Cloudscape - society

Buy and Sell

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:03:49 +0100

Usually, people only recognize beauty if they are told by others that it is there. This does not mean that they experience it: they merely recognize it as a fact. Many people have become so estranged from beauty that they can no longer experience it, and it is a mere concept, more of social than of experiential value — something to be shared with others but not felt, as a mere piece of information — like a merchandise.

Legal Fraud

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:59:25 +0100

Not only falsification, but any deception to exploit others should be counted as fraud — and not all deception involved lying. False, ambiguous, inaccurate, incomplete or equivocal information given in commercial, political, or therapeutic contexts should be seen as fraud, and, depending on the compromise caused to others, should therefore be punishable just as any other, less subtle forms of fraud, with the most severe form of punishment being prison sentence — indiscriminate of status.

Yet, deception and even falsification is seen routinely in propaganda or advertisement and is even taken for granted. People know that politicians and businessmen are trying to defraud them. They merely don't see it as fraud because they see it as normal.

Law of the Strongest

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:54:31 +0100

The law isn't there to protect people but to protect those who write it, that is, authorities in general and the government in particular. Because of this, laws usually have a back door accessible to powerful people, be it through money or authority, and if they do not, than they otherwise find a way to either suppress charges or manipulate trials. Some of the most important crimes, including theft, murder, kidnapping and even torture, are both justifiable for the government, even if they aren't meant to avoid other harm. The only difference is that they have different names, as a way of covering up the fact that it is still a crime (eviction, execution, incarceration, interrogation). To make any distinction between the average and powerful criminals is in itself criminal as it is discrimination based on power.

The Splitting of Humanity

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:52:25 +0100

When we see what humans have achieved, we are inclined to overestimate the abilities of the average human. The truth is that the average human never achieves very much. Humanity has always been divided in two groups, one that created change, and another that merely underwent it, be it that they profited from it or suffered it.
Despite the fact that we show more genetic similarity than most species, the psychological differences among humans are far greater than in any other species, because as our intelligence is multiple times greater, so the range in intelligence is likewise multiplied.
The creative and the passive have lived in increasing separation as civilization evolved, because civilization unlocked possibilities that the creative were more willing to seize than the passive. Among these possibilities were those that would further set them apart, such as those of knowledge, art, spirituality — things that allowed them to further improve themselves, whereas the passive remained largely unimproved. Those that choose to change evolve ever faster, while the passive remain normal. As the separation between the two groups increases, the two become more and more socially isolated, which further increases the differences between them through sexual selection.
Even now, the differences between these groups increase, and this trend will accelerate the further technology evolved. Right now, the only methods of self-improvement we have are more or less natural, learning being the foremost, and these differences are but subtle. If, however, we will one day be able to improve ourselves through nanotechnology, biotechnology and informatics, the differences between the passive and creative will become so dramatic that the two will split up into two altogether separate species.
Any form of self-improvement will require work, even it is effected through technology, for although technology may improve our abilities, it can't do the work for us of dealing with those abilities. Intelligence requires consciousness, and to improve one's intelligence, it is therefore inevitable that one's consciousness becomes expanded in the process, at least, if the right brain half is included in the process.
The expanded consciousness brought about by an increase of intelligence invariably causes upheaval, and it takes time, effort, patience and endurance to deal with this upheaval. This is one reason why passive people will be unlikely to wish to improve their intelligence, with the result that they are left behind on the evolutionary ladder as a separate species while the self-transcendant group will by far surpass them in intelligence.
The rift between the apathetic and the self-transcendant will grow until humanity is torn apart in two. It is only a matter of time. As and when this happens, this will cause tensions between the two groups, and there is no telling where this will lead.

Horizon of Possibilities

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:14:41 +0100

Civilization is a very dangerous place, and at the same time, it at the same time it is also a very auspicious place. It may turn one into a genius or into a ghost, into a saint or into a demon. It offers far more possibilities than nature alone ever could, from the most terrible to the most beautiful.

