06:12:00 AM  
Blogger Fausta said...

My only objection to the concept of singularity is that technology itself brings what Robert Lucas called a "learning spillover", i.e., you learn from doing, which brings about more technological advance.

As for the luddites, there's such a thing as a Darwinian effect.

9/26/2005 07:18:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

"Read it? I know him!"
ROTFLMAO !!!

Toulouse-Lautrec's tailor sent him the suit he'd altered. Later that day the tailor's shop door swung open and there stood Lautrec, glaring. The tailor looked up, and said, "Whatsa matter, too tight, Toulouse ?"

9/26/2005 07:22:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

The great masses of humanity can barely feed themselves. Only in the past decades or so has India moved from perpetual famine, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, the list is almost endless.
There is no technological revolution in Liberia or Gaza, no singlarity to be reached, there, any time soon.
Perhaps a machine or cyborg will reach critical mass, surpassing all expectations. Perhaps it will become God like in its' intellect
Yes, with technology man will create his own, new, better God, yet again.

The arrogance of the idea is baffling, much like the idea that man could control the Climate, Earth or Time itself.

Go tell it to the Spartans.

9/26/2005 07:29:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Buck Rutt.
. Reindeer Injures Old Couple in Finland .
The buck butted the man to the ground and kicked him before turning on the woman who was talking to her son on a mobile phone, Kittila fire chief Jorma Ojala said. The son alerted rescue workers who arrived in helicopters and flew the couple to hospital.
. Was this Rudolf bin Laden, or just Arkansas Trailer Park Harem Scarem?
A researcher at the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute said the attack came during the peak rutting season when up to 30 female reindeer may be on heat in the territory of one buck.
"Every year in the rutting season, buck reindeer are very possessive about their harems," said Mauri Nieminen, a reindeer expert at the institute. "If a person goes into an area between the reindeer and his females, the buck can easily turn on him or her."

"Normally, reindeer pose no danger at all," Nieminen added.

9/26/2005 08:13:00 AM  
Blogger T said...

The last line is funny. "Oh no, alternative view points that I might disagree with! I should be sheltered from such things!" haha. Those of us with a true thirst for understanding and knowledge seek out these things, that's why I read your shitty blog, and why you cower in fear when I challenge you to debate or even to read mine.

Baron: you say Islamic jihadis are against civilization. This couldn't be any further from the truth. They're born and bred of american power, they buy into all the myths of America the great empire. The only difference is that the empire has been trodding over them, and now they want to command the empire. They don't want to destroy civilization, that's a juvenille thing to say and shows and utter lack of understanding. What's next "terrorists hate our freedom"?

9/26/2005 08:19:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

What did that post have to do with Auntie Fanny?
Is Auntie Anti-Muslim, or just in a Rutt?

9/26/2005 08:22:00 AM  
Blogger T said...

Oh and talking about people following cult leaders. That's pretty fucking rich. George W. Bush, does the name mean anything to you lot? Hmmm, worshipping cult leaders, defying basic logic and facts to continue to agree with the beloved and respected comrade leader, hmmmm.

9/26/2005 08:22:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Arrogant is right. These movements are so nazi--Hitler with his vegetarianism, anti-coffee, anti-alcohol, anti-tobacco (but not anti-amphetamines), and the whole bit with nature, primitivism, hygeine, purity of essence, cleansing the earth of foul humanity. Essentially in love with death as an antidote to the awfulness of the things in their minds. Behind the fury of wehrmacht arms was a big ole sissy movement.

9/26/2005 08:24:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

" that's why I read your shitty blog, and why you cower in fear when I challenge you to debate or even to read mine."
Moti, bring link.
Reindeer Sausage Will Do.
Even Looks Kinda Like a S..... Log.

9/26/2005 08:26:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

It's those pesky harems, doug.
Get between a real alpha male and his harem... Mohammedans are not the only Harem keepers, are they.

Next thing you know they'll be implanting chips in reindeer, to control those hormonal out bursts.

Timmy McVeigh, they were using super computers to track his movements, using a micro chip implanted in his ass, or so he believed.

The silicon chip, answer to all mankinds challenges.

9/26/2005 08:28:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Who are you to Judge,
Mr. Aunty-Amphetamine?

9/26/2005 08:29:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Hillary is against Photo ID for Voters,
but wanted a IDchip on every Free Hillary Medicare Care Card way back in '94.
You want a Dr.
Register your Fanny!
Kill Bill Indeed!

9/26/2005 08:33:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Free Hillary!
That has a nice ring to it.

9/26/2005 08:34:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Can't accuse HER of being LITTLE
Aunty-Fanny.

9/26/2005 08:35:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Was Little Aunty Semitic?

9/26/2005 08:36:00 AM  
Blogger RWE said...

fausta: A book that came out in the early 90's, entitled 'Unlimited Wealth" made something of the same point. Technologies do not just advance, they interact in ways that no one could predict. The classic example is the dispaperance of the carburator. Who could have guessed that when we had IBM 360's crunching along that digital computer technology would be applied to internal combustion engines and be used to replace highly complicated carbs for approx 1/10 the production cost, with far greater reliability, much better emissions, and vastly improved fuel economy?
The author pointed was that we Americans do this far better than anyone else in the world. He predicted that we would soon surpass the then-ascendent Japanese economically because of that fact - and because while they became superb at asking customers "What do you want?", Americans were saying to people "Here is what you need."
Desert rat: Compared to Liberia and Gaza we have already had our Singularity - and they know it and it drives them crazy.
Perhaps the real reason for the fury of the Islamic Facists is that they know we have, are, and will pass through our self-created sigularities and leave them far behind, wondering, like Vinge's protagonists, where everybody went.

9/26/2005 08:37:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Preceding was all just an hormonal outburst.
Our Friend Desert Rat is the guy pushing
Free Viagra.
hmmm,
or Free Hillary?

9/26/2005 08:38:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Vinge's proctologist wondered where the yellow went.

9/26/2005 08:40:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Free Fanny May Be the Answer
To ANSWER.

9/26/2005 08:43:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

The International Answer,
That is.

9/26/2005 08:43:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

jeez, IOTM, "...you cower in fear when I challenge you to debate or even to read mine."

I've never SEEN anyone quite so frantic to attract readers. Why don't you try being, like, not insane, or somethin'? Maybe then somebody would want to play.

