govt that can further martian sucess

Martinkh · 2004-01-16 16:39:49

I just read a utopian vision thing, and man, how freaky. Look, social-engineered utopias didnt work in california in the '60, they wont work now, nor in the future.

If you gather together people who want to make a Utopia, you will end up with a bunch of frustrated losers and /or home owners association busybodies.

Or religious freaks ala Jonestown.

You want to colonise with rugged individualists, not social bees expecting someone else to provide everything for them. First, you want military type folks, with military order. People that do what they must when they must not to create utopia but simply to make it work.

Then you want your individualists, people who wont drive the military folks nuts with petty demands, people who wont forget half of what they need because they are used to having someone else wipe their a...errr... nose for them. You want people sick of the beaurocratic crap and overcrowding here. You want people with built in values. You want conservatives / libertarians, people you can trust on a handshake, not people who will try to redefine what the meaning of is is. You cannot have perverts and freaks trying to argue for their "rights", you need people who will live by civilized standards, without all the namby pamby moralizing.

Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", By R.A.H. Thats a good start. Make sure you read Orwell's "Animal Farm" and "1984", and maybe RAH's "Revolt in 2100".

Then read the US constitution again, and try to imagine the bunch of people with little or no faith in government that wrote it, and interpret it that way.

I hope I find signs of intelligent life in this forum, cause I tried to read the thread scott started and man, that first post alone blew the crackpot factor through the roof. RAH's characters had a good way of dealing with guys like him.

Aetius · 2004-01-16 21:17:54

I believe in individualism, but the 'rugged individualist' archetype is an American myth.

The colonists who braved the Atlantic and colonized New England in the 1600's weren't individualists. Mock the flaws of Puritan theocracy all you like (I certainly do), but the harsh environment favored those who could work well together and recognize the need for cooperation. The same could be said for every region colonized by species Homo. The lone wolf does not survive.

My politics are at least as right-wing as yours are, but I see things a little differently. As much as I despise the cult of victimhood which has conquered American society, social safety nets serve a valid purpose. Sometimes it's difficult for those of you working in tech jobs, sitting in nice cubicles, making high five figure salaries, to realize that. However, the truth is that you're only one downsizing away from waiting in the Unemployment Office line.

We have to care for others. I'm not Christian, but I think the Bible still says it best:

"What doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?"

My apologizes ahead of time, if I've somehow mangled this scriptural quote.

Aetius · 2004-01-16 21:29:47

The previous post was not intended as a flame. It just seems like you only want to be surrounded by people whom you think are like yourself.

Sorry, but that's not going to happen.

Martinkh · 2004-01-16 21:55:28

well, I see what you say, but the idea of scotts utopia would have me volunarily walking into vacuum.

Aetius · 2004-01-17 04:22:41

Scott has a unique vision for a better society, which I don't personally share. :;):

Bill White · 2004-01-17 09:54:55

Scott has a unique vision for a better society, which I don't personally share. :;):

Nicely said. Bravo!

Scott G. Beach · 2004-01-18 19:40:35

Aetius wrote, "Scott has a unique vision for a better society, which I don't personally share."

Thank you for disagreeing with me in a polite manner. You have set a good example for the other people who post messages in this forum.

:;):

Rxke · 2004-01-19 05:11:16

Heh.

Seriously, i wanted to reply to this discussion a while ago, but in the middle of my (slow-lessthan-ten-finger) typing i decided against it...

Fact: most people don't like Scott's ideas (and that's being polite)
But his threads are valuable for all the discussions his ideas, proposals, visions... stir up.

Scott makes you think, or at least make you tell people what you think, and that's important for this forum.

I, myself don't agree with most of Scott's ideas, but at least they're thought provoking.
(and troll provoking, too, sometimes, but that's what you get in fora...)

Who was the famous American that said: "sir i strongly disagree with your ideas, but i'll fight for your right to express them"
(something like that... )

Can't agree more...

Aetius · 2004-01-21 04:47:01

I think the famous "American" was Voltaire, the 18th century French philosopher.

Rxke · 2004-01-21 04:58:36

*cringes*

um. That's right. Me bad. And that for an European...

*prepares to be stoned to death by Cindy for this sloppy misquoting of her favourite thinker...*

But IIRC one of the first presidents of the USA was quoting him a lot, in discussions about freedom of speech, that's probably why i made that mental link (weak excuse, i know)

Palomar · 2004-01-21 06:30:16

*Yep, Voltaire said that.

Rik, I wouldn't toss even a pebble at you. All the philosophers, all the history to wade through, plus all the information we sift and comb through on a daily basis...sheesh, no one's memory is perfect. I'm not sure of which U.S. President may have referred to Voltaire in quotes...hmmm....

