mission statement
mike1937
suggested. I agree that we should fall under all of Paul Fernhout's
suggested Characteristics of Chaordic Organizations, and need a
central purpose shared by all members. I think our mission statement
should be to pave the road to mankind's extraterrestrial colonization
by creating an open source environment where talented individuals and
organizations can collaborate.
That said, our general plan should be:
1) create web infrastructure, we are already quite well along with
this
2) gather all relevant information
3) identify additional research and advances that need to be done to
create a sustainable settlement, this should involve some simulations
with some heavy duty math, physics and chemistry involved.
4) start actually building and testing modules
5) colonize something
Along the way we need to attract as many people as possible, be as
dynamic as possible, and obtain an understanding of the resources and
talent the public and private sectors can offer.
Just brainstorming, as always all suggestions are welcome.
Alejandro
description?
Jared Croft
should in a broad sense be. Personally I think Mike's outline is
good, but it should be built upon. Along with a series of goals, we
also need reasons for pursueing them and counterarguements for what
the nay sayers are liable to say about our project. The mission
statement needs to be intelligent, comprehensive, persuasive, and
transcendent.
We should make it an objective to approve an outline by the end of
tommorow.
Perhaps we should also ratify a provisional makeshift MS by then as
well.
Here is my outline idea for the semi-permenant MS:
Start with an survey of the resource and security problems on Earth.
Then contrastingly talk about the potential of space (Paul mentioned a
nearby asteriod capable of supportiong 500 million). Then introduce
who we are, and tell why we are. Then list our goals (Mike's list)
giving each a moderate amount of detail. Then, refute the arguement
we shouldn't go into space because people on Earth are starving,
oppressed, etc-by pointing out that with humanity in space, "We [will]
have it in power to begin the world over again."* We can create
juster, wiser societies, when we have such a massive clean slate at
our disposal. Then detail how we plan to operate-lots of people
donating their spare time and expertise, eventually money, and some
eventually may work full time. Then detail how you-the reader-can
help out.
Im not sure how soon we'll want money. I am thinking we don't really
have much to do with it right now, we don't have the infrastructure to
deal with it, and were not developed enough yet to ask for it in good
faith.
Perhaps we should have multiple people write the MS, and then
sythesize their work into a better whole.
*-Thomas Paine
Paul D. Fernhout
technology just because they might be wonderful places for trillions of
people to live someday *everywhere* in the Solar System.
Like:
"An Open Source Planet"
http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
But keep "for-profit" at the edges, not the core, remembering "Money is a
sign of poverty." - Iain M. Banks, 1987. And being location neutral.
Why justify a "hobby" further?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby
"Whilst some hobbies strike many people as trivial or boring, hobbyists have
found something compelling and entertaining about them (see geek). Much
early scientific research was, in effect, a hobby of the wealthy; more
recently, Linux began as a student's hobby. A hobby may not be as trivial as
it appears at a time when it has relatively few followers. Thus a British
conservationist recalls that when seen wearing field glasses at a London
station in the 1930s he was asked if he was going to the (horse) races. The
anecdote indicates that at the time an interest in nature was not widely
perceived as a credible hobby. Practitioners of that hobby went on to become
the germs of the conservation movement that flourished in Britain from 1965
onwards and became a global political movement within a generation.
Conversely, the hobby of aircraft spotting probably originated as part of a
serious activity designed to detect arriving waves of enemy aircraft
entering English airspace during World War II. In peacetime it clearly has
no such practical or social purpose."
Anything else for the Earth is a bonus IMHO. Fortunately, our current needs
for Earthly sustainability (Spaceship Earth) coincide quite a bit with the
learning we need to do for space settlement. Thinking about the difficulty
of living in space both technologically and socially also helps us better
appreciate the miracle of the Earth.
I feel simulation is a good way to approach this purpose now -- and we can
just start that now under the GPL license. Ideas?
I do not feel we need to persuade or educate anybody than ourselves and
perhaps the Virgle list for a while -- 1000 people already is amazing.
On "juster, wiser societies", I might just hope for more variety. :-)
As my father, a world traveler for 20 years in the Merchant Marine, used to
say: "Wherever you go, you take yourself along."
FYI: Below are some Chaordic ideas where #1 could be adapted to space
settlement and the rest adopted. Key is one sentence Purpose and flexible
Principles.
