I thought you're review could use a soundtrack provided by the Subhumans..



Us Fish Must Swim Together


Do you really wanna vote for the system?



Businessmen

I DON'T WANNA DIE!!!!


From the Cradle to the Grave..



British Disease


Dehumanization


Dying World



Human Error

quite an honour

lolololol

science is truly the new opium of the people

or science fantasies anyway

where are those labs?

waiter, i'd like 1/2 lb. of lab steak! here's a bar of gold to pay for it.

soylent is made from rice. an agricultural commodity.

i'm still waiting for my flying car and robot maid



the machine messiah ISN'T COMING

there will be no techno-rapture

not up to your usual standards at all

i couldn't argue point by point, it was too much to unpack.

not saying there won't be lab meat down the line. we have shit like quorn or TVP or soy schnitzel, but it doesn't beat the laws of entropy--or politics.

it already exists mang

entropy? politics?

do your own googling

it exists in a lab that costs more energy to run than it costs to raise a cow from plants that eat the sun. maximum disorder. large costs.

politics rules ownership and distribution.

the labs are not "ours". that's what triggered my laugh originally.

i dont know if the costs exceed agriculture, but if they do it won't be for long. also the time the sun and soil etc. takes, and the time involved in breeding is long.

growth medium isn't fairy dust conjured up from the void

Meat prices must rise before cultured meat is viable, say researchers
By Nathan Gray+, 28-May-2014
The economic feasibility of sustainably cultured meat compared to that of traditional meat production may be the greatest challenge facing those who support the new technology, warn researchers.
http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-...ay-researchers

progress will change that.

its inevitable.

good article.

progress tomorrow will not feed you today

postmodernism, more than a game of words, is the fundamental suspicion that progress and modernity didn't quite turn out the way they were cracked up to be.

would i love to have my own vat of meat in the kitchen? fuck yeah.

but for now it's a dream-- and it's full of questions

right now i'm just trying to make kimchi. i've fucked up a couple of times.

What fascinates me most about your perspective is that sociologically, ethically, spiritually you are absolutely hopeless nihilist, YET, when it comes to "science" you are indeed as !@#$%! aptly described, an enraptured believer.



You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to !@#$%! again.

i dont think both of you guys criticism is particulary fair or accurate. projecting christian moralism onto what i'm saying, when it's the exact thing i'm trying to get away from. you're both stuck in a particular perspective and it's not one i share, not even unconsciously, despite what you might think

nowhere did i say any of this stuff would "save us", and the idea that that's even what we should be looking for is the opposite of what i said. i did say we can use it, and we should. i think my attitude is more realistic because im basically saying there are aspects of progress that we can plan ahead for and use for our own ends. we can claw back some freedom if we can accurately allign ourselves with the technical progress that is on the way, because for a moment before it exists it's there in a virtual sense and the field is open for what its ultimate fate will be. if we are always a few steps ahead, we can create new social norms/demands/expectations before the monopolies happen and we get gouged.

there is a certain amount of leverage people have, and the attitude that both of you seem to espouse does not seem like it wants to use it.

ive also never encountered someone who uses the "ah ha, you really DO believe but you dont want to admit it!" line or argument and found them to be convincing.

im not the conservative here, and it seems like the cynicism you both espouse is based on previously ridiculously utopian expectations rather than a realism. that's my main point against xtian people or people unconsciously biased by the surrounding xtian culture.

the argument is like "this nuclear power you speak of, i can come up with so many reasons why it will be misused, why it wont reach absolutely EVERYONE, why horrible things will happen!" therefore im more cynical than you therefore i win.

to me this attitude is totally and utterly redundant because technical progress happens whether we like it or not, and the machines are working on us just as equally as we work on them, so the only sane attitude is to allign yourself not with the utopian or unrealistic aspects of progress, but with a determination to experiment/weaponise/use it because it is happening whether you like it or not.

it also is getting to a point where the continued reduction of what i say to my autobiography and some inherent essence of beliefs is just reminding me how futile it is to post these things here at all.

ufff, so much drama.

when we go from debating ideas to debating motivations, nothing can possibly work.

