Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012 with 'force of 100m bombs'

[eRe4s3r]

Yes but who decides what is adequate?

[Ozymandiaz]

Yes but who decides what is adequate?

Well, the people really. And science.

We know how much energy a human body needs from food, we know we need clean water, we know we need some kind of shelter and security. We need to have health care free of charge. We also need access to the internet, really.

All the basic really, at least for a start. When technology progresses further, we can eliminate any material needs altogether since it will be a trivial issue. But this is far in the future

So its not like we know what is adequate right now, but to set up an incorruptible impartial government? We really do need some form of computers to handle a lot of the paper work, and most of the trivial decisions. Maybe even rely on it fully?

I do not have a straight answer, but it is something that would need to be solved. And we need to kick out the current failures of politicians we got now.

[RCIX]

My change innvolves some sort of goverement/organizing body making sure everyone gets adaquate food and housing

Pretty sure that's called Communism (or socialism?), and we all (should) know how well that works out...

[Spikey00]

In wonderful unity! 

(Lest you disagree with our government, you will be executed for treason.)

[Ozymandiaz]

My change innvolves some sort of goverement/organizing body making sure everyone gets adaquate food and housing

Pretty sure that's called Communism (or socialism?), and we all (should) know how well that works out...

Actually, no

And really? you think socialism is a bad thing? Really?? I live in a country with a realtive high degree of socailism (Norway), and let me tell you, it great. It has nothing to do with communsim at all (we have all the same things as USA in respect to voting, capitalsim/consumerism {not fond of this tbh} etc). Socialism provides some basics for all, in regards to health care and such. You really think that is a bad idea? I am shocked. I for one like it that I can get rushed to a hosptial and get aid with no need for lots of overly expencive insurance, since my taxes has already taken care of it.

Also; pure comminusim is a system that has never been implemented. Communsim as implemented in the real world have been flawed due to corrupted leaders. That much should be obvious. Besides, you judge a whole sysem based on "The Evil Russians" of the cold war and current China. I agree that thoose two cases are bad, but that does not mean the fundamental principles of communism is bad. Its jsut different.


And to the point, what I want is not communism, what I want is the goverment to provid a basci framwwrok for all humans, regardless. What you build on top of that framwork can be your own thing

[eRe4s3r]

Social capitalism and Socialism have no correlation. However tis certainly true that not all things about Socialism were bad, but Human Nature is one where any power you give to someone, will corrupt that someone. The ones who assign food or merchandise get a little encouragement and soon some people are more adequate than others.

I grew up (for 5years) in the DDR / GDR in German and what i can remember is that food and work was never scarce, nobody starved, but exotic food was always scarce, anything a Nation can't produce itself has to be bought and Imported. And this is the reason why the gdr wen't bankrupt (lets leave the fact that the Stasi was there, there was only 1 Party to elect and that if you disagree you were thrown in Jail with no charge or even deported to Syberia).

In the GDR the people more adequate than others were Stasi members and Party members. Or only party Members. This seems to be a pretty common thing in Socialism (1 Party Dictatorships) as theres always that 1 group of people who decide what is adequate or not.  

Edit: by the way, 1 missing word - turned the meaning of my entire post around, sorry ;p

[RCIX]

My change innvolves some sort of goverement/organizing body making sure everyone gets adaquate food and housing

Pretty sure that's called Communism (or socialism?), and we all (should) know how well that works out...

Actually, no

And really? you think socialism is a bad thing? Really?? I live in a country with a realtive high degree of socailism (Norway), and let me tell you, it great. It has nothing to do with communsim at all (we have all the same things as USA in respect to voting, capitalsim/consumerism {not fond of this tbh} etc). Socialism provides some basics for all, in regards to health care and such. You really think that is a bad idea? I am shocked. I for one like it that I can get rushed to a hosptial and get aid with no need for lots of overly expencive insurance, since my taxes has already taken care of it.

Also; pure comminusim is a system that has never been implemented. Communsim as implemented in the real world have been flawed due to corrupted leaders. That much should be obvious. Besides, you judge a whole sysem based on "The Evil Russians" of the cold war and current China. I agree that thoose two cases are bad, but that does not mean the fundamental principles of communism is bad. Its jsut different.