I haven't checked this thread in a few days; if I had, I would have supplied the answer of course (thanks Aetius). I don't know why I checked this thread today... ::shrugs:: Fate, I guess!

Now back to the topic at hand...

--Cindy

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-21 14:51:21

Then you want your individualists, people who wont drive the military folks nuts with petty demands, people who wont forget half of what they need because they are used to having someone else wipe their a...errr... nose for them. You want people sick of the beaurocratic crap and overcrowding here. You want people with built in values. You want conservatives / libertarians, people you can trust on a handshake, not people who will try to redefine what the meaning of is is. You cannot have perverts and freaks trying to argue for their "rights", you need people who will live by civilized standards, without all the namby pamby moralizing.

Who's the one idealizing, now?

Gennaro · 2004-01-21 14:58:24

Mock the flaws of Puritan theocracy all you like (I certainly do), but the harsh environment favored those who could work well together and recognize the need for cooperation. The same could be said for every region colonized by species Homo. The lone wolf does not survive.

In other words, we need socialism, not leftism...

Voltaire is the principal anti-leftist.

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-21 15:06:59

Now, if you want a utopia, then just get rid of all government, and add a bit of interesting technology into the mix. Two things which are very likely, in my opinion, in a Martian environment. For a colony to survive for any extended period of time on mars, it's going to need self-sustainablity. At the very least CELSS (Closed Ecosystem Life Support System; think biosphere, a term I actually prefer, but one that actually works rather than simulates a nature reserve).

I agree with the "individualism" idea, but I think many people are missing that the so called Libertarian ideal is hardly individualist; it's one of the more interdependent ideals one can have. If I have to depend on industrialist Joe for his widgets, and farmer Jane for her grain, then I ain't independent. I think real individualists would scoff at interdependency. They work for no one except themselves and expect no one to work for them.

CELSS is inherently independent. Self-sustaining. It cannot be a basis for interdependency (without brainwashing a few people, at least). So then we have to look outside the box and ask what sort of stuff on Mars would be a basis for interdependency, and thus, follow with the Libertarian or captialist ideal (the oxymoronic idea that a bunch of individuals dependent upon one another are individualists; I'd say they resembled collectivists myself).

Once you, oh, have a robot to build a house, to dig stuff up, and make more of itself, then you start to have to question the whole process itself. This is what you're going to need on Mars, because it's expensive to ship stuff in, and it's arduous to build stuff by hand in space suits; most materials useful on Mars would in fact require some industrial process that building the infrastucture for human interaction, like smelting iron ore in an open furnace in a dome or something stupid, would also be very costly (and once you have the ability to build stuff cheaply, it'd be seen that direct human interaction is inefficient anyway).

Mars is not going to be paved by humans, it'll be built by machines. Just like the US was.

Aetius · 2004-01-21 18:21:02

See, Cindy, I really did read the book!

Martinkh · 2004-01-21 18:58:34

At least my idealizing is people being fairly independent, not being told what to do and how to think and what religion to have.

We are all idealist, in some way. I just want to point in a direction and go, not be babysat along the way. I could handle a military style mission and life on Mars, but NOT an attempt at Utopia. Who said something like "the worst tyranny is one that is imposed for our own good"?

You need to have a little mercy on me though, I just re-read 3 Heinleins before the Bush Mars speech (starting with "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"), and about 4 more since, and I may be a touch daffy at the moment!

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-22 00:03:08

I haven't read that much Heinlein. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was one I began, but its style was kind of wack to me and I just couldn't get in to it.

I didn't mean to come down on you, I just wanted to say how I saw things myself. It's been awhile since I gave my view on this particular topic. I consider myself an ardent individualist, especially when it pertains to actually existing in some hypothetical future on Mars; it seems unlikely to me that many unjust, highly interdependent, inefficient systems are going to be workable.

It's just that one cannot fairly critique someone else for being overly idealogical, while at the same time saying things like "you want trustable conservatives, and you don't want perverts or freaks, but people who can live by civilized standards."

How about we keep the civilized part, but rephrase it to mean "we need people who can get along with one another peacefully", and throw out the rest?

clark · 2004-01-22 07:09:49

Once you, oh, have a robot to build a house, to dig stuff up, and make more of itself, then you start to have to question the whole process itself. This is what you're going to need on Mars, because it's expensive to ship stuff in, and it's arduous to build stuff by hand in space suits; most materials useful on Mars would in fact require some industrial process that building the infrastucture for human interaction, like smelting iron ore in an open furnace in a dome or something stupid, would also be very costly (and once you have the ability to build stuff cheaply, it'd be seen that direct human interaction is inefficient anyway).

