I am back, or so I hope, and my new sequence of talks is labeled “follow the white rabbit”. This sequence of talks will be weekly, on Sundays (like before) and it will host the Transhuman Separatist ethic, with a gentle “Zeitgeist” undercurrent (but also Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, Copyleft, Culture Jamming, Provo, ANON endorsement and that sort of stuff) . Howewver (and Ivy, do remind me, I will try and no longer constantly hammer the same trump card – Ivy remind us all eventually which trump card!)

The topics will be – how do we leverage emerging technologies shy of the Singularity to prosper. How do we give a big fat finger (how do we declare out independence and show our disdain) to the corporate and money elites, to the retarded and genetically underachieving underclasses, and to the big autistic government machines. I will purposefully try and make these talks transcend the paralyzing and nonconstructive left-right polarity. I am fed up with camps and trench wars.

How can we break the stalemate? UPWING! By using and exploiting biotech, gene splicing, internets, social engineering, robotics, microbotics, 3D printing, recycling, alternative energies, seaports, nanotechnology, tax havens, memetics, virtual reality, piracy, augmented reality and who knows what else – and smashing the current screwed up world to pieces (without resorting to ‘crimes’ or ‘violence’) because, hey, we don’t really prosper much here right now yes? I mean, what do we have to lose?

For today please have a look at these publications. I will be focusing strictly and as much exclusively as possible on the conclusions and ideas of Marshall Brain. Where is he wrong, where is he right, and what can we take away from his contribution?

Robotic Nation
Robotic Freedom
Manna
The day you discard your body

Todays sequence of events in Second Life will be :
Serendipity – Fulfillment – 09:30- 11:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about 90 minutes)
Bryce – Ideas of Things to Come – 11:00 – 12:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about an hour)
Khannea – FTWR – 12:00 -13:30 AM SLT (lasts generally 90 minutes)

Sunday
April 3

White Rabbit SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/delinquent/160/192/503

Special guest this time: Teh Rachel Haywire. She won’t show up, but still. I am, trying. Note that I did not post this event the first time since the estate is owned by Ivy, and I do not have the group/estate rights to call events in that land yet.

Chatlog
Again, no Rachel. One wonders where she is?

[11:56:58] Dixit Writer: Hello =)
[11:58:16] Dixit Writer: lol
[11:59:09] Khannea Suntzu: I have barely done SL.. MY meat server is wading through all this turbulence.
[11:59:19] Khannea Suntzu: It’s unprecedented
[11:59:36] Franja Russell: Hi.
[11:59:42] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Once upon a time, I would spend upwards of a week at a time without logging out – though *I* might not have been behind the keyboard.
[11:59:51] Khannea Suntzu: Well looks like a full house today, yum!
[12:00:30] Franja Russell: I hope I didn’t end up standing on someone.
[12:00:36] Khannea Suntzu: Ok one detail.. my title is a little odd maybe but thats becayuse this land is owned by Ivy and she occasionally has stray men masturbate in my mouth.
[12:00:43] Franja Russell: Whoops. Sorry Khannea.
[12:00:56] Ivy Sunkiller: haha
[12:01:00] Khannea Suntzu: Welcome to the second installment of “follow the white rabbit”, a sequence of second life based talks about the next decades, speculating on the following premises
[12:01:01] Ivy Sunkiller: hello Atari
[12:01:10] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Ivy, everyone 🙂
[12:01:38] Khannea Suntzu: Y’all settled in? Then I am off for a flying start!
[12:01:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): nice landing, bryce! 🙂
[12:02:04] Khannea Suntzu: Um Mistress… some chairs
[12:02:15] Ivy Sunkiller: yus
[12:02:22] Bryce Galbraith: Hi all 🙂
[12:02:29] Ivy Sunkiller: I had white chairs 😛
[12:02:33] Alena Rosenstar: Hello
[12:02:35] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Rehi Bryce 🙂
[12:03:46] Khannea Suntzu: Mhurr
[12:03:55] Ivy Sunkiller: well, that should do it
[12:03:57] Xeno Octavia: TY Bryce
[12:04:01] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Whee!
[12:04:04] Khannea Suntzu: (1) we are sure there will be negative causators in the next decades. Thes enagative causators are known, but it’s impossible to talk about them in detail, since they have become ideologized. Among them are pension crisis, credit crisis, peak oil, climate collapse, disparity, military overextension, dollar collapse, food crisis, general unsustainability, awful educational systems miserable and unaccountable governnment apparatuses, cancerous corporatization, a culture of unsustainable entitlements, overpopulation and a lor more besides.
[12:04:07] Bryce Galbraith: you’re welcome Xeno 🙂
[12:04:07] Xeno Octavia: hi Franja
[12:04:12] Bryce Galbraith: Hey Amandeep 🙂
[12:04:16] Franja Russell: Hi Xeno.
[12:04:20] Franja Russell: Hi Everybody.
[12:04:26] Xeno Octavia: hi again Aman
[12:04:26] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Franja
[12:04:30] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Franza
[12:04:34] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): re hi to everyone
[12:04:34] Ivy Sunkiller: you can click the egg chairs to change pose
[12:04:41] Xeno Octavia: an hi Gilles : ))
[12:04:49] Khannea Suntzu: So that is the dangerous shit in the next few decades right? Might not be all that bad… but all at once? Could get evil.
[12:04:53] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Gilles
[12:04:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): can drop climate collapse. not happening anytime soon
[12:05:10] Khannea Suntzu: What did I say? Ideology.
[12:05:14] Khannea Suntzu: Anyone, feel free to list a few additional negative causators for the next TWO decades.
[12:05:34] Seren (serendipity.seraph): not ideological on that. simple fact of the median of all current scientific models on climate
[12:05:35] Xeno Octavia: wow Bryce almost all moved from ur place
[12:05:50] Gilles Kuhn: Hoooooowls!!
[12:05:50] Bryce Galbraith: It’s one big roving party Xeno 🙂
[12:06:06] Bryce Galbraith: started at Fulfillment this morning…
[12:06:09] Khannea Suntzu: A minor increase ikn tropical storms will move tens of millions of people, Seren, but I am not going to explore this debate now.
[12:06:10] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): It’s nice how we shift from optimism to pessimism
[12:06:14] Amandeep Timeless: en masse debaters
[12:06:25] Khannea Suntzu: (2) we are also sure to experience a sequence of positive, but no less destabilizing causators, among which a massive robotics and automations revolutions, a nanotechnology revolution, maybe a fusion or thorium infrastructural upheaval, maybe an alkternative energy revolution, some massive changes wrought by biomedical progress, a fair chance we’ll see some strides forward in life extension, certainly more chaos wrought by internet, augmented realitym virtual reality, cloud computing, the emergence of hard and increasingly general artificial intelligence and many things besides. Probably not space industrialization, but who knows?
[12:06:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that is not “collapse” but okies. plenty of other fish to fry..
[12:07:01] Xeno Octavia: collapsed in my FL went from 82 degrees yester down ta 36 now–sofar
[12:07:01] Khannea Suntzu: Note that positive causators are still perfectly able to wreck your economic equilibrium.
[12:07:21] Tara Li (tarali.jie): *nods* Ask the whip and buggy makers.
[12:07:26] Khannea Suntzu: Anyone, feel free to list a few additional positive causators for the next two decades.
[12:07:29] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Grath!
[12:07:33] Khannea Suntzu: Anyone?
[12:07:38] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Grath!
[12:07:44] Xeno Octavia whispers: is that CIA Tara??
[12:07:46] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Grath
[12:07:49] Seren (serendipity.seraph): thorium build out would be the best thing ever. not exactly a negative
[12:07:55] Metafire Horsley: DIY 3d printing will be cool
[12:08:00] Seren (serendipity.seraph): so would fusion if we ever got it
[12:08:03] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Nano-particle technology.
[12:08:12] Tara Li (tarali.jie): You’ve seen the RepRap, Metafire?
[12:08:12] Xeno Octavia: hi hi Grath
[12:08:19] Metafire Horsley: yep
[12:08:26] Khannea Suntzu: Oh yes Thorium would be hopefull UNLESS only the Chinese have it and Greenpeace calls the shots where you live
[12:08:29] Metafire Horsley: And the CandyFab 🙂
[12:08:32] Bryce Galbraith: Khannea — new food sources maybe?
