Thanks b_b -- I'm all good. Actually the scary thing is that the Maelbeek/Schuman metro area is a line I take everyday. Luckily I have a pretty bad flu today so I decided to stay in...

But we still have to come to terms with the fact that this is now happening globally, in basically every country. It is really hard for me to think of any region on the planet where representative democracy is actually functioning, even roughly on its core principles. If anyone has good examples I'd like to see them, but the data tend to show a very real and advancing drift towards some form of financial authoritarianism, or global oligarchy, whatever. Of course, it is not consciously coordinated, but instead an adaptive property of unregulated capitalism, which should perhaps give us some hope because if we do show solidarity and commitment to fight this system, we can affect regulatory change. However, I must admit things overall look quite bad, and the struggle would be very tough. Look at Greece, I couldn't be more proud of the Greek people and also the European people who came out in solidarity with them. But it didn't do anything to help their situation in the end. Now it seems like the more the people fight back, the even more harsh the economic policies developed by the financial sector become. Crazy, crazy, times.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention thenewgreen. The classical "subject of science" is a weird appearance precisely because the limits of their knowledge are not inscribed into the "thing-in-itself" (i.e. we cannot objectively study inner states like thoughts and feelings, therefore there must not be inner states like thoughts and feelings). Of course such a split is likely the consequence of a Cartesian metaphysics where the self-certain knower-thinker can perfect an abstract understanding.

Nonetheless it seems much more likely the case that emotions and thoughts exist throughout the animal kingdom even if we cannot study them objectively or prove them in the way that we can prove the existence of certain external manifestations of behaviour. I would just add a precise distinction on the level of the symbolic or cultural. Animals likely experience feelings and thoughts, but only in the human world are these feelings and thoughts marked by/interpreted through symbolic-cultural material.

Either way there is no way to get inside another's head, animal or human. The advantage with humans (and hence the existence of psychoanalysis) is that a human can tell us that they experience feelings and thoughts with their linguistic capacity. We believe them, even if the subject of science tends not to find the methods and practice of psychoanalysis too convincing.

In any case, I quite like de Waal's specific metaphor about "emotions as organs". I experience my emotions like a 'throbbing organ" (heart, lung, etc.). When they are on they are on: desire, love, fear, sadness. The beat of the organ takes over my body. This is why I like Jacques Lacan's notion of "organ without body" to capture the idea of the emotion as an organ which overdetermines the body as a whole (as opposed to the physical organ which is a part within the body).

I'm really busy today so I can't respond right now... however, I will rebut a few of his comments here on Hubski and send them to him via email since he emailed me this article yesterday asking me to respond. I won't be responding in a blog post as my site does not function to discuss the non-controversy between evolution and pseudoscientific creationism. Furthermore, if my writing starts to attract a wider audience I should suspect that more people in the "Intelligent Design" community will start to draw me into discussion and debate. Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins took/take the stance that they wouldn't/won't debate Young Earth Creationists (YEC) because you give them exactly what they want: credibility (i.e. a scientist is taking our arguments seriously enough to debate me!). I know "I.D." is not the same as YEC but they are equally wrong (even if one is more intellectually untenable than the other).

During the first two years of my exposure to science I spent a great majority of my time debating the validity of evolution. I found this to be exhausting and actually subtracted from what I wanted to discuss... which was the science itself... not the validity of science. Historians of Rome don't have to constantly defend whether Rome actually existed. Physicists don't have to constantly defend whether or not atoms exist. Evolutionary scientists shouldn't constantly be burdened with defending evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory is supported by more evidence than perhaps any theory in science (with the only possible exception being Quantum Mechanics). Therefore, my blog has always functioned to discuss the science - not the non-controversy. In short, I take the stance that even acknowledging a debate with pseudoscience gives them the fuel they want to keep the controversy alive. I don't want to give them any fuel.

I hiked to the top of the acropolis in Athens today! It was fun! And definitely needed for someone who is constantly feeling stressed about the world.

http://imgur.com/EO8SVUc

Fair point about this role out of self-driving Tesla sports cars, but why is he attempting to build next-gen cars that are more affordable, and giving his patents away for free? I think he has shown that he does care about people and the planet, not just profit...