So it takes interdependancy to develop the technology to develop the machines that develop the robots that free us from the interdependancy upon one another that gave us the technology in the first place. [whew!]

With the end result being a product that is the modern day equivilent of a politcaly correct slave. You're not calling for interdependancy, your calling for the coming generation: Generation Lazy. Why do what a robot can be ordered to do for you!

Mars is not going to be paved by humans, it'll be built by machines. Just like the US was.

Umm, point of clarification, which merely proves the point, the US was built by slaves and exploited immigrant labor. Who do you think built the plantations, filled the factories, and laid the railroads?

How about we keep the civilized part, but rephrase it to mean "we need people who can get along with one another peacefully", and throw out the rest?

With a heave and a ho...

But what else might we expect from a moderator. :;):

Martinkh · 2004-01-22 08:33:10

The US was not built by slaves. As a matter of fact, US slavery was very inefficient (they had retirement and maternity "benefits").

The immigrants "slaving" away on the railroads however, now that was work!!!! And when you broke down, there was no resting on the plantation.

I stick by my statement that you dont want a bunch of libertines in such an environment. People who cannot agree to what the meaning of "is" is and think morality is relative will have a hard time getting along with thier neighbors, as they think the only social contract that matters is the one they remake for themselves everyday, based on their self-interest at the moment.

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-22 08:53:04

Ahh clark, you sound like the girl in "Rossum's Universal Robots."

You're trying to imagine up an ethical situation where there is none.

To answer your first question, who cares if it takes interdependency to create independency? Mind you we're just talking economic independency; not social. Humans are inherently social creatures, so most will depend on one another for company, etc. With economic independency we are able to be self managing, we don't need governments to help us keep corporate overlords off our back or to feed us when society doesn't allow us to climb the ladder as it so often does. I really fail to see your point. This is not laziness, because you'd still have to do stuff, as I'm not arguing for strong AI slaves.

Now, as to your second bit of rhetoric, and getting back to "Rossum's Universal Robots." In this little story, a girl named Helena argues that the robot making robots are slaves, and that they're sad or some such. These robots do not have consciouses in any sense of the word. They do not feel pain, in any sense of the word, like how an animal does (they simply do not have the calculation power, or the sensory inputs). They do not "love." Well, she cries and protests and basically gets a "pro-Robot" movement going, and finally convinces them (well, the main scientist guy, since he's a sap and falls for her) to add all these wonderful things to the robots. Let the robots feel pain, so that when they're in a cold wearhouse they may shiver and require heating, or get hot and require cooling (they didn't before). Let them love (and with love naturally must come hate), so that they can see their condition and hate their "masters." Let them have "souls" essentially. Then what use are they? We are back to square one. Nothing can be useful, because we make it so much like ourselves that it becomes questionable whether or not they're alive or somesuch and idiots like Helena can have peace of mind that robots, these soulless, painless, tools can have all the characteristics that any given human hates about their work.

This is one of my major gripes with Iain Banks' Culture series. He makes the useful creatures all have souls, of sorts! Why, oh why? Do cars have souls? Should cars have souls? Mind you, I'm just throwing the word 'soul' about liberally here, so don't take it too literally. Should we all drive around with Knight Riders? Why?

One does not need to give conscious to a machine for it to be useful. I do not care for strong AI. And frankly, I do not think we should expect strong AI to be helpful at all, though it could give us insight, and a very smart one would be able to do all sorts of things for us effortlessly (but at that point we are as ants are to human civilization).

Robot slaves... right... they'd be more extensions of us. Do we feel sorry for Google for having to sit in a huge room with millions of other computers? It even has a neural net of sorts. It's as alive as pretty much any collective insect society!

Liberate the machines!

clark · 2004-01-22 08:53:31

The US was not built by slaves. As a matter of fact, US slavery was very inefficient (they had retirement and maternity "benefits").

Okay, the US was not built by slaves. Indeed, it would seem from your facts that slavery was pretty progressive, what with all the benefits. Obviously then, the slaves were just coming over here for the social benefits slavery provided them.

I stick by my statement that you dont want a bunch of libertines in such an environment. People who cannot agree to what the meaning of "is" is and think morality is relative will have a hard time getting along with thier neighbors, as they think the only social contract that matters is the one they remake for themselves everyday, based on their self-interest at the moment.

Ah, you are either with us, or against us. What you are really saying, at least from the sound of it, is that mars should be peopled by those who agree with your view of what the 'absolute' morality is. And by is, I mean is.