Charity Follow-Up

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:27:57 +0100

If charities found a way to follow up the change brought about by each donation and reported it back to the donator, donations would increase hundredfold.
The best way in which this could be done would be to allow one to donate a sum for a very particular project of the charity's goal, so that they can still make a difference at all as individuals. Right now, when someone makes a donation to charity, it usually contributes to a very large and general project rather than one which is small and specific, so that the contribution is of proportionally smaller significance. Any contribution loses its significance if it only becomes part of a much greater contribution.
Hypothetically, this could also form the basis of an anarchistic society in which such donations supplant taxes.

Animal Sentience

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:06:00 +0100

The killing of a human, even humans of exceptionally low intelligence and therefore of proportionally low sentience, is considered the worst possible crime, yet the killing of other animals which scientists have confirmed to be highly intelligent, and certainly appear to be more sentient than many humans (such as those that are mentally retarded), deserve no trial. Mental retardation can sometimes reduce IQ to below 20. If people who are profoundly mentally retarded are protected by law, it only seems reasonable that dolphins, as well as elephants and some primates, should also be protected by law, yet there is no international law that protects them.

This has nothing to do with ethics. This distinction is made purely out of our instinctive urges to preserve the human race. Animals of near-human sentience should have the same rights as humans, all the more as there are many people whose intelligence is barely above that of some animals. Our need to preserve our own race is so strong that we will keep even people in permanent vegetative state alive, yet most people see the killing of sentient animals as being as innocent as a sport.

We have invented law at least partly to protect ourselves, and not just out of respect for others. Someone who kills humans is a threat to humans and may therefore also be a threat to ourselves, but if someone kills animals, even highly sentient animals, this does not pose a threat to us.

We have no instinct for the preservation of nature as we have an instinct to preserve our own species, and any respect we do show for nature comes forth from our own sentience. A respect, as has been shown, that dolphins, one of the most sentient species in the world, actually share, as evinced in the risk they are willing to take to save humans. The only other species that is known to possess such levels of empathy, high enough to spontaneously save a being of another species, are humans.

We are inclined to underestimate other sentients because, unlike ourselves, they have no civilization. This is not because of their lack of intelligence, however, but rather because of their lack of efficient manipulatory appendages — that is, hands. Aside from our intelligence, our hands are the most important thing that set us apart from other animals, and while they may seem to be less significant than our intelligence, this is actually quite misleading.

One is inclined to assume that our civilization proves our intelligence, but it is important to remember that our neocortex has no longer changed in morphology in the past hundred thousand years, as our civilization, rather than furthering its evolution, made it unnecessary to our survival.

It would not be fair to compare the complexity of dolphins' lives to that of our own, as dolphins have never had the chance of achieving the complexity of environment as that in our civilization. Rather, because our brain as it is now isn't very different from what it was before civilization was formed, we should compare it to how complex our lives were before we formed civilizations. Comparing our own way of hunting with theirs, it would seem that theirs is more complex. It is our ability to use tools that at this point really distinguishes us from dolphins.

Consider how dolphins organize their hunting, surrounding gigantic shoals, dispersing them and driving them to the surface. This isn't as simple as doing the same with a herd of terrestrial animals, a feat that any pack of wolves can manage. The fish in shoals are enormous in number, and in shoals of Atlantic herrons can number up to 3 billion. As a result, shoals act as very complex systems, and it isn't possible to pick fish out of the shoals until they have been dispersed numerous times, neither is a single fish enough. The shoal has to be of just the right size so that it is enough for the entire group, but not so large that it becomes impossible to catch any. If a smaller group escapes, it is lost.

To disperse a shoal as a singleton predator is one thing, but to surround a large shoal in a group is another entirely. Hunting in this way is comparable in complexity (though not in danger) to a high-profile military operation, the significant difference between the two being that this particular operation is in 3D.

This seems like a minor detail, but it multiplies the level of complexity involved. For a pack of hunting wolves, the only directions from which to choose are left and right. To a group of dolphins, it is far more complicated. Every move has to be carefully coordinated, and this requires a high degree of cooperative and language abilities.