And to the point, what I want is not communism, what I want is the goverment to provid a basci framwwrok for all humans, regardless. What you build on top of that framwork can be your own thing

The issue is not that socialism and communism are themselves evil, it's that ultimately there's going to be some bad apples which will pull the whole system down; i can guarantee it. Eraser made that point quite well; it's like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

[quickstix]

it's that ultimately there's going to be some bad apples which will pull the whole system down; i can guarantee it.

This is universal to any form of governance you can think of. The nation state and governance are abstract concepts with nothing inherently good or bad about them. One can argue that democracy commits the fallacy of argument from popularity.

The classic utilitarian will argue that the means are irrelevent as long as the end result is the maximum happiness for all involved. Of course, one can counter with 'what is happiness?', 'is a happy-but-misinformed population happy?', and so on...

Food for thought.

[eRe4s3r]

Happiness is that every human can live a life that at the end of days he can call "cool" - for some that means family, for some that means hording stuff, for some it means eating rare stuff, good tasting stuff, for some it means Internet or porn, or many women, or many men, or even many children and all of the above, or heck for some it means being lazy, watching Anime and playing weird Otaku culuture related Tohou games ;P

One can live any such a life with even a fleeting attempt at abusing capitalism and how it works. But one can never achieve most of such a life living in system like socialism as i knew it. Now of course its a fact that most practiced socialism is in fact a misnomer (Germany and Norway are not practicing socialism, but social capitalism!).

But real socialism and communism (particularly both together) are absolutely prone to abuse, not because the systems in their own right are flawed, but because any such system on a nation scale requires supervision by flawed humans, who don't live in socialism or communism but in egomanism. Which is my term for people who "abuse a system to gain the maximum profit for themselves and their ~relations~".

In Capitalism, the reality is that BECAUSE humans do this Capitalism largely still works, even though an african or north korean might very well scoff at such a statement. Reality is that as long as theres Nations to be oppressed by sheer force of economic power, exactly that long Capitalism will exist.

And that will be a very long time still. As the average education of say, someone living in Bangladesh coming from a farm, and working 7 days a week for 14 hours in factory, is.. lets say, "low" - not becaues the humans are stupid, but because the system in place actively denies them education in order to exploit them. What a fucked up world it is. But it is the world that puts food in the super markets...

Not much else to say, remember Socialism is NOT social capitalism.

[zebramatt]

One might argue that attempts at socialism and communism thus far have been inherently flawed from a (classical) Marxist perspective, as they have not:

• arisen from within the proletariat;
• emerged from a natural undermining of advanced capitalism; nor
• been based on a society of universal economic abundance.

Autonomist Marxists might further argue that the downfall of capitalism has begun with its dilution into socialism capitalism and will continue throughout this epoch's lifetime until such time that a state of growing economic abundance will trigger its erosion into full-blown socialism.

Either way, smarter men than I agree it takes more than just a despot and his empire to form a successful socialist society...

[Ozymandiaz]

Happiness is that every human can live a life that at the end of days he can call "cool" - for some that means family, for some that means hording stuff, for some it means eating rare stuff, good tasting stuff, for some it means Internet or porn, or many women, or many men, or even many children and all of the above, or heck for some it means being lazy, watching Anime and playing weird Otaku culuture related Tohou games ;P

One can live any such a life with even a fleeting attempt at abusing capitalism and how it works. But one can never achieve most of such a life living in system like socialism as i knew it. Now of course its a fact that most practiced socialism is in fact a misnomer (Germany and Norway are not practicing socialism, but social capitalism!).

But real socialism and communism (particularly both together) are absolutely prone to abuse, not because the systems in their own right are flawed, but because any such system on a nation scale requires supervision by flawed humans, who don't live in socialism or communism but in egomanism. Which is my term for people who "abuse a system to gain the maximum profit for themselves and their ~relations~".

In Capitalism, the reality is that BECAUSE humans do this Capitalism largely still works, even though an african or north korean might very well scoff at such a statement. Reality is that as long as theres Nations to be oppressed by sheer force of economic power, exactly that long Capitalism will exist.

