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Next Step - Think Past our Thought Past

Future Philosophy

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Next Step - July 2007

What book are you currently reading

July 31st 2007 07:00

I'm reading The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin. I'm loving it so far, it's kind of like a problem solver's approach to the near future. The first section (which is where I am up to) looks at what the key problems will be in the comming years, the combined consequences of depleting our natural resources and altering climate, drastically increasing population in the poorest and worst managed areas of the globe, and a drastic increase in the number of people who will try to lead a western lifestyle, what this will mean for the status of humanity, especially in terms of availability of food and drinking water. The second section looks at the technologies which will play key roles in transforming humanity and how they might help us avert crisis or get through it, including nanotechnology, radical genetic modification, evolutionary AI. The third section looks at the philosophies and theories which might play a role in getting us through or averting crisis, what social, political and economic structures will play a role. The fourth deals with what possible outcomes might be, from utopia to the end of humanityand a host of other possibilities in between.

What are you reading currently?

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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Against: Man Vs Machine

July 30th 2007 10:28

Ok so I mentioned in a few previous posts why I think it is misleading to look at the future through the paradigm of man vs machine but I didn't explain why, so here's an attempted explanation.

In biological evolution it is often very easy to see evolutionary relationships as competition, zero sum games, with opposing sides, one of which prevails at the cost of the other. There are many examples of this. But if you delve deeper into these relationships you find that it is really a symbiotic relationship, one of mutual dependence. Take the preditor/prey relationship for example, it seems one of competition at first glance but really, this is just the case when it comes to individuals when you look at the species over time, the preditor and the prey are working together in order to find a balance which will guarantee the survival of both, if the preditor kills too many, it will destroy its own food source, and eventually itself. There are other cases which are more straightforward cases of symbiosys, the variety of microorganisms which call our bodies their home for example, even mitochindria are though by many to be bacteria which joined up with our cells at some early point

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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Can postmodernism be creative?

July 24th 2007 05:31

OK, so there's a view out there which says that postmodernism is destructive in the sense that it is purely critical, it doubts the possibility of truly creating anything new, thus postmodernism if it takes over will kill art and other creative endeavors.

I think this is a misunderstanding. The claim that the author is merely the point of intersection of the cultural sum of their experiences and simply put old ideas together in different ways, is a descriptive claim. You can't come along and say postmodernism is bad because it will kill art in the sense that no new art will be created, because everone will be busy rehashing old ideas. That totally misses the point. If the postmodern claim is true, it means there never was a creative and new art in that sense. That doesn't diminish art, it still is as great as we always thought it was, but not because it was entirely novel

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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The next creature

July 21st 2007 08:37

I really think that analysing things as man vs machine is to totally misunderstand the relationship. Nonetheless lots of people look at it in this way. So let's play with it and see what we get.

Well, it is clear then that if it is to be an evolutionary battle of man vs machine (where 'machine' is broadly understood to include computers and others of our artefacts which are not stricly mechanical) then we will lose, and pretty soon. But what's interesting is to think about how this new creature which will beat us for top spot will evolve

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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An epiphany

July 20th 2007 16:49

Hahahaha, an epiphany is a profound realisation of a great idea. The irony is that this less than mediocre post was made all the worse in that it was interrupted by me having an epiphany and then I couldn't keep writing properly and it totally ruined this post. What the hell am I doing here? Shouldn't the epiphany be what the post is about? Unenejoy:

the next level of brain enhancement is a little nanobot which is way more powerful than your brain. But how can this integrate with your brain? it's too small to make enough connections with your neurons and stuff. Instead it shall work as the caretaker of the brain. Not speaking with neurons, rather arranging them as it sees fit. Organising the experience and connectedness of the neurons

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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Ideas rule

July 19th 2007 12:54

Ideas. I got a lot of them. I've got ideas here. I've got an idea. Hey I just thought of something. By the way, I was thinking. Oh, I just had an idea. Sometimes we get sick of that.

Ideas? we ask, oh gosh I'm just not sure, I've got so much on my mind already. It's not hard to see why so often we slink back into ignorance and self delusion, individually and collectively

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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I made a video

July 18th 2007 13:01

The title pretty much says it all. This is how I understand self-conscoiusness.

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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response to DancesWithDeath

July 13th 2007 17:08

yes! you just won a subscriber for that post. I like your brain. The only thing is, lets not make the wikipedia first and then test it by putting people in the society it describes. That's not what wikipedia is. Its not a plan. Plans don't work. Just make a society where the people in it can change the rules as they please, that's what wikipedia is, you don't write it then test it on other people you test it on the people who design it.

That way the people in it cause the whole system to evolve, and to evolve to a state which pleases them. So wikipedia started as a plan, a way of collecting data before putting it into Nupedia. Nupedia was meant to be an online encyclopedia that represented the sum of human knowledge. But it wasn;t wikipedia, they were kind of expecting to have a static thing. Like a book. Sure there would be updates, written encyclopedias get updated too. But this essential was going to be a 'real' and 'respectable' encyclopedia. But they soon found out that wikipedia was the real encyclopedia not just the training ground. Soon they canned Nupedia altogether

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Understanding the internet - coherent version

July 13th 2007 15:51

Alright so my previous post turned out to be a ramble. If anyone wants to read some stream of consciousness kinda stuff, then feel free to check out the previous post.

Now here's the deal. The Internet. They have it on computers now and its gonna change the world. Scrap that, it is gonna be the world. If you don't get that, you just got left behind

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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understanding the internet

July 13th 2007 15:29

I think understanding the inernet is vital to being a meaningful part of any society in 5 years time. What deas it mean 'to understand the internet'? well its a crude way of putting it, but you get what I mean generally, what it's all about, what logic and values underly it, what's going on between people over it, etc.

-[Okay, I'm going to institute some new language here. Et Cetera literally means and the rest. Which is taken less literally to mean and so on. But we can take it even more broadly to mean 'you know what I mean'. So rather than having written the 2nd and 3rd sentence above, I could have phrased the first, using this broader usage of etc, as: "I think it is vital to: understand the internet, etc - in order to be a meaning ful part in any society in 5 years time. By etc I would mean meaning of the next two sentences, thus not having to write them

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Posted By: Denergo - Category: No Category

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The Fate of Humanity

July 9th 2007 07:03

We are not just going to accept our fate as animals. Stop fighting, stop trying to be happy, stop tring to be right, they cry, but we must charge on. For we have really hit on something here. Being right has proven to allow us to have the kind of control over things that we have. It's something, we shall not sit back and say its not anything and we ought to stop arguing because there is no truth. Because it is our belief in the basic ideas of progress and rational thought that has elevated us above the other animals.

we shall not heed the call to return to our grazing fields, for the ones who give that call have no intention of returning themselves, but they do wish to control and profit from the flock. They attempt to dull the minds of the masses, their culture industry mocks art, it steals from art in order to get people not to think. But we shall have higher aspirations for our species, we shall not conceive of ourselves as a flock of sheep. We are each and every one of us intelligent, rational, sentient beings, we can be so much more than a herd of grazers. So let us continue in the march of progress, do not listen to those who scream for you to forget your ideals since they are meaningless, do not listen to these hypocrites

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The Online University

July 7th 2007 17:39

**This is a long one, but it is serious and coherent. I'm starting to make some contacts with people about starting this but here's the reasoning behind the basic idea of a university that is online in which everyone is both a teacher and a student**

The online University

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What Sarah Said

July 7th 2007 14:58

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today

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December 2007