Because of the disparity in brain morphology, it is hard to compare dolphin to human intelligence, but the most relevant finding is probably the number of synapses in dolphin cortices: dolphins have 0,87 · 10¹⁴ cortical synapses, compared to 1,3 · 10¹⁴ in the human cortices (Encyclopedia of Marine Animals, page 147). The estimates of the latter cipher vary, however, and the estimates of the cortical synapses in dolphins would likely also vary if more research went into it. However, based on these ciphers, dolphins would have 67% the number of synapses humans have. This does not mean that they would have 67% of our intelligence, but rudimentary as it is, this would probably be the best approximation we have so far.

We seem to be biassed against animal intelligence because out of instinct we want to be special, despite ever more research pointing to the contrary. If our image of the intelligence of animals changes, however, so should our ethics about deciding about their lives. Ethically, the killing of animals of near-human sentience is tantamount to homicide.

The Unification of Man and Machine

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:58:34 +0100

As machines become more advanced, more and more humans lose their jobs as machines replace them, until only creative jobs will be left, but there will likely also be a time when machines may also become creative. However, as and when our computers become creative, they will become part of ourselves and so of our own species, for either we will already have found a way of uniting them with our own brain, or we would set these computers to the one task of finding a way to do so until they would, since this would be the most important thing we would need at this point.
There might be a chance that by this time, many people who remained unemployed would have become so decadent that they would no longer care to set these computers to any other task than to find better ways of stimulating the pleasure centers of their brain, but, fortunately, they would be in the hands of the scientists that invented them, and they would certainly choose otherwise.
Thus, even if humans and computers will not yet have united by the time that computers become creative, humans will still be needed for creativity until then, and, because creativity gives meaning to life and our need for meaning is so great, then as soon as they are more creative than we are ourselves, they would be fully focussed on the task of enabling us to have their creativity by unifying them with our brain.
As long as computers are not conscious, our own lives as humans could still have meaning, and as soon as they would become conscious, we would become one with them. In a time when the only work that is left is creative, everyone could likely achieve an equal level of creativity through cognotechnology, as the creativity of someone altered through that time's cognotechnology would be vastly greater than that of anyone who has ever lived anyway. This does not mean that everyone would become identical, however, as there are infinitely many ways of being creative; these need not be scientific or artistic, as they can also be social.
By the time when man and machine will become one, both will be quite different from what they are now. Machines will no longer be the contraptions we see today, as their machinery, just as our own, will entirely have advanced to molecular levels, whereas men will no longer be the animals that we are now, as our abilities will have advanced to cosmic levels. Machines will become more like organisms in structure as they achieve nanotechnological levels, as they will then make more use of analogous media like chemistry, rather than relying only on black-and-white digital media as they do now. Meanwhile, men will also become more like machines in power, as they, as well, integrate aspects of their mechanical counterparts into their bodies. Our computers will become subtler and more complex, whereas we will become stronger and more skillful.
It would seem that a unification of man and machine would make society shift further towards the material and away from the spiritual, but the opposite is true. Our spiritual as well as our material world will grow, but they will also grow toward one another. It's just that spiritual evolution comes more subtle than material evolution.
Moreover, when man and machine will become one, we will still have use for our biological aspects as well as of our electronic aspects, as both have their own unique qualities. Both man and machine will keep evolving, and either evolution will help the other, but both evolutions will themselves unify.
The unification of man and machine is only one aspect of a greater unification, that of mind and matter. Our power to change reality becomes so great that reality becomes like a dream, while virtual reality become so immersive as to become like reality.

Post-Scarcity Communism

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:21:06 +0100

When communism rose in the previous century, as is now clear, it was much too early for the world to be ready for it, and thus it remains to this day. The failure of communism has shown that people are too self-centered for it to work, and unless people change, it can never work. People work out of necessity or out of greed, but not out of love, at least for now.

Communism is bound either to fall or turn into despotism as long as it is not the choice of the people themselves, and because of this, the communism we have seen so far has little to do with its actual ideals. Nonetheless, it is probable that communism will be the next step in the evolution of society, though in another form than is seen today. However, today, it is still too soon for us to take that step.

Every kind of government has its place in the evolution of society, and when it is time for one to succeed the other, this happens almost spontaneously, not through revolution. There was a time that democracy could not have succeeded, or even republicanism. When a nation tries to get ahead of itself in this evolution, it is bound to turn either into despotism or into anarchy, and so evolution is usually the best way of change.