--Paul Fernhout
===================================
Chaordic Ideas:
http://www.pcdf.org/meadows/visa.html
"The purpose is "what ought to be." Hock says it's the hard part of any
chaordic alliance, getting the purpose right, making it consistent with real
need, with the laws of the planet, with the mysteries of life. Purpose is
derived from morality, from vision, from collective wisdom, not from
individual ambition or greed."
http://www.chaordic.org/who_we_are.html
"""
Join a Purpose-Centered and Principle-Based Community
The Commons is purpose-centered and principle-based. The common purpose that
all owning members share is:
To develop, disseminate and implement new concepts of organization that
result in more equitable sharing of power and wealth, improved health, and
greater compatibility with the human spirit and biosphere.
Owning members observe the following principles when participating in
activities of the Commons:
Principles of Practice
1. Work to ensure that all people, by right of birth, have adequate
necessities of life, including clean air, water, food and shelter; an
equitable share of wealth and resources; and opportunity to develop their
full physical, mental and spiritual potential. Work to ensure that human
capacities, technologies and organizations protect and support, not
systemically alter, degrade or destroy, the Earth, its diversity of life and
its life support systems. Work to ensure interdependent health and diversity
of individuals, communities, institutions and cultures. Resolve conflict
creatively and cooperatively without resort to physical, economic,
psychological, social or ecological violence.
2. Freely and fully exchange information relevant to the Purpose and
Principles unless it violates confidentiality or materially diminishes
competitive position.
Principles of Organization
1. Be open to owning membership by any Individual or Institution
subscribing to the Purpose and Principles in conducting activities of the
Chaordic Commons and Terra Civitas Initiative. Have the right to
self-organize at any time, on any scale, in any form or around any activity
consistent with the Purpose and Principles. Conduct deliberations and make
decisions by bodies and methods that reasonably represent all relevant and
affected parties and are dominated by none. Vest authority, perform
functions and use resources in the smallest or most local part that includes
all relevant and affected parties.
2. Educe rather than compel behavior to the maximum possible degree.
The principles are the "organizational DNA" found in each and every "cell"
of the Commons, no matter how it grows and evolves. Participation in the
Commons provides owning members an opportunity for experiential learning
about new ways to organize in a self-organizing, self-governing,
self-evolving community!
Jared Croft
board for trying to make Open Virgle (which has 9 members) a
success.
In regards to "Wherever you go, you take yourself along.", we don't
have to take a random slice of humanity along. We could could easily
filter for general merit (intelligence, social functioning, no
psychopaths, etc) when we choose our first generation. That
generation will give birth the next, and this stuff is about half
genetic. We wouldn't just have a blank structural slate, we would
also have an better species. Even if we don't pursue that goal
explicitly, the fact of the matter is there are going to be more
willing pioneers than there will be room for on the ships, so we would
then choose the most effective individuals so as to maximise the
likliehood of mission success. So no matter what, spacemen are going
to be better than average at least at first.
If we get to the point where it becomes possible to use space
colonization to relieve significant Earthside population pressure,
then the same old mix of stock will pour into space, but even then if
by then the space stock is large enough, it will still remain better
than the one which has produced humanities history so far. Humans are
and always will be imperfect, but I can't think of a less
controversial or more moral way of producing anchored self
improvement.
Paul D. Fernhout
According to Gatto, in the 1920s the eugenics movement was very open and
promoted in the USA (and was later adopted by the Nazis based in part on the
US American ideas, which in turn came from other places like England). Gatto
suggests, in passing, how the eugenics movement was behind some of the
"Brave New World" notions of breeding specific classes by "class rooms"
where people of similar abilities associated and presumably then chose
mates. So, even in this worst case of eugenics and racism as one motivation
for classrooms, Gatto makes clear how the entire thing was going on in the
open (even in medical journals), not as some hidden conspiracy. See in
Chapter 11:
"Eugenics Arrives"
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/11b.htm
"Between 1890 and 1920, the percentage of our population adjudged
"feeble-minded" and condemned to institutional confinement more than
doubled. The long-contemplated hygienic form of social control formulated by
eighteenth-century German social thinker Johann Frank, "complete medical
policing," was launched with a vengeance. Few intimidations are more
effective than the threat of a stay in an insane asylum. Did the population
of crazies really double in those three decades? ... The eugenics movement
begun by Galton in England was energetically spread to the United States by
his followers. Besides destroying lesser breeds (as they were routinely
called) by abortion, sterilization, adoption, celibacy, two-job family
separations, low-wage rates to dull the zest for life, and, above all,
schooling to dull the mind and debase the character, other methods were
clinically discussed in journals, including a childlessness which could be
induced through easy access to pornography. At the same time those deemed
inferior were to be turned into eunuchs, Galtonians advocated the notion of
breeding a super race. Humanist Scott Nearing wrote his masterpiece, The
Super Race: An American Problem, in 1912, just as the drive to destroy an
academic curriculum in public schools was reaching its first crescendo. By
"problem," Nearing wasn’t referring to a moral dilemma. Rather, he was
simply arguing that only America had the resources to meet the engineering
challenge posed in creating supermen out of genetic raw stock."
