I think we will outlive every other species on the planet, even if we have to escape it, leaving a burnt-out cinder behind.
The meek shall inherit the Earth. The strong will leave. But what I want to know is why in all of our awesomeness, we don't spend a little of it in introspection. Well, I never did like the word we. Sounds like Anthem. You seem introspective. Therefore, the collective whole is more introspective. Youve done your part. Teach your kids. you think we are on the verge of self-extinction Theres never been a more conning successful argument than pay me now and I will deliver later. Sort of blood for promises! The end is near! Repent for your sins today. Send your checks to When the theists do this for rewards in the afterlife, they use guilt. When the statists do this for rewards in the future, they use force. We have a constitution that protects us from the former but not the latter. Both are religions. Its just that the latter doesnt call it a religion so it doesnt fall under First Amendment. When the Rapture doesnt happen on the foretold day, excuses are made and the event is pushed a little bit more into the future but still looming on the horizon mind you. When the Annual Global Warming Convention is snowed out in the biggest cold spell in decades, excuses are made. Neither side will admit the possibility of being wrong. You cant prove there is not a Hell in the afterlife just as you cant prove there is not a Hell in the future. We cannot go there now so it cannot be negated. Pascals Wager is then invoked along with a false dilemma. The most emotional dramatic speakers win the argument. I'm an anarchist. That always seems to have a bad connotation doesnt it? Anarchy means against archies, like monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies, etc. I dont think it means zero government. It just means minimal government. Supposedly all governments have the same common abstract goal: to minimize conflict, which usually results in one entity using force against another. So the government has to use force to intervene, which causes conflict, but just less than no government. So the questions become, what is the minimum and who started the fight? If you do something that I dont like, are you allowed to or not? We have Freedom of Speech, but not Freedom of Volume at any place and time. I think the government doesnt care who started it so long as someone does start it and the government can use that as an excuse to get involved and grow. Sounds like a conflict of interest. What can the government do today to cause the people to hate each other? I know from watching the last few decades of American politics that the two parties in the government seem to be far more united than their voters. We are divided and so we are conquered. To paraphrase the Obama slogan, "we are the ones we've been whining about". Thats funny. I have a feeling that the Obama administration is going to look just like the Bush administration but with the tables turned. Its hilarious. Dems complained about Bush, Reps said, you need to support our president!, and Dems said hes not our president! Now Reps are complaining about Obama, and the Dems are saying, just give him a chance and have hope, and Reps are saying, he doesnt represent me! Dems accused Bush about the Patriot Act as an invasion of privacy. Now Napolitano releases some paper about suspicious groups that are on the watch list and the Reps accuse the same. The final score: PEOPLE 0, GOVERNMENT 2. Im very positive about the future because the private sector seems to invent and adapt to new technologies far faster than the government slugs can react. Look at PGP, blogs, cell phone cameras and recorders, and instant cross references. Politicians are still dumbfounded when some YouTube shows them saying two contradictory statements with the same conviction and sincerity to two different voting groups both made in different cities but both in the same week. Theyre still fighting the previous war. They also hate it when people pull up recordings of their past (when they were hoping it would be forgotten) and send it out virally. Politics. You just gotta love it. I hope his [Obamas] detractors are as wrong as their arrogant self-rightous blustering implies. Whatever laws your political party passes that benefits you at the expense of the other party becomes precedent for revenge when the tables turn. And those laws linger for a long time. The best way to make society better is to make yourself better. Do your part. Set an example. Rob _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 10:09 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How many years left I wonder how much more efficient cars have gotten. They have certainly gotten lighter over the years. But are they really getting that much more energy from gasoline? My contemporary cars get about twice the fuel mileage that my earlier vehicles did. This is a combination of being lighter, more aerodynamic, having better drive-train efficiencies, improved combustion due to combustion chamber design, fuel management, and spark management. Vehicles with similar weight but (in my case) with 4x4 or AWD get about 50% better gas mileage than their 2WD counterparts from 30-40 years ago. My "economy cars" from the 70's/80's rival even the hybrids. I have to coast a lot, manage my speed carefully, avoid sitting at idle, but yes, they clock in about the same as a Prius or even an Insight, but it takes a lot of care. I wonder why we, the apologists and denialists for anthropogenic crises are so quick to take credit for man's great abilities to fill every corner of the world, to dominate every climate, every landscape, yet insist that we could *never* be the cause of major systems imbalances in the world I suppose the same is true in reverse. There are those that apologize for our greatness and deny that weve done wonders yet insist that we could never be the cause of our own destiny. Its all a matter of perspective. I'm usually on your side of the arguement. I'm a human-chauvanist (thanks to Robert Heinlein) and I think we will outlive every other species on the planet, even if we have to escape it, leaving a burnt-out cinder behind. We are wicked-clever, and we *will* find a way. But what I want to know is why in all of our awesomeness, we don't spend a little of it in introspection. Why don't we look at what we are doing and ask whether we really want to be so exploitative? To hear one side of the debate you think we are on the verge of self-extinction through abuse of the planet, but to listen to the other, you would think we are also on the edge of extinction if we don't exploit every resource to the greatest of our ability. For the nuclear-buffs, "what if fission was out of our reach?". What if nuclear power simply were not an option? Would we *really* be on the verge of disaster? Sure, it is convenient, but that isn't the same as saying it is necessary. Sometimes I wonder, if a conservative is someone that resists change, then are those that save the whales and fret about global warming or global cooling also conservative? Did those mammoths died because they didnt change; that they were too conservative of a species and didnt adapt and evolve? Did they really die or did their genes live on in other species? If we hunted them to death and thats bad, is it also bad that they supplanted other species during their rise and caused them to go extinct? The rhetoric of conservative/liberal is mostly duplicitous and argumentative to me. I'm an anarchist. We have some choices that other species do not have, that our ancestors did not have for the most part. We are the smart-ass Hippies who knew it all, who became Yuppies who knew it all, who are now blaming "them" for FFing everything up. To paraphrase the Obama slogan, "we are the ones we've been whining about". Right now is a *really good time* to take serious stock of our (collective) situation and put down our "childish things" (another Obamaism?) and ask ourselves what is really happening in this world and whether we want to do something different (if we even can). This is environmental, sociological, economic, political. I hope Obama and his inner circle are as smart and aware as they (sometimes) appear to be. I hope his detractors are as wrong as their arrogant self-rightous blustering implies. I hope the rest of us at least take our role in this seriously, err on the thoughtful side, take a chance by asking some of the harder questions (pro and con) and considering what we can and might do about the answers. Our parents spent their lives trying to avoid/repair the mistakes their parents made (depression, world wars, etc.) and we are doing the same I fear. I hope not to condemn my own children to fighting/repairing from my mistakes while ignoring their own real plight and opportunities. I think I'll choose to live in a region of the multiverse where humans *do* recognize their self-destructive habits I dont think you have a choice. If in this universe we destroy ourselves, our conscious continuity will only live on in those other universe where we dont destroy ourselves. I think you are right. I was merely being rhetorical. I think multiverse theories are generally moot, no matter how interesting. I have a thin belief (whatever that means) that to be conscious is to be able to span and navigate these possibilities... but I'm not sure I know what that really means. Imagine all those other universes where a killer asteroid hit the Earth, or nuclear war, or plague killed everyone. Well, here we are and there were not! But I'm sure my ur-selves in their uber-competence would have found a clever way to escape the worst of it, to live on and speculate and cogitate and pontificate endlessly. I think I need to go back to inspecting the lint trapped in my navel now, maybe I can felt it up into a fresh cover for my yurt... the 20-year warranteed plasticized canvas is starting to age. - Steve
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