Is Privacy Holding Back Humanity?

[JJMcClure]

I fail to see the logic behind your argument entirely. Our most fundamental behavior is the reaction to the problem. OK, change it with a different behavior - but what does it change? The problem is still there.

Yeah exactly, Trade is the behavioural adaptation that occured due to limited resources, the 'reaction to the problem' as you put it. Trade has created a society full of suffering, war, misery and greed and the answer isn't to try and get people to be nicer, to not do things like pollute the environment for more profit or sell insurance to poor people who can't pay the premiums and then vanish before the world economy collapses etc etc, humans won't change because we point out that they're not being very nice. There are very few ethics in commerce and that's unlikely to change.

The answer is to remove the problem that causes the behaviour. If we have unlimited resources, literally you can have anything you want, there's no way for anyone to exert power over you. Remove the environmental pressure of scarce resources that causes the undesirable behaviour and perhaps the better side of humanity will have the chance to emerge.

[Clinton]

JJMcClure, I agree with a lot of what you say about lack of ethics in commerce and that far too much power is wielded by a few rich people/governments and that it's to the detriment of humanity.

Where you lose me is the trade being the source of all evil and the cause of wars, misery, hunger. What part religion? Evolve beyond trade and you'll still have motivators for war.

[JJMcClure]

Where you lose me is the trade being the source of all evil and the cause of wars, misery, hunger. What part religion? Evolve beyond trade and you'll still have motivators for war.

Trade isn't the sole cause of suffering, just the major one but religion is a toughie and one I've been avoiding up till now. Religion, in my view, is a method of control. Whenever you have something somebody else needs you have a means to control them. Where religion is similar to Trade is that it's also a behaviour that evolved and prospered because it affords a survival benefit. A group of people united in a spiritual belief were more likely to fight harder and more recklessly (believing that they had a diety on their side) and were more likely to survive and pass on the gene for 'believing'. This isn't my argument, it's actually from Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion and he explains it far better than I can.

Like Trade, Religion helped us get where we are now. Unlike Trade which we can remove simply by meeting people's material needs, religion appeals to people's fears so perhaps the only way to replace it is through education, unbiased education. So the unlimited resource that we would provide in this case is information, the more educated people are, the less likely they are to fear death or have questions about how and why we're here and need religion to fill those gaps in their knowledge with spiritual mumbo jumbo. This ties in with my fervent desire that we eventually live in a society where the sum of all human knowledge is available to everyone at any time, it would be a significant step in removing our dependence on religions.

[tke71709]

Trade isn't the sole cause of suffering,

Trade is not a cause of suffering, scarcity is a cause of suffering for which trade is an imperfect solution.

Religion appeals to people's fears so perhaps the only way to replace it is through education, unbiased education

And here is the issue, you're already starting out with a bias, that religion is bad, and that bias will permeate your "education".

There will always be biases, you display biases in this thread (and others), others display other biases in this thread (and others). Any time anyone seeks to "educate" they include their own biases (or at the very least the biases of the people who wrote the educational material), it's impossible not to.

[JJMcClure]

Trade is not a cause of suffering, scarcity is a cause of suffering for which trade is an imperfect solution.

Ok, can you suggest an acceptable solution?

And here is the issue, you're already starting out with a bias, that religion is bad, and that bias will permeate your "education".
.

Incorrect. I regularly experience the bias religions exhibit in their teachings whereas I would teach everyone everything there is to know about everything and allow them to draw their own conclusions. For example, I'm trying to teach my kids to have an open mind, to question everything and always try to gather as much information as they can before reaching a decision. I'm teaching them how to learn instead of teaching them what I think they should know.

My paradigm is 'keep an open mind until there's enough evidence to provide an explanation', religion's paradigm is 'god is the explanation'... anything outside their terribly insular paradigm is not relevant or meaningful and they control information to keep people ignorant. Educated people ask awkward questions and churches don't like to fall back too much on 'god moves in mysterious ways' when they can't explain something because even the most faithful will eventually be disatisfied with that type of evasion.

In a way the internet is the best thing that ever happened to free us from the yoke of church induced ignorance. The access people currently have to information is unparralleled in our history.

[tke71709]

Ok, can you suggest an acceptable solution?

The point of my comment wasn't to find a solution, my point was to show that your basic premises are incorrect. This discussion started out as end privacy and the world will be a better place, then it became an anti-trade/organized religion item, then it became the use of benevolent AI's to run the world for us then it became in 500 years we will colonize the stars.

Seeing as our discussion apparently has a 500 year timeline, my solution would be to build a device capable of converting energy into matter and develop an infinite source of non-polluting energy. All our problems are solved and people could keep as much privacy as they like. Or we could all convert into beings of pure energy as well I suppose.

Each are reasonably likely in the timeframe given and just as useful to the real world today as anything else suggested in this thread.

/edit

Sorry for being harsh, I just hate (even though I am drawn to) discussions that are completely hypothetical about how to change the world when we have issues that need resolving today. Seems like mental masturbation at best to me.

[Saul]

Trade has created a society full of suffering, war, misery and greed and the answer isn't to try and get people to be nicer, to not do things like pollute the environment for more profit or sell insurance to poor people who can't pay the premiums and then vanish before the world economy collapses etc etc, humans won't change because we point out that they're not being very nice.

I thought we have agreed scarcity was the problem, so it would be logical to say scarcity has created those things not trade. I can tell you with as much certainty and proof of the argument as you have that trade has prevented it from being much worse.

Remove the environmental pressure of scarce resources that causes the undesirable behaviour and perhaps the better side of humanity will have the chance to emerge.

