Chato

tobarstep, on 12 April 2013 - 03:03 PM, said:

Ahh, but the question is, does Verizon have a camp, where future employee's have their brains removed, and a complex (and unknown to science) neural netwerk substituted.

Note that no noise that I made in any way interrupted the programing of the "person" I was talking with. No data or datum interfered with the fixed response. That the choices of this mechanism were limited to only a few alternatives.

Not that I want anyone to think I am one of these who believe in any and/or all conspiracy theories.

Dave

Scotty, on 11 April 2013 - 11:05 PM, said:

I don't understand...  

Lord, I wish this WAS creative writing...

But, but, is that AI? A robot? A human turned into a robot?

Dave

Capitalism has gone apeshit crazy, because they no longer fear the the Soviet Union. As long as the Soviets were preaching Marxism to the workers, the fear of local Commies, kept their greed in check.

Marx's prediction that Capitalism would pauperize the workers proved to be false, but only because the Capitalists feared that unchecked greed would lead to Communism.

No more Soviet Union, and by gosh, they ARE reducing everyone to poverty, just as Marx predicted they would.

Dave

Screw the Pentagon.

I once had one of those super realistic dreams, that leave you with the feeling that it "really happened," in which I had a half dozen trained pet Dragonflies, that would ride my shoulder, and eat any mosquito that came near me.

If only it was true...  


Dave

An interesting post, and an interesting topic….

Let us put things into perspective. The Heretic points out the present dysfunction of modern society.

Granted.

But what preceded the age of enlightenment? A Feudal structure in which only a few percent of the people could even read. Only a few percent of the people had access to to what even then, were basic necessities of life.

How then did this ground breaking period of history, "fail?"

Can we objectively say that the benefits of society have not slowly but steadily been extended to more and more people?

I believe we can. We are objectively more prosperous, more educated. more aware of the world around us. Can I refute that this steady progress has been interrupted by a troglodyte mentality? Of course not. The very fact that Fox News is a profitable enterprise shows that we are in a period of regression.

Unexamined life, in the time of Socrates and his spokes person was at best a hypocritical desire to return to an authoritarian system. The Republic was a blue print for a Nanny State of horrible proportions. We can safely dismiss this as pseudo intellectual claptrap.

Humanity goes through phases of cynicism and corruption. Energies are diminished, hopes that were predicted are unrealized, corruption, whether intellectual or monetary seem to dominate the picture. Is this something new?

I recommend Barbara Tuchman's, "A Distant Mirror," in which she analyzes the 14th century, and in a loose manner, shows the parallels with our present situation.

No, the tide has not turned. We are still in a society in denial. We still battle and struggle with ideas and positions which have been proven false on numerous occasions. But more and more members of human society are starting to reject the ideas of reactionaries. Even as we slowly trend toward Fascist, Authoritarian visions of the future, opposition is coalescing. Resistance to Corporate governance is growing.

The people of the world are less corrupted now then they were last year, and even if the tide has not changed, the signs of attitudes changing are visible all over the world.

Dave