[12:08:36] Tara Li (tarali.jie): DIY 3D printing is well on its way.
[12:08:39] Khannea Suntzu: Like what Bryce?
[12:08:44] Seren (serendipity.seraph): change is very very good if positive. we must have change to deal with the problems on the negative side and soon, yes?
[12:08:46] Khannea Suntzu: Soylent Pink?
[12:08:51] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): New food sources…what do you mean, Bryce?
[12:08:51] Grath Helgerud: sorry rezzzing slowly
[12:08:52] Bryce Galbraith: Yeah 😉
[12:08:55] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Algae as a food source?
[12:09:03] Amandeep Timeless: Halliburton did recently patent Soylent Green
[12:09:14] Khannea Suntzu: I’ll ask all here to shy away from The Singularity. This whole Singularity remains a chinese box, and a mystery. It is little use to speculate about it. It may very well happen, whatever it will turn out to be in practice, but I am for now interested in just *surviving* until then. If the Singularity happens early, say around 2030, that will still be nearly 20 years. If it happens late, say around 2060, I don’t even have a guarantee to have my LAOSS (Laggy Ambulatory Organ Stack Server) physically survive till that point.
[12:09:15] Bryce Galbraith: I don’t know if I have something specific… but yes, maybe algae or other things from the sea that we aren’t using yet.
[12:09:16] Tara Li (tarali.jie): And as a biodiesel source…
[12:09:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea all those transhumanist events you mentioned will seem negative to those with a stake in the status quo
[12:09:20] Bryce Galbraith: But also better GM crops.
[12:09:25] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes, for one. or vat grown foods generally. synthetic meats and so on.
[12:09:31] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Mm.
[12:09:38] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Gwyn 🙂
[12:09:43] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hmmm, synthetic meats; made from yeast?
[12:09:45] Khannea Suntzu: Heya Gwynnles
[12:09:47] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Gwyn!
[12:09:54] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hi!
[12:09:55] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Gwyneth!
[12:09:58] Gwyneth Llewelyn: sorry for being late 😉
[12:10:04] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Not necessarily – just chunks of muscle encouraged to keep growing.
[12:10:08] Khannea Suntzu: Thats some yeast infection I love to taste, Rhi
[12:10:16] Morad Oh is Online
[12:10:21] Seren (serendipity.seraph): although the dewar should be ok until 2050
[12:10:33] Khannea Suntzu: Quick vote – next week I will probably attend a party in Amsterdam in the afternoon. If I do, please cast your vote by stating a loud Yes, No or Abstain to hold this event substantially earlier (say, 00:00 saterday SLT, 0900 my time) instead of the usual timeslot? Note also I will have minor surgery the 13th. So if I never show my face online ever after that, you’ll know what have happened 🙂
[12:10:33] Gilles Kuhn: well the all idea of “singularity event” is highly conjectural i personnaly would bet nothing like that will happen
[12:10:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): you know that I’m making a reference tgo “caves of steel,” right?
[12:10:45] Amandeep Timeless: frankenstew
[12:10:55] Gwyneth Llewelyn: (Gilles: after or before the meteor strikes in 2012? 😉 )
[12:10:55] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Amand, lol
[12:10:58] Xeno Octavia: u mean the intellectual singularity or the real one that is unavoidable ??
[12:11:10] Seren (serendipity.seraph): 00:00 saturday works for me
[12:11:26] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Hum… I wasn’t sure which yeast vats SciFi reference you were making, Rhi.
[12:11:27] Khannea Suntzu: Quick yes/no please in the next minute
[12:11:27] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gilles, I’ve never been sure as to what transhumanists mean by a singularity event
[12:11:30] Gilles Kuhn: (gwyn when a pirelli calendar end i dont think for that it is the end of the world…..)
[12:11:34] Tara Li (tarali.jie): YES.
[12:11:35] Metafire Horsley: 0900 your (and my) time is possible.
[12:11:36] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): All changes will happen at a rate we can absorb
[12:11:45] Gwyneth Llewelyn: (lol Gilles
[12:12:02] Khannea Suntzu: Quick vote – next week I will probably attend a party in Amsterdam in the afternoon. If I do, please cast your vote by stating a loud Yes, No or Abstain to hold this event substantially earlier (say, 00:00 saterday SLT, 0900 my time) instead of the usual timeslot? Note also I will have minor surgery the 13th. So if I never show my face online ever after that, you’ll know what have happened 🙂
[12:12:08] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that surgery is pretty low danger, K. You will be good.
[12:12:13] Khannea Suntzu: I know
[12:12:45] Khannea Suntzu: Three yes for 00:00
[12:13:09] Khannea Suntzu: In case anyone is in Amsterdam next week the 10th, do email me where the party is. 🙂
[12:13:14] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone) is Online
[12:13:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): as long as I log by 0200 SLT I am good
[12:13:17] Franja Russell: Earlier on Saturdays would be good for me… 8 am, even 7 am.
[12:13:20] Tara Li (tarali.jie) is Online
[12:13:25] Gilles Kuhn: the problem in amsterdam party is they always try to serve you that piss of camel named heineken
[12:13:29] Khannea Suntzu: Ok onwards with the topic today
[12:13:40] Khannea Suntzu: This is a different party
[12:13:42] Khannea Suntzu: Its sex
[12:13:54] Khannea Suntzu: Additionally – I am in a turbulent state IRL and I need small online jobs I can do. I a temperamental, egotistic and my skills are flawed and onesides. However if you have something for me you are certain I can do, please let me know. I really need money IRL for a range of reasons, and not just a little and for flimsy reasons, I run head first into big lifestyle problems. It’s about clothes, food and basic necessities. I prefer not to take charity or donations but right now I can’t afford to sya no to any, since literally I am losing weight in the real world at a rate of several kilo a week. There are health reasons for that – but also I find that I can’t eat processed foods with additives anymore without throwing up. I can only eat pure, untreated foodstuffs, ior I literally eat nothing. And yes I have been doing that for several days this week. I have lost over 23 kilos in the last year.
[12:14:26] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Eeeeps!
[12:14:41] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Have you looked at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, Khannea?
[12:14:42] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): : Good luck, Khannea
[12:14:50] Gilles Kuhn look extremely puzzled
[12:14:56] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh my, Khannea… that sounds dreadful
[12:15:01] Khannea Suntzu: Not an option, I have severe ADHD, I cant do short-cycling actions
[12:15:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, these discussions you hold should be renewing; like 3 or 4 days in the woods.
[12:15:45] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Ok.
[12:15:45] Khannea Suntzu: Love I’d do RW prostitution at this rate.
[12:15:56] Khannea Suntzu: I had offers
[12:16:00] Khannea Suntzu: Enough of that. Today I will strictly focus on one topic, and one topic only. I do not have means to restrict drift but I;d seriously would like you all to constrain it. The topic is the site of Marshall Brain, of which I have been a fan for many years. The guy makes a point I particularly fancy myself, and which has been ignored.
[12:16:08] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, what’s wrong with that? Ii was a whore for 3 years and proud of it.
[12:16:16] Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Khannea…. yhou could go to webcam chats. Do paid ones 🙂
[12:16:25] Khannea Suntzu: Yah
[12:16:32] Khannea Suntzu: Thats the offer.
[12:16:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: They pay very well and actually it’s absolutely safe!
[12:17:04] Khannea Suntzu: So about this site by Marshall Brain
[12:17:06] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, unless they trace you through your computer. But I want to hear about today’s topic.
[12:17:16] Khannea Suntzu: I am pretty sure nobody will have even looked at the site. And some of you may have read a few sentences (=skimming) and will be filling in the rest according to their own constrictive mental or political paradigms. Please don’t do that. Please keep an open mind, and try and follow the arguments Marshall poses.
[12:17:47] Khannea Suntzu: He also did some stuff for discovery channel
[12:17:55] Khannea Suntzu: and he spoke one at SingU
[12:17:57] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.marshallbrain.com/
[12:18:05] Khannea Suntzu: Lets go through a bunch of quoted segments from his three articles.
[12:18:13] Khannea Suntzu: First page
[12:18:23] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
[12:18:25] Bryce Galbraith: rehi… crashed
[12:18:25] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): wb Bryce 🙂
[12:18:33] Khannea Suntzu: The iceberg looks like this. On that same day, I interacted with five different automated systems like the kiosks in McDonald’s:
I got money in the morning from the ATM.