And that will be a very long time still. As the average education of say, someone living in Bangladesh coming from a farm, and working 7 days a week for 14 hours in factory, is.. lets say, "low" - not becaues the humans are stupid, but because the system in place actively denies them education in order to exploit them. What a fucked up world it is. But it is the world that puts food in the super markets...

Not much else to say, remember Socialism is NOT social capitalism.

Indeed, I might have missused the term Socialism, but my thoughts are bascially the same as you.

But indeed, I want to change current system since I think there is something inherently worng with the system in that where you are born determine if you are a 'slave' or the 'oppressor'. To that end I belive a system that gives some basics to all is a good thing.

As for determining what is needed, that is a trivial matter. We make some more "human rights" documents to state it once and for all. Like right to clean water, food, shelter etc etc .

To take care of such a system, we need computers. It may sound like I give us up to machines, but machines will at least be as impartail as we can get, until we device a technology capable of solving all material needs permanently for all. Then we no longer need goverment as such.

But we need to start somewhere

[RCIX]

it's that ultimately there's going to be some bad apples which will pull the whole system down; i can guarantee it.

This is universal to any form of governance you can think of. The nation state and governance are abstract concepts with nothing inherently good or bad about them. One can argue that democracy commits the fallacy of argument from popularity.

The classic utilitarian will argue that the means are irrelevent as long as the end result is the maximum happiness for all involved. Of course, one can counter with 'what is happiness?', 'is a happy-but-misinformed population happy?', and so on...

Food for thought.

The issue with socialism though is that you're placing all of your power into a few people, who are far more likely to end up corrupted than the millions of people that make up your society. Granted, many will end up corrupt either way, but in capitalism the vast majority of the power (is less likely to) land in the hands of a few who can abuse it. Eraser said it better and faster than me (again) >.<

And computers might not be a good idea; there's a few issues:
 * They can be easily hacked
 * The system in place would have to either be inflexible, or prone to abuse (you'd need software that  is light-years ahead of what we have now as far as machine learning and artifical intelligence, and at that point there's the very real issue of ending up with something like a Skynet or a GlaDOS or ....)

[eRe4s3r]

If we end up with something like Glados I'd totally be for it. Free cake for everyone! 

Besides, Glados only followed its programming in the absence of personal - in reality, its likely personal would always be there when we have a omnipotent "Omni-AGI" ;P

(Artificial General Intelligence) - General Intelligence defines that it can learn and adapt on higher levels (also called evolution ;p) - something that an AI (like, say, fish swarms or ants) can not.

The Question is of course, what priorities does this global AGI have? Does it see us as holy beings that it has to protect at all cost, or only at some cost, whats the cost? Who sets it.. again a system prone to abuse, in this case by the creators.

In fact, there should never be a central AGI that governs us, as that would degrade us to a Hive. While a Hive would not be bad - (as long as the Drones (humans) remain self-deciding) it would stagnate us to death within a 1000 years.

Also, the problem is that when we decide to develop an true AGI with a synthetic neural net, adaption, emotions and evolution possibility, then we have in fact not created an AI but Life.

the final solution to all problems on Earth would likely be some kind of transcended thinking, which would likely require DNA rewrites to give us access to more (yet unused?) brain functions. And even then the "transmission" phase would be 1000 to 5000 years.....

[Ozymandiaz]

I just want to mention that for every evil AI (or SI - Sentient Intelligence if you wish) in fiction, there is a benevolent one (also cake is good)

Lots of theories about them, but no concrete eveindence yet to being the end of the world. I think we got a tendancy to anthropomorphize them


Getting run by a computer is not a final solution, of course, but taking use of computers is a good idea, if only to reduce the immense destructive bureaucracy that we got now. Its all theroy crafting for now really. Still need to invent such awesome things .

As for changing our DNA, I am all for that. We got the power, and why not take advantage of it .

But the best we can do right now in the closest years is to give all the basic material needs (water, shelter, and basic food {not to say take away from thoose that got more, but elevating the rest is imo a right thing to do}), then build from that.


Its as you say all in our thinking, we are currently "tuned" in ot his life around us. All we really need to change it, is the will.