Could Darwin have forseen the Ape Hitler ?

[SwiftSpear]

So thermonuclear BombBlueprints for everyone ? Or first find a DefensiveSystem to get Rockets down, when your distributed Information Backfires ? Sorry, im just a partime free information flow enthusiastic - a certainly good thing if sb poor can learn all the stuff in the wiki for free... however it is questionable if some of the dangerous stuff gets freely distributed, without a antidot around the world, or ?



Thx for all the Anwsers Pic

IMO it's a sign of a weak sociaty that we have to fear information. If one person, with only the power of information, can seriously damage or overthrow sociaty, then sociaty isn't worth defending in the first place.

[smoth]

Information should be free. THe more we all learn the sooner I can has my own zaku! Mechs r reelisstik!

[SinbadEV]

Information should be free. THe more we all learn the sooner I can has my own zaku! Mechs r reelisstik!

And the sooner all information, research and technology becomes completely free the sooner everyone's job can be done by a computer and we can all become philosophers.

[Comp1337]

Sitting around watching anime and fapping all day
the future is awesome
wait, im in the future already?

[SpikedHelmet]

The whole arguement that "without incentive there will be no progress" is an idiot's joke.

[Zpock]

The whole arguement that "without incentive there will be no progress" is an idiot's joke.

This is really huge epic truth.

Say one true great artist or scientist who got/was/died rich.

[SwiftSpear]

The whole arguement that "without incentive there will be no progress" is an idiot's joke.

This is really huge epic truth.

Say one true great artist or scientist who got/was/died rich.

Attacking that argument on the basis of the word "no" isn't really a good counter argument.

I can just resize to say "without incentive there will be much less progress". Not quite as powerful a statement, but one counter example no longer invalidates my point, it's just a statistical anomaly.

Do you really believe that a zero incentive sociaty would be better off? I mean, I personally would probably still be ok... but I'm not so naive to believe that it would apply to everyone. There's a good 5% of the total population that is born nearly completely sociopathic from birth, and it's not that those people are bad, but without incentive they won't do much aside from mope. A healthy society learns to use every member for some good.

[Saktoth]

The whole arguement that "without incentive there will be no progress" is an idiot's joke.

This is really huge epic truth.

Say one true great artist or scientist who got/was/died rich.

Artists is so easy! Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, etc etc etc.

As for scientists- there are the Thomas Edisons of the world, as well as popular science authors (Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking). The first type makes its money from patents (IP) and the other from writing (IP).

But there are plenty of scientists out there who can devote their lives to science and make a living from it, be it in academia or in private research. Its about giving people enough to live on in exchange for the information they produce. I know a lot of the content creators and developers for spring probably work a day job and do this in their free time. Personally, im on a disability pension which is the only reason i can do any of this. Its a testament to human charity and our desire to create art for its own sake, but wouldnt you like to work on this full-time and be paid for it, if you could? Not so you can drive a ferrari and have paid vacations in tuscany, but just to live comfortably?

Of course we could all go socialist and have the government fund everything through grants and what have you, but again, do you trust your government to control your information? Do you trust the people being given all this money to create something worthwhile? Or will it all be like soviet-sponsored art?

While i do find the general idea of restricting information repellent, i also find the idea that only actions with material benefits are worthwhile persuits to be equally repellent. I simply do not think artistic or intellectual endeavour should be relegated to a 'hobby', something to do in between the 'important stuff'.

[SwiftSpear]

Sak: Hence the problem... if people's "hobbies" are to be made valuable... we need a sociaty in which you can survive off your hobbies without being forced to sell them.

Sure, there's the occasional project developer who is just so influential his shit gets covered by someone no matter what (Linus Torvel) or the occasional project that someone nice and rich likes so much they will donate enough to see it through even if it makes them no money in the end result, but on a whole, this sociaty blows ass at supporting anyone who works for the good of sociaty without forcefully taking something back.

[Saktoth]

Hrrrm. I had to read that twice, but i think what you are saying is that if we reward information purely by utility, by its salability, then we reward the wrong sort of information? We reward what sells, over what enriches and improves society and peoples lives? We reward marketers, over inspired scientists and passionate artists?

Certainly, a lot of crap sells, but its obviously what people want. Who are we to tell them its trash? They'd ignore us if we did. Trashy ideas and trashy culture lowest-common-denominator me-too rubbish.

Then you get the other end of the spectrum. A lot of what the government sponsors in art is 'classical' art and music. High brow, wine and cheese affairs. Rarely innovative, fresh or new. Its more preserving 500 year old paintings and doing concerts of 300 year old symphonies. The same can probably be said of science- it can be hard to get funding to research a truly innovative, controversial idea. At least popular culture, no matter how trashy it may be, is constantly inventing something new.

Finally you have the really cutting edge artists, who put poop on a wall and call it genius and make millions from cynical investors who buy it and pay through the nose for it only because other people might want to also buy it and pay through the nose for it because people are buying this artist and paying through the nose for it (Really, its an absurd system, the value is created almost entirely through investment, like the stockmarket and rarely through the arts merits).

I agree that we cant only reward the things that sell, as thats often not what artists/scientists want to do anyway (But at least it lets them practice what they enjoy and make a living from it while honing their skills). I also dont think we can rely on government grants, as i dont trust my government to not work in their interests, rather than mine. And sponsorship of artists to simply do whatever they please will lead to people making all sorts of crap (literally and figuratively) and calling it genius just so they can bum around and make money off it.

I think you sort of need something in the middle, that fosters a certain amount of respect for what the public desires, an amount of conservation of what has historically been popular, and an amount of free-form wild innovation. Which is, i guess, what we have?

