[onlooker]

Sorry, I think I will always be humored by this eccentric perspective.

[Hawkcreek]

To understand KJ you need to remember he believes in AI, robotics and the Singularity. So The Biggest Change has already arrived, we are on the road Godhood

I can't blame him for any of that, since I believe that what we think of as our reality, exists in fact, as part of an already virtual reality.
It is the only thing that makes sense to me.
So we should all pay homage to the great Admin.
If you don't, you could find yourself in a recursive string of bad marriages and divorces - commonly known as Hell.

[Hawkcreek]

All just part of the program. One thing happening causes another thing to happen.

[onlooker]

All just part of the program. One thing happening causes another thing to happen.

So who created the Programmers/Administrators?

[Newfie]

KJ et al,

That's my point. WE are the 1%.

Wealth wise but not power wise

Well then how DO you define the 1%?

A while ago we had a TPTB thread. I argued there that they really don't exist, not in any cohesive fashion. I think this is a rehash.

[Newfie]

As if the 1% had more than 1% of the votes.

It's easier to believe in and blame endless conspiracy theories than take personal responsibility.

If you don't believe that the 1% own more than 1% of the votes in the house, senate, and executive branch, you haven't even been looking, or thinking.
It's the peons fault, because they didn't vote .....hah! If they would have voted for the other guy or girl, it would have all been ok. Sure.

So then you are saying democracy is a failure because the average guy is too dumb to make good choices?

[Hawkcreek]

All just part of the program. One thing happening causes another thing to happen.

So who created the Programmers/Administrators?

Simple, its turtles all the way down.

I'm not sure about the turtles, but if an entity came to consciousness in the middle of emptiness, in my opinion he would go bug-f**k crazy from the isolation. Maybe go crazy, and come back from it for a million bazillion times. If you wanted to stop going crazy, he might create a virtual universe, just to observe and be entertained. The universe might be created starting with simple rules about interactions between elementary virtual particles. If he wanted to "experience" the results of his virtual universe, he might modify the rules to develop consciousness. The sense of "I" embodied in these conscious creatures would be the programmers will, each and every one the same. The observer in each of us is the programmer, trying to experience all of his universe. Each of the paths possible for all creatures to follow would lead to another set of decision trees. Each decision another page of the book. Each page another experience, totally independent of the construct we call time.
Or god might have just said, let there be light.
But I think my version is more logical.
And there are some scientists that seem to agree with me.

[Hawkcreek]

As if the 1% had more than 1% of the votes.

It's easier to believe in and blame endless conspiracy theories than take personal responsibility.

If you don't believe that the 1% own more than 1% of the votes in the house, senate, and executive branch, you haven't even been looking, or thinking.
It's the peons fault, because they didn't vote .....hah! If they would have voted for the other guy or girl, it would have all been ok. Sure.

So then you are saying democracy is a failure because the average guy is too dumb to make good choices?

Nope, not saying anything like that. I'm saying that there is a pipeline of candidates in place in the major parties that know their path to power is through obeying the dictates of the elite.
A vote for either of the candidates in major elections accomplishes nothing except make you think you have some control.

[Newfie]

Then how is that not a damnation of democracy? Maybe not through populace stupidity but because the populace can never have a good choice in candidates?

[Cog]

Why would we want to elect those who are woefully inadequate to the task at hand? A plumber might do a swell job at swabbing out a pipe but he is not someone I want running Treasury. The fact that the 1% run things in politics is a feature not a bug.

[onlooker]

Then how is that not a damnation of democracy? ---We have a Plutocracy. We have probably had it for much of our history. Cog, politicians excel at acting. Other than that, I see no personal virtuous attributes in them

[Ibon]

Then how is that not a damnation of democracy? Maybe not through populace stupidity but because the populace can never have a good choice in candidates?

A bit of wandering on workers day.... May 1st, something most Americans don't realize that most of the world today is celebrating.

I guess first of all democracy is an ideal and no economic/political system will ever approach the ideal of what it proposes. So imperfection is always there especially for reasons we are outlining here, that regardless of the party or system there will always be an elite.

In that way what Cog says is also true, it is a feature of civilization and not a bug.

Just think of all the attempts at creating an egalitarian system from socialism to intentional communities to communes in the 70s to religious movements. They also all represent and ideal that always manifest imperfectly. So does democracy. Or socialism and the failures we have witnessed due to the ever present elite. Some Scandanavian manifestations perhaps represent an exception.

Isn't this expectation of an ideal in and of itself part of the entitlement of opulence? That expectation puts us all in the 1% actually.