Drug is a control system word. It is better to conceptualize psychedelics as medicine or entheogens.

Damn, this was nice to read. It takes fucking courage to admit when you're wrong about something. And you explained your thought processes quite well too. At the end of the day it's about caring for the system and making sure everyone in the system has comfort, security, health, and their basic needs met. If you argue anecdotally from an individualistic perspective you are bound to put one imagined groups interests (i..e, your own) over everyone else's.

kleinbl00: "Surveillance is never egalitarian"

nailed it.

EDIT:

This is my favourite podcast so far. Fantastic job thenewgreen!

IMO, religion has three causes: a) being aware of death, b) a desire to explain, c) need for a parent-in-adulthood. Religion is on the decline in the developed world because religion can't explain much of anything that science can't much better. It's explanatory power has been stripped bare of any meaning and therefore open to ridicule for those educated or rational enough to do so. However, a) and c) remain strong as causes and so we should expect religion to remain in some form until they have been eliminated. Simple as that.

and Medium took it and ran as fast as they could with it.

You mean Scott Santerns - a basic income advocate and someone who blogs using the Medium platform - who does not represent Medium itself...

Upon broaching the subject of Unconditional Basic Income, she was offended that the movement parades under the banner of "liberalism". She sees the idea as a radically-left, obviously socialist policy that undermines moderate leftists.

Liberals like this play the political game on conservative terms. Only a new radical left can help solve our modern issues with government/economics. The job of the radical left is to render the conservative/liberal tension obsolete: taking the economy to a new meta-level (what the next tensions will be I am not sure but my intuition is that they will revolve around transhumanism and super-collective intelligence).

The EU isn't doing so hot, but Scandinavia is more or less fine.

Countries like Denmark and Sweden are proof that building a human economy and being a competitive economic entity are not mutually exclusive concepts for developed countries in the 21st century. It is possible, in fact, they may be reaching a point where they can become more competitive (if the "Collaborative Commons" starts outcompeting traditional market forces).

Instituting UBI in America would have to be a process, and a long one at that. If we woke up with the policy in place tomorrow, I think almost all of your minimum wage employees wouldn't show up for work.

MAYBE. Research with basic income communities shows that people work more overall in a basic income society because they are more in control of defining their own work trajectory. There are many structural status quo 'impossibility' notions at work in the idea that the system would collapse because we wouldn't have minimum wage slaves. In particular I am interested in the fact that people say that most people will stop showing up to bullshit jobs - but my response is SO WHAT? I am sick of living in a society built on alienated (read: dehumanising) labour. Moreover, people will say that everyone will stop working alienating jobs, but I am more interested in the fact that people will not then simply do nothing. People want meaningful work. How about let's focus a discussion on that.

It's pretty obvious whose pockets the money will have to come from for UBI to exist. But these people, with their deep pockets, are actively making policy to retain as many pennies as possible. They don't want this. They don't want anyone talking about this. No, it will absolutely take serious social unrest before the discussion enters into the mainstream media circus. And again, it won't happen immediately or quickly. The process will be necessarily painful.

Demand the impossible.

There are also people who absolutely will not.

This is neoliberal ideology. The people who are a drain on society in the developed world are the mega-rich, not struggling low-income workers or the unemployed. People who receive a basic income and just decide to spend their basic income without doing anything extra will still have to spend their entire salary in the market. Also, we must work hard to ensure that new forms of collaboration and entrepreneurship will enable people to explore inherent pro-social and pro-creative interests and passions. I think that if we design a truly human economy we can eventually eliminate alienated labour altogether which will render redundant the whole discussion of whether someone is "employed" or "not employed". The goal should be collective self-actualisation - no one is left behind - all options for growth are open.

Edit: To you, Cadell, if you have the time - Everything I argued above is assuming a strictly domestic UBI (domestic to the U.S.). If a unified global hierarchy does indeed see adoption during the 21st century, you've gotta scrape a whole lot more wealth off the top to distribute to poorer regions. This complicates things... significantly. I hope transhumanism has got some A+ solutions in its bag.