In the beginning of this evolution, despotism is the only viable government: at this time, republicanism cannot or barely succeed, as there is too little cooperation between people for it to work. At this point, cooperation must be imposed by a despot. It is crude, but the only thing that works at this point. Without a single ruling power, everyone would become a despot. There is, fortunately, the mercy that the worst despots are often the quickest to be overthrown by the people.

Every society begins in anarchy, and, if it lives long enough, it eventually ends in anarchy, in much the same form, but on a larger scale. Anarchy is viable in the beginning of the formation of a society, when people still live in small clans, which are much alike to a large family. Sometimes, these clans are communistic. Superficially, it seems that these clans are more cooperative than most societies, but this is only so because they are so small; so small, in fact, that every or almost every member of the clan usually knows every other. As these groups grow, this level of cooperation is no longer possible, because although they may be cooperative towards people they know, they are quite uncooperative towards strangers. The people of a clan are so little used to strangers that they will often kill them on sight. Wars between neighboring clans are frequent. If the people of ten clans were put into one tribe overnight, most would be dead before long.

There is a lot of cooperation in early societies, but little cooperativeness. The cooperativeness in societies grows as they evolve, until they eventually achieve the level of democracy and eventually (though this has never happened so far) anarcho-communism. So far, however, anarcho-communism is not feasible, as people have yet to achieve the level of unity for it to work.

However, we live in a world were everything is being automatized through robotics and informatics. This is already posing problems in many developed capitalistic countries as more and more people become (or remain) unemployed as they are being replaced by computers. Because of this, many countries already find themselves to be forced into a compromise between capitalism and communism, in which unemployed people receive benefits during the time they are unemployed.

As work in the primary and secondary sector continues to be automatized, and not everyone can or wants to work in the tertiary sector, more and more people will become unemployed. Eventually, the rate of unemployment will become so high that it can no longer be resolved in any sensible way, forcing the government into offering people benefits in order to help them survive.

With the trend of robotization, it is only a matter of time before we achieve a state where our necessities are provided for automatically or largely so, and so become almost free. Eventually, it will be possible to produce anything through software, and since software can be duplicated freely, this will mean that all necessities will be available in sufficient amounts without any work being done. In such a society, it would be nonsensical to still pay for software, as everyone could as well have all software there is if no one asked money for it. In a society where everyone has enough to survive and where software offers so many possibilities, many people will see software (which by then would encompass all art, science, and culture of civilization) as being more important than money. It only takes a certain percentage of the population to believe this before the system collapses, all the more because many of these people would themselves be artists and programmers. The more people would believe spiritual values to be more important than material ones, the more the capitalistic system would be subverted, and software would be hacked and shared illegally. Moreover, artists and programmers who would be of this view would release their works for for free, so that, eventually, those who would still charge for their works would be likely to be ignored, all the more because their work would be motivated purely out of greed, rather than out of love, and therefore be seen as being of lower quality. It is therefore inevitable that, at this stage, software would become free or practically free.

The need for socialism will increase with unemployment, and eventually, artists, scientists and social workers will be the only people left to be employed. Most scientists, many social workers and some artists (in some countries) are already being paid by the state, but in future, all will depend on the state for payment. For now, scientists, artists and social workers are still required to work in order to be paid, but this is only because much of their work is not fully creative and involves routine. However, as the routine component of their work will eventually be done by computers (robot scientists already exist for genetic research, for instance, as do computer programs for educations), only the creative and social components will be left, and neither can be done on demand. Ideas come best when they are not forced, which is the only thing scientists (and, of course, artists) will still be needed for, and the same counts for compassion, which is what social workers will still be needed for. When I say creativity, I'm not talking about the ability to remember the right idea at the right time, but the ability to think of new, unique ideas that have never been used before, as anything less can be done by computers. With compassion, I'm not talking about commitment, patience or politesse, but genuine and heartfelt sympathy, as, again, anything less can be done by computers. Attempting to enforce creativity will lead to loss of inspiration. Attempting to enforce compassion will lead to detachment (as is seen in many psychologists and psychiatrists today). Either how, the best ideas will come from people who seek them because of their passion for the idea, not from people who seek them because they must. The same counts for compassion. The true scientists, social workers and artists of the future will not need money as an incentive to work. Those that would, would be incompetent anyway.

