How does the World view America these days?

[Satans Little Helper]

So, basically Rachel from Blade Runner is going to save the USA!?

[thefxbip]

I wonder what behavioural patterns/brain anomaly/social construct/biological need, from an evolutionary perspective, is responsible for the compulsive need to collect goods and money and power to the extent it will probably destroy your whole species chances of survival in the next few hundred years.

Must be some fuck up with addiction and the brain reward system going on here? It's just so fucking illogical and irrational and against all survival instinct.

Wonder how many other species have that behaviour of unstoppable greed until self-destruction.

Are we incapable of perceiving threats if they are not immediate and even just a little abstract?

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by thefxbip

[Satans Little Helper]

Edited June 28, 2022 by Satans Little Helper

[ignatius]

As for “blood on the hands” just the work of Henry Kissinger will easily tilt the scale.  Millions died because of his influence. 
 

 

[caze]

57 minutes ago, thefxbip said:

But the lands were in near pristine state when europeans arrived. They did take care of the territory.

They were also living at the whims of nature, and when crops failed and natural disasters occurred, the resulting stresses generally led to the genocidal warfare (again, like with any other society of a similar level of development - and what we'd return to if the eco-fascists and degrowthers got their way). Also, once they got a hold of some horses and guns their rep as living in harmony with nature took a serious beating, look what happened to all the buffalo.

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And some of the tribes lived peacefully.

...and were preyed upon by the ones who didn't. Same as it ever was.

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But the fact that you are so willing to only talk about indigenous society using words like ''widescale human sacrifice, cannibalism, slavery, large scale genocidal warfare'' and calling it pre/proto-civilization makes me wonder if you are not just a bit biased toward the good ol' ''barbarian uncivilized savages'' excuse to destroyed them.

The only reason I'm talking about it at all was to disabuse you of the noble savage notions you seem to have. I also called the Europeans genocidal, to suggest I think they deserved it is absurd.

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These were not proto-civilizations. They were STRAIGHT UP COMPLETE CIVILIZATIONS. With laws, systems, languages ,cultures and ways of living.

There were a mix of hunter gatherers, nomadic warring tribes, and at times more settled agricultural systems (though nothing in North America that was very long lasting or left much of a permanent record). There was no large scale continent-wide agriculture based civilisation (just a few regional proto-civs that never fully got going, though they undoubtedly would have given the time). Things were a lot more developed in central/south America, where they also developed writing/astronomy/maths.

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You see those things were and are still used to portray indigenous society as deserving no respect.

I might be biased, i take notice but so are you.

No, you're just making a lot of dumb assumptions.

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My point is: of course things were never perfect, but RIGHT NOW Indigenous voices could help us tackle problems like climate change, destruction of biodiversity and political unrest if we listened to them more.

Doubtful, unless they're big proponents of nuclear power and genetic engineering or something. I am a big fan of the anti-NIMBY guys in Vancouver though, more of this kind of thing would be great.

[thefxbip]

27 minutes ago, caze said:

 

There were a mix of hunter gatherers, nomadic warring tribes, and at times more settled agricultural systems (though nothing in North America that was very long lasting or left much of a permanent record). There was no large scale continent-wide agriculture based civilisation (just a few regional proto-civs that never fully got going, though they undoubtedly would have given the time). Things were a lot more developed in central/south America, where they also developed writing/astronomy/maths.

Extremely reductive views of what constitutes a civilization, the worth of civilization or development imo.

Very materialistic and technology centered.

And very biased indeed.

 

 

 

[thefxbip]

Flashback of History books in high school describing entire cultures with two words ''hunter gatherers''.

It's just such a lazy attempt at describing complex and varied cultures.

I cringe everytime i hear those. And hell, are they used all the time still to this day to put the most reductive framework on many cultures around the world.

Edited June 28, 2022 by thefxbip

[caze]

37 minutes ago, thefxbip said:

Extremely reductive views of what constitutes a civilization, the worth of civilization or development imo.

Very materialistic and technology centered.

And very biased indeed.

I never mentioned 'worth', you're still just making a bunch of dumb assumptions about moral judgements I haven't made. Civilization is defined around specific technological and social development (specifically including a writing system), it's just an objective measure of what has or hasn't occurred around that, the value of other aspects of their society, and their relative moral worth is a totally separate argument. Just because some people in the past made shitty moral judgements based around 'civilized people and barbarians' doesn't mean we have to today, we can recognise obvious historical facts without engaging in needless moralising.