IMHO - I think the job of the government today (and the job of a new international left) is to shift economic focus from corporate activity to commons activity (this means - as a foundation - huge investment in making education, health care, food, water, shelter free). New economy: all basic creature needs are a human right and non-negotiable (this is why modern liberals are destroying the left, and why they are playing the political game on conservative terms). I don't think this requires the erection of a "global hierarchy" - in fact - quite the opposite. I disagree with economists like Piketty that a global government is going to emerge to regulate a global market and distribute funds from a global wealth tax. True global organization is distributed organization (i.e. no central control). When we have reached the end of history there will be no state, but to get there we need to radically democratise the state and create a globe that is a common space for all humans. My hope is that one or several countries will lead the way in this initiative - in the developed or the developing world (i.e. Switzerland or Namibia for example) can institute a basic income and start experimenting with communities based on social self-organization projects. If you are interested about what is happening with basic income initiatives/advocates/research in Belgium, Switzerland, and Namibia I'd recommend this documentary which gives a nice summary.

EDIT: Here I would also like to add an old Hegelian notion that speaks to our current situation (which I believe to be largely one of overcoming our own psychology):

For Hegel: in order to pass from alienation to reconciliation, we do not have to change reality, but rather the way we perceive and relate to it.

In other words: we need to change the way we perceive and relate to our labour/work/society - we need totally new foundations for adult human life. Until that happens - we are going to continue to have the contours of our collective life organized by impersonal persons (corporations).

I'm Cadell. I like thinking and writing about evolution. I work on this show and research for this institute. One day I hope to simultaneously love what I'm doing and be able to make rent.

Ok, let's clean this up a little bit.

First - morality is not uniquely human. All organisms that live in social groups have an evolved moral code based on their evolved value system (i.e., what they find pleasurable/sensually enjoyable). Every social animal needs a moral code to facilitate social cohesion and group stability. The more agents you have in a system - the more complex the moral code must be to facilitate higher levels of ordered stability.

Second - You cannot say that just because natural selection and fitness govern biological change, that therefore everything in nature is kill or be killed. The entire biological world is based off of a quid-pro-quo (a "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours"). Scientifically this is called reciprocal altruism and a number of glorious biological phenomena emerge from these interactions. Is everything at base selfish? Yes, but cooperation evolves from competition. In fact, socio-technological evolution has a long arc towards eliminating competition using metasystem transitions (i.e., when a new level of order is stabilized the smaller agents that formed the larger collective overwhelmingly cooperate and eliminate "free riders"). This is in the process of happening in our species. We are far more moral than we have ever been. We are far more cooperative than we have ever been. This is dictated by the amount of energy in our system. If no one wants for anything on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - no one needs to compete. Most of our competition is now not related to natural selection. We compete, but if we lose, we don't die.

Finally - We are in charge of our morals. We culturally construct our morals. The enlightenment philosophers got it right. The only thing that is important in life is consciousness. Everyone's individual consciousness is precious and unique. Our morals therefore should be constructed around the principle that you should never harm another consciousness. You can do whatever else you like - just don't fuck with anyone else's experience in life.

Hope that helped insomniasexx

Buzzfeed GOP.

This is fantastic, but actually goes much deeper than social media timelines. Think about all types of social information available to us. My granddad literally grasps at a past that doesn't exist. He has no pictures and maybe a few letters. So little information of a beginning lost to time forever. Our generation has pictures, video, blogs, twitter, etc. the list could go on forever. One of my friends just adopted a kid and the girls entire life is recorded in vine-like video clips on her iPhone. What would it be like to be a 100 years old with a large portion of your first year recorded?

The function of all of this is for improved memory. Technology enhances human memory. Whenever we have the technological ability to collect information about our own lives, we do it. I suspect that children in the 2050s will have almost all relevant information about their lives recorded in some way, shape, or form. Most likely in quantitative and qualitative ways that don't currently exist.

If there is an ultimate goal to this technological progress it can best be represented in attempting to have a complete and unified history of self and consciousness. And it will all be in the Global Brain.