Obviously, the unemployment would also put many people before the problem of finding meaning in their lives, or rather, it would confront them with that problem which was already there, now they could no longer seek distraction in vacuous mind-numbing routine. By and by, people would learn to find meaning either in love or some form of creativity.

Uncreative people who would want to become more creative could be made more creative through cognotechnology (technology applied on cognition). Because of the significance cognotechnology will have on humanity, it is extremely important that everyone be given equal chances, and here, we are once more faced with a need for socialism: the means of cognotechnology should be equally allocated among those who desire it, for if this does not happen, a disastrous technological divide will result which is so great that, over time, humanity itself would actually split up into two separate groups, one being vastly more intelligent than the other. The intelligent group would become more successful, so acquire increased access to cognotechnology, and so forth. Of course, the more intelligent group would eventually realize the necessity to give the other group equal chances.

In the past, communism has failed because the interests of the individual are capitalistic. In future, capitalism will fail because the interests of the individual will be communistic.

Too Soft Wares

noreply@blogspirit.com (Oneiromancer) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The reason why illegal downloading is so common, aside from the fact that it is very easy to do, is that there is little or no moral inhibition against it. This is not only because the chance of being caught is smaller, but also, and mostly, because the thief does not take anything away from the owner, but merely refuses to give them anything for their work: the owner remains unaffected by the thief. This is worsened by the fact that most software products are sold by large firms, so that if the individual does buy the product, it makes no difference to the firm, as the payment is spread over a large number of people, so that each receives only a very small sum, and only the payment of an equally large number of people will make a difference to them; whereas, if it is paid to another individual, it does make a difference to him or her. Also, because the payment usually happens via Internet, it is made not through a person, but rather to an impersonal website. The firm is a mere concept to the thief, and does not concern him or her at all.
Meanwhile, because they can be duplicated freely, more and more people program freeware applications, which replace the vast majority of non-freeware applications programmed by individuals, so that only the applications programmed by large firms remain unavailable as freeware. Because people become used to getting software for free, they will be all the more reluctant to pay for other software.
Also, the laws of software ownership are also becomes more and more ambiguous, causing people to regard them as irrelevant. For instance, one can legally watch most popular movies and listen to most popular music on a large number of websites, including Youtube and Megavideo, and one can even legally record music from the Internet using legal applications, such as Audio Hijack or SoundFlower, or record videos using applications which are also legal, such Windows Media Recorder.
. Meanwhile, one can also legally upload or download books or articles.
Illegal downloading is becoming so prevalent that it becomes very hard to take measures against it, and even would we succeed in bringing all illegal downloaders to justice, this would mean that we'd have to imprison one third of the population and ruin another third with fines.
Perhaps this means that it is time we find another system, which pays designers and artists fixed regular sums based on the quality of their work. On the other hand, one might also argue that this is unnecessary, as only popular software is readily available for illegal downloading, and the producers of that software have already earned a lot of money with that software anyway, and so all artists and designers still have a chance of earning enough money.
If, however, illegal downloading continues to become more popular, it will soon become unmanageable. Unfortunately, it is very hard to control illegal downloading, as anyone who possesses software can also duplicate it. The only way anything can be done about this is by protecting the software, though this is only feasible for applications. Most "killer applications" have effective protections, but for most of these applications, and almost all of the popular ones, this can relatively easily be surmounted through "cracks," especially for the Windows operating system.
However, for music and movies, it is probably already too late, since YouTube is far too popular to be closed down, and closing it down would result in general outrage among the population. Eventually, it will likely become possible to upload entire movies in full resolution, so that, aside from philanthropism, the only reason people might still prefer to buy the movies would be because it might feel more quaint. The money earned through cinematography would be reduced mostly to the revenues of movie theatres, and the money earned through music would be reduced mostly to the revenues of life performances. Obviously, if we allow this to happen, then artists will need to depend on subsidies. Only applications might still have a chance of escaping the same fate.