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.

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

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.

I have yet to hear a cogent argument disputing any of the claims made by Ray Kurzweil. Even top computer scientists in the academic literature acknowledge the validity of Kurweil's basic arguments and commend him for articulately exploring the possibilities of a "Kurzweilian Singularity". Here is an example of a good article to check out:

Goertzel, B. 2007. Human-level artificial general intelligence and the possibility of a technological singularity: A reaction to Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near, and McDermott’s critique of Kurzweil. Artificial Intelligence, 171: 1161-1173.

I am currently doing extensive research on the technological singularity for a book. According to most computer scientists in the field there is as much consensus over it occurring as climate scientists have regarding the anthropogenic effects of global warming. Vernor Vinge, one of the most prominent futurists in computer science first coined the phrase "technological singularity" back in 1993 in his now-famous paper:

Vinge, V. 1993. The Coming Technological Singularity: How To Survive In The Post-Human Era. Vision-21 Symposium, NASA Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, 30 to 31 March 1993.

Although other scientists had been aware that something "singularity-like" was on the horizon well before 1993:

Ulam, S. (1958): "One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."

Good, I.J. (1965): "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need very make."

Vernor Vinge has discussed one of the reasons why a singularity-like event would NOT happen, with the main cause of that scenario being that we simply don't "find the soul in the hardware". I wrote about my thoughts on this here:

http://www.theadvancedapes.com/theratchet/2012/12/13/singula...

And here is the citation for the Vernor Vinge article:

Vinge, V. 2007. What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen. Seminars About Long-Term Thinking, the Long Now Foundation.

His talk was at a recent Long Now Foundation conference. An organization I have discussed before if you are interested in learning more about them:

http://www.theadvancedapes.com/theratchet/2012/12/10/thinkin...

Overall, people who hear about the singularity for the first time are just scared of it because the idea is so massive and so overwhelming and it changes our entire species. Actually, it more than changes our entire species, it makes our species irrelevant, and ushers us into a post-human era. I recently told my mom and her husband about the book I am writing and I experienced the common shock response that most people have when they hear about the singularity for the first time. My mom's husband actually got mad and irrational. He later calmed down, but his reaction is typical of most people (even academics) who are exposed to this type of thinking for the first time.

Here are some other interesting articles about the singularity if anyone wants to do further research on the issue as it is being discussed today:

Heylighen, F. 2008. Chapter 13 Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain. In Modelski, G., Devezas, T. & Thompson, W.R. Globalization As Evolutionary Process. New York: Routledge.

Vinge, V. 2008. Signs of the Singularity. IEEE Spectrum. Special Report: The Singularity. 1-6.

Sandberg, A. & Bostrom, N. 2008. Whole brain emulation: A roadmap. Technical Report. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/reports/2008-3.pdf.

Sandberg, A. (2010, March). An overview of models of technological singularity. The Third Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-10). URL http://agi-conf. org/2010/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/agi10singmodels2. pdf. 2010.

I also summarized Kurzweil's main ideas in an article earlier this year (for anyone that hasn't read The Singularity Is Near):

http://www.theadvancedapes.com/theratchet/2012/10/19/an-idea...

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?

Mindblownology 101 (Earth & Life): 1) There are other species on our planet that make tools, learn language, and develop traditions. 2) All life (from a bacterium to a giant squid to a Kim Kardashian shares the same basic genetic structure and a common ancestor that existed 3.5 billion years ago 3) There were other human species on this planet only 12,000-13,000 years ago There were up to four different species on Eurasia alone (that we know about), and we probably interacted and mated with at least two of them 4) Our species emerged from an area smaller than modern day Eritrea about 200,000 years ago, and managed to colonize almost every available landmass on the planet in less than 60,000 years 5) All complex multi-cellular life on the planet has emerged in only the last 500 million years of Earth's history. That means for 90% of Earth's existence there was either no life or only life that you would need a microscope to see with a human eye!

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.

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

Silence is actually a very small part of my life. I find myself listening to music almost everywhere I go, and whatever I'm doing. The only time I don't have a pair of headphones on is when I'm talking to people or if I'm reading a physical book. Don't know whether that is good or bad, but it is my pattern of behaviour.

Wild random thoughts on Facebook appeared: It has become almost in vogue for internet-savvy individuals to mock Facebook, and even popular for people to say they have a Facebook account but don't use it. From a qualitative perspective in Canada, I've noticed that Facebook usage seems to be dropping off. People don't engage with their "friends" in the same way. It has become more and more like a link aggregator. I personally get more out of Facebook from the things I "like." For example, I found that hyperspace article by Gizmodo on Facebook today. I find most actual people in my Facebook feed boring and/or annoying. Why would I restrict myself to the people I only know in my real life when I'm on the internet? Maybe that is why I find that I enjoy my community of "friends" on Hubski more. Because it is a community of people that - although I would never have met them in physical reality because of geography - we can aggregate together online. Finally, I'm hesitant to say Facebook usage will continue to decline. It would be foolish to bet against a social network that has been as successful and has as much capital as Facebook. However, what we may be seeing is a major transformation in the way people engage with Facebook. This wouldn't really be the first time this has happened. I remember when I first got Facebook I sometimes updated my "status" on my "wall." People thought this was very strange, so I stopped doing it. In the beginning, if you remember, people only wrote on each other's walls, but you didn't write on your own wall. That only happened later. I guess that is one small example of how much people's behaviour on Facebook has changed.

I find Neil deGrasse Tyson's reasoning on this fairly sound. He said that we shouldn't be surprised that we haven't noticed anything yet, saying there is no other intelligent life in the universe is like a marine biologist scooping a cup of water out of the Atlantic Ocean and concluding that there are no whales.

However, it could be quiet out there because of transcension.

"I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." - Richard Feynman