Quote

Flashback of History books in high school describing entire cultures with two words ''hunter gatherers''.

It's just such a lazy attempt at describing complex and varied cultures.

I cringe everytime i hear those. And hell, are they used all the time still to this day to put the most reductive framework on many cultures around the world.

All human societies were at one time hunter gatherers, there's nothing reductive or lazy about it, it's what we all did at one point before we figured out different ways of doing things. It simply describes what people spent a large part of their time doing, and doesn't discount all the other things they did, if it did the people who study these societies would have run out of stuff to do a long time ago - they have no problem referring to them as hunter gatherers and also documenting the complexity of their rituals and so on.

[thefxbip]

33 minutes ago, caze said:

I never mentioned 'worth', you're still just making a bunch of dumb assumptions about moral judgements I haven't made. Civilization is defined around specific technological and social development (specifically including a writing system), it's just an objective measure of what has or hasn't occurred around that, the value of other aspects of their society, and their relative moral worth is a totally separate argument. Just because some people in the past made shitty moral judgements based around 'civilized people and barbarians' doesn't mean we have to today, we can recognise obvious historical facts without engaging in needless moralising.

All human societies were at one time hunter gatherers, there's nothing reductive or lazy about it, it's what we all did at one point before we figured out different ways of doing things. It simply describes what people spent a large part of their time doing, and doesn't discount all the other things they did, if it did the people who study these societies would have run out of stuff to do a long time ago - they have no problem referring to them as hunter gatherers and also documenting the complexity of their rituals and so on.

Alright, i know i am emotional about this, i will probably overract because i have seen the direct results of colonialism on human beings, people very dear to me and it really is not pretty to say the least. So sorry about that.

But am i wrong to think that the classical definition and concept of civilization brings along with it a certain imperialistic definition of progress and evolution? Doesnt The guy with the bigger gun/the bigger boat/the bigger castle gets to define himself as the best/smartest/superior one and the end of the chain of evolution because he built those things?

Aren't other cultures too often compared with these dominant narrative terms and scales?

And this is still a very real problem right now. I see anthropologists and scientists talking about hunter-gatherers, even if it is done in a very cloaked and almost unconscious way, as somehow less evolved, less capable, less intelligent and less worthy very often. The narrative that technology and industry are the main marker of evolution in a culture, and the things that define them, a marker that overweight things like philosophy, way of living, relationship to nature and other beings, music, art, language etc. is still very much alive right now.

How often i hear scientists just insulting so called pre-historic men because they lived maybe more simple lives? The infamous ''go back to live in caves'' line i hear very often.

Like if living a simple life in caves would make you instantly inferior.

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by thefxbip

[thefxbip]

And i am not naive about the modern situation. We just cant go back to the past. We have to play the game with the cards we are dealt.

But i dont like the current technological civilization and modern man superiority complex towards any culture less technically advanced.

[zero]

15 hours ago, cichlisuite said:

no, definitely rule out (maybe some pun intended) any kind of AI. First, we're never going to reach the level of AI sophistication needed in a reasonable time (if at all), second, we have no idea what to expect of an AI even if we do. So why, in light of our current experience and situation, should we let the reins of our destiny into something completely unknown to us, and hope that somehow, things turn out ok... It's like we're not learning anything, it's even worse: it's like we forfeit our responsibility completely.

yeah, you're right, just turning things over to the machines doesn't sound like a great plan at the current point we're at. we are speaking in pretty broad terms here, and have no idea how realistically this would look. all the AI discussion is purely theoretical of course, since we're not there yet. and if we ever do come close to this point ("we" here in this forum will all be really really old or dead by then), I have no doubt there would be some massive human power struggle to control it. and then what's the point if humans are just going to control the machines, which may actually be able to make better governance decisions any way. so yeah then talking on this with respect to fixing the current US political shit show is really just pie-in-the-sky "what if" type talk.

sadly, we here in the US are more than likely going to be stuck dealing with this 2 party system, which has run its course. human society has changed so much since the advent of the internet, it doesn't really make sense to keep in place a bunch of governance rules that were created a long time ago. I mean there are a bunch of foundational rules that need to stay (like you kill someone, go to jail duh), but there are a bunch more that really need some serious consideration and questioning if this really makes sense any more in today's world. but once again, we go back to the problem that self-serving politicians are making all these decisions with their voting base in mind, and ignore the greater good. and to further add into the current mix, the decisions these politicians are making are fueled by social media influenced lies, so now the decisions become flawed because they aren't based on fact. this is why I sometimes go down the AI rabbit hole, because I think that governance decisions should be made based on hard data. like use science to determine how much of an impact this decision will make, and get a yes or no from that. make decisions based on data, not opinions. politicians are notorious for taking a hard "yes" answer to a fact, and convincing their base it should be a no. that is BS. I think we are all sick of this, since it has reached a completely absurd point that is not even comical any more, it is just pathetic. they don't even try and hide the lies any more. some of these guys could literally say "I am lying to all of you to get elected, because the dems suck!" and the red hat crowd would go wild, and vote for the guy! this is insanity!