Who brought up Christianity?? I wasn't trying to criticize, more so critique. Its been my observation over these years that you are hopeless (and not in the pejorative sense, rather the literal) about sociological and philosophical matters but head over heals in love with the "progress" of science. It is perhaps the ONE and ONLY thing you ever talk about on this forum in positive terms and I get the impression that your face lights up when you talk about it in person. I wasn't trying to diss you at all, just point out that it is a reflection of your faith in science and modernity, and indeed as !@#$%! mentioned that post-modernism is to view with skepticism and scrutiny the "values" of science and "progress" to alleviate all the ills of the human experience. You may WANT to get away from the emotive idea of faith and belief, but it is the ontological reality of your perspective whether you're aware of it or not. Its a logical conclusion, if you argue that science and progress will "improve" or "solve" critical issues of the human experience, yet this hasn't happened yet, it demonstrates your faith, belief, and possibly even hope in the sciences and technology.



Yet you've already mentioned how technology is actually starting to further empower the forces of corruption, greed, and ineptitude that are as you've also mentioned the root of our own evils.


You are very hopeful indeed, I'm a bit more pessimistic about this myself..


By calling it "progress" you've already brought into the world of morality and ethical assessment, not the raw data of science like you'd want to. Technology is what it is. Progress is a relativist, moralist term. Technology can be good, it can bad, it can both at the same time. Also remember its a human creation, so it is as weak, vulnerable, and flawed as the humans who create and operate it. So, to call "progress irrelevant" is a matter of blind faith, not prophecy, because remember if humans use technology to exaggerate our own human fuck ups THAT bad, it can all fall backwards. Our world is a house of cards, you're right, in this era they are very modern, technological cards, but they are fragile as they ever have been. Rome was the most advanced technological civilization and lasted for many centuries, but succumbed to the inevitable progression to the mean. The Muslim empires of the Medieval era were even more modernistic, yet look at the shambles their world is today?? There is an inevitable ebb and flow, true, now we are flowing in an upward direction, but how can you know that nothing can set us back in a future that doesn't even exist yet?

would either of you say it's even possible that it's not?

the rest of what you're saying all rests on me universalizing, which i'm actually not doing if you look closely.

my position is that both of you are projecting biases from your own perspectives, and they are what i've encountered over and over again.

i'd say that neither of you want to accept that my perspective could be what it is.

if i was pitching an argument where this little space of progress (and what i mean by that is technical progress which is a real thing (with no ULTIMATE teleology), was immune from the nihilism then you'd both maybe be right.

but this is not what i want to say at all.

i'm pretty happy with this basic position, and i want to work it out further. i understand that it is difficult, but this is due to specific cultural biases. it is possible to have the perspective i have with no theological or ultimate moral compensations. not easy, but possible, that's why its a worthwhile project.

I may be, but I'm basing it on the consistency in ALL of your posts to mention technology in particular, and science in general, in a very positive light. Further, I don't need to drag up quotes, but you've often mentioned how technology and science and alleviate societal ills, empower people, and help us out. That may be true, but it can in the future be just as much wrong. Hence why its something you believe as a matter of faith. Is it that hard to see that? Further, what is wrong with believing in something? I'm not saying it to you as some kind scathing accusation, even if you want it to be that so badly so as to make yourself a victim in this. You're not victim, and I ain't got nothing against you. Actually, I enjoy your posts in this thread in particular, and I didn't post the Subhumans post to mock you by the way.

my perspective is aware of that, but it doesn't get caught in it. there is alteration, there is alleviation, there is experimentation, there is relief and release, and there is possibility of improvement.

but you can always say that "cos we have lightbulbs now life is still as hopeless as it ever was".

nowhere do i advocate faith. what is possible in this world is to predict where technological progress is going. you can allign yourself with it.

