[ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell)

Tomasz Rola rtomek at ceti.pl
Mon Jul 18 00:08:06 UTC 2011


On Sun, 17 Jul 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
[...]
> > PTSD is nasty thing, especially when one is in a society unprepared to
> > understand it (I think US is not). Next time I drink, I will drink one for
> > those guys. Probably would not help much, however.
> 
> The US is better prepared for PTSD now than they were in Vietnam, and
> were better then than in WWII. Nobody was ready for it in WWI... There
> are now somewhat effecive treatments...

Well, you sure have better knowledge on this than I :-). And contacts with 
real people who tell you interesting things.

[...]
> 2) The Marshal Plan
> 3) The Post WWII GI Bill (if you weren't black)
> 4) The Interstate Highway System
> 5) The Space Program
> 
> These government programs are among the most successful ever in US
> history.  And they did come as a direct result of WWII (and the cold
> war).

Yep. Education and infrastructure - truly admirable connection. This is 
exactly what I was trying to state in my original post. All those things 
went into existence thanks to US involvement in WW2. Maybe some would 
happen anyway, but I doubt that they all would happen and to the same 
extent.

[...]
> actions in the past might be indicative of results in the future. If
> LBJ did X and it resulted in Y, and now BHO is doing X, I might point
> out that Y might be an expected outcome. So for me, history is most
> useful as a predictive tool.

As they say, history repeats itself but not in the same way. So don't 
overestimate the power of prediction :-).

> > BTW, pity that as far as I can tell, Land Lease wasn't sent to Poland, too
> > - we had our own government in exile, residing in London, army, navy etc.
> > We even managed to evacuate gold reserves via Romania, but from what I
> > learned they have been confiscated by our British ally - I wonder why,
> > especially because this had put us on pension,  but again this is a bit
> > boring, at least on this particular day.
> 
> The difficulty for Poland seems to me to have been that they were
> always in the way of greater powers who wanted to fight each other. So
> Poland all too often became the battleground of a fight they had no
> real part in.

That's part of it. However, in Europe, practically all countries have been 
a battlefield, some for 30 or 100 years (albeit not recently, heh). We 
were able to fight off Soviet Union because other countries (Great 
Britain, France, I think) were watching Germans to not attack us. I guess 
we would do better job with Germans 20 years later if Soviets didn't help 
them. I think Wehrmacht was slowly loosing steam and we could easily go on 
for another month, maybe even two, which would be very long, leading them 
on the verge of exhaustion. This wasn't an army that knocked off Russians 
in 1941, mind you.

BTW, I have read that as later research showed, only Poles and Russians 
were able to fight Germans on equal terms when strength factor was close 
to 1:1. Western allies, when they won battles, had it more like 1:3 or 1:5 
in their favor.

However, this is alternative history :-). And it reflects my current 
knowledge which is subject to change, even five minutes from now if I am 
lucky enough.

As a comment to recent 100 years, here goes a Polish "Polish joke". On the 
picture, God says to angels something like this: "And now let's have some 
fun and place Poland between Russia and Germany" :-)

http://patrz.pl/zdjecia/polakom-zrobimy-numer

[...]
> > The article sums up what I wanted to say: "The extreme poverty of these
> > settlers likely contributed significantly to their devotion to the
> > principles of the United Order."
> 
> Yes, and they also had only three industries, the biggest being the
> mill. It was easy for them to work together when they all had common
> goals. Once you get big enough that you need two mills, and they have
> to compete with each other, then this sort of thing starts to break
> down, IMHO. Even worse, if you have a Catholic mill and a Mormon mill
> in the same "in common" system... then differences start coming out in
> potentially culture shattering ways. A lot of the US "race relations"
> problems are of this nature.

Very interesting. I hope one day I explore this subject.