You Bush haters know that he just forgave $55,000,000,000 that poor nations borrowed back in the 90s? Even if he IS a jerk, that is a world-historical helping hand to the needy. How much help are you rads providing? Haven't seen any black-clad body-pierced relief workers helping the hurricane victims--all i've seen are red-state Americans driving cross-country on their own dime to chain-saw trees out of highways, and take food and water to the helpless. Your type, as far as value to the commons, are Nulls. Why? because you don't have anything to offer. No matter how much your type hates the capitalists, you'll never put a bean in a spoon for anybody anywhere, ever. You ain't up to snuff on making anything, so you got nothing to help anybody with. Unless someone needs crazy sentences, what value are you to the world?

9/26/2005 08:46:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

So Hitler Youth were all like:
"Hey Missey My Sissy?"
---
What does a
"Sissy Movement"
Look Like?

9/26/2005 08:50:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Why Did Anti-Dote on Me?

9/26/2005 08:53:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Ah, dang, I have to be at the Mexican Consulate at noon--time to grab a shower. I won't be around to enjoy your barrage of name-calling, freaky-geeky--sorry. Doug, will you insult IOTM for me, for a few hours?

9/26/2005 08:55:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

What is it about Crazy Sentences
That's Wrong,
Mr. Aunty?

9/26/2005 08:56:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Jimmy Carter is in Favor of Photo ID's to vote!
Has he gone sane?

9/26/2005 08:59:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

Well regardless of tickling masochists, here is a tid bit about Iraq

"... I had a rare opportunity to hear a detailed explanation of U.S. military strategy this weekend when the Centcom chief, Gen. John Abizaid, gathered his top generals here for what he called a "commanders' huddle." They described a military approach that's different, at least in tone, from what the public perceives. For the commanders, Iraq isn't an endless tunnel. They are planning to reduce U.S. troop levels over the next year to a force that will focus on training and advising the Iraqi military. They don't want permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. Indeed, they believe such a high-visibility American presence will only make it harder to stabilize the country. ..."

"... "The longer we carry the brunt of the counterinsurgency fight, the longer we will carry the brunt," says Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who commands U.S. troops in Iraq. "The sooner we can shift [to Iraqi security forces] the better." Casey explains: "A smaller U.S. footprint, that is allowed to decline gradually as Iraqi forces get stronger, actually helps us." ..."

David Ignatius, "A Shift on Iraq"

"... After watching Iraqi political infighting for more than two years, they're more cautious. "I think we'd be foolish to try to build this into an American democracy," says one general. "It's going to take a very different form and character." The military commanders have concluded that because Iraqis have such strong cultural antibodies to the American presence, the World War II model of occupation isn't relevant. ..."

Well I've been half right, anyway.
We will have to see about that base, though. Depends on timing, we could have our cake and eat it, too.

9/26/2005 09:04:00 AM  
Blogger Red River said...

I don't see AI replacing people and I don't see biological bodies being replaced.

A softer form of augmentation as depicted by Vinge is more likely.

In other words, we would have direct mind-machine interfaces. We would also have much better medicine and much tougher bodies. And much faster minds.

I'd love to be able to post without typing. Just think the thoughts and the words appear.

9/26/2005 09:08:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

The important thing being pre positioned equipment, more so than troops on the ground.
Maintaining the security of the equipment, that would be vital.

9/26/2005 09:08:00 AM  
Blogger Yanni Znaio said...


It is disputed when or if the Singularity will occur, but futurists most commonly estimate the third decade of the 21st century.


Do they predict the day of the week? Monday morning, methinks.

9/26/2005 09:12:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

They have a hard enough time with speech recongnition, red river, just think of the challenges that thought recongnition would entail.

Once a mind was 'connected', just think of the hacker and spam opportunities that would develop.

Hacking into someone's brain, now that would be something.

9/26/2005 09:13:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

What were you wrong about, 'Rat?
Gen. John Abizaid should be the Face of our efforts abroad.
Just as is Honore at Home.
Eliminate State Dept!

9/26/2005 09:15:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

I thought we'd be more up front about basing 30,000 - 40,000 troops there, medium to long term. They are saying that we do not want that.
It may be semantics, spin, the Air Wing will have to be stationed somewhere. I don't think we would move to only Carrier Air for Ground Support. I'd think there would have to be at least some forward deployed rotary support,
both logistical and combat ground.

9/26/2005 09:23:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

I sure hope so.
After all this.

9/26/2005 09:27:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

We've had carriers there forever!
"Free"

9/26/2005 09:27:00 AM  
Blogger Lanny Nugen said...

First, Kurweil has no equation to map the rate of change of human intelligence to the x (time) axis so he just throw the dart at the marvelous exponential curve and assume that we are close to the knee of that curve. He has no idea what the y axis is and what is the mapping unit of the y axis. I can also use the same exponential chart to prove otherwise by using the humongous unit of knowledge in the universe to claim that our knowledge is even smaller than a drop of water in the ocean and we are not very far from the prehistoric man in that humongous chart. With a mind of a micron, a move of few centimeters is probably a singularity semantically, but look at it from a remote view, it is rather insignificant. As a matter of fact, the move from the prehistoric man to today's man could be considered as a singularity if we adjust the x axis accordingly.

Second, human mind is not a Turing machine and you cannot design a machine to surpass human's mind if you don't know what it's designed for. If you don't know what it is designed for then you can't reverse engineer and if you can't reverse engineer it, you can't model its properties correctly because modeling without knowing what it is designed for is like throwing a dart into a room full of furnitures, whatever stick still doesn't not represent the room, but rather of a piece of equipment just happened to stick at the moment.

Third, assume we know what it designed for and by Steve Pinker suggestion through the logical law of natural selection, the brain is designed to maximize it duplication of its genes. With this purpose, it cames will all adaptive functions and properties to make its jobs easier. Language, pattern recognition, symbols representation, networking and all of the mundane behaviors appropriate for certain symbols during certain situation that we take for granted will make the fastest machine crying uncle. It is the natural computation that makes the human brain remarkable, not the specific computing power, people are so envy at the computing machine. The logical extension of the brain design to maximize its gene copying, is the brain can only maximize its gene copying in its conducive environment with less stress placed upon it. Information overload is also a stress to the mind and is antithesis of of the brain design hence there is no such dramatic singularity could ever occur. This condition could change provided the material of the brain is changed but at this moment, we are clueless as Adam with Eve in the dark cave.

9/26/2005 09:31:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Maybe we should have our air bases in Afghanistan?

9/26/2005 09:31:00 AM  
Blogger John Aristides said...