Edited June 28, 2022 by zero

[thefxbip]

Man the concept of the Jury (citizens randomly selected, to serve justice for a defined amount of time ) should just be extended to all area of politics.

Randomly selected citizens of all social backgrounds constantly monitoring every aspect of politics. Watching politicians at every corners. Having no interest in the matters other than duty. Short-medium terms. No voting involved, so no deception, no sale's man politics. Chosen by luck.

Edited June 28, 2022 by thefxbip

[ignatius]

you guys should read "Sapiens:  A Brief History of Human Kind" by Yuval Noah Harari. it's quite illuminating regarding hunter gatherers and transition to farming.. how all these people interacted and forward. tribal skirmishes etc weren't uncommon. history of genocide is interesting. the earliest genocide appears to be a site uncovered on the muddy banks of a river where it appears an entire tribe was bound and killed en masse. it's a dig site still i think. still being studied. but mostly it was more pragmatic types of violence over territory and resources. people weren't stupid. they wanted to survive. they knew a lot about their environments and what they could eat and when.. what was a natural remedy to some ailment and all that. the tribe moved though.. so in their migration if they someone was too old or too injured to go on. .they often were left behind. 

anyway.. it's an interesting book. 

also, white religious fascism becoming open talk from idiots. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/lauren-boebert-says-the-church-is-supposed-to-direct-the-government/ar-AAYX4K1

[prdctvsm]

40 minutes ago, ignatius said:

"Sapiens:  A Brief History of Human Kind" by Yuval Noah Harari.

read that; while his history is informative, his pro trans-humanism is a worry imo

[ignatius]

38 minutes ago, prdctvsm said:

pro trans-humanism

you mean body modification and augmenting our brains etc? 

a lot of people are pro to a certain degree.. i think the jury is out. but also that of course the people w/access to it will be elite wealthy types and use it to gain more advantage perhaps. we'll see though.  if some of it gets real cheap it'll become common. at least aspects of it.  but for core things like memory additions to the brain and embedded virtual displays etc.. i think we've a way to go with that. we'll probably have well function cyborg things before we can just tap into our brains and neurological systems with any stability. 

i'm not so worried about it. humanity will have to figure it out in the midst of climate collapse and all that.. and ever growing energy needs to power all the servers and whatever that host the METAverse   and whatever quantum computers are hosting the people's brains that get scanned.  

meh.. it's all a crapshoot. certain things seem really possible at some point but our own human foibles will be difficult to overcome. wars, regressive religious policies, fascism etc. 

i'm trying to remember his stance on it and it seemed sort of glowing at times but also worrisome. i don't remember him being a ray kurzweil evangelical type about it.. but perhaps hopeful some.. i can't recall.. read the book some time back. was really interested in the earlier parts of the book.

i think we're in for some form of dystopian world regardless of technology.. we're getting pretty close to it already really. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by ignatius

[prdctvsm]

21 minutes ago, ignatius said:

you mean body modification and augmenting our brains etc? 

 

[ignatius]

54 minutes ago, prdctvsm said:

 

yeah.. for sure. .the ray kurzweil book "The Singularity is Near" is full of examples of where we're at and where we're headed with so much of it. it reads like a thesis. endless examples of breakthroughs and what it might mean. it's practically dated now though. i think a lot of it is very optimistic sometimes.. and i think i recall sapiens coming across that way at times.. but he leaves a lot hanging if my memory is correct. 

there's some books that are cyberpunk predictions of things.. and others that are essays on what could happen when/if it call goes wrong and we end up with the grey goo in the environment that is self replicating nano machines feeding off pollution and organic oils and running amok uncontrolled and unable to be defeated like a virus. 

every part of the world, and certainly america, is one or two natural disasters away from tipping the scales backwards. if "the big one" comes to the PNW or one of the super volcanoes somewhere blows up.. mega flood from ice dams giving up and all that. the ability of governments to deal with those kinds of catastrophes will be tested. i do think it's all a crap shoot. we're at this point in history where we're along for the ride with this stuff for the most part. 

thanks for the link. i'll have to check out his other books. i found Sapiens pretty interesting.. especially the first 1/3rd of it. 

