New Testingstan

crowdsourcing and crowdfunding aren't the same thing

it's not like they're significantly different

well in one you get a large group of talentless morons trying to do work themesleves

and in the other you get a large group of talentless morons giving money to a talentless moron to do the work

adr wrote: and in the other you get a large group of talentless morons giving money to a talentless moron to do the work

sounds like the stock market if you ask me

Gands wrote:Presumably refunded.

Money only actually gets taken from you if they meet the goal. It doesn't sit in escrow or anything like that, it's just you promising that if enough people promise a certain amount of money, you'll pay up. There's not even a check to see if the money you promised is there, so some people will fuck a project over by pledging money on a $1 prepaid card or whatever.

Hey Blayne and Tucker are on probation on TEO! Good for you, guys, I guess. Now GROVEL!

Oh it's like a pledge. I get it.

They need an engraved paddle atop the forum list. One with the Imperial sigil and some words in old Latin heiroglyphics High Galactic.

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:

Dooey Jo wrote:the only reason it could happen is because humanity has relegated all control over what gets invented and what gets produced to the mindless and arbitrary market, ie. because of the economic system

You can't chalk up literally every problem in the world to the spectre of capitalism, nor will 'fixing' capitalism solve the issues which I raised in admittedly extremely truncated form. People don't want to give up their quad core smartphones or twenty four hours a day seven days a week social networking or increasingly speedy internet and they don't really want to give a shit about the suffering of other people. Yeah, they probably started wanting that shit because of consumerism, but unless you've got a time machine you're not stopping that train.

You say 'we should change society to better benefit people' and I say 'dude that IS transhumanism'. That's what it's about. How many places wouldn't be better off if Dunbar's number was two hundred thousand instead of just two hundred?

No but you can chalk up problems actually caused by capitalism to it. And that is not what it's about, it's literally about changing humanity to fit the monster it's created, except in present society you will only ever be able to change the small portion of humanity who can pay for it.

And here lies the problem. If society was geared towards humans, you wouldn't need to change Dunbar's number to be anything (and whether Dunbar's number is actually relevant is another question). No one would need to care about two hundred thousand people, or even a single person. Poverty and suffering sure as hell aren't caused by people not caring about Africa or wherever. All the world could care about Africa (and frankly it does) and it wouldn't solve a thing.

And honestly, I don't know a single person who doesn't think constant "social networking" is a complete bullshit waste of time and wish they wouldn't have to do it. It's the same with being constantly connected to work via their cell phones, which causes enormous amounts of stress for people. Lots of people apparently feel very relieved when their phone breaks because then they have an excuse for not answering. Are you telling me the best answer to this problem is to change everyone's brains to cope with the increased work load (which by no means is necessary, but is believed to increase profits), instead of changing the way we work? What will you do when profits eventually require even more of people than even technological upgrades can fix? Because individuals will always be limited compared to the demands everyone else can put on them.

you do have a point - some of the complexities progress has brought upon us aren't necessarily ideal things or desirable

and a true techno-whateverical utopia would bring about societal changes that would override our current conceptions of what things are and should be, replace it with something better that we wouldn't be able to conceive of in the present, and the singularoid transhumanoids' vision of the future would end up being about as accurate or as holistic a conception of human evolution as a story about going to the moon via a giant gun or something

the dystopia would be ibrain post-organ branded embryonic shit

the utopia would be some kind of jodorowskian technological buddhism thing

Dooey Jo wrote:And that is not what it's about, it's literally about changing humanity to fit the monster it's created, except in present society you will only ever be able to change the small portion of humanity who can pay for it.

Dude you are literally just making shit up.

Even in a super capitalist dystopia it wouldn't just be available to the people who could afford it. Corporations would also be interested in augmenting their employees. It'd just be a question of whether they feel that they could guarantee a certain length of employment in order to pay off the cost, assuming the changes aren't modular so they can't just be removed when the employee quits or gets fired.

It'd be interesting from a legal standpoint, since a contract where the employee promises X years to the corporation in order to cover the cost of their increased productivity gets pretty close to indentured servitude, but it's not without precedent since the military already does that with ROTC grads.

As important as the discussion of how already existing elites will attempt to exploit transhumanist technologies is, a lot of people immediately jump to these outrageous cyberpunk scenarios which aren't necessarily very realistic. It's always assumed that the dial will be set to carte blanche, but questions of government policy, regulation and socialisation of the technology are important.

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:

Dooey Jo wrote:And that is not what it's about, it's literally about changing humanity to fit the monster it's created, except in present society you will only ever be able to change the small portion of humanity who can pay for it.

Dude you are literally just making shit up.

What is your counter-point ?

Edit : ninja'd

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:As important as the discussion of how already existing elites will attempt to exploit transhumanist technologies is, a lot of people immediately jump to these outrageous cyberpunk scenarios which aren't necessarily very realistic. It's always assumed that the dial will be set to carte blanche, but questions of government policy, regulation and socialisation of the technology are important.

See it always seems that the current elites are interested in making money, which they can do quite effectively without turning the world into Syndicate. It won't be that obvious, these people aren't stupid.

I doubt the dial would be set to carte blanche, Probably the opposite, actually, at least in the US. I can see major opposition to even having them be legal from both ultra-conservative anti-stem cell research and anti-euthanasia types who would think it's playing god, as well as hardcore animal rights activists since any hypothetical augmentation would undoubtedly be tested on animals like chimpanzees or rhesus monkeys before any human trials.

So there'd probably need to be a massive amount of corporate backing for them to even be legal.

Socially I could see it going a few ways. If they start out being expensive designer stuff then a lot of the upper classes would be all over it since it'd be another way to flaunt their status. But if they start out being worker productivity tools then the rich would go to great lengths to show off how they don't have any augmentations because cybernetics would be an indicator being part of the working class (at least until Apple or some equivalent comes out with sleeker-looking versions).

the part of the capitalism argument i hate the most is what i called #2 - that the augments would displace regular folk entirely

this is said to be cuz they'd outcompete the regular folk in the marketplace thus you'd either get the stuffs or be left behind

i say fuck the marketplace and fuck competition

(and moreover i don't believe they'd even outcompete that much since i'm very skeptical of the advantages in the first place over plain tools)

fyi the human body is stupid

so i hadn't slept well the last few days

as a response i developed a headache....

...which kept me up most of last night too


COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

Obviously the solution is to cut your head off and put a robot one on.

Dooey Jo wrote:Because individuals will always be limited compared to the demands everyone else can put on them.

My vision of the future is like The Jetsons where all your work is to press a button for five minutes a day and that pays a living wage for a single worker household.

Better than augments.

RogueIce wrote:

Dooey Jo wrote:Because individuals will always be limited compared to the demands everyone else can put on them.

My vision of the future is like The Jetsons where all your work is to press a button for five minutes a day and that pays a living wage for a single worker household.

Better than augments.

in the future, everyone will be politicians

adr wrote:(and moreover i don't believe they'd even outcompete that much since i'm very skeptical of the advantages in the first place over plain tools)

yeah, i'm arguing from the hypothetical assumption that society actually would develop technologically to a point where augmentation would be necessary for large amounts of the population to "keep up"

personally, however, i think that if society really got to that point (which it probably wouldn't), it would be much more likely that shit would just collapse back to a point where humans could live relatively easily again

i mean it is a pretty fundamentally contradictory idea

Aaron wrote:Obviously the solution is to cut your head off and put a robot one on.

i find most problems can solved by cutting someones head off at least

Manus Dei wrote: i find most problems can solved by cutting someones head off at least

HOLY GROUND, HIGHLANDER!

remember the rule