Damnit. Whenever i examine societal issues this is always what i come to. 'No particular strategy is best, we need to employ all of them'. The difference, i guess, is the degrees to which you employ one over another.

[Zpock]

The only scientists/artists who make a lot of money are the one's who are/was also good at playing the system in addition, having good financial acumen etc. The stereotypical artist dies poor and then people who are good at capitalism start making fortunes off his work. Of course, this is pretty much how it always been and will always be probably, whatever system the ones who know how to work it will benefit the most after all. I don't think it's that bad, a real pure scientist/artist doesn't give a damn about ephermal money/power anyway, they have a shot at making history. I also think the art/science itself is it's own reward and the true reason why people do it, they actually like to do it.

Consider for example, if patents were removed, you would still have innovation going, only the people who think they can make the best practical use of the innovations will be the ones paying the innovator (a normal salary, just like you would get today anyway, working as a scientist or whatever). You don't get that "poor guy comes up with something new amazing so that he can make billions of $$$", but I consider that a pretty naive thing to believe in happening anyway.

With the developments of information technology some new form of communism or whatever new system might work much better. Capitalism will probably lead to super-corporations that start running everything and overthrow the governments and stuff, I believe. Ai that distributes resources?

[SwiftSpear]

Hrrrm. I had to read that twice, but i think what you are saying is that if we reward information purely by utility, by its salability, then we reward the wrong sort of information? We reward what sells, over what enriches and improves society and peoples lives? We reward marketers, over inspired scientists and passionate artists?

Certainly, a lot of crap sells, but its obviously what people want. Who are we to tell them its trash? They'd ignore us if we did. Trashy ideas and trashy culture lowest-common-denominator me-too rubbish.

Then you get the other end of the spectrum. A lot of what the government sponsors in art is 'classical' art and music. High brow, wine and cheese affairs. Rarely innovative, fresh or new. Its more preserving 500 year old paintings and doing concerts of 300 year old symphonies. The same can probably be said of science- it can be hard to get funding to research a truly innovative, controversial idea. At least popular culture, no matter how trashy it may be, is constantly inventing something new.

Finally you have the really cutting edge artists, who put poop on a wall and call it genius and make millions from cynical investors who buy it and pay through the nose for it only because other people might want to also buy it and pay through the nose for it because people are buying this artist and paying through the nose for it (Really, its an absurd system, the value is created almost entirely through investment, like the stockmarket and rarely through the arts merits).

I agree that we cant only reward the things that sell, as thats often not what artists/scientists want to do anyway (But at least it lets them practice what they enjoy and make a living from it while honing their skills). I also dont think we can rely on government grants, as i dont trust my government to not work in their interests, rather than mine. And sponsorship of artists to simply do whatever they please will lead to people making all sorts of crap (literally and figuratively) and calling it genius just so they can bum around and make money off it.

I think you sort of need something in the middle, that fosters a certain amount of respect for what the public desires, an amount of conservation of what has historically been popular, and an amount of free-form wild innovation. Which is, i guess, what we have?

Damnit. Whenever i examine societal issues this is always what i come to. 'No particular strategy is best, we need to employ all of them'. The difference, i guess, is the degrees to which you employ one over another.

I can appreciate your point... however it breaks as soon as we consider the fact that information content is now virtually free to copy in today's world. If I make something good in real life, and I want to give it to someone, then I sell it to them, because once they take it I no longer have it. If I paint a painting and sell it, then I no longer possess the painting. However, if I digitally paint a virtual piece, and I give it to someone, 2 things are fundimentally different.

A: I no longer lose the origional source
B: I can give it to as many other people as I want for no additional cost.

Simply put the capitalist market isn't designed to deal with that, it's rightfulness is built on the assumption that if I give a good to someone, that it was worth what was paid for it. If I could produce an infinite amount of food using the same amount of resources as it takes to produce a single item of food would it be ethical to set a price on that product and allow people to starve because they can't pay?

Now at the fringes I can somewhat appreciate the case of intellectual property as a concept. I mean, so if an artist produces a digital painting or piece of music I shouldn't expect to be able to get it for free just because there is zero cost to reproduce it. Ultimately I'm not going to die because I didn't pay for this product. I'm just choosing to not spend my money on X entertainment as opposed to Y entertainment. However, this case falls apart when we consider what exactly the specification of intellectual property can pertain to. If I write a high quality piece of software to aid teachers running online courses educate students more efficiently, imagine a case where there is a school that can't afford $50 a license, or in the case of most microsoft software we're leaning more towards $200 dollars a license. There is absolutely ZERO cost to me to allow those people the ability to download, use, and modify my software if need be, every bit of work I was going to do was already done the moment the software was finished, yet I arbitrarily withhold my goods and services simply for personal profit. There is no ethical grounds by which I can defend that, the richness of the whole of sociaty should always be a bigger goal in sociaty than the personal profit of the individual. If that's not the case why not allow rapists to rape because it's fun? Why not allow murders to murder because it's fun? Society must defend sociaty first and the individual second. We have a system where the copying and distributing of an immeasurably valuable commodity is completely and utterly free. Yet there is absolutely NO incentive for creators of said content to acctually allow their works to be shared in sociaty free of cost.

Going back to what I said before. I don't believe a sociaty without incentive is plausible... That's why things are so broken right now, we're creating large incentive for people to do what really can only be described as evil, with absolutely no real incentive for them to do the good and right thing.

Now there will always be some Linus Torvels, Charles Darwins, and Galileos in the world, who will do their best to contribute to sociaty in ways that are righteous, even if everyone in the world thinks they are an asshole for doing it. But realistically... that still doesn't make it any less of a fucking backwards system.