I bought gas from an automated pump.
I bought groceries at BJ’s (a warehouse club) using an extremely well-designed self-service check out line.
I bought some stuff for the house at Home Depot using their not-as-well-designed-as-BJ’s self-service check out line.
I bought my food at McDonald’s at the kiosk, as described above.
All of these systems are very easy-to-use from a customer standpoint, they are fast, and they lower the cost of doing business and should therefore lead to lower prices. All of that is good, so these automated systems will proliferate rapidly.
The problem is that these systems will also eliminate jobs in massive numbers. In fact, we are about to see a seismic shift in the American workforce. As a nation, we have no way to understand or handle the level of unemployment that we will see in our economy over the next several decades
[12:18:37] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): wb, Bryce
[12:18:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): know Marshall Brain from some conferences.. scanning site
[12:19:02] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Don’t mind Bryce; my dancing over excites him and he crashes
[12:19:14] Franja Russell: Excuse me, do you want us to click on the http:// thing now? Won’t I lose contact with SL?
[12:19:14] Seren (serendipity.seraph): ok. same topic line as last time I heard him speak..
[12:19:19] Tara Li (tarali.jie): MMmmmm… I know what problem he’s talking about…
[12:19:22] Khannea Suntzu: Note that Marshall is quite cautious, by transhumanist measure. Look at this quote.
[12:19:28] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Franja, no you won’t
[12:19:30] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm I think that those arguments are the same as the ones brought up during the Industrial revolution in the 1850s…
[12:19:32] Khannea Suntzu: In 2055 the nation hit a big milestone — over half of the American workforce was unemployed, and the number was still rising. Nearly every “normal” job that had been filled by a human being in 2001 was filled by a robot instead. At restaurants, robots did all the cooking, cleaning and order taking. At construction sites, robots did everything — Robots poured the concrete, laid brick, built the home’s frame, put in the windows and doors, sided the house, roofed it, plumbed it, wired it, hung the drywall, painted it, etc. At the airport, robots flew the planes, sold the tickets, moved the luggage, handled security, kept the building clean and managed air traffic control. At the hospital robots cared for the patients, cooked and delivered the food, cleaned everything and handled many of the administrative tasks. At the mall, stores were stocked, cleaned and clerked by robots. At the amusement park, hundreds of robots ran the rides, cleaned the park and sold the concessions. On the roads, robots drove all the cars and trucks. Companies like Fedex, UPS and the post office had huge numbers of robots instead of people sorting packages, driving trucks and making deliveries. By 2055 robots had taken over the workplace and there was no turning back.
[12:20:00] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yess..
[12:20:00] Khannea Suntzu: Thats cautious for most transhumanists
[12:20:02] Khannea Suntzu: I think we’ll see this scenario unfold some time before 2040.
[12:20:17] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very likely; now more than ever!
[12:20:19] Khannea Suntzu: Here is another quote
[12:20:20] Gilles Kuhn: well that would be marvellous no more slave work we only need to redistrubute wealth in a system not based on work
[12:20:23] Khannea Suntzu: When you look at this chart, it is easy to understand that there will be huge job losses by 2040 or 2050 as robots move into the workplace. For example:
Nearly every construction job will go to a robot. That’s about 6 million jobs lost.
Nearly every manufacturing job will go to a robot. That’s 16 million jobs lost.
Nearly every transportation job will go to a robot. That’s 3 million jobs lost.
Many wholesale and retail jobs will go to robots. That’s at least 15 million lost jobs.
Nearly every hotel and restaurant job will go to a robot. That’s 10 million jobs lost.
If you add that all up, it’s over 50 million jobs lost to robots. That is a conservative estimate. By 2050 or so, it is very likely that over half the jobs in the United States will be held by robots.
[12:20:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, I think Vonnegut had a similar scenario in Player Piano
[12:20:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): if we don’t meltdown and implode first economically or in the other ways listed.
[12:20:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And Asimove thought we’d handle it by restrictions on robots
[12:20:42] Gilles Kuhn: i repeat : well that would be marvellous no more slave work we only need to redistrubute wealth in a system not based on work
[12:20:42] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Yes, Gilles
[12:20:51] Franja Russell: Various science fiction authors have dealt with robots assuming most jobs in the future leaving humans to spend time on mental gymnastics and art.
[12:20:58] Khannea Suntzu: When a significant portion of the normal American population is permanently living in government welfare dormitories because of unemployment, what we will have is a third-world nation. These citizens will be imprisoned by unemployment in their own society. If you are an adult in America and you do not have a job, you are flat out of luck. That is how our economy is structured today — you cannot live your life unless you have a job. Many people — perhaps a majority of Americans — will find themselves out of luck in the coming decades.
[12:21:15] Gwyneth Llewelyn: well, Seren, remember, robots don’t need payment and they never go on strike ; from a capitalistic PoV, it’s just perfect…
[12:21:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, that’s what Marx really thought would happen; replicators and robots will usher in the communist utopia; capitalismwill be obsolete
[12:21:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): first you need the wealth. but aren’t you presuming that every human born must by all means necessary be kept alive regardless?
[12:21:34] Khannea Suntzu: 🙂
[12:21:51] Khannea Suntzu studies Serendipity with a smile
[12:21:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): what is that presumption validated by? we would like it to be the case but is it justifiable or a fundamental article?
[12:21:57] Gilles Kuhn: but look if rhi is proud of having been a prostitute (too bad i didnt know her at the time ;-))) ) i am perfectly confortable to not work for money
[12:22:10] Khannea Suntzu: Let’s have a look at the second page
[12:22:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): robotic technology will generate the wealth, Seren; such an accumulation of it that capitalism will break down.
[12:22:13] Gwyneth Llewelyn: post-capitalism. No ‘class fighting’ since robots don’t argue, they just work
[12:22:21] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
[12:22:30] Khannea Suntzu: In 2015, at about the same time that the airlines are laying off all of their pilots, Wal-Mart or Target or some other large retailer will be introducing a totally automated inventory management system. Every shelf will be fitted with RFID tags and bar codes, allowing a mobile pick-and-place robot to find the exact shelf location of every product in the store. Every individual product in the warehouse will also be fitted with an RFID tag and bar code, so the robot will be able to pick up and identify every product that it needs to shelve. A relatively simple computer vision system will allow the robot to stack items on the shelves. These inventory management robots will operate 24-hours-a-day shuttling merchandise from the back of the store onto the shelves as items are sold. The robots will also constantly straighten the shelves and re-shelve merchandise. All of the technology needed to do this is nearly in place today.
[12:22:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I don’t see how that follows, Rhi….
[12:22:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no it won’t. can’t by definition if you grok it.
[12:23:01] Khannea Suntzu: The fast food industry provides a perfect demonstration of how the race to the bottom works. Almost every working American employed by the fast food industry is paid hourly, makes minimum wage or close to it, receives no benefits, no vacation time and no sick time. Employee hours are tracked so that no hourly employee works more than 40 hours a week, thereby avoiding overtime pay. Schedules can be extremely choppy, sometimes requiring employees to come in to work, go home and come back again during the same day. The pay of the nation’s 3.5 million fast food workers has been driven as close to zero as is legally allowed.
[12:23:03] Flight Band: All Go
[12:23:21] Gwyneth Llewelyn: capitalists don’t exploit people for the *fun* but for the *money* 🙂 Robotisation just means lower costs and no HR issues
[12:23:27] Khannea Suntzu: But that is not low enough. The fast food industry wants to drive worker pay even lower. The only way to do that is to eliminate the minimum wage. The book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser describes the trend:
[12:23:28] Seren (serendipity.seraph): walmart has largely succeeded by better automation and computational systems than anyone else alreday
[12:23:42] Khannea Suntzu: The fast food industry pays the minimum wage to a higher proportion of its workers than any other American industry. Consequently, a low minimum wage has long been a crucial part the fast food industry’s business plan. Between 1968 and 1990, the years when the fast food chains expanded at their fastest rate, the real value of the U.S. minimum wage fell by almost 40 percent. In the late 1990s, the real value of the U.S. minimum wage still remained about 27 percent lower than it was in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) has vehemently opposed any rise in the minimum wage at the federal, state or local level [minimum wage has been $5.15 since 1997]. About 60 large fast food companies — including Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, Chevy’s, and Red Lobster — have backed Congressional legislation that would essentially eliminate the federal minimum wage by allowing states to disregard it. Pete Meersman, the president of the Colorado Restaurant Association, advocates creating a federal guest worker program to import low-wage foodservice workers from overseas.
