My tv set, a state of the art Sony Black Trinitron, probably older than you, has been disconnected for many years ago. I see no utility in a machine that, following your reasoning, just blinks little dots and does nothing more. For that, I prefer to look to the stars...
It's not surprising how IT related people always tries to relativize machine's role into mankind oppression. Exactly the same way gun defenders arguments, computers don't harm, people using them do. How innocent, misunderstood poor computers... (only programmers are even more innocent, of course...)
What next? the constitutional right to be a number inside a computer? The only good computer is the switched off computer.
Once you get onto the subject of "freedom from" you open up a can of worms that "freedom to do" knows little of.
Certainly. I suppose Jimbro introduced the "freedom from" concept just in order to avoid the problem of not enough "freedom to do" question. Freedom from, although eventually correct, it's something that's better expressed as being protected from or being safe from (at least at the mental frame set of my language). It has not too much to do with Freedom.
By the capacity of functioning together into gigantic networks, that generates information that people believes to be accurate and right, computers limits people's lives and freedom much more than any army.
Computers don't generate any of it. They just keep it around and make it available.
No? computers don't generates information? what do you call to the result of billions of queries that operates, not over you -the real person, but over an ID number that represents you over all those databases?
All the computers do there is cataloging and indexing. They don't write the crap.
Yes... just as televisions don't show images, just a bunch of little flashing dots.
There is a point at which the world that I imagine to be secure will come to a screeching halt.
You've introduced a perspective that I didn't thought about, "freedom from". To me, freedom is always "freedom to do".
Maybe there's a time for both freedoms during a man's life. I know too many people that, at their age, they deserve to be "free from" many things and they aren't.
It seems that either at "freedom from" or "freedom to do" we are too short of what's desirable for a man.
f that's what freedom is then nobody's free in any significant way. I'm free to comb what's left of my hair, but in so many much more significant ways, I'm not.
Well, I'm waiting that then you say a better definition of freedom.
The one I got was clearly a dictionary type of definition. Man is a "social animal", it means, per itself, that we prefer to trade some freedom for other things. Security for example. Or social ties. But, if so, how do we know that we've traded already too much? That's the problem.
By the capacity of functioning together into gigantic networks, that generates information that people believes to be accurate and right, computers limits people's lives and freedom much more than any army.
Computers don't generate any of it. They just keep it around and make it available.
No? computers don't generates information? what do you call to the result of billions of queries that operates, not over you -the real person, but over an ID number that represents you over all those databases?
It's exactly based on the result of such operations that people's life it's restricted, everyday, at all areas.
Communications. Most companies and jobs. Taxes. Banking. Assurances. Health. Surveillance and Repression. Aviation. Car circulation. Television and press. Army and Police.
All that runs 24/24 based at information generated by computers. Many of those systems are directly feed by information captured, also directly, by machines.
You have no money independence, no privacy independence, no information independence, no freedom to move, no freedom to communicate. Everything you do it's being registered and queried under some criteria. Results applies to you. If this is not oppression, I don't know what oppression is about.
Or lots of people just ridiculously overestimated the progress in artificial intelligence.
Yes, I believe so. "Artificial intelligence" has nothing of intelligence and everything of artificial.
The first steps for real AI have already been done by linking cells and microchips. Other investigators are doing different approaches and I see no good at such practices.
There's no need for AI for computers being already destroying human beings and reducing them to serfdom. Computers are tools, nothing but tools, but they are very special tools, a kind of tool that has their own dangers and that's what people are closing their eyes to.
By the capacity of functioning together into gigantic networks, that generates information that people believes to be accurate and right, computers limits people's lives and freedom much more than any army.
All those networks, separated or together, it doesn't mind, constitutes an entity that, in fact and for all finalities, it's operating against human beings. Half a dozen, if such, of good things don't pay all the rest.
Well, I'm sorry to say that our membership rolls have staggered to the point of immobility.
New users are mysterious beings, no different from the Yeti. Many expeditions tried to spot them before, none succeeded. Immobility it's exactly the way to catch them.
Well, keep calm. There's no motif for worrying. People are waiting, it's normal. The Vivaldi place opened one or two weeks ago, MyOpera will be there for two months more. Quality posters for Debates and Discussions are already here, not anywhere else. We are also waiting (while Frenzie tunes up the artillery). With calm.
The battle has not started yet. Someone put that soldier back to lines...
Yes, machines would probably consider laughing as something lacking internal logical consistency... and, specially, something extremely anti-productive. Therefore, subversive.
