10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Rise of the Useless Class
As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might themselves become the owners. Human law already recognizes intersubjective entities like corporations and nations as “legal persons.” Though Toyota or Argentina has neither a body nor a mind, they are subject to international laws, they ca...Folksonomies: automation universal basic income
Folksonomies: automation universal basic income
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notes
notes18 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Altruism is a Basic Human Instinct
The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother?
Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we’ve dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true.
If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a sear...Folksonomies: altruism
Folksonomies: altruism
1 notes
notes13 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Factions in the Artilect War
I predict that humanity will split into three major philosophical, ideological, political groups, which I label as follows.
–The Cosmists (based on the word “cosmos”) will be in favor of building these godlike machines (the artilects), who would be immortal, think a million times faster than humans, have unlimited memory, go anywhere, do anything and take any shape. The Cosmists would take a quasi-religious view that they are god builders. Privately, I am a Cosmist, but publicly, I hav...
1 20 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
IDIC - Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
IDIC basically states that we should delight in the differences amongst people, not hate people because they are different. It seems that the human race has found a large number of ways to hate (different sex, color, religion, nationality, political party, social class, etc) and has emphasized hate over co-operation, caring, and compassion. The result has been a world torn by big and small wars, religious and philosophical differences, and alienation of one person from another.
This has take...
1 A good overview of the Vulcan philosophy from Star Trek.
30 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Bend Children to Science Through Play
From the evident disposition of children to imitate all the actions of grown persons, from their little scientific propensities to produce in miniature what they see in magnitude, from the delight which they feel, and the deep interest which they take in all their little works and playful amusements, it is certain that nothing more is required to put them in the channel of correct ideas than to give them such instruction, and to bend their minds to such objects as shall at once employ, amuse,...Science provides games and play for children that will bias them toward discovery and exploration.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Craft vs Industrial Tools
All of humanity's tool extensions are divisible into two main groups:
the craft and the industrial tools. I define the craft tools as all those
tools which could be invented by one man starting all alone, naked
in the wilderness, using only his own experience and his own
integral facilities. Under these isolated conditions he could and did
invent spears, slings, bows, and arrows, etc. By industrial tools I
mean all the tools that cannot be produced by one man, as for
instance the S.S. Queen M... 1 notes
notesInteresting taxonomy. Crafts are things we can make by our naked selves in a forest, while industrials require another human to produce.
19 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Hand Axes as an Extended Phenotype
Two and a half million years ago, our small-brained ancestors
evolved the ability to knock flakes from rocks to use as cutting edges. By doing so, they could also make the rocks themselves useful as choppers. This basic tool kit of flakes and choppers served the needs of hunting and gathering for a million years. Then, around 1.6 million years ago, a medium-brained African hominid (Homo erectus) evolved the ability to produce an extraordinary object that archeologists call a handaxe. A handax... 1 notes
notesIf, as the author assumes, handaxes were genetically-informed because they did not change for hundreds of thousands of years, then why do we not still have the instinct for hand axes?
16 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
What is a Person?
What is a person?
This seems like an easy question, but appearances
can be deceiving. Throughout the long sweep of
human history, the answer to the question of what
a person is has continually changed. Was a woman
a person, or was she a piece of property? Or was she
even a liability, something that had to be compensated
for with a dowry before a man’s family would agree to take her on? Was a man alien to their immediate
culture a person? Not if you were of African descent
in the United Sta...A great passage on the history of personhood and its possible future.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Death is Not Assured
The organic perfectibility or deterioration of the classes of the vegetable, or species of the animal kingdom, may be regarded as one of the general laws of nature.
This law extends itself to the human race; and it cannot be doubted that the progress of the sanative art, that the use of more wholesome food and more comfortable habitations, that a mode of life which shall develope the physical powers by exercise, without at the same time impairing them by excess; in fine, that the destruction...Through perpetual improvement through the sciences, humans may not ever attain immortality, but we may extend our lives indefinitely.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Poets, Scientists and Children
When some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race–a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint–there are three sorts of human being who are particularly likely still to see point in it and befriend it. They are poets, scientists and children. Inside each of us, I suggest, representatives of all these groups can be found. Folksonomies: poetry exploration
Folksonomies: poetry exploration
1 notes
notesAll have a natural inclination to explore things unpopular with the human race.