I would, if there were any point, put money down that no machine will ever pass the Turing test. As I joked at another blog, if I were running the test I would begin with a question like: "why are, or is it true that, there are no atheists in fox-y-holes!!" When a macine can mediate the paradoxes of religion and a possibly offensive but not entirely coherent punning, and respond clearly within the context of my conversation, then I will admit that everything I know is wrong.

The assumption you make is that there is something unexplainable or paradoxical about the phenomena of religion and flight to religion. If you change your premises, the problem is much more workable.

For instance, what if we start with the premise that there is no God (in the normal sense of protector, which is what you believe in while in a fox hole), a stipulation that is not at all unlikely, and one a machine probably would assume. The intelligent machine would have no difficulty postulating various reasons why humans tend to be taken in by the idea when staring at the abyss. Patterns would emerge that would have similar causes--i.e. ultimate powerlessness can spawn the idea of ultimate powerfulness, and a belief thereof--and while we cannot look to the machine for Truth Unvarnished, it is arrogant to believe that the human brain is the last word on intelligence in the universe.

A much more interesting question than passing the Turing test, which seems to me to be a low standard for appraising intelligence, is how a machine can become self-aware. A machine can be hyper-intelligent, be able to communicate that intelligence, and still not be self-aware. Our self-awareness comes from the continuity of our senses as they process environmental information, so it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it.

Regardless, most analysis of this issue are handicapped by the assumption that intelligence must be recognizably human to be intelligence. It does not. Intelligence is measured by data retention (memory), processing speed, spontaneous recall, pattern recognition and extrapolation (induction), etc. Not necessary are emotions, senses, or self-awareness.

The human brain is a phenomenal piece of natural architecture, no doubt about it. There are more neurological pattern possibilities than there are particles in the universe. There is a good chance that any AI will strongly resemble this architecture.

I have a soft place in my heart for an ethical understanding of evolution, but which comes first, technological change or ethics? Would women have been liberated without vast improvements in homecare technology? If it still took 12 hours of hard work every day to keep a house clean and functioning, who would do it if women were the bread-winners? Men could, sure, but then the problem of liberation is merely transferred, not solved. We forget that women and men divided labor out of necessity, and without technological achievements one of them was always going to be "trapped" at home. History determined that to be women, but it didn't have to be. Either way, it was technology that enabled the ethical revolution of true gender equality by making women bored and unsatisfied with a life spent at home.

To end, an inventing machine that combines all knowledge of prior art in all fields of human enterprise would speed up the time of R&D exponentially. Quickly, all things that are possible become reduced to practice, as the inventing machine tackles one problem after another. If cellular senescence can be cured, the machine will cure it, and we will live 5,000 years. If minds can be downloaded, we will be able to download them, and live our lives in a virtual reality.

The emphasis imparts to the "If", because whether or not "we can" is subsumed therein. I am not confident enough in human intelligence to say definitively what is or isn't possible. I am confident that "what is" will be enormous, and destabilizing.

9/26/2005 09:34:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"I can also use the same exponential chart to prove otherwise by using the humongous unit of knowledge in the universe to claim that our knowledge is even smaller than a drop of water in the ocean and we are not very far from the prehistoric man in that humongous chart."
---
Great Stuff, lan.
Hope Presbypoet sees that post.

9/26/2005 09:34:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"A much more interesting question than passing the Turing test, which seems to me to be a low standard for appraising intelligence, is how a machine can become self-aware. A machine can be hyper-intelligent, be able to communicate that intelligence, and still not be self-aware. Our self-awareness comes from the continuity of our senses as they process environmental information, so it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it."
---
Maybe you have the entire answer right there, Aristedes:
We are not only who "we" are, but the sum total of all that humanity has been, and we are adding to that.
Ruthlessly.
...and computers are notoriusly deficient in senses.
You think I'M Tone Deaf!

9/26/2005 09:41:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Limbaugh's bionic ear has *8* artificial "hairs" for frequency discrimination.
How many million do the rest of us have.
(he can recognize music he knew before, but new stuff is just noise)

9/26/2005 09:45:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"If minds can be downloaded, we will be able to download them, and live our lives in a virtual reality."
---
Doesn't THAT sound like a whole lotta fun!
Makes Hef's "Playboy Mansion"
sound nuanced.

9/26/2005 09:54:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

In reference your Afghanistan Basing suggestion, doug, I suggest you read the Thursday, September 22, post at

Westhawk

Those fellas are really smart, over there, you see they agree with me a lot.
So they must be smart, right?

Ahh, There are always those that yearn for the days when mere mortals could ascend to being a God, and when the Gods were mortal, as well.

Omnipotent impotence.

9/26/2005 10:19:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Omnipotent impotence.
Maybe impotence drives the desire to be Omnipotent?

9/26/2005 10:35:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

Then there are those that will be getting a fruit basket in Paradise, lied to all their lives, thinking they will get some free love for the first time in their existence.

As if Paradise would really be that, for them, and not just another cess pool in their eternal existance. Just another cruel twist of fate from a benevolent and merciful allah.

The "Forbidden Fruits", as it were, 72 white, virgin grapes.

Cheeseburger in Paradise, that's for me, with french fried potatos and a cold draft beer.
A couple of serving wenches on staff, with rooms in the back.

Running out of ice, that would be the biggest fear.

9/26/2005 10:36:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Maybe the fantasy is to stone the crap outta those 72 innocent virgins.

9/26/2005 10:45:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

That's why the Arabs invented those giant water pipes.
Those Assassians on hash
They were listening to Dylan, before he was born.

Free love, smoke and grapes, seedless, I'm sure.
I mean it IS Paradise, right.

9/26/2005 10:53:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

And what of Mohammedan women, are they continuely reborn, as Virgins, to be used as reward to the "Faithful".
I mean there have to be alot of those girls, if each Mohammedan to have fallen for allah gets his own set of virgins.
Do they get to trade the virgins in? or do they have to keep those same 72 women with them for all eternity?
One man, alone, amongst all those women, forever, no thanks, allah.

9/26/2005 11:04:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Helter Skelter
On Hash
Praise be to Allah!

9/26/2005 11:04:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

9/26/2005 11:21:00 AM  
Blogger Annoy Mouse said...

If a conspiracy to murder an individual is aggressively prosecuted by LE, what vigor will conspirators be prosecuted with who advocate the murder of 6 billion people? What is the name for the extermination of a species? Controlled extinction? Perhaps the problem is diluted into Stalin’s precept that the murder of millions is a mere statistic.