Your brother is not necessarily wrong - there is a hormonal basis for the lack of female facial hair. The real evolutionary cause is facial neoteny. Neoteny is the "retention by adults of traits previously seen only in juveniles". The effects of neoteny are massively exaggerated in human females (i.e., larger eyes, smaller noses, and fuller lips). Many physical anthropologists have shown that you can estimate the age of an individual based on information about eye width, nose height, and lip height alone - and it is clear that women (on average) have much larger eyes, smaller noses, and "taller" lips than do men. In this sense, facial hair growth can be seen as part of this neotenous package (as infants and children also do not have facial hair - obviously). This could be adaptive, or perhaps an exaptive - no research has really tested which it is (but the actual selective pressure was very high since lack of facial hair is always seen as a sign of physical attractiveness cross culturally).

I would add that several studies have shown that in the neotenous package - women are always rated as more sexually attractive cross culturally if they exhibit "supernormal" aspects of the neotenous package, and studies of high end fashion magazine and super model magazine model facial proportions also end up falling on the most neotenous end of the facial spectrum.

I would add that in these studies the researchers admit that it is hard to control for what it was - evolutionarily speaking - that men selected for in women - neotenous faces, or maximal waist-to-hip ratio - both of which are indicators of youth and high fertility.

To end - I took a sexual selection theory course in grad school. Two of the most interesting questions to me where the following:

A) Why are humans the only species that have hair that needs to be cut?

B) What is the evolutionary origin of the female orgasm?

One of these questions is currently still a mystery. What one do you think it is?

Future Cadell: I should have explored more of physical reality and enjoyed the constraints of my animality before getting sucked into a hyper-dimensional virtual intersubjective space with unlimited degrees of freedom.

I didn't read the study (just the abstract, which sounds silly). In general I am skeptical of research that reduces human sexuality to presence or absence of certain chemical compounds (as if you were studying groups of lemurs). Moreover, studies of this type, with such a small sample size, on such a strange and obscure human group (Harvard Business School students,...), tells us nothing about the interesting and dynamic nature of human sexuality.

Of course we know that testosterone and oestrogen etc play a role in promoting sexual behaviour in pretty much all vertebrates. But when we discuss human sexuality, and whether or not someone choses to engage in a "committed" or "uncommitted" relationship (or however you classify it - which is in and of itself a non-trivial problem), you cannot extract away sociocultural factors (what does society deem acceptable/unacceptable?), socioeconomic factors (resources, stability), sociopolitical factors (class, race, gender identity) etc., not to mention factors that most scientists always totally forget related to individual self-reflection (what type of relationship(s) makes me comfortable/happy/fulfilled?), symbolic imagination (what types of relationship(s) do I want to engage in in the future?), etc.

Basically what I am trying to say is that the types of relationships we engage in and why is a very complex topic that requires far more nuance and sophistication than this study would allow with a binary logic and a reduction of human behaviour to hormones. Maybe varying testosterone levels can lead to predictions of "commitment", or maybe they can't. But my hunch is that the higher social, cultural, political, economic, historical affects are much larger. I know that when I think about my own sexual behaviour, the level of testosterone doesn't have so much to say about whether I am in a committed relationship or not, it has much more to do with higher phenomenological and relational complexities.

The most significant political event of your lifetime has in all likelihood already happened, in '08.

NOOOOOOOO. The largest political project for the whole of humanity is still ahead of us and won't involve a single politician. But first we have to reclaim democracy and radically distribute our organization so that it can never be captured again by a small group of people.

Hey, I'm with you man. But these 5 year olds have challenged political policy and education throughout history, and they still continue to. I don't need to know about why some people don't believe the holocaust happened because they aren't threatening education in North America, but these people are, so I need to know about them.

I remember a few years ago anthropologist Ian Morris released an influential book arguing that, while the "West" had ruled for the past few centuries, now that balance of power was shifting to the "East". It is a common narrative/fear but he produced a wealth of historical socioeconomic data to support this idea of a pendulum swing between west/east power with the 21st century marking another swing back towards the east. I think this narrative is wrong. It's clear that power is not shifting from the west to the east but from the west to a mutating global corporate parasite. Obama keeps saying that the TPP will be great for American trade. In reality what the TPP does is elevate corporate entities to the level of sovereign governments. They will be able to privately decide public policies, overpower national courts, and sue any country that weakens profit in favour of social or ecological issues. I don't believe in the illuminati, I don't think we need to believe in that. The formation of a global corporate elite is not something being hidden in the shadows of strange billionaire occult ritual ceremonies, it is being formally orchestrated within the epicentre of governments all around the world.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership will pre-determine the global socio-economic contours of the planet and will dramatically increase the likelihood of global corporate oligarchy. There will be no opportunity for genuine progressive social or ecological direction. We have our individual freedoms but we are losing the commons. We have free choice within the contours of an increasingly authoritarian forced choice.