If you want integrity in a population take away the opulence. Our species does not do well with abundance. We evolved honing our hunting and social skills butting up against constraints. That is actually the norm for our species. Not what we have now.

I often think that we all suffer from a type of nostalgia where we have in our collective memories the times when we lived with constraints. In spite of hunger, pandemics, wars, hardships these were and are and will always be the default when we are most at ease and content. This is the garden of eden we left behind. Living in an environment of uncertainty.

This applies both to our biological evolution and our psychological well being. Let's take an example from our biological evolution. It seems counter intuitive but actually disease and sickness is what has made us so resilient. There is a good book that digs into this.

The Survival of the Sickest

https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Sickest ... 0060889667

Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth. Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes.

Disease is not something to fight against but to embrace as something that strengthens us as a species.

The same can be said of constraints.

Psychologically when the external is satiated with abundance we become indolent, gluttonous, yield to addiction, an abundant civilization breeds an elite that swell to extremes. Look at the greatest misallocation of resources the planet has ever known. Yes I am talking about the global middle class, not the elite, the global middle class is actually part of the elite for all practical purposes. And there is not much happiness to be found once this socio-economic class matures, in fact what you find mostly is obesity and addiction and social isolation.

I am rambling a bit but actually staying true to a theme that the consequences of human overshoot that many of you think will be hell will be actually taking us back to the norm where we do best both biologically and psychologically, thriving under constraints.

Hell is what we will leave behind. Yeah, that's it.

[Hawkcreek]

Then how is that not a damnation of democracy? Maybe not through populace stupidity but because the populace can never have a good choice in candidates?

The idea of democracy works just fine. Everybody should get some voice in the decisions that affect us. The implementation is what gets screwed up. The most influential are able to slowly change the system to allow themselves and their cronies advantage over the least influential. Even something as simple as gerrymandering can distort the lines between a fair vote and oligarchy. When you throw in things like unlimited corporate lobbyist access and funding to politicians, you are finished.
Regulation could easily cure the disease, but you can not find enough members of the elite who are willing to regulate themselves.
Democracy is kind of like capitalism, both are great when properly regulated, but both become tools of the elite when unregulated.

[Newfie]

Why would we want to elect those who are woefully inadequate to the task at hand? A plumber might do a swell job at swabbing out a pipe but he is not someone I want running Treasury. The fact that the 1% run things in politics is a feature not a bug.

I'm delighted to hear you have been so happy with the leadership we had for the past 8 years.

[Newfie]

Then how is that not a damnation of democracy? Maybe not through populace stupidity but because the populace can never have a good choice in candidates?

The idea of democracy works just fine. Everybody should get some voice in the decisions that affect us. The implementation is what gets screwed up. The most influential are able to slowly change the system to allow themselves and their cronies advantage over the least influential. Even something as simple as gerrymandering can distort the lines between a fair vote and oligarchy. When you throw in things like unlimited corporate lobbyist access and funding to politicians, you are finished.
Regulation could easily cure the disease, but you can not find enough members of the elite who are willing to regulate themselves.
Democracy is kind of like capitalism, both are great when properly regulated, but both become tools of the elite when unregulated.

So you like democracy, just not the democracy we have? Or are you saying we don't have a democracy.

[Cog]

Why would we want to elect those who are woefully inadequate to the task at hand? A plumber might do a swell job at swabbing out a pipe but he is not someone I want running Treasury. The fact that the 1% run things in politics is a feature not a bug.

I'm delighted to hear you have been so happy with the leadership we had for the past 8 years.

Am I better off financially with Obama? Well yes I am. The stock market has done well. Am I better off with personal freedom under Obama, then NO I am not.

[Newfie]

then I take it sounds would have been satisfied had Hillary won?

[Cog]

then I take it sounds would have been satisfied had Hillary won?

Would my guns rights have been safe? Would she have invited a boatload of Islamic refugees to come in? Would she have appointed Gorsuch to the Supreme Court?

Within the small circle of things, outside my financial well-being, are things that make a difference to me come voting time. Not all 1%'ers are created exactly equal.

[Newfie]

The points I'm trying to get across with my annoying questions are:

We don't really have a democracy, you need a bunch of money to participate
Having money does not mean you are fit to govern
The pool of candidates we have is pretty lame, a lot of broken people there

I don't have a good alternative to our government. My observation is that despite our Lamentations to the contrary, we seem to be drawn to some kind of feudalisim. Left to our own devices it's what we want as a species.

Listen to what a man says, but closely observe where he walks, uou will find his heart there.