While the real value of the wages paid to restaurant workers has declined for the past three decades, the earnings of restaurant company executives have risen considerably. According to a 1997 survey in Nation’s Restaurant News, the average corporate executive bonus was $131,000, an increase of 20 percent over the previous year. [ref]
[12:23:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, the Marxian argument is that as technology generates more and more capital, it’s price ewill go down; there will be a stock market crash that’s permanent, and people will start liviing off the capital; meanwhile the workers will be pushed to the wall by redundancy and will take over, eliminating the now useless capitalist class.
[12:23:51] Gilles Kuhn: if you can create wealth without slavery of humans you only need to accept the new tec and make a political revolution that redistribute money in a generalized and UNCONDITIONAL welfare world state
[12:23:57] Seren (serendipity.seraph): capitalist do not exploit people.
[12:24:01] Franja Russell: Since the materials used to create plastics and other synthetic materials are not found in everyone’s environment, there will still be the Haves and the Have-nots. How will things be different.
[12:24:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): He just overestimated 19th century technology’s wall of doingn that; but this new tech Knnanea is talking about could do it
[12:24:32] Franja Russell: Robots and mechanical work tools are made from synthetic materials.
[12:24:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s what tghey meant, Seren. That’s not their goal; their goal is just to accumulate wealth 🙂
[12:24:36] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that is not a consequence from walmart to fast food. most fast food jobs are very low skill hence low pay. D’uh!
[12:24:44] Gilles Kuhn: capitalist desserve to be shot or hanged by gutts from priest but that only my opinion….
[12:24:50] Khannea Suntzu: Robots completely change the equation, because robots make the minimum wage irrelevant. As robots become available, they will allow the fast food industry to dump all the minimum wage workers. The executives will make even more money, and who can blame them? We would all like to get bigger paychecks. The goal of a business owner is to make more and more money, not to create jobs or raise wages.
This is why robots will spread throughout the workforce with remarkable speed. The same sensitivity to labor costs will cause the high-speed replacement of employees in retail, construction, transportation, entertainment, etc., all at approximately the same time. Over the next decade or two, robots will begin releasing millions workers from their jobs. The bad news is that there will be nowhere else for these workers to go.
[12:25:02] Seren (serendipity.seraph): Marxism is totally exploded crap.
[12:25:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, no Khannea, it will go thee way Marx thought
[12:25:14] Franja Russell: Too much of Walmart’s products are made with lead based paint and other risky materials.
[12:25:27] Khannea Suntzu studies Serendipity and smiles.
[12:25:27] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, maybe so, but if Khannea is right, we have a Marxian scenario before us.
[12:25:38] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no we don’t.
[12:25:41] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): That’s what he was talking about; he just got the technology wrong.
[12:25:42] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Not necessarily, Rhiannon.
[12:25:48] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Nothing against that argument, Khannea. Still, millions lost their jobs in the 1830s-1850s
[12:25:50] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Steam engines weren’t enough to do it.
[12:25:52] Seren (serendipity.seraph): unless you claim the robots are exploited.
[12:25:56] Khannea Suntzu: This is all quotes and arguments by Marshall Brain. I happen to agree with the guy.
[12:25:57] Gilles Kuhn: you confound marxism and leninism the rare time marxism was tried the result were quite good but as say my profile you need to unite marxism in economy with anarchism in politic for it to work
[12:26:13] DivinePhoebe Luminos: all “systems” have failed more or less during the history of mankind… something new is required (though I don’t have any suggestions)
[12:26:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): no, the robots won’t be revolting; ;it will be thte redundant labor force
[12:26:17] Tara Li (tarali.jie): I mentioned in one of the earlier discussions about Heinlein’s radical economic system he presents in a couple of his novels.
[12:26:27] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Which one, Tara? 🙂
[12:26:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it is one scenario. very doubtful it will be as widespread without other compensating changes not in his scenario.
[12:26:34] Khannea Suntzu: Robots will also be quite suitable to make sure revolt is NOT AN OPTION.
[12:26:41] Gwyneth Llewelyn: oh yes. Khannea
[12:26:44] Bryce Galbraith: There are a lot of problems with Marxism, but I have to say, in his defense, that in the 19th century he was probably an exceptionally insightful observer and critic of industrialism at that time.
[12:26:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): this argument about automation killing all / most employment is over a century old..
[12:27:03] Khannea Suntzu: SOMEWHERE IN DETROIT A CRIME IS HAPPENING
[12:27:07] Violet (ataraxia.azemus) agree’s with Bryce’s take
[12:27:07] Khannea Suntzu: Fourth Page
[12:27:13] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): -‘
[12:27:20] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Exactly, Seren….
[12:27:23] Gilles Kuhn: if you have that range of tec recolution is no more about economy its about wealth redistribution and actually right now we have already that problem we can produce way more than we can consume in fact and we let people be slave to control them
[12:27:27] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
[12:27:38] Khannea Suntzu: In other words, The first wave of robots has the potential to make things very uncomfortable for the American economy. In the 2020 time frame, the rate of economic change will be startling. At the very least it will be a time of intense flux and employment turmoil.
The question that I would like to pose in this article is a simple one: How are we, as a society, going to respond to this robotic revolution? If we handle it properly, the arrival of robots could be an incredibly beneficial event for human beings. If we do not handle it properly, we will end up with millions of unemployed people and a severe economic downturn that will benefit no one. Can we modify the American economy now to prevent this downturn? Are there things that we can do today to smooth the transition to the robotic nation?
[12:27:51] Seren (serendipity.seraph): workforces adjust. new skills become marketable
[12:28:02] Gwyneth Llewelyn: “smooth the transition” – what is implied?
[12:28:02] Gilles Kuhn: i repeat again if you have that range of tecnology revolution is no more about economy its about wealth redistribution and actually right now we have already that problem we can produce way more than we can consume in fact and we let people be slave to control them
[12:28:04] Metafire Horsley: Why not introduce a tax on robots: 50% of the decrease in costs compared to minimum wage workers will be used to finance a guaranteed basic income.
[12:28:10] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bryce, the problems with Marx was that he didn’t anticipate the age of imperialism, once Lenin corrected for that, it is uncannily accurate; and if Khannea is right, we may be enteriing into the final phase. All the welfare/socialist reforms of the last century, btw, fit his paradigm.
[12:28:14] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Regulate the number of allowed robots?
[12:28:14] Tara Li (tarali.jie): “Beyond This Horizon” has the basics – “For Us, The Living” explains it in detail, Gwynneth.
[12:28:19] Gwyneth Llewelyn: a tax, ok
[12:28:23] Khannea Suntzu: We see the reason for this trend regularly in the news. CEO and executive salaries are rising at a startling pace. The average CEO of a large corporation now makes between $10 million and $20 million per year. Since 1980, CEO salaries have risen by a factor of 10, and that same trend is increasing all executive compensation. William McDonough, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, notes:
“I find nothing in economic theory that justifies this development… I can assure you that we CEOs of today are not 10 times better than those of 20 years ago.”
At the same time, employee wages are stagnant. The minimum wage has not risen since 1997. Since the minimum wage acts as a foundation on which most other wage scales are based, we are all affected. As a result, sixty percent of Americans make less than $14 per hour today. In her book The Divine Right of Capital, Marjorie Kelly describes the situation this way:
The wealthiest 10 percent of households own about half of all stock — so that minority has a virtual economic majority…. Because corporate revenues represent a bulk of GDP, and the wealthiest own the bulk of corporate equity, running corporations to serve stockholders means running the economy to benefit the wealthy.
[12:28:25] Seren (serendipity.seraph): if you have ever lived in detroit that is like saying somewhere on other some human just farted.
[12:28:25] Khannea Suntzu: It was a ROBOCOP reference, Sip.
[12:28:26] Bryce Galbraith: Khannea, it sounds like that is the question Marshall Brain pretty much poses at the end too…. that is, to re-think the economy.
