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Poll

Which of the following options is the most probable future for the United States in the next five decades?

Re-emergence of liberty focused ideas and actions, leading up to a worldwide technological and economic paradigm shift.
- 4 (15.4%)
Continuation of the decline of moral and economical liberties for individuals and groups, leading to a worldwide economic decline.
- 7 (26.9%)
Clash of the 'fates' (Rebellion, Social Decohension, and rapid rise of tyranny in certain locales).
- 7 (26.9%)
A technological singularity.
- 3 (11.5%)
December 12, 2012 ends it anyways.
- 0 (0%)
Alternative explanation(s) I wish to present.
- 5 (19.2%)

Total Members Voted: 7


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Author Topic: Lets play 'Karnak.'  (Read 8328 times)

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Level 20 Anklebiter

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Lets play 'Karnak.'
« on: August 05, 2008, 08:26:36 PM »

I thought this would be a nice game to play with respect to what we know and especially what we don't about the future. :) If you can come up with more options please offer them.
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BonerJoe

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2008, 08:33:10 PM »

I picked the two obvious ones.
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Taors

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2008, 08:40:43 PM »

I don't hold the belief that 2012 is an 'end date' for the planet, or anything like that. I think that 2012 will be a year of Complete Novelty, as explained in McKenna's Timewave Zero. Technology and novelty will be produced at such an epic rate, that the Singularity will spawn out of it and result in a global shift in consciousness and awareness - the way we smell, touch, hear, taste, and see. I think we're on the cusp of something fantastic. I can't wait to see the day, if I'm able.

Of course, it always gets worse before it gets better.
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trollfreezone

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2008, 10:22:45 PM »

I chose "alternative explanation I wish to present."

Violent revolution, followed by a newly-instituted U.N.-installed democratic socialist republic, followed by one world government of a similar nature.
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BonerJoe

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2008, 10:23:40 PM »

I don't hold the belief that 2012 is an 'end date' for the planet, or anything like that. I think that 2012 will be a year of Complete Novelty, as explained in McKenna's Timewave Zero. Technology and novelty will be produced at such an epic rate, that the Singularity will spawn out of it and result in a global shift in consciousness and awareness - the way we smell, touch, hear, taste, and see. I think we're on the cusp of something fantastic. I can't wait to see the day, if I'm able.

Of course, it always gets worse before it gets better.

Oh stop already.
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Level 20 Anklebiter

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2008, 10:42:12 PM »

I chose Clash of Fates and Technological Singularity. My reasoning is as follows: several significant discoveries in the natural sciences have happened in particular advancements in neurology and the  other life sciences. On top of that, two major social trends are indeed forming: ours and the neo-collectivists. This sets up a significant precedent not seen probably in thousands of years of recorded history (think real early Mesopotamia history...), so this won't be some easy clash either. I suspect at least one major change will happen: a new 'human' species will evolve due to whatever political, economic, and scientific wrangling that occurs. This species will decide the ultimate fate of itself and our current species. What I do see in the Pattern for this key event is that everything we know today will not exist as it does now. I do mean it, too. It will happen here in the United States only because the elements for social, scientific, and economic changes seem to be converging here for whatever reason. I suspect there are other forces at work, but nothing like what the conspiratards think. Personally, I think it's simply other folks like myself who can see the Pattern as well, but have their own designs for its shaping. They can't be happy with letting it unfold as it will, they wish to be gods, that's all I can guess so far. 
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Taors

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2008, 10:51:44 PM »

I don't hold the belief that 2012 is an 'end date' for the planet, or anything like that. I think that 2012 will be a year of Complete Novelty, as explained in McKenna's Timewave Zero. Technology and novelty will be produced at such an epic rate, that the Singularity will spawn out of it and result in a global shift in consciousness and awareness - the way we smell, touch, hear, taste, and see. I think we're on the cusp of something fantastic. I can't wait to see the day, if I'm able.

Of course, it always gets worse before it gets better.

Oh stop already.

Never.
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BonerJoe

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2008, 10:52:33 PM »

If the singularity happens, I hope someone destroys it. It can only lead to enslavement.
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Level 20 Anklebiter

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #8 on: August 05, 2008, 11:05:12 PM »

If the singularity happens, I hope someone destroys it. It can only lead to enslavement.

Or evolution.
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Taors

  • Guest
Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #9 on: August 05, 2008, 11:19:29 PM »

If the singularity happens, I hope someone destroys it. It can only lead to enslavement.

It depends on what you mean by Singularity.

Am I talking about super-advanced AI that can program itself?

Hardly. Look the word up.
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BonerJoe

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #10 on: August 05, 2008, 11:25:24 PM »

If the singularity happens, I hope someone destroys it. It can only lead to enslavement.

Or evolution.

If you think that machines can somehow possess the same qualities as a human brain, then why is it improbable to think that as with humans if it can attain controlling power that it won't?
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Taors

  • Guest
Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #11 on: August 05, 2008, 11:28:47 PM »

If the singularity happens, I hope someone destroys it. It can only lead to enslavement.

Or evolution.

If you think that machines can somehow possess the same qualities as a human brain, then why is it improbable to think that as with humans if it can attain controlling power that it won't?

It will, and that's why we must impede progress on such an abomination of God.
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blackie

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #12 on: August 05, 2008, 11:29:12 PM »

Quote
First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car of his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that I can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the system. We can imagine into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige an power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.

176. Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service of industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people will would spend their time shinning each others shoes, driving each other around inn taxicab, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable that the ones we've just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the "bourgeois" type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.
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BonerJoe

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Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #13 on: August 05, 2008, 11:32:30 PM »

Sometimes I think that manifesto will be seen as the new Bible in 1000 years.
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trollfreezone

  • Guest
Re: Lets play 'Karnak.'
« Reply #14 on: August 05, 2008, 11:35:01 PM »

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car of his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that I can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the system. We can imagine into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige an power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.

176. Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service of industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people will would spend their time shinning each others shoes, driving each other around inn taxicab, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable that the ones we've just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the "bourgeois" type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.

tl;dr
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