What are you dreading?

The next Miley Cyrus video.

What do you want to avoid under all circumstances?

Robot enslavement.

What are you currently avoiding?

Ok, serious time. I'm avoiding writing a book. It's hard! But I want to do it! But it's hard! But people don't even read books anymore! But I still want to do it!

Essentially what this means to me, is that it is very important to have a diverse education that includes acquiring skills related to both quantitative and qualitative reasoning. I feel like emphasizing a diverse education in the humanities and sciences (the "two cultures") is imperative. Throughout my entire academic career I have been caught between the two cultures and I see the perils of being on either polarized end of the cultures. People in my humanities courses would be fearful of science and math; and people in my science courses were the worst writers and quite sub-par critical thinkers (especially related to important socio-political and historical issues.

Thanks for the mention lil. I have replicated the list from that article below, along with some additional books that I either A) forgot to mention last time, or B) have since read and feel worthy of inclusion:

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The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred Crosby (1972)

Orientalism by Edward Said (1979)

Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan (1985)

The Global Brain by Peter Russell (1985)

Hyperspace by Michio Kaku (1994)

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan (1994)

History of God by Karen Armstrong (1994)

The Major Transitions in Evolution by John Smith & Eors Szathmary (1995)

The Demon-Hauned World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan (1996)

The Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm (1996)

Beyond art: Pleistocene image and symbol by Margaret Conkey (1997)

The Symbolic Species by Terrance Deacon (1997)

Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins (1998)

The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behaviour by Craig Stanford (1999)

The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil (2000)

The Origins of LIfe: From the Birth of Life to the Origins of Language by John Smith & Eors Szathmary (2000)

Global Brain by Howard Bloom (2000)

A Devil’s Chaplain by Richard Dawkins (2003)

On The Shoulders of Giants by Stephen Hawking (2003)

The unbound Prometheus: technological change and industrial development by David Landes (2003)

Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson (2004)

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2004)

The Epic of Evolution by Eric Chaisson (2005)

Holistic Darwinism by Peter Corning (2005)

Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean Carroll (2006)

The Living Cosmos: Our Search for Life in the Universe by Chris Impey (2007)

The Extended Mind by Robert Logan (2007)

The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker (2007)

History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer (2007)

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku (2008)

The Wayfinders by Wade Davis (2009)

The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester (2009)

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shuban (2009)

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham (2009)

Jane Goodall: 50 Years at Gombe by Jane Goodall (2010)

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (2011)

Big History and the Future of Humanity by Fred Spier (2011)

Evolution: The First Four Billion Years ed. by Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis (2011)

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (2011)

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (2011)

Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil deGrasse Tyson (2012)

Masters of the Planet by Ian Tattersall (2012)

Debt: The first 5,000 years by David Graeber (2012)

Wild Cultures: A Comparison of Chimpanzee and Human Cultures by Christophe Boesch (2012)

The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking (2012)

Lone Survivors: How We Came To Be The Only Humans On Earth by Chris Stringer (2012)

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Hope you find it useful thundara

It is a well written story and a nice read... But the idea of a soul mate (or 100% perfect girl) is just a myth.

We aren't even really a monogamous species. We pair bond, and the average length of that pair bond is much shorter the the average life expectancy of an adult. We are also flexible in our sexual preferences and organization depending on ecology (or our "socio-economic" organization). In hunter-gatherer societies we tend to be more explicitly promiscuous with less power and ownership connected to sex and relationships. In agricultural societies we tend to be viciously patriarchal with men controlling women in one form or another from their birth to their death. The richer the man the more partners he will have (statistically speaking). Today we seem to be shifting strongly from this agricultural pattern to one that is in some weird mix between the hunter-gatherer-agricultural modes of socio-sexual organization.