[12:28:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, like in Asimov
[12:28:39] DivinePhoebe Luminos: robotic nation.. what implications would that have in the human psyche… sorry.. .lots of texts here so it might have been adressed earlier
[12:28:46] Gilles Kuhn: what we need is universal allocation system
[12:28:58] Khannea Suntzu: Think about the era we are about to enter. Within 50 years in the likely case, and without question within 100 years, robots will perform every task essential to human survival. Robots will grow, package, transport and sell all of the food we eat. Robots will build all of the housing we live in. Robots will make, transport and sell all of the clothes we wear. Robots will manufacture all consumer products, put them on the shelves and take the money that we pay for them. And so on. Robots will displace the tens of millions of employees who are doing all of this work now. In our current economic system, all of these displaced workers will become unemployed. If they are not able to find new employment quickly, they will burn off their savings and they will become homeless. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat” is a core philosophy of today’s economy, and this rule could make a rapid robotic takeover extremely uncomfortable for our society. See Robotic Nation for details.
[12:28:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): marx did not in the least understand economics or human beings
[12:29:00] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, but right now, the major stockholders in corporations are Unions and other institutions.
[12:29:14] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh, like on the “Naked Sun” novel… robots work, humans do virtual worlds 🙂
[12:29:22] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): So it’s like saying the economy is run to benefit the workers
[12:29:33] Khannea Suntzu: Ok
[12:29:36] Khannea Suntzu: Note that Marshall then offers a list of solutions that come down to variants of tax and basic income. I know that this will be ideologically unacceptable to many hnere in this audience. If this is the case, I’d like to hear (1) why this is unacceptable, (2) what would be the alternatives and (3) what would be the consequences in case a significant portion of the populations where in facxt locked out or (4) these conclusions of Mrshall Brain are completely wrong.
[12:29:43] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and the robots want to keep meat bodies around exactly why?
[12:29:44] Khannea Suntzu: Lets hear it
[12:29:54] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Union controlled corporations and government controlled industry (GM); hmmm, sound like a phase anyone we know predicted?
[12:30:00] DivinePhoebe Luminos: I do wonder if that transition to a compleltely automated world would be… hm.. “flawless”…?
[12:30:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: The robots employed by ikndustry are not exactly sentient…. 😉
[12:30:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): unions are one of the most economically destructive forces around
[12:30:42] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): No, that’s one of the flaws in the analysis, Gwyn; so far automation has cerated more jobs than it eliminated, as someone senetient has to handle the machines
[12:30:48] Khannea Suntzu: Blind ideology is a little more destructive Serendipity.
[12:30:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It’ll be by stages, very smallones, smoothly flolwing, Divine
[12:30:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): they will be..
[12:30:57] Gilles Kuhn: the problem is that all of you were educated to believe working for a wage is honourable i was not for me its insulting if you change your mind in that you will find the solution very easy
[12:31:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, only in a class divided society; where they must work against the establishment
[12:31:05] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sentient that is if they are going to take over all/most jobs
[12:31:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes. points back at you smiling
[12:31:26] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well yes, if they take over, say, teachers or doctors…
[12:31:34] Khannea Suntzu: What about you, personally? Think about your situation. It does not matter who you are or what you do for a living — you are vulnerable:
If you are working anywhere in the service sector — fast food, retail sales, hotels, airlines, delivery, transportation, etc. — your job has the potential to be replaced by a robot.
If you are in the upper middle class — engineers, programmers, airline pilots, teachers, professors, insurance adjusters, etc. — your job is vulnerable (either to robotic takeover or offshore outsourcing).
If you are in middle management, your job is vulnerable.
Even if you are in a position that today seems untouchable — doctors, lawyers, etc. — your job is vulnerable.
[12:31:39] Franja Russell: Excuse me, real life is calling. Enjoy the rest of the day.
[12:31:42] Gwyneth Llewelyn: But I see them taking over people on junk food restaurants first 🙂
[12:31:48] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Take care Franja 🙂
[12:31:48] Gwyneth Llewelyn: take care, Franja – bye!
[12:32:00] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: okey.. but still I keep wondering what will happen to the human nature in that transition… is there a risk of some kind of “psychological collapse”?
[12:32:04] Khannea Suntzu: Article 4, Manna
[12:32:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it is not insulting to trade what I make or can make for money I can use for my needs. not in the least.
[12:32:10] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
[12:32:19] Khannea Suntzu: Circa 2000, the fast food industry had a problem, and Burger-G was no different. The problem was the quality of the fast food experience. Some restaurants were run perfectly. They had courteous and thoughtful crew members, clean restrooms, great customer service and high accuracy on the orders. Other restaurants were chaotic and uncomfortable to customers. Since one bad experience could turn a customer off to an entire chain of restaurants, these poorly-managed stores were the Achilles heel of any chain.
[12:32:20] Xeno Octavia: why not a minimax wage tieing the maximum to th eminimun sosay 20 x is whats legeal –th eshitheads at the top gets way too much anyhow
[12:32:24] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Divine: the same collapse we experienced in 1830-1850
[12:32:30] Khannea Suntzu: To solve the problem, Burger-G contracted with a software consultant and commissioned a piece of software. The goal of the software was to replace the managers and tell the employees what to do in a more controllable way. Manna version 1.0 was born.
Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down. The software was also attached to the time clock, so it knew who was working in the restaurant. Manna also had “help buttons” throughout the restaurant. Small signs on the buttons told customers to push them if they needed help or saw a problem. There was a button in the restroom that a customer could press if the restroom had a problem. There was a button on each trashcan. There was a button near each cash register, one in the kiddie area and so on. These buttons let customers give Manna a heads up when
[12:32:30] Khannea Suntzu: something went wrong.
[12:32:37] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Mm, Xeno
[12:32:39] Seren (serendipity.seraph): robotics is not moving this fast. not close
[12:32:52] Gilles Kuhn: serendipity it is because that make of you a merchant a trader a mercantile cockroatch
[12:33:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Or the one Japan experienced during the Meiji revolution – when samurais dropped their kaqtanaqs and became ruthless industry leadedrs and administrative experts 🙂
[12:33:13] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: good reference…. and that is up to debate , as far as I know, until today.. if it was good or bad..
[12:33:15] Seren (serendipity.seraph): why should any being bio or not be guaranteed continuing existence by the rest no matter what?
[12:33:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, exactly right; that’s why I’m not ashamed of having been a prostitute. What else are you going to trade as a 12 year old girl?
[12:33:22] Khannea Suntzu: Page 5 – Marshall Does A Ray
[12:33:29] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm
[12:33:42] Khannea Suntzu: Discuss 🙂
[12:33:46] Gwyneth Llewelyn: sure, we can debate that, Divine. Looking at the standard of living today compared to, say, 1760, I would say we’re better off after the industrial revolujtion 🙂
[12:33:50] Khannea Suntzu: Discuss 🙂
[12:33:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And those who think less of me for it, like lokifluff clarity, can go to, well, I’m too ladylike to say.
[12:34:10] Gilles Kuhn: we need more aristocrat and less slave thats all and if we supress wage based economic system we will have that a civilization of aristocrat provided we force a bit education in exchange for allocation
[12:34:13] Bryce Galbraith: I’m not really convinced that I buy the scenario that MB outlined, but let’s set that aside for now and accept that as a premise. There are a number of other areas of the economy that I suspect wouldn’t be automated and people may eventually migrate to those areas… especially areas that involve doing things that involve creativity or require more interaction.
[12:34:18] Seren (serendipity.seraph): Voluntary trading of value for value makes me a cockroach? who is serving steaming ideological shit here?
[12:34:34] Bryce Galbraith: I suppose, taking your premise, is the question of system shock — whether the changes happen so quickly that people don’t have enough time to adapt.
[12:34:36] Khannea Suntzu: Hmmm?
[12:34:39] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gilles, well, in the communist utopia, we are all aristocrats; freed from artificial division of labor, we are all Renaissance persons
[12:34:58] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Future shock, Bryce?
[12:35:08] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): I more or less agree with what Gilles said; if everything does become automated, it’s just a matter of shifting our cultural values
[12:35:14] Seren (serendipity.seraph): we saw how well that kind of utopia works. as did many tens of millions killed attempting to produce it.
