Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, October 10, 2016

Change Election

People who want "change" without any risk or cost to themselves, without any interrogation of their assumptions don't want change.

2 comments:

jimf said...

> People who want "change" without any risk or cost to themselves. . .

. . . need to start praying to the Great Programmer in the Sky
to adjust some o' those simulation parameters.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/10/12/silicon-valley-creationists/
-------------
There’s a wave of irrationality sweeping through the
over-privileged, ridiculously wealthy world of coddled
millionaires and billionaires of Silicon Valley. Some
of them seem to think The Matrix was a documentary,
and that we’re code living in a simulation, so they
like to get together and wank over this idea. . .
====

via
http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/151702093623/silicon-valley-creationists
-------------
. . .in which a developmental biologist is flabbergasted
at the blatantly pseudoscientific bullshit that appears
to be riding with the simulation hypothesis. “I think there
must be some scientists somewhere who are milking a couple
of gullible billionaires out of their cash.“
====

jimf said...

> People who want "change". . .

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix
-------------
Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's
more likely than not

A swath of technologists and physicists believe that
‘simulation theory’ will be proved, just as it was proved
that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

Olivia Solon in San Francisco [where else?]
Tuesday 11 October 2016

When Elon Musk isn’t outlining plans to use his massive
rocket [ooh!] to leave a decaying Planet Earth and
colonize Mars, he sometimes talks about his belief that
Earth isn’t even real and we probably live in a computer
simulation.

“There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in
base reality,” he said at a conference in June. . .

According to this week’s New Yorker profile of
Y Combinator venture capitalist Sam Altman, there
are two tech billionaires secretly engaging scientists
to work on breaking us out of the simulation. . .
====

Why am I reminded here of the story of Nasruddin and
the Shah's ass?

"Breaking out of the simulation" (or at least breaking out
of a lower level into a higher one) actually happened in
the 60's novel _Simulacron-3_.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron-3

I don't think it entailed any massive rockets, though. ;->