[ExI] merry christmas! was: RE: The president's letter

[SR Ballard]

It’s not the fish poop in the ocean that bothers me — it’s the people poop. 

SR Ballard

> On Dec 18, 2019, at 1:04 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> Sushi, sashimi, whatever.  You know the oceans are an enormous toilet bowl.  I'll eat raw fish when those creatures come on land to excrete.
> 
> Merry, Happy, and whatever to those with Winter blues, common around Xmas.  May you have someone wonderful to meet under the mistletoe.  bill w
> 
>> On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 11:37 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bill Hibbard <hibbard at wisc.edu> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> >...Merry Christmas Spike! And a happy, healthy 2020!... Meanwhile, do what
>> you can and Merry Christmas!...
>> 
>> Thanks Bill!  Very much the same to you sir.
>> 
>> I will put aside the overly introspective questions on the nature of "merry"
>> and offer a perspective of our world today.
>> 
>> Technological change is disrupting our world on many levels.  One of our own
>> former ExI posters, Julian Assange was pointing out 20 years ago in this
>> forum that government power is enabled by secrecy, and that if the secrets
>> were exposed corruption would be forced out.  We are compelled to admit he
>> has a valid point.  It is becoming ever clearer the man was right on the
>> money.  China is locking down their societies (or attempting to.)  But
>> information wants to be free.  The Chinese people can see what the Hong Kong
>> people have, and they want that.  Rather than trying to give that to a
>> billion people, China's strategy is to stop the Chinese people from seeing
>> what the Hong Kong people have.  An alternative would be to take away the
>> freedoms and material wealth the Hong Kong people have.  I am very
>> optimistic in the near-term outlook for China, for I suspect that once the
>> genie of freedom is out of the bottle, the commies will be unable to stuff
>> him back in.
>> 
>> Anyone who is into astronomy can scarcely fail to be merry in our times.
>> Those LIGO results continue to stream in and they seldom fail to amaze.
>> Then that crazy weird 70 solar mass black hole, discovered right here in our
>> own galaxy, by the Chinese of all things.  How crazy is that?  They
>> discovered that black hole without even government command.  How can a 70
>> solar mass black hole have formed in this neighborhood?
>> 
>> Medical technology marches on as it always has, but a most promising trend
>> which has been steadily increasing for decades is the patient's access to
>> his own test results.  Any patient enabled with the understanding of how to
>> access information has such a powerful tool set in gaining and maintaining
>> health.  A week ago today I landed in the hospital for the first time in my
>> (long) life with a lung infection.  The experience was most educational.
>> Details available on request.  The medics tell me I will live.
>> 
>> My contact with young people fills me with both hope and fear on many
>> levels.  I commented earlier on Maslow's Hierarchy.  When I was the age my
>> Science Olympians are now, my peers and I were thinking of what menial job
>> we might be able to land and our aspirations to break 3 dollars an hour,
>> that sort of thing, down in the safety and comfort range.  None of these
>> young people, growing up in an ordinary middle-class setting, is anywhere
>> other than right up at the top, diving deep on self-actualization.  Think
>> about how difficult it must me for them.  They can't get any
>> self-actualization from having climbed up that ladder, managing to escape
>> dangerous neighborhoods and poverty.  These poor souls don't even know they
>> started at the top of Mazlow's Hierarchy!  At the same time, some of them
>> know not where their next meal is coming from.  They might cruise Luigi's
>> for pizza or the Outrageous Burrito, or of their posse so decides, they
>> might end up at one of the old reliable standards such as Burger King or
>> Taco Bell.  Some are so poverty-stricken, they might be compelled to just go
>> home and raid the refrigerator, unable to afford even basic sushi.  They
>> don't know where that next meal is coming from.  Pitiful souls they are.
>> But they are damn good at putting together a counterfeit science project on
>> short notice.  They know how to make those look really good, in just a
>> coupla hours, completely devoid of any actual understanding of the topic at
>> hand, but still look great doing it.
>> 
>> I am thankful in a way for living when I do and being in the front row for
>> the coming spectacle in the 2020 summer games, as our societies follow the
>> logical path and recognize we could have easily anticipated male athletes
>> vaguely pretending to be transgender, showing up wanting to compete in
>> women's weightlifting, track, cycling etc.  I don't know how that is going
>> to play out, but I shall enjoy watching them struggle with the question.
>> 
>> I do feel deep pity for those who must convince others how bad it all is.
>> If their jobs require this for some reason, such as aspiring
>> revolutionaries, it must be so frustrating to find that every oppressed
>> faceless mass thinks he is going to be a millionaire.  Even more frustrating
>> to the revolutionary is knowing that many of these oppressed fools damn well
>> might do so, in spite of the unfairness of it all.  They are too stupid to
>> be unhappy!  Life must be so hard for revolutionaries today, with society
>> all around them crushed by grinding prosperity.
>> 
>> I do wish all of you the merriest of Christmas seasons.  May your m approach
>> 1 and stay there as long as necessary to provide sufficient contrast next
>> Christmas season when it must be again increased even artificially be
>> chemical means.  May my Extropian friends and their families enjoy a
>> prosperous and healthy 2020.
>> 
>> spike
>> 
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