I suspect this shift is directional towards a more egalitarian and far less monogamous organization. I suspect we are on our way to a socio-sexual organization that probably closely resembles our hunter-gatherer mode that is largely devoid of exclusive long-term pair bonds. Mechanisms that would facilitate increased sexual opportunity are already emergent, the function of pair bonding (raising offspring) is declining rapidly in the developed world in favour of cultural reproduction, and culture that demonizes females "promiscuity" is fading. Also, the more densely we are organized in cities and the longer we expect to live, the shorter exclusive bonds last because our options for other partners increase. Also, the longer females delay marriage the less males will adopt a monogamous sexual strategy when dating.

Of course that is dependent on two things primarily: our life expectancy and our socio-economic development. If we extend our life expectancy to any significant degree past 100 and if we create a world of abundance, monogamy as it existed in the 19tn and 20th century, will simply die.

Whatever your stance on labour unions, someone has to be looking out for workers in every sector, otherwise they are bound to be taken advantage of by corporate interests. From the 1940s to the late 1970s workers wages rose with the overall growth of the American economy. From 1978 to the present this has stopped, which has created the ridiculous and embarrassing inequality in America today. Surely the decline of organized labour unions plays a critical role in this process. If you're against unions, you are forced to propose a better way to protect the rights of workers and to ensure that improved economic growth also leads to a fair distribution of that economic growth.

In a paper I wrote that was just accepted by the World Future Review I discuss my vision for the future of our political system in depth (I'll upload to hubski when it's been published - due to nature of the academic journal article process this is an inherently lengthy process). I do speculate about how the transition will happen but I don't pretend to know with a high degree of certainty. I am just sure that the transition will occur if socio-technological evolution holds. The big question is this: Will it be violent or not? Will it be gradual or not? Basically, will it be like the French and American Revolutions? (i.e. violent and relatively abrupt). There is really no way to know because it depends on too many social factors and players. A number of things could happen, which I know is not very helpful. The only guarantee is that socio-technological evolution is on our side, and not the industrial systems side, so however it occurs, we will win.

won't this invasion of privacy make it difficult for people to coordinate efforts?

Industrial political systems can temporarily abuse their power - in the process temporarily halting progress - but they cannot control the Internet or our collective action in its entirety. Dictatorships learned this throughout the Middle East and North Africa over the past few years. You can't stop all of us. The Internet is too decentralized and robust. More importantly, the Internet allows our actual collective opinion to emerge, which shifts the entire culture faster than most of us anticipate. We have already seen more of a popular opinion shift against spying and centralized organization in 2013 than probably the entirety of human history before 2013. This is only going to grow the more we become aware that our current information infrastructure does not align with our current political infrastructure.

One of the most important things to discuss moving forward is the fact that our institutions are not embedded in the laws of physics. They have a beginning. And they will have an end. That beginning and that end are dependent on evolutionary functions. We can explain their emergence. And we can explain their collapse. Their existence is currently on shaky grounds.

It fueled a worry every content creator must have at some time. What if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about?

1. Do your research. Make sure you substantiate your central thesis with evidence (or well developed theory).

2. If you don't have time to do the research, don't sacrifice quality for quantity.

3. If you're wrong, admit it. Your ideas are not you. You should keep your ideas in a box outside of you. If you're ideas are wrong, change them, that is how you grow. Thank the person who called you on your bullshit or pointed out a logical flaw/citation error/etc.

EDIT:

Also, if someone ever attacks you, don't take it personally because it says more about them than it does about you. Whenever you disagree with someone, you disagree with their ideas. One of the things I like the most about hubski is that this is how discussion and arguments typically develop. People disagree, but no one gets personally attacked. Hopefully we can keep that environment because it is the environment within which great content creators can develop.

We had a science fiction panel at the latest World Future Society and discussed Neal Stephenson's comments at length. I personally believe that dystopia and utopia both have a functional role in the genre. Utopia (done well) gives us something to strive for and actively work to achieve and dystopia (done well) teaches us what to avoid and actively work to prevent. But overall I agree with the notion that there is not enough imaginative optimistic science fiction, and that this is a problem. So maybe science fiction needs to go back to its first roots. The first works of science fiction were mostly works about how human beings could reach the stars (i.e., Somnium - 1608) and generate infinite possibility (i.e., The New Atlantis - 1624).