We don't need to argue over killing, right? Killing is wrong, it's immoral. Unless that is if we are talking self defense. Or if we are talking about shooting someone on your own property. Or invading antother country and killing civilians who happen to be in the way. Or killing criminals who no longer pose a threat to society. See, killing is wrong. It's an absolute. Except when it isn't that is.

Now, from there, we can start to tackle some of the gray morality and start making it absolute. Like, I dunno, is homosexuality immoral? Are interracial marriages immoral? Is abortion immoral? Is euthanisia immoral? Is divorce immoral? Are drinking, dancing, or using any type of carcinogen's immoral?

It used to be moral to own slaves. It used to be moral to beat your wife. It used to be moral to lynch the black man. It used to be moral to stop 'lesser' humans from reproducing.

Your stance would keep us stagnant.

clark · 2004-01-22 09:03:49

You're trying to imagine up an ethical situation where there is none.

Well, yeah, that's kind of the point.

Really, I understand and I don't fault you for your desires. I share them. But there is a disturbing aspect to it, the fact that we transfer interdependancy to one of reliance upon the machines we produce.

As we each become more speicalized in a specific field, we neccessarily give up the possibility of providing the wide neccessities for self-reliance. As we get deeper, we get less broad.

Now, in this dynamic, we in fact become slaves to the machines since we must rely on them. We need the tools. Look at our current situation- we have a breakdown in the flow of oil, our industries stop. Food stops moving to the cities, people can't get enough supplies. Many die.

Same with the robots. And the point still stands that the future of technology is to create a PC version of an ancient slave, without the ethical qualms. Afterall, we use wrench's, and I don't hear PETA getting up in arms (do they get upset by my mistreatement of my pet rock BTW?)

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-22 09:22:52

Sure, the argument is not "independency of things" it's "independency of other people from a strictly economic standpoint." At this point anything you depend on is essentially an extension of self. One can make the argument all day and all night that a given thing could be our master (indeed, this is basically the primitivist critique upon... everything), but that's just one point of view which I find corrupt really, and even inherently meaningless since these sorts of dependent relationships are at equilibrium, and dependence is mutual.

And about the PC comment. I don't quite see the issue. A hammer is not a slave. Just because something can serve similar purposes as ancient slaves does not mean that that thing, because it is built using easier processes (ie, weak AI is a lot easier to make than strong AI), is a "poltically correct" slave. Obviously it avoids a lot of issues, but that's not the sole reason for having it; it's just easier to make.

There are in fact others who wish to build strong AI... the Singulartiarians, and they see absolutely no issue with AI being our masters (or slaves, depending on your point of view, and you, clark, seem to like to take several different ones at the same time). The difference between what I'm talking about and what they're talking about is that the stuff I'm talking about is a whole lot more achievable in the near term, and is almost inherently necessary for long term survivablity for humans in space.

clark · 2004-01-22 09:29:42

Okay, but a hammer dosen't have the potential to be anything other than a hammer. Weak AI, strong AI, it has the potential to be our equals, at least on a certain level.

If we purposely make weak AI's, yet develop the capability to develop strong AI's but prefer not to in order to avoid these squishy issues, isn't there at least a basis for a comparison to forciably engineering people's intelligence to make them suited for their designated task? Yeah, I know the difference, but I'm looking at the similarities to question this.

You note the Uplift series and find fault with granting intelligence and souls to the lesser beings, they in effect become useless tools who can no longer be exploited to something resembling us. But that's the whole friggin point. :laugh:

We can't learn from a tool, we can learn from our equals. And if it is within our power, are we not somehow obligated to act?
But this is drifting a bit off topic.

Martinkh · 2004-01-22 14:44:28

People in society need to have basic rules to get along. You cannot have some people deciding, for example, that child molestation is ok, if the child does not complain. This is the view of NAMBLA and the Am. Pediatric Assoc.

Now, our social contract says that we dont hurt kids. This is based on morality. But if we let people who agree with liberal shrinks and the NAMBLA guys define their own morality, we will have chaos. People in confined spaces need to have a mutually acceptable moral contract, and you cannot have one with people who dont understand what morality is.

PS Touch my kid and I will kill you, and I will kill anyone who defends you. I am not the only one who feels that way. So you either import nothing but child molesters, or you make darn sure you only import folks who have a solid moral basis for living. Same with other issues, if you send libertines, you better make them all such, but you will find they do nothing for anyone, and certainly not for science.

Oh yes, you did nothing to refute my argument RE slaves. The net economic benefit of having slaves was not that great compared to the ordinary workforces. And slaves in the south did not build anything in the north nor the midwest. I did some study of US economic history in college, so if you want to refute my argument please use something that sticks to the point.

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