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by ignatius

[thefxbip]

i watched this one video with geneticists trying to convince everyone that getting old is just an illness like any other and that one day there will be a pill against it...

i was like ''this totally doesnt sound like an advertisement for billionaires to give them money for a miracle fountain of youth pill''

[ignatius]

5 hours ago, prdctvsm said:

 

watching this now. doesn't at all sound like a pro-transhumanist position though. sounds very much like a warning. at least about 12 minutes in that's what it sounds like to me. 

[dcom]

That Harari talk has nothing to do with transhumanism, it's about technologically enhanced psychological-to-commercial exploitation, which is is already the norm, e.g. Facebook et al. It's four years old and a lot has happened after that, but even at that point (2018) it was already evident. I love Harari and gobble up everything he writes, but a "disturbing presentation on transhumanism"? No.

Edited June 29, 2022 by dcom

[prdctvsm]

21 minutes ago, dcom said:

That Harari talk has nothing to do with transhumanism 

Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as the ethics^[3] of using such technologies. Some transhumanists believe that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.^[2]

 

[dcom]

27 minutes ago, prdctvsm said:

Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as the ethics^[3] of using such technologies. Some transhumanists believe that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.^[2]

 

Yes, transhumanism is about transforming selves, not others. Harari is talking about outward-facing transformative technological exploitation, not inward-facing enhancement of an individual's abilities. There are two visions of post-humanity in the transhumanism movement: one in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges - but he's only dipping his toes in the latter, and saying nothing about the former. It's mostly about hacking the collective consciousness, which has already been happening for quite a while.

Edited June 29, 2022 by dcom

[Rubin Farr]

 

[usagi]

some crucial details coming out of this testimony that will surely spur the US justice system to really nail the former Transgressor-in-Chief.

[luke viia]

8 hours ago, dcom said:

Yes, transhumanism is about transforming selves, not others. Harari is talking about outward-facing transformative technological exploitation, not inward-facing enhancement of an individual's abilities. There are two visions of post-humanity in the transhumanism movement: one in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges - but he's only dipping his toes in the latter, and saying nothing about the former. It's mostly about hacking the collective consciousness, which has already been happening for quite a while.

Agreed that the talk is not disturbing (in the sense of Harari endorsing anything in particular). But wrt this post, I'm not sure if you watched the video to the end or not, but he is definitely and repeatedly touching on the subject of radically engineered humans in the distant future ("we may be among the last generations of sapiens" etc) and hardly mentions anything resembling singularity style machine intelligences... actually I don't recall him going there even once. "Digital dictatorships" are not described in terms of AI; it's about data control and avoiding this outcome by some undetermined set of regulations. It's also not about hacking "the collective consciousness," but rather largely about individual biometric data and algorithms that "know us better than we know ourselves." I think he's right (unfortunately IMO) that in the coming battle between privacy and health, it is almost certain that health will win. I don't see extensive biometric data as necessary for good health by any means, so this is a shit outcome to me, but it is likely. I also had to lol at the first half of the talk honing in on biometric data as essentially a super gaydar, and I deeply question the idea/mantra he seems to endorse that "organism is algorithm." I'm not sure if a rejection of free will is as embedded in that claim as it seems to be, but it is certainly easy to read as a sort of eliminative position on consciousness, which I find both premature and incoherent, personally. Autopoietic systems do not need to be fully deterministic, so maybe I'm misreading him entirely here. 

Anyway. I like his humility and his caution, but I'll pass on the fatalist  stuff and the conclusion that it is somehow assumed to be possible - let alone good - for future biometric algorithms to 100% accurately capture our internal states in a way as infallible as he presents them. It is pretty silly to me to call the act of measuring hormone levels or blood pressure "hacking human beings" and unless we're not just reading biometric data, but real-time altering it (as in a wildly dystopian image of a Fitbit literally forcing hormonal changes upon you without your direct and immediate consent), then hacking it is not. And the idea that by such "hacking" we will be freeing evolution from the clutches of natural selection and "directing the future of the species", is ridiculously hubristic and the stuff of promissory materialist nightmares. 

Mixed feelings. 

Edited June 29, 2022 by luke viia