And how do you propose to do that? Mine other planets, but by what means? Your proposition was to pool collective intelligence. Well, that in my opinion, and I've told my arguments, requires so much more will for people to be nicer than trade does. Trade is imperfect, true, but what is? It's the best darn thing we could come up with, and now to dump it and seek utopian alternatives? We've been there, and done that. Didn't work.

Trade works, let's free it up, create a government that doesn't interfere but protects and we'll have a very efficient system to get to our goal. The matter of fact is that the only alternative we have now is the tip of a gun.

[JJMcClure]

The point of my comment wasn't to find a solution, my point was to show that your basic premises are incorrect. This discussion started out as end privacy and the world will be a better place, then it became an anti-trade/organized religion item, then it became the use of benevolent AI's to run the world for us then it became in 500 years we will colonize the stars.

They're all tied together and this thread was mistitled at the start but I chose to leave it how Benitez titled it (he offered to change it when he split it out from another thread) because it's such a broad topic and I really didn't think the title mattered that much. Privacy, Trade, religion, getting off planet, mining asteroids, a free information society, they're all part of the same thing and if I haven't got that across then I'm really failing here.

My basic premises are not incorrect. Trade is the symptom or the result of the problem which is limited resources. Trade has come up so much because it's a great way to highlight the problems but you're rquite ight that solving our trade problems won't result in the culture I'd like to see humanity grow into, we need to solve the problem of resource scarcity before we do anything else. Improving trade is a waste of time because it will never cure our problems, only perpetutate them.

If you can come up with a solution please post it for us to discuss.

Seeing as our discussion apparently has a 500 year timeline, my solution would be to build a device capable of converting energy into matter and develop an infinite source of non-polluting energy. All our problems are solved and people could keep as much privacy as they like. Or we could all convert into beings of pure energy as well I suppose.

500 years was mentioned but I've also said I don't want to use words like timeline, it's open ended, it'll take as long as it takes. The point was that I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime.

Again people are comparing something that as far as we know is impossible (Star Trek food synthesisers? Time travel? Pure energy beings?) thinking that they're making a point about how ridiculous the technologies are that I'm discussing when this discussion is actually about technologies that vare ery possible and that we're already developing. I'm running into flat earth syndrom all over the place here. What's that you say? The earth is spherical? Don't be silly, I can't imagine that at all because it's contrary to conventional thought. What's that? We could live together without killing each other over mystical beliefs, greed and oil by finding a way to meet all our material needs? Don't be silly, I can't imagine that either......

The question is how we get there and I'm discussing one way of doing it and it's not just me, I got to my current perspective through what I've read and seen on the subject of the long term survival or our species.

Sorry for being harsh, I just hate (even though I am drawn to) discussions that are completely hypothetical about how to change the world when we have issues that need resolving today. Seems like mental masturbation at best to me.

Be as harsh as you like, I'm a big boy and I can take it. You think this is mental masturbation, I think you lack vision and you're a product of your time with very conventional thought processes. All changes start with people talking about them, they either grow in momentum or they fizzle out but the discussion is never wasted, it's the essence of free thinking.

[Saul]

The question is how we get there and I'm discussing one way of doing it and it's not just me, I got to my current perspective through what I've read and seen on the subject of the long term survival or our species.

So far I've only seen a proposed goal but no way to get to it. There was just antagonizing of trade with no real arguments, and the idea of pooling collective potential with the only argument that again, trade is the cause of all problems.

[JJMcClure]

I thought we have agreed scarcity was the problem, so it would be logical to say scarcity has created those things not trade. I can tell you with as much certainty and proof of the argument as you have that trade has prevented it from being much worse..

We agree, see my post above to Tke, the problem is scarcity, trade is the symptom of that problem. I would love to hear your theory on how trade has prevented things being much worse and presumably it will include an alternative explanation for how our species would have still become so successful without adapting for trade? Post it.

And how do you propose to do that? Mine other planets, but by what means? Your proposition was to pool collective intelligence. Well, that in my opinion, and I've told my arguments, requires so much more will for people to be nicer than trade does. Trade is imperfect, true, but what is? It's the best darn thing we could come up with, and now to dump it and seek utopian alternatives? We've been there, and done that. Didn't work.

Trade works, let's free it up, create a government that doesn't interfere but protects and we'll have a very efficient system to get to our goal. The matter of fact is that the only alternative we have now is the tip of a gun.

No.. not mining planets, gosh, are you reading my posts with the same level of attention and care I give yours? Mining asteroids, totally different concept. We've already sent machines to asteroids, all we need to do now is figure out how to mine them remotely and send the resources back to earth and even that's just a matter of Physics, we simply launch them back to earth orbit. Or we just build where we find the resources. I can post some links if it's helpful.

We provide the unlimited resources, 'nicer' comes later when people no longer need to fight over resources, when greedy people no longer have the means to increase their personal wealth at the expense of other people. First you remove the motivation, then the behaviour changes. The change to a culture that doesn't need money becuase there's no trade would be very gradual but it could happen.

Trade doesn't work it because it creates misery and suffering. We can do better than this, or maybe we can't, what do you think, is this the best we can do? This mess we live in that we somewhat optimistically call civilisation is humanity at it's peak?

So far I've only seen a proposed goal but no way to get to it. There was just antagonizing of trade with no real arguments, and the idea of pooling collective potential with the only argument that again, trade is the cause of all problems.

I must have been answering the first post when you asked this. I think i have suggested a way to get to it, do you not think so?