[12:35:22] Gilles Kuhn: trading is and was for all aristocrat class untill XIX century an insult to their dignity that is 2500 years of civilization that you just qualified as shit seren
[12:35:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): I think it will be what we already know; those in their 40’s or over will be befuddled at first, the younger of us will just go with it
[12:35:45] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: that depends on how you look at it… sure we have better material standard and health.. BUT… there is a MAJOR issues with pshychological health in the developed world… in my country from age 14-45 I think the most common death-cause is suiciide… that tells something about that we might not have invented a “perfect word”.. maybe far from it DESPITE our material wealth
[12:35:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): we don’t live in ancient times but in a modern highly industrial technollogical state. huge difference.
[12:35:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Sern, it was infantile leftism;; the times weren’t right and the Soviets tsrieed to push it.
[12:36:01] Bryce Galbraith: yes, I suppose 🙂 What I mean is that the transition to a more robot automated workforce happens so quickly that people employed in those areas to be automated don’t have time to either age out of the system or retrain.
[12:36:12] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): “Diahistamit is neither earler or late but comes in Its own time.”
[12:36:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): laughs. do I sound befuddled to you?
[12:36:23] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh, we’re certainly not ‘perfect’, but can you really attribute ‘psychological issues’ to the results of the industrial revolution?
[12:36:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Kimmy!
[12:36:36] Gilles Kuhn: yes say that to the majority of humanity living with under 2 dollar by day seren very evoluted high tec society indeed….
[12:36:48] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Remember, it was politically incorrect to be ‘depressed’ in the 18th century 🙂
[12:37:10] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the majority has always lived at under $2/day! more live with more than at any previous time in history.
[12:37:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Seren is right; read Bjorn Lomborg for some charts proving that point.
[12:37:48] Gilles Kuhn wish he can take seren on a tour of central africa in rl and ask her if she will want to stay there with that economic level….
[12:37:48] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: I dont have enough data to make such an assumption.. there are countless parameters that might cause those things.. BUT.. I do belive that some part of that development was somewhat bad.. some part, emphasise….
[12:37:52] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and we have grown a lot too
[12:37:52] Khannea Suntzu: So they can have cake, serendipity?
[12:37:54] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bryce good point. In “Primary Colors,” the Bill Clinto type spoke to a group of blue collar workers and said, “I won’t lie to you; you’re jobs are gone. I’m not going to bring them back. But I promise you education to help you adapt.” Almost made me like Bill Clinton
[12:38:20] Gwyneth Llewelyn: well Divine… everybodyh is affected by change.
[12:38:32] Gwyneth Llewelyn: But change is all there is 🙂
[12:38:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Some cope; most don’t
[12:38:50] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: yes… and a too rapid change SEEMS, at least in my thought-world, to be quite risky
[12:39:06] Seren (serendipity.seraph): have you been to central africa? a big issue is that many many people do not want to advance. life is centered around status quo community villages. in other places things have been fucked by warlords and by oil lust fueling conflicts.
[12:39:07] Gwyneth Llewelyn: So let’s prepare people to cope with change 🙂
[12:39:16] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I have a few methods hehe
[12:39:18] Bryce Galbraith: Ah, interesting… I didn’t actually see the film Rhi. That was where John Travolta played the Bill Clinton-like candidate, right?
[12:39:26] Gilles Kuhn: have i been yes seren and i bet you have not i lioved there
[12:39:39] Khannea Suntzu: Aha, “They” . Do not want to change. Interesting. Africa. I see.
[12:39:45] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: on that I do agree… a slow change is probably the best when it comes to major changes in how our world is constructed(built
[12:39:56] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm.
[12:39:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren’s point is the baselline of productivity ahs gone up, and even if not evenly shared, all have bnefitted.
[12:40:03] Gilles Kuhn: and to say that they want not to advance is only apart of being false pure racism
[12:40:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): have not lived there. only a visitor. is it our fault generally that conditions are the way they are or our responsibility to fix them though?
[12:40:18] DivinePhoebe Luminos: but even then… how do we know what is best for the human race!?
[12:40:40] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Change can be completely unpredictable; just take a look at wars devastating cities in tghe past. Or earthquakes, fires…. people adapted to that, or not.
[12:40:42] DivinePhoebe Luminos: it’s not like someone asked some billion of people how they really want the world to be, I mean
[12:40:42] Khannea Suntzu: They said the same in Britannia, a few centuries ago about these damn colonies, Serendipity
[12:40:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): R. Daneel Olivaw’s dilemma when he took over human history;; fortunately, he met Hari Selden…
[12:40:57] Seren (serendipity.seraph): know. it is exactly hat real people who have lived in some of those areas all there live told me. I did not make it up. I was shocked.
[12:41:01] Xeno Octavia: lol Divi –they lost the race !!
[12:41:01] Gilles Kuhn: the fact a country like congo (rdc) is plagued by war is due to capitalism pillaging the non protected treasure they have helping creating chaos andd civil war
[12:41:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): do you think that it all that is behind it Giles?
[12:41:31] Gilles Kuhn: hearsay heh seren
[12:41:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): So back to robotization–well that help or hurt the 3rd world?
[12:41:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actual people saying what they actually thing rather than ideology, giles.
[12:42:14] Khannea Suntzu: Full force robotization will RRRRrrRRrrReally fuck with India and China
[12:42:15] Gwyneth Llewelyn: The “best” for the human race is what makes them more happy 😉 The trick is knowing what causes happiness… 😉
[12:42:15] Gilles Kuhn: thats obvious if there is no pure civil war in let say tanzania its because they have not the mineral riches of congo
[12:42:19] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seems to me that evenif 1/2 the wokers in the 1st world are unemployed, it will helpt he 3rd world immensely
[12:42:33] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, or will it make ethem change for the better?
[12:42:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): The fat man outgrowing his pantaloons metaphor (Marx again; sorry.)
[12:43:02] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): They will have to adapt and actually feed their people or collapse
[12:43:09] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): As the food becomes plentiful due to robotics
[12:43:12] Khannea Suntzu: No. It will make production work return to places such as the US and Europe. But NOT jobs mind you.
[12:43:16] Gilles Kuhn: ideology good heaven you are the ideologist here seven and the worst you dont even know it because you really believe in the religion named capitalism
[12:43:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I still have a question. Is the goal to keep everyone alive and at some standard of living regardless of whether they produce anything anyone values and regardless of whether anyone cares about them as a person or not?
[12:43:23] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: indeed 😉 !
[12:43:26] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Alas. Even the longest-lasting empire will one day collapse.
[12:43:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): Is the ideal that we care about anyone regardless of having no reason to do so or not?
[12:43:46] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Take care, guys 🙂
[12:43:48] Metafire Horsley: Yes, that would be a pretty humane goal, Seren 🙂
[12:43:53] Bryce Galbraith: Bye Violet 🙂
[12:43:53] Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s a good ideological question, Seren 🙂
[12:43:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): are you sure?
[12:43:55] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: yea.. history is a great example…
[12:43:56] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Yea, I still mourn for the Assyrians, Gwyn
[12:44:06] Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe Rhi 😉
[12:44:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it may lead to anti-competitive pressure on the species so it does not evolve one iota.
[12:44:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm 🙂
[12:44:25] Khannea Suntzu: Serendipity would you at least consent to humane euthanasia treatments for those made irreversibly redundant? I mean from your tax dollars? If I beg?
[12:44:28] Gilles Kuhn: i dont remember who say that the level of a civilization is to be judged as how they treat their weakest members which say a lot obout ours…..
[12:44:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and actually regresses over time.
[12:44:36] Metafire Horsley: You know: People who are dead have a hard time producing something of value. People who are alive at least have the potential to do that.
[12:44:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Gilles: still, ourts is the best civilisation in thaqt regard! Previous ones werfe far far worse
[12:44:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gilles, actually a numbeer of people said that; Elenor Roosevelt was one.
[12:45:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): when is potential sufficient to justify cost of it maybe becoming actual someday and when is it not?
[12:45:11] Gilles Kuhn: anti competitive pressure but the hell are you too a social darwinist?
[12:45:35] Khannea Suntzu: I don’t want to suffer when I am useless? Please, just a painful euthanasia treatment when I am useless? You can harvest my organs afterwards?
[12:45:41] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, but isn’t Khannea challenging us to see what robotics will do o the social structure that sustains it? Yes, the new technologies will elimante poverty, etc., but at what cost?