Nah, I don’t think these people would care if the Eskimos remain semi-industrialized or that most socialist societies remain intact. They have to be goal oriented and work at things right at hand, which is to say that they intend on destroying the industrialized West, beginning with the USA. After all, familiarity breeds contempt, and these would be genocidal tyrants are all so familiar with the West. Maybe it is time for them to fan out in areas that are already being expunged in the matter they advocate, how about Dafur or Zimbabwe? Both are lovely this time of year.

Rainbow Six was, in my opinion, about 600 pages too long, but had some clever plot lines that allowed the Greens to spread their engineered disease around the planet, in that case the Olympics, but it could have been as easy through the UN.

The line at Jim Jones punch party was long but only so long as his personal coercion could muster. Thank god for the second amendment. As long as it remains intact the people have recourse from moonbats and a government that feels a need to rule popularly with extremists. Viva la Azlan.

Thank god for little girls. The world that feminists collectively envision is truly one that I would not be a part of. Fortunately, these women and their misandry have ruled me out of being in any such world. Could you imagine what pap they teach their daughters? Such enlightened thought solves much, women can live blissfully unaware of the outside world in their fantasies while the flesh eating Morlacs live in a violent underground waiting for the soft fleshy ones to ripen.

The USA needs more Mexicans and less whities, fortunately the white women are doing everything they can to guarantee this outcome. Diversity now!

9/26/2005 01:24:00 PM  
Blogger truepeers said...

Aristedes, thanks for picking up on my comment. Unfortunately we’re going to have to agree to disagree (a paradoxical concept I can’t imagine a machine ever grasping, except in some pre-programmed sense.)

The intelligent machine would have no difficulty postulating various reasons why humans tend to be taken in by the idea when staring at the abyss. Patterns would emerge that would have similar causes--i.e. ultimate powerlessness can spawn the idea of ultimate powerfulness, and a belief thereof--and while we cannot look to the machine for Truth Unvarnished, it is arrogant to believe that the human brain is the last word on intelligence in the universe.

-OH, I see difficulty everywhere. For starters, what can powerless or powerful ever mean to a machine? That it can or cannot do what it wants? How is the machine going to have desire, will, freedom? What I think is arrogant is the attribution of our human qualities to machines or, for that matter, animals. Humility is recognizing that we are alone, the queer creatures that we are, until the day we meet intelligence from somewhere else in the universe. And humility is also recognizing that the human cannot be known or thought without the idea of God. Whether God actually exists, or whether humans alone created the idea of God, is not really the question; what is God? is perhaps a better question, though unanswerable in any fully satisfying way by either human or machine.

Our self-awareness comes from the continuity of our senses as they process environmental information, so it is clear that a computer would have to have senses, touch, sight, sound at least, to get a three dimensional idea of space and therefore its place in it.

-I do not consider animals to be self-aware, though they can certainly process environmental info. and respond to signals from the environment, such as the “names” we give them. Our self-awareness comes from our sense of sharing in a scene or event with our fellow mortal human beings. Notably the scene always takes the form of a desiring periphery around a sacred center. What makes the scene significant, a precondition for self-awareness, is our ability to represent it, to figure a sign that transcends and survives the worldly scene and that serves as the basis for the construction of a symbolic imagination that is not merely indexical or instinctual.

Regardless, most analysis of this issue are handicapped by the assumption that intelligence must be recognizably human to be intelligence.

-here, we agree. All I am arguing is that we cannot replicate a specifically human intelligence in a machine that is not significantly human itself, i.e. a cyborg that has need to come to terms with its mortality and the culture that transcends this mortality.

which comes first, technological change or ethics? Would women have been liberated without vast improvements in homecare technology? If it still took 12 hours of hard work every day to keep a house clean and functioning, who would do it if women were the bread-winners?

-my point is that the technology would not have been invented or applied if women did not already want to be liberated from drudge work. But that desire existed long before the technology to make it possible did. The ethic of liberation came first, as a result of women’s (and men's) reflections on the different roles assumed by human beings. Once a king or queen existed to exemplify the life of leisured luxury, it was only human that everyone would aspire to realize what was first articulated in terms of the sacred, e.g. the divine right of kings and queens. And, indeed, today in the west everyone can live, to some extent, like the kings and queens of old, and in many ways better. Even the poor are often fat, as were only the aristocrats of old.

History is a process of secularization; it unfolds as an attempt to realize what is first imagined as sacred, unrealizable by ordinary human beings, mere mortals. The possibility of a new ethics begins in the sacred or esthetic imagination and is only later possibly realized in this world. Keep this in mind when you approach the question of why people find the idea of the singularity appealing. The “singularity” is something of a sacred goal to realize according to an ethic that we are now just beginning to construct. When the picture is clearer, thought out more carefully, we might then find the technology to build it. I ragged a little on Kurzweil, but futurists play an important role in human society. God bless ‘em all.

9/26/2005 01:51:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Rat, 9:13 AM
"Once a mind was 'connected', just think of the hacker and spam opportunities that would develop."
---
I always thought there was something conspiratorial going on in there, but maybe they hacked *that* thought in on me?

----

"Hacking into someone's brain, now that would be something."
---
Isn't that what our Muslim Friends have been doing since day 1?

9/26/2005 01:57:00 PM  
Blogger Bernhardt Varenius said...

Just to interject another cautionary note regarding the Singularity, here's C. S. Lewis:

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Even those who are optimistic about the Singularity should only be nervously so...

9/26/2005 02:18:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"Eat all you want in Heaven and never get fat! "
Yes, Virginia, there is a cheeseburger in paradise. At least according to the report by WWN correspondent Brett Anniston.

Anniston's report quotes research by a Dr. Herbert Greenward, who studied "11 overweight people who visited heaven after they 'died' in surgery or in accidents, and then were revived by doctors." Greenward's overweight patients apparently told their doctor that during near-death experiences, heavenly angels allowed them to pig out on their favorite foods.

Esther Smoyke, a 390-pound, 54-year-old from Tampa, Fla., said "everyone loves burgers, shakes and fries in heaven," and that "angels love their fries -- they drown them in ketsup," according to Anniston's report.
The WWN report went on to describe other "intriguing cases" in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina studied by Greenward that seemed to indicate that in heaven, there is no pain and no gain.

"These findings are wonderful news for overweight people, many of whom fear that in heaven, they'd be forbidden from committing the sin of gluttony or unable to even taste food," Anniston quotes Greenward as saying. "Apparently, the opposite is true. Indulging in the feast provided by the Lord is encouraged, and food tastes even better in heaven than it does on Earth."

Heavenly indeed, but troubling. There is this bit in the Bible about the sin of gluttony, but maybe that just doesn't apply in paradise.

Anniston's report ends with some unsettling news for those who might not make it through the pearly gates. Apparently of the 16 cases Greenward studied, five of the obese people who had near-death experiences went to hell, not heaven.

"In Hell, there's plenty of food alright," Anniston quotes Greenward as saying. "The problem is, it's just out of reach of all these millions of naked fat people, who are chained to boulders and struggle to reach it for all eternity."
---
The front-page headline,
"Found: Saddam and Osama's Gay Home Movies."

9/26/2005 02:19:00 PM  
Blogger desert rat said...

The serving wenches doug, what about the wenches.

I sure don't need or want 72 virgins hanging around.
A couple of willing and well seasoned, but not abused or worn out, serving wenches, like they have at Hooters.

Now that could be Paradise,
with or without the Cheeseburgers & fries.
A good draft beer, now that needs to be on tap.

9/26/2005 02:41:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

No Squealing 'Rat, He:
.Aleman: I'll never squeal MOUNT STERLING, Ill.
-- He's known as the ultimate iceman -- a cool, calculating mob killer whose brains and brutality are matched only by his stubborn refusal to rat out others.

"They talk about the f------ mob; at least we've got principles!" Aleman says, his voice raising.
Aleman doesn't much like this prison, which is fairly modern and located just outside this town of around 2,000.
"It's the mental torture that bothers me," he says. "They don't give beatings."

He prefers his last stay, at the state prison in Dixon.
"I'm an oil painter," he says.
"There's no art classes here or art room," he says, adding he had an easel in his room at Dixon. "Out here you can't do any of that," saying he believes pencils are all that are sold along that line at the prison commissary.
,Literary critic.
He discusses Les Miserables with a mix of worship and disbelief.
"What a f------ tale," he says. "How could a guy write something like that? . . . It's impossible. . . . He covers the entire French Revolution!

Another recommendation is The Count of Monte Cristo, a Napoleonic novel in which the protagonist is wrongly imprisoned but escapes to vanquish his enemies.
"You're so happy after reading it," he says. "But I couldn't shake Les Miserables."
He almost chides a reporter for not having read more classics.
What have you read? he asks.
Some of the Greek tragedies.
Like what?
The Iliad, The Odyssey.
"I've read that."

"I miss reading . . . how I'm situated, you can't read, you just can't, it's not conducive to reading," Aleman says.
Why?
"It's got something to do with the two hours out and 22 in," he says

9/26/2005 02:52:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

One youthful tragedy he shares, however, involves a long-ago pal named Mike.
A group of guys were on a boat, and one of them threw Mike's keys into the water as a joke. Mike dived in to get them, got tangled in the weeds and drowned.

Aleman was at a family picnic, and believes if he'd been with Mike, he would have been saved, or never in the water at all.
"I didn't like that f------ kid" who threw the keys, Aleman says. He probably wouldn't have been there if Aleman was around that day, he says.

The dead boy's mom took it hard, and seemed to blame Aleman for not, somehow, being there to save her son, Aleman says.
"I got to live with that," he says, professing remorse for a death he wasn't responsible for, while expressing no regret about anything he might have done in the mob.

9/26/2005 03:00:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Hewitt's interviewing
Medal of Honor Recipients.
First guy is from 'Nam
...lost 75 guys in first 10 seconds!

9/26/2005 03:11:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

yeh, them Seven Deadly Sins don't get NEAR the play they oughtta, in a self-examining society that studies its own mood and desires knowledge of happiness. The SDSs aren'tr even Biblical--much to my surprise whern i came cross that factoid. Some fourteenth century (or thereabouts) Catholic philosopher-monk wrote 'em up for his flock. Then there's those Seven Virtues...jeez...we've been laughing at that old Victorian bluenosery for just about as long as we've been wondering why we aren't happier.

9/26/2005 03:23:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Wow - this is a most fascinating thread!

It's important to realize who Ray Kurzweil is, and why he gets these mad props. These are not new ideas, Ray Kurzweil has always built machines that can uniquely do what humans do.

I had the fun of working with Kurzweil machines from the early 80's onward. The Kurzweil Reading Machine for the Blind, v1, came out in the late 70's. (Nathan wasn't even born I bet!)

The Reading Machine actually did READ OUT LOUD. Can you imagine, if you were blind and could lay a book on a machine like a copier and it would read it to you?

This technology was soon adapted to business uses, and by v2/3, these machines were reading not only all fonts in Roman alphabets, but other alphabets, like Cyrillic.

Ray Kuzweil also built the incredible synthesizers, which owe their inhuman ability for mimicry to the fact that Ray had them "listen" to instruments to gain their unerring fidelity to instruments as diverse as the grand piano, saxophone and drums.

All of Ray's inventions/insights have produced machine capabilities that were previously reserved.

He put together machines that could "see" and "read" and "hear" years ago, decades ago.

"Thinking" may possibly enter this list of previously HUMANS-ONLY abilities.

9/26/2005 05:21:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Tony,
Did you guys have to find some way to keep that book laying there from going to sleep?
---
---
"the abolition of all power relations — e.g., structures of control, coercive authority, domination and exploitation — and the creation of a form of community that excludes all such relations"
---
The cool thing tho, is then c couldn't lord it over me, er,
D.

9/26/2005 05:50:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Don Adams, RIP

9/26/2005 05:51:00 PM  
Blogger M. Simon said...

iotm reads shit. Evidently he couldn't get his fill eating it.

Any yes my apologies to W and all.

a. I couldn't help myself
b. I couldn't resist

I hope this doesn't get me banned

9/26/2005 05:53:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

I'll bet he coulda taken out the Daily KAOS.

9/26/2005 05:54:00 PM  
Blogger Karridine said...

Its "We Are Elite" in a different guise. Pure and simple.

"We're good vegans and all whom WE do not recognize as being like US are untermenschen, vile creatures that WE are right to kill."

Oh, now you see it?

VeggiNazis.

9/26/2005 05:55:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

No Problem, Simon:
Almost ever C4 post has some bodily function referenced.
Usually to describe OTHER
people.

9/26/2005 05:57:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

every

9/26/2005 05:57:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

That's Don Adams taking down KOS, NOT MOTI!

9/26/2005 06:00:00 PM  
Blogger M. Simon said...

i was reading a biography of A. T. Mahan - Naval Historian.

