Samantha,
I'm not going to go through and give detailed counter-rebuttals all of your points, except to say, in general, that (1) your Hamiltonian mentality regarding "the masses" underestimates the people (in a way most psychologists and sociologists would probably disagree with) and, therefore, opposes Jeffersonian ideals upon which our democracy rests, (2) technological progress has been accelerating exponentially (as Moore's law, as it as been applied to various areas, explains), and that (3) your "history" of the New Deal reflects either standard right-wing or left-wing ideology and your mentality regarding the capacity of the masses than it does historical fact as represented in (non-right-wing) history books. I'm sure you will respond to this posting in your usuall knee-jerk fashion, but I have no desire to indulge this debate, or respond to your reactions to my other arguments which you have misunderstood. I will therefore leave it up to those reading this thread to make up their own minds, as I am confident they will do if they are true intellectuals. Jon ________________________________ From: Samantha Atkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 11:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: SPAM: Re: SPAM: Re: [singularity] The humans are dead... On May 29, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Jonathan H. Hinck wrote: But does there need to be consensus among the experts for a public issue to be raised? Regarding other topics that have been on the public discussion palate for awhile, how often has this been the case? Perhaps with regard to issues such as the dangers of drunken driving, but public discussion on other issues of import proceeded nevertheless, in spite of disagreement among experts and laypeople. I therefore misjudge the people if they prefer to walk into the future with blinders on, leaving discussions of issues which might affect their future in a fundamental way to an aristocracy of the elite. Reality check. Half the population has an average or below IQ. Do you think these are average IQ topics? Do you think the majority of the people have any real feel whatsoever for the forces that move their world or even the major patterns? Do you think the majority care to? Alas it is has been my unhappy experience that most people either cannot or do not care for these things, understand such issues or have any real desire to do so. I really, really wish that it was not so. Disagreement among this expert group, however, is definitely not helping the issue along, though I also suspect that the fact that this issue is still academic, and not immediate, in nature is also giving the people little reason to discuss it now. Of course experts disagree. This is difficult cutting edge stuff. Perhaps the people will finally need to have their backs to the wall, so to speak, before they reconsider existing paradigms. If ideas pertaining to the possibility that society may need to transition from a labor-based to an automation based economy were put out into the open ahead of time, however, then people would have a body of thought to draw upon later when times get tough. Such ideas of post-industrial possibilities have been bandied about for many decades now. Why is this different? The ideas behind FDR's New Deal did not originate during the Great Depression, for example; they were around for years, if not decades, before then, and out in the open. "Experts" did not keep them a secret or hold them close to vest, nor was there any "consensus" regarding their efficacy. Because these ideas were readily accessible, however, they got pulled out and utilized byRoosevelt as a result of a desperate economic situation. Don't get me started on what an utter disaster the "New Deal" was. Most Americans were not aware of many of these ideas except in a one-sided fashion and as a result they gave FDR a lot of the credit. They also weren't aware of the discussions and problems with these ideas because they didn't care to think about ideas that deeply in the first place. If they had been paying attention they would not have so easily gone along with it. Of course most of those talking about such ideas spoke of them in glowing terms that fooled many who did hear about them. Does this opposition to opening a public discussion have more to do with social classism/elitism than anything else? Opposition? There is no real opposition except to making a pubilc issue stance prematurely. Like it or not the elite, the right hand tail of the curve, will fashion the future. They always have. - samantha ________________________________ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