Yet again, that is a matter of faith, because technology is dependent on humans who inherently making mistakes, time and time again in our history they have been cataclysmic mistakes. So yes, technology could keep evolving, yet it could just as easily collapse. Technology is not an inevitability as you've described, rather its fragility is based on the reality that as technology evolves, it also exponentially increases the number of dependent variables and hence increases the risk towards failure.

that's why i like parts of accelerationism, because it gets around this problem by saying that technology is also subject to darwinian impulses, and it's literally using us to bring itself into existence.

i don't think this is particularly unrealistic. those dinosaurs and plants that became the oil our cars use - that's a real process. obviously we're part of a similar process.

it's all information vs. increasing entropy so of course it is subject to selective pressure. there are not "impulses" though, much less from within--that would be buffonian not darwinian.

in other words -- "life" is a maxwell demon

but it's not the only maxwell demon

cody wilson gets it

the basic essence of what im trying to say about technology is put forward really well here. very american specific but still worth thinking about

i don't have time to watch a phone video for 30 minutes, though i'll happily read a transcript or other writings--- but do you mean this "free market anarchist"?



i didn't know you were a free market anarchist/libertarian Hayek-loving gun nut! i had you pegged all wrong! all wrong! pardon my misunderstanding.

im not of course.

its not that stuff that interests me, which i dismiss under the broad stroke of "american", because its all ridiculous fantasies that only americans could believe. but his discussion about revolution and the relationship between the state and 3d printing, in that video you didnt watch, that's good.

that's still rooted in strong individualism, not in the replacement of one totalitarianism for another.

dude i cant hear you over the sound of my own personal brand of currency coming out of the 3d printer. you're probably a fed anyway.

"You still car jacking, nah player, well what is the new thing, white collared crime and computer hacking!" E-40

you're goddamn right.

if it gets to the point where banks can't even guarantee the location or stability of their capital, then things might get interesting.

the hysterical whingpocalypse of libertardians since the 08 crash is completely and utterly irrelevant. as if they can restore some "real wealth" that's lying in wait obscured by "fiat" currency.

the fact is that more and more money is digitized, and this process is not going to slow down.

obsolescence of capitalism.

Here is the irony, if technology enables the criminal, it further empowers the law. The digital paper trail can be more revealing than the literal ones. Computer crime is sometimes even more trackable than old fashioned strong arm robbery..

id like to see organized robin hood hacker bureaucracies that rob the 1% and distribute to the rest.

the idea of trad capitalism was "these ninjas got gold in they vaults so dont fuck with them and go run the rat maze for some coins."

dont know how the system can cope with the new digital world.

will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The paper trail would be in the distribution. Virtual money would be even more obviously trackable than paper money. Its pie in the sky, if it were feasible all the hackers would be doing donuts in Lamborghini's after sitting courtside at Miami Heat games ;)

Again, NSA, drones, billions of surveillence cameras, GPS tracking/monitoring ...err "location" on mobile phones.. If you ask me the government loves the new digital world more than any other, they're doing a better job of fucking people than the fucking Romans or the damned Crusaders ;)

maybe.

i wonder if you couldnt destroy the system completely by organizing enough digital hacking.

just bring it to absolute chaos.

all those other things you mentioned aren't just locked up in gov hands. anything is hackable, even the nsa. its data in clouds and surveillance works both ways.

the russian hackers have already got hundreds of millions with gameover zeus.

all money is virtual these days and we have the same shitty power structures of before, if not worse.

back in the day before all-digital money there was a hefty cash economy that occurred outside of state surveillance.

now square is asking to send me their new card reader so i can take trackable, taxable payments, of which they get a free every time.

bitcoin maybe offers some alternatives right now, but as soon as it becomes a real threat the lawyers will find a way to preserve the power of their bosses and then some.

and the mafiosos are always also politicians.

just like the free internet that was going to save us all is about to become the next cable tv full of "sponsored content" and everything else throttled to death.