He was complaining about the tendency of State Dept. types to go native in the 1880s.

Nothing changes.

9/26/2005 06:03:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

I wonder how much suffering those pages went through at the "hands" of Tony and Ray, being insensitively and remorselessly read that way by a MACHINE!
---
If gaawd had wanted books to be read by *machines,* he wouldn't have given men hands.

Smash every reading machine!

9/26/2005 06:05:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Doug,

At the time, all the problems were USER problems. It never ends. heh

The computer could scan and read and "type" pages about 17x faster than the Office Typing Champ. Okay, maybe only 3x faster in some cases, but still, Faster / Cheaper / Accurate data capture.

In Response to this Industrial Marvel -- The Users always complaining about the Dancing Bear's Dance Moves. "Oh look! it made a mistake!" the customer always points out, pointing to one error in 500 characters that they would otherwise have to outsource to have typed for a pretty penny.

Applications of "Artificial Intelligence" face some pretty serious Efficiency/Value competiton from the Human side, still.

Back in, say 1978, the Kurzweil Reading Machine could have been forgiven for mumbling a few words while reading aloud your childhood copy of "Treasure Island" say.

That's why they were called Reading Machines for the Blind, they were meant for Individuals, they read to them, just like a Human could. Wild for the 1970/80's. Wild for now.

Ray Kurzweil has always invented machines that uniquely do what only humans have been able to do before his machines.

That's why "Singularity" echoes.

9/26/2005 06:17:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

It is SO PAINFUL to witness GRIEF !
Damn this war to H...!

9/26/2005 06:19:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

How did it do against the office Chimp?
That would be IOTM, here.

9/26/2005 06:21:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

How has transcription gotten so cheap?
I read somewhere that some celebrity was paying $7.50/hr!
Illegal Transcribers?

9/26/2005 06:23:00 PM  
Blogger Karridine said...

Doug, you jest, but read (!) what Gutenberg had to go against. And the Wright brothers... it sounds like simple words, but when those 'devil worshipper' and 'vile hater' words were being whispered and shouted at those who courageously sought a new way, it was hurtful, and difficult.

Any meme that catches on in a person's mind and impairs the person's ability to know or love, is a demon (daemon), and must be treated as such. 'brain-hackers', indeed.

9/26/2005 06:24:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Doug,

RE: Transcription - Kurzweil machines apply the core Artificial Intellegence approach to everything Kurzweil to Voice Recognition.

So, yep - that formerly Human-Reserved capability, Kurzweil machines got it.

Voice Recognition, check. Always been there, always done that.

-------------

Sorry I'm typing so much - Core Topic obsession. I'll tone it down soon.

9/26/2005 06:31:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Carridine doesn't care about how much the self-esteem of birds has suffered since the (white) Wright Brother's evil spawn!

9/26/2005 06:34:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

So transcribers are using voice recognition, and then just cleaning it up?

9/26/2005 06:36:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Kurzweil is on Topic imo.

9/26/2005 06:37:00 PM  
Blogger Karridine said...

He rocks in the treetops
all day long
Hoppin' and a'boppin'
and singing his song:

"Nobody know, the trubble I see'd"

"...Silver Bird, take my lady away..."

And now, we are forever bereft of our distinction as flying beasties, shorn of our glory by the vile human usurpers!

9/26/2005 06:54:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

STREISAND DECLARES 'GLOBAL WARMING EMERGENCY'

9/26/2005 07:40:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

USATODAY.com - Cold-war device used to cause Katrina .

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack — and that this technology will soon be wielded again to hit another U.S. city.
Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, said he was struggling to forecast weather patterns starting in 1998 when he discovered the theory on the Internet. It's now detailed on Stevens' website, www.weatherwars.info, the Idaho Falls Post Register reported.

9/26/2005 07:49:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

CALIFORNIA NEA ALONE EXTRACTS $100 MILLION/YEAR FROM MEMBERS TO LOBBY FOR WORSE SCHOOLS !
That's what we're up against trying to change MSE.

Proposition 75, a November ballot measure that would require public employee unions to get members' written permission to spend their dues on political campaigns.

Proposition 75 supporters say the initiative is all about fairness, because the unions finance candidates and causes that many of their members might not favor — namely, Democratic ones.

Schwarzenegger riled labor by trying to shift government pensions to private accounts.

He abandoned that idea earlier this year after the unions pummeled him with a campaign of media ads and street rallies, which saw police officers close ranks with firefighters, nurses and teachers.

9/26/2005 08:01:00 PM  
Blogger ledger said...

I wonder what this will do for the recruiting of good species traitors in Iraq:


'U.S. Special Forces Kill No. 2 Terrorist in Iraq'

FOX News has confirmed that Abu Azzam, who was believed to have been in charge of the financing of terrorist cells in the war-torn country, was killed during a raid in Baghdad early Monday morning Iraq time. Azzam is thought to be the top deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted terrorist...

Another one bites the dust

[ignore this if it has already been posted]

9/26/2005 08:15:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

That's a good one, even if accidental, Trangbang:
"I wonder if Iotm is one of the grayheaded eunuchs relieving the sixties pictured looking on piously as the saintly Sheehan is carried off in cuffs"
---
That's about the state of things for the grayheaded eunuchs these days:
Even in public, half the time they are relieving themselves, masked only by their faithful companion, Depends-tm.
After a few more anarchist workshops, they'll be ashamed to wear *them* anymore, and we'll be treated the Televised Spectacle of creeping stains down their clothes, as they soak up those last few minutes of fame on this earth.

9/26/2005 08:51:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

The retrospective will have an (illustrated) chapter titled:
"Relieving the Sixties, the Later Years"

9/26/2005 08:58:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

My wife was going through old textbooks we bought here when we were homeschooling our son. There's a used bookstore that has all sorts, including textbooks turned in from local students of the public schools.
Before she took them back, I looked through them, and kept one titled
"AMERICAN GOVERNMENT"
"Comparing Political Experiences"
Published in 1979.
Luckily, this was one book that never got used, as best we can recall.
Leafing through, I came upon 20 pages devoted to GOO, which was "Get Oil Out" which was the organization formed in Santa Barbara following a Blowout on one of Union Oil's offshore platforms.
It waxes on about what a great example it is for organizing political action committees and etc, including a hagiographic piece on the first "Chicano" City Council member. Turns out he was active in the formative years of the local "La Raza" organization, which I think was one of the first. Built Casa de la Raza, probably ripping off local taxpayer's money for their racist cause. Last time I looked they had taken over significant parts of the Humanities offerings at UC Santa Barbara with their dumbed down, anti-American claptrap.
"Matinez feels strongly that concerned people like him must remain active in politics. He believes there must always be some individual or group to see that resources are equally distributed among city residents."
(Including Subversive Racists, of course.)
The long and short of it was, this was the beginning of the downward spiral, leading eventually to the Rich Kid's Riot in Islla Vista which culminated in the Burning of the new Bank of America Building, and the murder of a security guard on campus. Very effective politiking indeed, certainly something the kiddies should learn how to do.
(The book of course leaves out these gory details, they were all leftist enviros, so immune to negative reporting.)
Turns out the whole damn book is comprised of similar contemporary examples:
Over 600 pages worth!