> > When one has close to nothing, one is willing to share with others
> > similarly ill-fated individuals.
> 
> Just as there are no atheists in foxholes (you'll never catch me in a
> fox hole, thank you very much ;-), extreme stress causes people to
> join together in ways that otherwise would be difficult to imagine.
> Sometimes the stress is manufactured, as in this case. Brigham Young
> sent people to these godforsaken places and "called" them to figure
> out how to make the place profitable to "the Kingdom". If they failed,
> which many did, I imagine that they saw it as a lack of faith.

Ouch! That's not the way to treat loyal guys.

> Programming methodology is at least as complex as politics. :-(

This why I like low level so much - 0s are 0s and 1s are 1s. The only 
real stuff.

[...]
> >> At least you can envision a future with cinemas... :-)
> >
> > Now the puzzle is, am I an optimist or a pessimist?
> 
> Depends on whether the movies are good or bad. Whether they are all
> propaganda, or some of them are educational and uplifting. Hitler's
> Germany had a lot of movies, but some are probably illegal to own in
> Germany now, not sure about that...

I guess such films are treated as normal nazi propaganda - in most 
coutries they are forbidden by constitution, from what I know (as hate 
spreading materials). Or, if not quite forbidden (because it is good to 
know errors we want to avoid and because there are free speech concerns), 
they are mostly forgotten. At least they very rarely (and only in 
fragments) appear in the mainstream.

Some could have been destroyed during and after the war. Some could have 
been collected as proofs for future trials of war criminals.

> Movies are a tool, like computers and hammers, that can be used for
> good or bad ends.

Right! I tend to forget it. Thanks for reminding this to me.

[...]
> > Glaciers are moving back since 18000 years. I
> > understand, temps are going up during this period, too. I think most of
> > Antropocentric GW talk is marketing, selling houses in Spain, or in
> > tundra. GW is not antropocentric, I'm afraid. It is something else,
> > probably.
> 
> I think it is probably human caused. The science is fairly definitive
> in that direction.
> 
> > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period ]
> >
> > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period ]

Well, I'm not really convinced. I think humans could have added something 
to the process, that started long before industrialisation, long even 
before agrarian revolution.

Science is what it is - it is fluid thing, as new data come in, old 
hypotheses are revised. As far as I know, there is no good enough climate 
model. And it is quite possible that there are still some factors not 
taken into current best models. With no correct model we are unable to 
make longterm predictions. While daily meteorological prognosis have 
improved, the longest give some insight into the week-long future, AFAIK.

Of course models don't bother themselves with exact temperature in my 
place in a day July 18st, 2110. But still, I see that climate modeling 
will improve a lot during next ten years. And then, who knows, maybe I 
become convinced, or maybe they will lead to some other conclusions.

But I confess that I have never tried my hands on anything 
climate-related. So I am not even a novice.

And I have no access to any data, so even if I had my hands stuck deeply 
in papers, without data all effort would be useless.

However, I can look around. For example, they build a whole new city in 
Dubai, on a current sea level, and don't seem frightened that in hundred 
years all this investition will go under water. Maybe they are stupid, or 
maybe they do fraud, or maybe something else.

Guess for some foreseeable future I will remain unconvinced. ;-)

> > Kiosks could be put inside communes/villages (if we are talking 3rd
> > world), perhaps with participation of local schools and churches. So that
> > children can meet there together and maybe learn from each other.
> 
> Thanks for the nice chat Tomasz all of the Poles I have talked to have
> been genuine seekers of the truth. It's a great national attribute if
> my sampling is accurate. Then again, there are a LOT of Catholics
> there... :-)
> 
> -Kelly

Glad to hear you had good experiences with Poles (even thou, as in every 
group, there can be found examples of many different human behaviours). 
Truth is good and it makes us stronger, so seeking it is a worthy goal. As 
of Catholics, I am one of them (at least formally). I learned to be 
critical about institutions built upon humans, even if they are said to be 
rocks ;-) and I like critical thinking ability that I found in many 
Americans (must be somehow connected with individualism) - wish we had 
more of it in Poland :-).

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **


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