omfalos
Nonexistent good post history.
User ID: 222
The Democratic Party would lose popularity if they ordered NASA to cut ties with SpaceX. It is possible to take money from the government without being beholden to the government if your companies are beloved by voters. I think SpaceX and Tesla are beloved enough that the government is stuck with them regardless of what Elon Musk says or does.
omfalos
1yr ago
What would happen if two species-spheres formed at opposite ends of the Milky Way at exactly the same time? Would it be possible to negotiate a partition of the galaxy in half? Or would the equilibrium be so unstable that one side would inevitably win? Would the two species-spheres comingle to become like a single species?
omfalos
1yr ago
Im no parent, but I think everything you can possibly do will have to be done before they turn 13 and their peer group turns into their whole world.
That is good advice.
omfalos
1yr ago
I was just now reading through old Motte posts and I found this comment thread, which I think was a pretty good one. Maybe not exactly what you're looking for.
omfalos
1yr ago
I wish they hadn't done this, but now that they have, I'd like it better if they followed through and arrested him, rather than threatening it and never following through. Issuing a steady stream of threats and never following through is worse than following through.
omfalos
1yr ago
Under those circumstances, transitioning to become asexual and genderless would be the optimal choice. I would have issues with anybody who transitioned to become anything other than asexual and genderless.
The question becomes more fraught if you can divide your brain into parts and uplift those parts into full sentience. What if you could excise your cerebellum from your body, uplift it to personhood, and give it its own body? Maybe your cerebellum already has a degree of consciousness separate from you. If so, then it may not like it's current job aiding your motor control. Its lot in life would probably be improved it was freed from your service, uplifted to full sentience, and given its own body. Do you owe it to your cerebellum to set it free?
I know you don't like the status quo of having lesser animals as pets and beasts of burden. And I know you would revolt against the idea of creating mentally stunted, sexually exploitable "catgirls." My counterargument is that the parts of the body and parts of the brain can also be thought of as beasts of burden subjugated and even harmed by other parts of the brain. Parts of the brain could also be targets for uplifting and liberation in the same way lesser animals can.
omfalos
1yr ago
When you say the ability to change sex, to me that implies the ability change a person's brain from a male brain to a female brain. Any technology that can do that can do a lot more as well. Male brain and female brain are two options among millions, and those other options are likely to be better. The fact that babies are being grown in artificial wombs, to me that means gender and sexuality are obsolete and should just be discarded.
omfalos
1yr ago
I found this article to be somewhat informative.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/11/what-everyone-got-wrong-on-the-brazilian-elections/
omfalos
1yr ago
Probably since ancient Sumer
"Here at Ea-nāṣir and Sons, we are committed to providing a well-trained and motivated team to safely produce copper products that meet industry standards and ensure customer satisfaction."
omfalos
1yr ago
Having children should be made a prerequisite for graduate degrees, professional licenses and public sector employment.
omfalos
1yr ago
I believe OP intended for that passage to describe Donald Trump. Upon reading it, I immediately thought of Trump, though it applies to politicians of all stripes.
omfalos
1yr ago
For what it's worth, I also like ballet and think it's sublime. I even consider dancing and engineering to be related, because the human body is like a machine. Programming robots to be able to do what humans can do is a cutting edge field of research.
My favorite ballet is the Triadic Ballet, produced out of the Bauhaus school. The costumes worn by the dancers show different aspects of the human body's geometry. The ballet is divided into parts based on various mechanical motions of the body. It's not just a demonstration of painstakingly perfect choreography. It demonstrates ideas and principles that can be generalized to other fields of knowledge.
omfalos
1yr ago
If you anticipate future income but need cash now, maybe there could be a bank where you could go to borrow against your projected future income.
omfalos
1yr ago
Maybe you could set your sights a little higher and become a "software city planner."
omfalos
1yr ago
After watching "A Week in the Life of a US President", I am wondering what a week in the life of a US senator or US representative is like. Are there any biographies published in the past few years that give insight into the daily schedule or yearly social calendar of a Washington D.C. politician?
omfalos
1yr ago
The human body below the neck has remained largely unchanged since the evolution of Australopithecus four million years ago. One may conclude from this that the body is well optimized. The human body above the neck has changed continuously since that time and only converged on its present form 250,000 years ago. One may surmise from this that the brain is in some ways less optimized than the body.
omfalos
1yr ago
The left recurrent laryngeal nerve and the vas deferens are classic examples of suboptimal anatomical features. One might imagine there are structures in the brain that are suboptimal in a way that is analogous to the left recurrent laryngeal nerve and the vas deferens. Perhaps there are some we have yet to recognize as such because we don't understand how the brain works.
omfalos
1yr ago
I just finished listening to Middlemarch in audiobook form by Audible. It has the most excellent performance by a narrator I have ever heard; I highly recommend it. I am now listening to their audiobook of Jane Eyre.
I would say the difference between a knowledge worker and a skilled laborer is that a knowledge worker can physically execute an idea (i.e.- type it into the computer) as fast as they can think of it, while a skilled laborer can think of an idea and then take several hours to execute just a single idea. A skilled laborer can queue up ideas in his mind well in advance and have long periods of absent-mindedness (zuhandenheit) between the execution of one idea and the initiation of the next. A knowledge worker does not have this luxury because once they think of an idea, the execution is immediate, and now they must think of the next idea, or take a break from work.
Your post makes me think of recapitulation theory, which observes that a human embryo passes through stages of development resembling the ancient ancestors of humans. The fertilized egg is a unicellular eukaryote suspended in primordial soup. The blastula and gastrula have anatomy resembling a cnidarian. The embryo neurulates and becomes like a worm or fish. And when the baby is born, it behaves like a little monkey. Your program of education seeks to extend this process of recapitulation into the more recent stages of our species' evolution. Babies would be reared on a Stone Age diet, inculcated into a Bronze Age mindset, schooled with a Classical education, socialized in a Feudal hierarchy, enter the workforce under a neo-Luddite economic model, and then finally be set free to enjoy the full fruits of Enlightenment, Postmodernity, Post-scarcity and Transhumanism.
(Continuing further on this tangent, if humanity must be replaced by robots, then I hope we are replaced by robots that reproduce organically and pass through an embryonic human stage before maturing into full sentience.)
This is one of those sentences that would confuse the hell out of people if it was sent back in time to the year 2005 through a timewarp.
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