9/26/2005 11:45:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

This epoch also featured Tone Deaf Blabbermouth doug attending a City Council Meeting at the time.
On the way home, all po'ed about the endless droning of the "corrupt local government," I picked up a hitchhiker on his way home.
Blabbering on about the "corrupt relationship" between Union Oil and the local Italian Family that leased out the Pier they owned (probably the garbage company also) for the oil service stuff, the kid got to hear my enlightened commentary, listening quietly.
When we got to his house, as he started to shut the door he looked at me and said:
"That's my Uncle"
Same old Dumb... doug, some things never change.
Lucky to be alive.

9/27/2005 12:00:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

It now strikes me how unlucky it was for me and others that we happened to be there at this moment in history.
Might have spent that time learning something closer to the truth.
Live and learn.
(within each individual's capabilities, of course.
There's Slow Learners, and Very Slow Learners.)

9/27/2005 12:04:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

1. What were the major concerns of Leo Martinez as a member of the city council?

2. In what ways did Martinez want to help the Chicanos of Santa Barbara?

3. In what ways did Joe Doaks want to help the White Anglo Saxon Males of Santa Barbara?

Quiz:
Which question was not in the Textbook?

9/27/2005 12:12:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

I'll stick sum up my rectum for ya, C4,
Nice Counting!

9/27/2005 12:37:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Shoot, confession's good for the soul:
I was hoping I could suck C4 into fessing up to some of those yarmulke burnings in his younger days.
Course that's based on the assumption that he has one.

9/27/2005 12:59:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Service and Sacrifice above self.
No Guarantees.

9/27/2005 01:02:00 AM  
Blogger The Wobbly Guy said...

C4, that's certainly encouraging news. However, the breeding problem will demand very interesting solutions if we are to progress as a species.

9/27/2005 02:17:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Whoah, 1 post and c4-Drone accounts
for 660 words.
3,328 characters (no spaces)
4,001 characters (with spaces)

9/27/2005 02:18:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Oh, he has a special plan for that Yeo, fear not.
---
"genes are added to suppress cancer, give enhanced IQ in a 110-210 Bell Curve, and eliminate early myopia"
---
Doesn't take that much of an immagination to realize how seamlessly other characteristics could be, um, "eliminated" now, does it?

9/27/2005 02:22:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

We could probably even serve up some cute young little French Boys for his Buddy Gore.

9/27/2005 02:25:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

And, of course, the 'family-planning' technology will be available to the young couple able to afford it. And soon enough, ALL who can afford it will face the question, is it cruel to my yet-to-be-conceived child to put him into a classroom and onto a playing field with the trait-designed super-sized, super-brained, super-athletes (who-shhh!-are also super-good-looking)?

9/27/2005 02:35:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Hey, Doug, when you refer to someone's 'Buddy Gore' Vidal, I have a personal interest in your following standard grammar and writing it as 'buddy'.

9/27/2005 02:41:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Yeah, we were going to get an amniocentesis test, we thought, then my doctor friend asked a simple question:
And then what will you do?
We never came up with an answer,
and ended up never getting around
to having the test.
Probably should have been "eliminated" for not coming up to C4 level criteria:
Poor Boy's only human.

9/27/2005 02:41:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Will do, certainly not intentional.
I'd hate to mar the perfect picture for C4.

9/27/2005 02:42:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

It's getting pretty tough already dealing with all the "PERFECTLY" Pearly White Choppers whenever all those closer to perfection types give their perfect smiles to the world.
At least I have never come in contact with a perfect latex Breast.

9/27/2005 02:47:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

I guess that wouldn't be perfect: I meant silicon, of course.
I'd even get a rash if I was around latex for long.

9/27/2005 02:49:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

I guess that even though it's shifted in a more perfect direction, it *is* still a bell curve, so you're not doing anything that's CERTAIN.
Although that could be dealt with with some post experimental culling.

9/27/2005 02:58:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Hey Buddy,
What was that Perfect Graft you came up with for you to relive your football career with more perfect results?
Was it a Rhino?

9/27/2005 03:11:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Deus et Machina? How it has appeared in regards to those useless hyper-fecund parasites of the Superdome, a good start for the modern era would be General Benjamin "Beast" Butler, New Orleans' Recontruction czar post Civil war, who gathered the Ninth Ward's ancestors around himself as a deus machina for the graft & corrupting of federal program funds. That particular concentration of hostages is six or eight generations old--nowhere near enough time to make anything but behavioral changes--and these were valuable people to the southern economy (albeit forced) just prior.

IOW, the only thing wrong with the Superdomers is the government policy that has been using them since the first slave boat docked four hundred years ago.

Dispersed from the ghetto, recovery/integration would be rapid. Dispersal would require only opening the plantation gates, which now have the form of government anti-poverty programs.

However, be warned, without that ghetto, the planet would never have seen a new art form evolve (which the silicon world may be only now beginning to match in level of abstraction), the high-concept mutating super-intelligent multi-sensory expression of the sacred known as Jazz Music.

Easy enough to imagine the array of deus machina. The Nicholsen/Burton underappreciated comic masterpiece "Mars Attacks!" has it right. At the last moment, the world was saved from complete murderous alien destruction by the accidental playing of a Slim Whitman recording, the yodeling bridge of which exploded the otherwise-invulnerable Martians' heads.

9/27/2005 03:52:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Don Adams was in the "Naked Bomb," or some such, in which the mad scientist made a bomb that did just that.
Sounds too good.
---
I didn't know Mel Brooks wrote Get Smart.
Says that was why Don took the part.
...it never left him according to him... Condemened forever to be Max.
Bill Dana lives here on the island and writes in the local paper.
---
re: Superdomers, this looks like a kind of planned diversity that might work
...but I am not going to read until tommorrow.
. Raleigh LINK .
Wouldn't it be more perfectly efficient to just adjust the Bell Curve so as to, a, exclude them?
Hey, we've been doing that in our ghettoized NEA Schools, where all the dreg teachers end up!
COOL!
G.D. Bush and his stupid "kid left behind" movie or whatever.
Also, damn Arnold for trying to make tenure be meaningful.
What a Cad.