[12:45:44] Seren (serendipity.seraph): potentially every lottery ticket is worth millions but that doesn’t mean you build an ultra secure safe to place it in until the draw.
[12:45:54] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Depends on your moral values, Seren – answering if it’s better to provide for people now or let natural selection weed out those unable to survive on their own so that the entire species evolves 😉
[12:46:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, always have death parlors, like in Soyyent Green.
[12:46:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and where do those “moral values” come from and how are they justified ?
[12:46:19] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I’ll stick to providing for them now, and forget about evolution anyway ?
[12:46:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): From Harry Harrison’s “Make Room; Mke Roo.”
[12:46:28] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oooh some are very simple, Seren.
[12:46:29] Khannea Suntzu: Thank you Rhiannon, that was quite humane of yours. I don’t want to be a burden.
[12:46:33] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): *Make Room
[12:46:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): simple but not so obvious as people may wish to believe
[12:46:52] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Not a problem, Khannea; and I hope my danciing has made your last day on earth an enjoyable one.
[12:46:53] DivinePhoebe Luminos: oh.. evolution.. the thing I never comprehended lol
[12:46:56] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Don’t kill people, don’t steal from them… that’s pretty universal imho
[12:47:11] Xeno Octavia: lol Rhia –cost is only the poor!
[12:47:16] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh… agreed., Simple, but definitely NOT obvious!
[12:47:19] Khannea Suntzu: On the other hand > http://khanneasuntzu.com/2011/04/01/i-give-you-permission-to-be-violent/
[12:47:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn; why hold people to an impossibly high standard? lol
[12:47:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sure. but that is far from a mandate that you must keep every human alive by any means possible
[12:47:32] Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s a goal!
[12:47:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Juswt because it’s a high standard, it doesn’t mean it’s worth following it 🙂
[12:47:52] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Xeno, well or collapse of society, unless there’s a revolution to create a new one.
[12:47:56] Khannea Suntzu: “So I say, when they disagree protest. When they ignore you, sabotage and strike. When they punish you, revolt. When they try and put you in your place when you revolt, accept death as an acceptable fate over this, and do what it takes to drive to message home.
Death over this. Be prepared to destroy this planet, and euthanize all human life, rather than accept you, or any other human being having to live in a state of humanitarian apartheid. Yes, I say aim for ‘detente’. But not after you bring solid arguments to the table. A thermonuclear explosion would be a nice argument. The event itself would be horrific, but as a negotiation tool it would be indispensable.”
[12:48:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, I know; I was joking
[12:48:06] Gilles Kuhn: seren if about you where moral value come from question are one time in a weak position i wonder if you will hold to your discurse for the principle or beg for help that i will do due to kant hypothetical imperative not because i am fond of you be assured
[12:48:07] Xeno Octavia: problem as i always say is extraterrestrials!
[12:48:21] Gwyneth Llewelyn grins @ Rhi
[12:48:27] Xeno Octavia: over 6 billion extra
[12:48:38] Seren (serendipity.seraph): so gimme or I will attack you? why should I care about those that would do this?
[12:48:47] Khannea Suntzu: Correct
[12:48:49] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, right now, we have just a few ETs… how many people in the ISS right now? 🙂
[12:48:56] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, let’s try for w1 trillion, Xeno, befosre we ask the Vulcans for help. We have our pride, you know.
[12:49:09] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I will beg for help but I will not kill if refused
[12:49:09] Bryce Galbraith: 🙂
[12:49:14] Xeno Octavia: Gwyn i mean extra terrestrials
[12:49:23] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Aren’t they on orbit?
[12:49:26] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And the Eugenics Wars will kill off a lot of people, making it easier to feed and house the rest.
[12:49:42] Gilles Kuhn: sieg heil rhi…..
[12:49:47] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Heh Rhi – with that argument, one can justify anything… 😉
[12:49:50] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Hum….
[12:50:01] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): That’s why the European Hegemony was able to have such a near utopia before we met the Klingons
[12:50:09] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually, no.
[12:50:18] Khannea Suntzu: Supply and demand, serendipity.. and oh.. “evolition in action”… that’s a good one too.
[12:50:21] DivinePhoebe Luminos: everybody in 100 years knows that WW3 started on the web and ended in caves
[12:50:26] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, yes, the problem with any neo-positivistic account of ethics
[12:50:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn *nods* @ Rhi
[12:50:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): supply and demand. reality and wishes.
[12:50:40] Metafire Horsley: From a purely economically point of view entitlements are easy to explain: If they are cheaper than controling the population by force, you better go for entitlements.
[12:51:00] Seren (serendipity.seraph): entitlements are not cheaper.
[12:51:07] Xeno Octavia: lol Rhia ethics dont apply –they for the ethical
[12:51:12] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm. More population = more consumers, so eugenics is anticapitalistic 🙂
[12:51:15] Seren (serendipity.seraph): as they are unbounded.
[12:51:27] Metafire Horsley: So, you say the US should get rid of entitlements and use the army and the police to keep the resulting chaos at bay?
[12:51:30] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Entitlements are *controlling the ppopulation by force*
[12:51:32] Gilles Kuhn: i weep every day we have not crushed the burghesy and other emerging merchant class under the hooves of our horse when it was still time in the XII century….
[12:51:32] Khannea Suntzu: Mass production is driven by lots of consumers
[12:51:44] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh yes :=)
[12:51:50] Seren (serendipity.seraph): you can’t have buyers that you have to give the money to buy. immediate FAIL
[12:52:01] Khannea Suntzu: But if most consumers cant work, they aren’t consuming much. Damn, then capitalism ends anyways.
[12:52:06] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Making people healthy and getting them to have enough molney to buy more things they don’t need is also a requirement 😉
[12:52:17] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Khannea, that’s what I meant
[12:52:19] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, actually yes, eugenics is anti capitalistic, as is racism, genocide, alll the horros attributed to globalization. Globalization is part of the solution, imo
[12:52:40] Xeno Octavia: sell them printing presses and dollar plates
[12:52:42] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): (Not to mention a prerequisite for the rise of the antiChrist, but let’s not go there.)
[12:52:45] DivinePhoebe Luminos: the solution is in the mind, IMO
[12:52:46] Khannea Suntzu: Rhi there is a thing such as market driven Liberal eugenics.
[12:52:47] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Possibly. The world is so small these days that ‘globalisation’ loses its meaning.
[12:52:52] Gwyneth Llewelyn: YES Divine !!!!
[12:53:14] Khannea Suntzu: The solution is certainly not in serendipities mind I fear
[12:53:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Yes, Divine! And free markets liberate the mind, right, Seren?
[12:53:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): you can’t make people healthy if they want to practice unhealthy eating and such. you can profit by receiving back what was taken from you just to pretend the system is working.
[12:53:45] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes they do.
[12:53:54] Gilles Kuhn: property is theft…..
[12:54:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: true, Seren, but there is some sort of long-term self-regulaqtion
[12:54:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): they were responsible for the great leap forward, the real one, of the last two centuries.
[12:54:11] Gwyneth Llewelyn lights a cigarette after that comment 😉
[12:54:12] Khannea Suntzu: Damn you are close to a paradigm change sip. Very close.
[12:54:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reality is the ultimate regulator
[12:54:28] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Hummmmmmm……..
[12:54:29] Arch (archmage.atlantis) is Online
[12:54:40] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Reality…. riiiiiight
[12:54:53] Dixit Writer: nice night, thanks for all
[12:55:00] Gwyneth Llewelyn: whatever ‘reality’ iks 😉
[12:55:00] DivinePhoebe Luminos: How do you mean, Seren=?
[12:55:03] Khannea Suntzu: 🙂
[12:55:05] Bryce Galbraith: Bye Dixit
[12:55:08] Dixit Writer: see ya next time good night ^^
[12:55:13] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Actually, as I recall, in QM, Reality has a left-handed bias.
[12:55:19] Metafire Horsley: Bye Dixit
[12:55:20] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): thanks for coming, Dixit
[12:55:29] Gwyneth Llewelyn *chuckles* @ Tara
[12:55:29] Khannea Suntzu: That’s precisely what the Zeitgeist movement says, oddly enough.
[12:55:47] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Feedback; free markets provide feedback, as do political riots, coup d’etats, etc.
