The Social Heirarchy

The social heirarchy is what I call society. It fits somewhere in between these two extremes:

A top-down, 'dictatorship'

















A decentralised heirarchy containing only families (as human babies are born dependant on others, it is currently an unavoidable to have these type of social units).

















Now ideally, everbody should be at the top of the heirarchy, but this is impossible. The only way it can be done, is if there is no heirarchy at all. First you have to eliminate the heirarchy by making each individual as powerful as the other, so none can attack the other without immediate retaliation. It's kind of like how the USA and USSR were in a cold war. If one nuked the other, the other would immediately retaliate, destroying them both. Thus, this is the only way peace was achieved.

So, here we have the best situation. No social heirarchy, all defences against the other equal, no power imbalance, no statism or other stupid ideologies forced on people and anarchy.

Some people may want to stay in the heirarchy, but as I said in my previous post (Virtual Communities) - you can still share information/trade with others yet not be part of any heirarchy. The worst heirarchies, however, are forced on the individual (parent-child, cop-'citizen', government-individual, etc).

Examine your memeplex

Basic definition of 'memeplex' from Wikipedia:

Much of the study of memes focuses on groups of memes called "memeplexes", "meme complexes" or "memecomplexes" — such as religious, biological organisms, cultural, or political doctrines and systems. Some selfish genes propagate more effectively together. Similarly some memes propagate more effectively together; they are called memeplexes. Examples are sets of beliefs like acupuncture and astrology, sets of traditions like Christmas celebrations, circumcision, languages, political ideologies, religions and scientific theories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex

The enemy of the memeplex is called 'cognitive dissonance' - here is the basic definition of that from Wikipedia, again:

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Cognitive dissonance can be good though, as it may force you to re-examine your beliefs. Then again, it could drive you insane.

Police have no duty to protect you at all

Ok, anyone reading this blog would know that I hate the police. Why? Because they are a bunch of thugs that enforce unjust laws.

Well, here is another thing:



Actually, it cannot work out any other way, really - as the police have too few resources to be able to effectively protect anybody. But that's not the point. The point is, that not only are you forced to pay for police through taxes and in a lot states they ban weapons so you can't defend yourself - and police don't even have an obligation to protect you! That is a very bad double standard.

Not only does the presence of police create crime, by enforcing unjust laws and persecuting innocent people but it also helps out criminals by disarming people so they can't defend their property and make them dependant on police who don't even have to bother protecting them.

More info: http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kasler-protection.html

Molecular assemblers

Molecular assemblers are basically small(er) factories that use nano-machines to build virtually any product.

For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler

OR



I also downloaded the Nanohive@home distributed computing system software to use my computer's resources for large-scale nanotech systems simulations. Just doing my bit for the singularity... You can download the software here. For further info, go here.

Virtual communities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community

Internet forums are close to ideal virtual communities. It's all about exchanging ideas and debating. If you don't like somebody, plonk them.

It differs from real communities because in real communities you have to put up with other people most of the time and you have much less choice about who to interact with.

And if you don't like the community, you have many others to choose from.

I predict that in the future, most people will be a part of virtual communities, and will reject real communities because they offer far less.

Also, in a virtual community I don't have to worry about a social heirarchy imposed by some psychotic dictator and his followers.

Fantastic Voyage: Live long enough to live forever

I just bought this book - basically it is about keeping your health in check and staying alive (adjusting for your biochemistry, using supplements, diets, etc) until the biotechnology revolution in a couple of decades time, when you can extend your lifespan even more. Then hopefully you can make it to era of medical nanotechnology - and from then on live forever. It is written by Ray Kurzweil, author of Singularity is Near and The Age of Spiritual Machines. Looks like an excellent book, I can't wait to read it.

Gene therapy - an overview

Gene therapies are where it's at and the near future looks quite exciting in how it will be applied. Here are some quotes I read from Access Excellence website:

Each of us carries about half a dozen defective genes. We remain blissfully unaware of this fact unless we, or one of our close relatives, are amongst the many millions who suffer from a genetic disease. About one in ten people has, or will develop at some later stage, an inherited genetic disorder, and approximately 2,800 specific conditions are known to be caused by defects (mutations) in just one of the patient's genes.

Yeah, I hate faulty genes, that's for sure. Faulty genes have ruined my life - giving me fairly good health except for a crappy respiratory system.

In the U.S. and Europe, there are exciting new programs to 'map' the entire human genome - all of our genes. This work will enable scientists and doctors to understand the genes that control all diseases to which the human race is prone, and hopefully develop new therapies to treat and predict diseases.

Ray Kurzweil talks a lot about this and how because of accelerating returns we will be mapping individual human genomes very soon.

Much attention has been focused on the so-called genetic metabolic diseases in which a defective gene causes an enzyme to be either absent or ineffective in catalyzing a particular metabolic reaction effectively. A potential approach to the treatment of genetic disorders in man is gene therapy. This is a technique whereby the absent or faulty gene is replaced by a working gene, so that the body can make the correct enzyme or protein and consequently eliminate the root cause of the disease.

More info here:

http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BA/Gene_Therapy_Overview.html

Image courtesy wikipedia

Post-scarcity

With advances in technology, primarily nanotechnology in which the raw material is information, and we can rearrange atoms to make pretty much anything, we could easily move from a scarcity-based economy to an abundance-based economy.

http://www.postscarcityeconomy.com/

At the moment, resources are limited. Which means that economics dictates who gets what. Not only economics, though. Economics doesn't describe something called power. Power, as I described here, is basically the ability of someone to use coercion (mostly threats, but when it comes down to it actual physical force with the most extreme being inflicting death). Economics does influence power. But power isn't entirely dependant on economics. For example, the 'President' of the 'United States of America' isn't the richest man in the world, but he is extraordinarily powerful.

The aim of the singularity - actually the aim of all civilisation, should be to eliminate scarcity as much as possible. Because of scarcity, we have the rich-poor divide. We have individuals who lack the resources to live healthy and happy lives. We have people who must put up with the coercion of the state.

But then comes the second thing we have to overcome - power. Will the singularity eliminate or decentralise power? By all accounts, it would. The more resources individuals have to avoid the state, the less power the state has. The only problem is, that some technologies can magnify the state's power, not lessen it. But the state would need a very good justification to use these technologies to intrude into everyone's lives. That's where terrorism comes in.

And, surprise, we are already seeing this happening. The only consolation is that it's not likely the state will be able to ban any of these technologies because by doing so, it will enable other countries to soar ahead of them.

For more reading on post-scarcity, wikipedia has a good general article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity.