Mikhail and Hodj's Political Thread
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khalid
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I am a bit shocked at Tanoomba getting rickshawed. It is a clear sign that hanging out in the shaw, even as someone that has never committed a crime, can turn you to the dark side. When will I start posting pictures of people's children? Will I start creating Prometheus threads? Am I going to start sending people dick pics in private messages? I just don't know, but one of these is bound to start happening.
Back to the communism subject, so Mikhails says I can still "have the farm" as long as I don't let it lie fallow and don't pay people to help me. Dumar says that private property should be abolished and it won't matter because at that point I won't care (and if I do, I'll be one of the oppressor 1% at that point and I guess should be killed). However, that violence wouldn't be communism's fault, but instead started by me defending my property.
So Dumar and Mikhail both conflict. Can I have a farm to call my own or not? Also, neither of you have yet answered, what happens when Hodj's fucking asshole kids show up and start chopping down the black walnut trees I planted to build furniture.
Back to the communism subject, so Mikhails says I can still "have the farm" as long as I don't let it lie fallow and don't pay people to help me. Dumar says that private property should be abolished and it won't matter because at that point I won't care (and if I do, I'll be one of the oppressor 1% at that point and I guess should be killed). However, that violence wouldn't be communism's fault, but instead started by me defending my property.
So Dumar and Mikhail both conflict. Can I have a farm to call my own or not? Also, neither of you have yet answered, what happens when Hodj's fucking asshole kids show up and start chopping down the black walnut trees I planted to build furniture.
khalid
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Well, how can you be so sure? The philosophy classes that I studied marxism seemed pretty clearly to be unfalsifiable. Why are you so sure that history progresses this way?
You concede that these things will take a long time to develop. To me it seems that in order for there to be any hope of private property being abolished (assuming that is the end goal, contrary to Mikhail), you would have to wait until AT LEAST my father and I are dead and probably my generation. Yet I don't see kids today any more interested in getting rid of private property. How can you be sure that the generation after the current generation of selfish kids will want to get rid of property?
Now mind you, I haven't even started debating whether or not elimination of private property is even a good thing in all this. Even if I concede that point, I just don't see any stage even in several generations time that this will happen. You are better off working in AI and hoping for the singularity than praying for communism it seems. That just seems a whole heck of a lot likelier to happen first.
khalid
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I have a great many doubts about the real possibility of a technological Singularity. I think we are far more likely to end up with a future more likeA Deepness in the Skythan we are something likeAccelerando. The progress that AI, computers and science in general has been tremendous, but it never seems to match up to the kind of heights that we would need for the latter.
However, striving for the Singularity or Communism, both utopias that various people hope to reach, at least striving for the singularity you are adding to things. Even if mind-computer links never happen, we end up with artificial vision and google glasses. Even if truly artificially intelligent creatures are invented, we still get search engines and automated cars. Striving for communism gives us what? I would say maybe socialism and reform of capitalism, but many diehard communists seem against those kinds of reforms. They would rather it fail than try to reform it. In fact that seems to be their whole ethos.
However, striving for the Singularity or Communism, both utopias that various people hope to reach, at least striving for the singularity you are adding to things. Even if mind-computer links never happen, we end up with artificial vision and google glasses. Even if truly artificially intelligent creatures are invented, we still get search engines and automated cars. Striving for communism gives us what? I would say maybe socialism and reform of capitalism, but many diehard communists seem against those kinds of reforms. They would rather it fail than try to reform it. In fact that seems to be their whole ethos.
hodj
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Who knows man. I just like the idea of the Singularity, I'm not that invested in it. Its more of a joke than anything.
I do think if AI surpasses human intellect that our lives will be much better for it though. Mainly because those computers will be cranking out badass solutions to shit like cancer within 5 years, if not less, of their invention.
Hell those fellas that just got a Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year got it because they came up with a badass program that analyzes molecular structures such as proteins both quantumly and through traditional models simultaneously, allowing them to predict how shit like new drugs will interact with various molecules in the human body.
Now imagine a program smarter than a human with those types of algorithms. How fast could it find chemicals that can just eradicate all sorts of diseases? Pretty goddamn fast I'd wager. Hell the system as it is now is already pumping out cures.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
That's what gets me excited about the Singularity more than anything, the positive effect on human health it will have.
All the "RESISTANCE IS ILLOGICAL YOU WILL BE UPGRADED" type stuff is just for fun.
I do think if AI surpasses human intellect that our lives will be much better for it though. Mainly because those computers will be cranking out badass solutions to shit like cancer within 5 years, if not less, of their invention.
Hell those fellas that just got a Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year got it because they came up with a badass program that analyzes molecular structures such as proteins both quantumly and through traditional models simultaneously, allowing them to predict how shit like new drugs will interact with various molecules in the human body.
Now imagine a program smarter than a human with those types of algorithms. How fast could it find chemicals that can just eradicate all sorts of diseases? Pretty goddamn fast I'd wager. Hell the system as it is now is already pumping out cures.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
That's what gets me excited about the Singularity more than anything, the positive effect on human health it will have.
All the "RESISTANCE IS ILLOGICAL YOU WILL BE UPGRADED" type stuff is just for fun.
TrollfaceDeux
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iannis
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iannis
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My argument being that the singularity will kill us all!
Honestly though my money is on Wintermute. I think Gibson got that part exactly right. They will be these bizzare, esoteric entities that interact with humanity on some crass level but for the most part are simply a permanent, definitional, otherness.
Honestly though my money is on Wintermute. I think Gibson got that part exactly right. They will be these bizzare, esoteric entities that interact with humanity on some crass level but for the most part are simply a permanent, definitional, otherness.
Big Phoenix
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Whats to know? Marx was a fucking idiot and those who are of his school are even bigger idiots.
It's not gonna happen in our generation, your kid's generation, likely not even in your kids' kids generation. I've said it before, this is why reading excerpts of Marx is so dangerous and misleading: you don't get the full picture of what he's trying to say. When you read him describing communism, the whole theory regarding the processes of production changing man's social relations is ignored, so you're thinking he's saying something like 'well he wants to take my family's farm away from me and give it to the bum down the street.' because that's the social relations you exist in at this moment in history, in capitalism.
The wiki says it very clearly:
the tl:dr version of my long posts before is that, under communism, these relationships areno longer forced. There's isn't an 'owner of a farm' who enters into a relationship with an 'employee on the farm'. Communism is all about free association (i.e., not forced), so your family won't enter into social relations as 'a family that owns a a farm and sells farm products'.Relations of Production_sl said:
I don't know what the social relationships will be. That no one can answer. A feudal lord couldn't have predicted that he'd be usurped by something called a capitalist. But as productive forces change, so does society and the roles in it.
hodj
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I can't recall the last time I was forced to work anywhere without it being of my choosing. Certainly I've never been forced, against my will, to work on a farm. How do we not have free association now? What magic act of Capitalism removes our free association when I walk into a place and ask for a job and the owner decides whether to hire me or not? I can leave when I desire. He can fire me if we aren't getting along. How is this not free association?
I want SPECIFICS. Not specious "Well because capitalism owners ownership capitalism master slave relationship" nonsense. I want a specific mechanism of capitalism that strips away the free association nature of the owner/wage laborer relationship that would not exist under your theoretical framework society.
Duh? It's called capital, which replaces as an intermediary other historical relationships that were the same thing (i.e., instead of a slave to a master, we now have a worker to an owner with something called capital in-between: the exploitation still occurs). Seea Character Mask:
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