9/27/2005 05:44:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

They've really screwed up the search this blog feature:
I tried to find your Rhino Post which in the old days woulda worked, and no luck.
Just some Dane Bison in ALL BLOGS.
Type doug, or Buddy Larsen, you now get ZIP.
that sucks
7th anniversary too - already too arrogant, them Googleliberals.

9/27/2005 05:50:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

CENSORED! At LAST, I'm SOMEBODY! :-)

9/27/2005 05:59:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Adams, a Jew, took his first (of 3)
wive's last name.
First lucky woman was:
Adelaid Adams.
Hope they had some laughs.
---
Yeah, I'd take about ANY kind of recognition over the kind that Mother Sheehan is Basking in.
reminds me of Verc's "shakes head"
Hard to believe anyone could be that simple,
...or Needy.
Sad, Indeedy, but we may as well enjoy the fun if it benefits the Troops.
---
NOW I have to type in "labud"
Your even MORE famous!
Bask in it, ya only live once.

9/27/2005 06:07:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Back to Gore's Buddy!
Ha!
Sack time in Paradise.

9/27/2005 06:07:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

One last thing,
SIX people died, 1 OD, 1 Suicide
4 old folks presumably almost ready to go, in Superdome
HELL
I imagine rapes were similarly overblown.
Total Murders, etc in NO was no more than background,
but that did NOT
fit the template of the current newscycle:
Racist Bush Lied
People Died.
All time disaster:
Send Money.

9/27/2005 06:24:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

You're SO right. Talk about a self-licking ice cream cone. Anti-racist reporter hypes Superdome Hell in order to expose racist Bush (who doesn't know what racism IS, accounting for his tin-ear as well as as his profound decency), and ends up creating news product literally indistinguishable from whatever the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan would write, if he could write.

9/27/2005 06:54:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

It's not that the private, personal approach to behavior is so dang great--it isn't, it's just nature--but that it proceeds thru time on so many disconnected fronts that it must and will continually trope, and tho some fall (and become deus machinas of media careers), the whole has it's best chance at survival--meaning that in time fewer will fall.

The alternative, the government program, is like a glacier, frozen and slow moving, and responding only to extreme temperature changes (AKA urban riots and right-wing ballot backlashes).

The one shows up in the "New South", color-blind, successful, attractive of all forms of capital including human, and wherein American Blacks are having a huge economic success.

The other shows up in the Ninth Ward. Social programs which create a careerist public-employee industry while having malign effects on the formal beneficiaries are what create ghettos--which are only a sustained crisis away from gulags.

"Ninth Ward"...what a name, what a symbol...'ward', and 'ninth', as in Dante's outer circle of hell.

Except, the wrong people are 'in' it.

9/27/2005 07:24:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

C4, are you immune to the comic irony of posting pointless drivel about someone else's pointless drivel?

9/27/2005 07:34:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

...as i of course just did?
;-)

9/27/2005 07:36:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Prophets are without honor, y'know, and you must expect your sharp, high-relief 'prophet-of-doom' writing is going to attract the needle. The reason I needle you--or try to--is that I suspect you of being an out-party operative, AKA 'profit-of-doom'.

9/27/2005 07:50:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

well, gotta go--later, prognosticator.

9/27/2005 07:53:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

If I were, Quick-Draw, would I have posted my 7:36AM ?

(and my adjective was 'comic'; 'cosmic' being reserved for more ethereal 'high' drivel) ;-)

9/27/2005 11:27:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

He sees himself as part of the eternal cosmic drivel, you see, where you are merely one of the passing parade of comic drivelers.

9/27/2005 12:22:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

A cosmic driveler in his own mind.
Quite Obviously, I might add.

9/27/2005 12:23:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

I, on the other hand, am an irresistably attractive driveler to the self-styled Gods of cosmic drivel:
To the point of driving the Gods to counting drivels.

9/27/2005 12:25:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Somehow these demigods are unable to count LINKS for which, over time, I have provided a wealth of, even by demigod standards.
But how could there be a standard if there is no count?

9/27/2005 12:27:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

I think the Charginghawk Pledge
Is the highest standard one
can attain to.
I will dwell in the glow of
a dreamed of Charginghawk Nirvana.

9/27/2005 12:29:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

eternal ethereal, of course.
my bad.

9/27/2005 12:31:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"noticing" as in staring at, poking with a stick, turning over, smelling, picking apart to get a better look, smelling some more, getting closer, furtively looking over shoulder to see if anyone might have noticed that stolen first bite.

9/27/2005 12:38:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

Doug, if you were watching a human mind break down before your eyes, would you think it better to not gamble on exacerbating the dissolution, and hence say nothing to the owner, or to take arms against a sea of tribbles, and suffer the slings and arrows of outfageous rate, by trying to offer a hint, possibly couched inside a hypothetical, and perhaps softened with silliness via a Shakespeare spoonerism or two?

9/27/2005 01:18:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

:-)
:-(
Softened is scarey. Scattered kibbles of drivels is bad enough.
Think of the mess, not to mention the stench.
We know not what the heck we're up to.

9/27/2005 02:31:00 PM  
Blogger Steve Poling said...

The problem with singularity theorizing is that we have not seen some things that were predicted of the world of tomorrow. There are the obvious things like flying cars and jetpacks. But consider thermonuclear fusion reactors, you know, the ones that would make electricity so cheap you won't have to bother metering it. Didn't happen.

Then there's machine intelligence. Sure, IBM has made machines that do heuristic tree searches at warpspeed, but they don't play chess the way humans do. And consider Robbie the robot: the closest we have is the roomba. The DARPA grand challenge is just trying to get some robots to tote stuff 150 miles. Machine vision and speech recognition continues to disappoint.

These things may be overcome, and I'm sure they will be, but the future-vision of Mr. Vinge in the '80s is likely to be as off-target as the future-vision of Mr. Bester in the '50s. This happens because seemingly easy problems prove difficult and as unexpected solutions become available that revolutionize society.

9/28/2005 02:44:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

C4 Gets Activated Goat Brain Implant in Quest to Raise IQ

9/29/2005 12:08:00 AM  

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