[12:55:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I mean that regardless of wishes, shemes, attempting to force thinks that do not fit what is possible that reality trumps all always.
[12:55:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Not veryh original 😉 but fine…
[12:55:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And whether we call that ‘realitiy’ or not, feedfback exists
[12:56:04] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And regulates
[12:56:28] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reality of necessity never ever belongs in scare quotes
[12:56:38] Metafire Horsley: All praise the allmighty feedback, as it makes you more humble.
[12:56:41] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I think I understand what yhou mean, Seren: we cannot simply bring an ideology oujt of the vacuum that is tgotallhy at odds with the so-called realioty and expect itg gto work!
[12:56:41] Khannea Suntzu: Reality is the ultimate tyrant. But the question is if free markets and capital accumulation have ANYTHING to do with this reality.
[12:56:49] Gwyneth Llewelyn: History shows that won’t work.
[12:57:21] Gwyneth Llewelyn: well, they ‘capitalise’ (pun intended) oln human nature: greed, power…
[12:57:22] Trinity Dejavu is Online
[12:57:26] Seren (serendipity.seraph): wealth can only be produced by creation of more value than was consumed creating it. a net good.
[12:57:46] Seren (serendipity.seraph): real wealth not mere tokens that were supposed to quantify it
[12:57:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): free markets reflect rality, Khannea, by giving you feeeback
[12:57:50] DivinePhoebe Luminos: I am not sure that I completly agree, Seren… I mean… once upon a time flying machines was considred impossible… and trains would make the human body explode due to the speed.. etc.. sure, we are bound to reality in some degree but reality seems to be “designed” (lack of better word) to be really really “tweaked” .. so.. in that view we are not very “bound” by it…
[12:58:17] Khannea Suntzu: Small group of people become insanely rich because of automation. Majority of humans have no recourse, no protest, no income and are reduced to grotesque exclusion. So what gives?
[12:58:23] Xeno Octavia: : that of this stoopid species Gwyn –why we need a new one
[12:58:28] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh…. I understood that Seren was talking about the reality of human nature, its relationshipos, and so forth
[12:58:37] DivinePhoebe Luminos: aha
[12:58:42] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reality was what actually would happen did happen not opinions about what would
[12:58:44] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Xeno, feedback again; helps make the stupid smart–if it doesn’t kill them
[12:58:55] Khannea Suntzu: I say – we take out the middlemen. Kill em all. Guillotines.
[12:58:58] Gwyneth Llewelyn: nah Xeno. We just need to discard those things that are not really part of our nature, but that we think they are ?
[12:59:01] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren was, but I’m talkiing getting consequences to your actions that’s a guide
[12:59:08] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I don’t agree with that model K.
[12:59:22] Khannea Suntzu: Yah well, cake right?
[12:59:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): do you really advocate mass murder, K?
[12:59:31] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): We don’t have to worry about metaphysics, the inevitable “But what is reality?” We try something, it fails; we try something else.
[12:59:39] Khannea Suntzu: Worked in france 🙂
[12:59:42] Gilles Kuhn: the concept of wealth is a pure absurdity most wealth we have are totally useless a good example is the fact we create machine that are engineered to break down after their guarantee expire in order to generate more “”wealth””
[12:59:42] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, everybody would be a middlemen 🙂
[12:59:53] Metafire Horsley: I’ll say we do the following: We do the best we can think about and see what will happen then. Then we repeat that process.
[12:59:53] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi Arch!
[12:59:58] Bryce Galbraith: Hey Arch 🙂
[12:59:58] Khannea Suntzu: Heya Arch
[13:00:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Gilles: not ‘absurdity’ – just a convention, a label
[13:00:15] Gwyneth Llewelyn: that’s good pragmatism, Meta 🙂
[13:00:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually it fucked France up massively for a time and seriously undermined the meme of freedom.
[13:00:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and gave us Napoleon 🙂
[13:00:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): The Guillitine, Khannea? Actually not. That’s why the French say “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Or in the ewords of the Who, “Look at then new Boss; same as the old Boss.”
[13:01:07] Khannea Suntzu: I am not someone very happy with revolutions. Oh if only we could do without.
[13:01:20] Seren (serendipity.seraph): how do we teach more people to be their own boss? it isn’t easy.
[13:01:22] Khannea Suntzu: Tunesia.
[13:01:27] Khannea Suntzu: Egypt.
[13:01:29] Khannea Suntzu: Lybia
[13:01:37] DivinePhoebe Luminos: and much later Napoleon Dynamie came along… gosh.. the low jokes comes when no one expect it (reference to the movie napoleon dynamite) LOL… yea.. I laugh at my own jokes.. forbidden but anyway
[13:01:37] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, as ZMarx pointed out, we can effect change democratically, if we all believe in peace
[13:01:39] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): heh
[13:01:53] Metafire Horsley: stevepavlina.com <- he's good at that, Seren.
[13:01:57] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c5117a6-2eda-11e0-9877-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1IUZojJCg
[13:02:02] Gwyneth Llewelyn: most people 'believe' in peace, Rhi
[13:02:05] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): We don't need Revolutions in the sense of violent overthrow
[13:02:11] Bryce Galbraith: The problem with revolutions is that they have a habit of eating their own children … (hey, while we're bringing up revolutions and such I had to throw in the phrase 🙂 )
[13:02:14] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Revolution of the Mind!
[13:02:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, yes, one of the reasons AI'm optimistic
[13:02:24] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bryce, except for one.
[13:02:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Rhi ?
[13:02:28] DivinePhoebe Luminos: "this is a revolution of the mind" 😀
[13:02:35] Seren (serendipity.seraph): ah yes, steve. when he is not on a zero-sleep or fruit only diet he says some good things. 🙂
[13:02:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: mm hmm
[13:02:41] DivinePhoebe Luminos: "the lucid dreams option is worth the risk" 🙂
[13:02:47] Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe
[13:02:58] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Louis XIV begat Napolean begat Hitler
[13:03:03] Gwyneth Llewelyn: yay on lucid dreaming!… even when we're awake 🙂
[13:03:12] Arch (archmage.atlantis): begat Castro
[13:03:21] Arch (archmage.atlantis): All idealists
[13:03:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: heh 🙂
[13:03:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): used to have very deep lucid dreams when I was meditating an hour every day.
[13:03:42] Gwyneth Llewelyn: idealists = too many ideas 😉
[13:03:45] Khannea Suntzu: WEE DUDN"T STAHT THA FIRE
[13:03:46] Gilles Kuhn: Napo and Louis XIV idealist???? LOL
[13:03:46] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
[13:03:53] Gwyneth Llewelyn: oh yes, Seren, that is usual….
[13:04:17] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Better still is to remain lucid throughout the day, though 😉 heh
[13:04:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Democracy is but a lucid dream
[13:04:33] Metafire Horsley: http://chrisguillebeau.com/ <- The Art of Non-Conformity. He's good, too.
[13:04:33] Khannea Suntzu: On that note
[13:04:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh yes!
[13:04:50] Khannea Suntzu: I bit yiou all an end to this lovely soiree
[13:04:50] Seren (serendipity.seraph): or that tibetan practice of blurring the line between waking and sleeping until one is fully present in both..
[13:04:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Napoleon was an idealist; believed in equality under the law, religious freedom, and that even short men had something to contribute
[13:04:52] DivinePhoebe Luminos: then what is waking up?
[13:04:57] Khannea Suntzu: It has been wonderful
[13:04:58] Arch (archmage.atlantis): To be an idealist is not the same as saying that the ideas are kind, or justified, or even useful
[13:04:59] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ahc1b0Tm7A
[13:05:07] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Divine paying attention all the time
[13:05:09] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Divine, Obama Administration
[13:05:11] Khannea Suntzu: 🙂
[13:05:13] Gwyneth Llewelyn: hahahahahaha
[13:05:20] DivinePhoebe Luminos: "YES WE CAN" LOL
[13:05:47] Gilles Kuhn: he mostly believed in putting his italian mafiosi family in all throne of europe sacrificing hundred of thousand of people in butcheries doing so…..
[13:06:26] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Assuming that is correct, Giles…..then those were his idealss
[13:06:46] Gilles Kuhn: assuming that is correct arch have you read a bit of history????
[13:07:02] Arch (archmage.atlantis): A small bit
[13:07:08] Gilles Kuhn: very small indeed