Either we disconnect machines or machines will disconnect entirely our lives, something that's already been done at a full scale. Stay connected, says the New Nazi propaganda... It must be dark humor. Reality exceeds all fiction.
He, he... you joke with my words, jax. But machines will not joke with you, I never heard about a machine that could laugh.
People should realize that is not normal to obey to machine orders and that's what people are already doing half of the time, be it directly or indirectly. It's not without a cause that one of the few jobs where people are still needed it's for making code for machines. They simply feed the beast.
Two things, one - why changing for such a big font? yes, I went to preferences and defined 14px, but unless someone has specifically asked for this, the older font seems to me to be perfectly acceptable. No web site uses such a big font anymore. two - I notice the change in quoting that I'm not sure that has any benefit. What I think to have a benefit is to eliminate the date/time stamp that seems to me useless and to create automatically a space (or half space) between the quote and the beginning of text.
Since 2005, patrol agents and CBP officers have killed some 42 people along the US-Mexican border without facing any public consequences – or any large-scale media coverage
Apologies to Belfrager: It turns out your lemming-like approach of "mass forum suicide" may have been closer to the truth than any of us were able to handle then. Now that we all know what was really happening in the back-ground, it actually looks like a sensible solution.
That was not meant to be a "sensible" solution, but an artistic collective work of art. Internet art. Maybe we can do it here... Ok, I'll shut up.
I could try to convince people to join DnD... I'll tell them that we are an exclusive member club, an international elite... with membership only by invitation.
The notion of freedom has too many footnotes, so claims of freedom need an infinite number of qualifications.
No, just one, your feeling. If you want to go further and analyze why you feel free then you need just three conditions, awareness, non compulsivity and moral.
It repugnates me when I see that kind of tourists that wants to eat what they eat back in home. If I had a restaurant I would not serve them anything at all.
Presumably you shouldn't have to worry about them even entering your restaurant?
Oh but they do! Specially the British, they want to bring Great Britain with them. Why do they travel so much instead of staying home, it's a mystery.
Other tourists are usually not like that, a much open mind. Including the Americans that have always surprised me, very open mind and curious about everything, I like them. Course the Americans that travels here aren't surely the average American...
It's a funny thing. Most of the time during the day we don't eat. We do all sorts of other things. Then again, we (tend to) eat every day. (I don't eat every day, but I don't know anyone else like me, so I can't say the world is weird. It must be something with me.) So, are we eaters or are we not? It's said we eat to live, but in reality we live just a couple of hours and then we fall back to eating again. Pointless vicious circle.
So... you don't eat everyday... original, I must say. Well, what you call a "pointless vicious circle" is nothing but the very definition of organic life. You need energy to stay alive, you get such energy from food's digestion and nowhere else. You don't eat, you die.
A different matter would be the pleasure that people takes from eating, which is the base of culinary/gastronomy and a characteristic that defines people's cultures. It varies very much from person to person and it ranges from those that eating it's a burden ( your case? ) to those that lives just for eating.
I prefer very much to eat tasty food, on small quantities and from different things, at each meal. Turning gourmet. Another thing it's the availability one has for other's food. When out of the country I always insist on eating the local food and experiment their specialities.
It repugnates me when I see that kind of tourists that wants to eat what they eat back in home. If I had a restaurant I would not serve them anything at all.
I live in "The Land of the Free"-- or so they tell us anyway. I have a "job" that by its very nature attracts free spirit types, but at the same time burdens you with worries you wouldn't have in some other line of work.
I could be "free-er" than I am now, I suppose-- but the funny thing is, some of the things we think make us free actually make us worse off instead of better.
Freedom is not synonymous of absence of worrying, very much the contrary. That's the beginning of the problem, a so complex world that will bring so much worries to those that pretends to maintain their freedom that people prefers to abdicate from it.
Slavery where slaves desires to keep being slaves, the perfect dead end, the perfect no way out...
Freedom is a vague concept unless tied to something specific. Everybody is constrained in many ways.
The condition of being free of restraints. Seems to me a definition good enough. If restrained to be tied to something specific, it's not freedom, just choice. If, besides that, just a certain number of options are given to you to chose from, then it's not even choice.
Quote from: Mandi
I'm a full-time mother amongst other things. Do I feel I could be freer? Sure.
Motherhood characterizes in the first place by the abnegation of putting other life first than ours. It's one of the few things that are above freedom and, in this sense, should be always considered sacred.
Economics it's certainly at the front line of what people considers to be a limitation to their freedom, but who putted economics there? Who gave economics such a power? We did, despite being told the entire life that money would not bring us happiness...