Having studied in Ecology & Evolution, one of the reasons
eugenics (and thus some of the related schooling practices) is a bad idea
(beyond the obvious ethical issues, and beyond the fact that "intelligence"
can't be reliably measured especially as there are many forms of it,
including compassion), is that "intelligence" is only one of many things a
human population needs to be healthy and successful. Generally any form of
selective breeding emphasizes one trait and loses many others; that's one
reason crop monocultures (most corn, cotton, etc.) are so vulnerable to
disease and drought and need huge inputs of fertilizer, pesticides, and
water to survive.
Even if eugenically organized classrooms or habitats somehow could
breed classes of people of both low and high intelligence to fit various
industrial jobs like in _Brave New World_,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
they might all die of poor immune systems unable to resist the next common
cold. A healthier and more adaptable population tends to be the one with the
most genetic variety, not the least. For example, a lot of mate preference
(via smell) has to do with health and parasite resistance, to maximize
genetic diversity related to immune system functions. See:
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19960301-000030.html
"After long dismissing the search for a human pheromone as folly, scientists
have begun to take a second look at how human body odor influences sexual
attraction. The magic scent is not some romantic elixir but the aromatic
effluence of our immune system. The only trouble is we don't give it half a
chance."
Even things one might consider disadvantages in an extreme form -- like
sickle cell anemia or profound autism are often, in their less profound
form, adaptive advantages to, say, resisting malaria or perhaps being able
to concentrate well; but often, by the way genetics works for many traits,
you can't have lots of people with a mild and adaptive form of something
without also having some people with an extreme form of it. Interfering
significantly with this natural process of mate selection and maintaining
high genetic diversity puts the whole human species potentially at risk --
especially since, as species go, humanity is already fairly low (perhaps
dangerously so) in genetic variety.
Consider, as just one example:
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/app-q/textq.htm
"It has recently been discovered that every single troop of chimpanzee or
gorilla has more genetic variety among its few members than the entire
living population of Homo sapiens has to offer worldwide. Genetically the
differences between the human local variations (known also as "human races")
are so minute that we could actually almost be clones of each other. ... To
us, all sheep in a flock look alike. This is not so for the sheep who can
recognize individual other sheep, even from a distance. Something similar
works in humans: most of us look quite different to each other and most of
us can recognize someone we know immediately from quite a distance, often
long before we can recognize his or her face. Our human senses are adapted
to recognize the tiniest differences by enormously enlarging them in our
minds. We may think that the differences between us are huge but the fact
when measured objectively, they are not."
--Paul Fernhout
Jared Croft
discerned, but not so precisely as to give us a numerical score.
General Intelligence is easy to measure, and has been proven very
relevant:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html
Emotional Intelligence is equally important. However, some sociopaths
have good EQs but no compassion. Thankfully, psycho/sociopaths (who
make 1% of the population and have no conscience) can be detected by
tests taken of them when they lie, because lieing doesn't affect them
emotionally like it does normal people.
The idea that intelligence is a mystery wrapped in an enigma is PC,
because it prevents judging, but it is simply inaccurate.
For variability we should focus on having a diverse genetic population
in the areas we are not trying to manipulate. Additionally, rather
than actually measuring GI and EQ, I think we should simply pick the
most dynamic and capable people we can find. We don't want intellects
that are overspecialized to the extent of being dysfunctional in key
areas.
Eugenics as it was in the first half of the 20th century was immorally
applied psuedo science. It is not races that should be the focus, but
rather individuals. Furthermore the methods for improving the genes
ought to be benign, and not include force.
Viewing the world as it is, and you see the overall course of humanity
moving irrationally. Renewable resource mining, starvation with
luxory yachts, overpopulation, violent superstition/ideology,
addiction to unnatural vices (excessive: TV, VGs, Sweets, etc),
overworking, and corruption. Awareness helps combat all of these
things, and intelligence produces awareness.
There is certainly no defending the perpetuation of pyschopathy.
Without it there would have been no invasion of Iraq, likely no
Stalin, no Hitler.
mike1937
predict how anything will affect genetic variation. Generally the more
diversity the healthier the population in the long run; sickle cell
anemia, for example, is still in existense because it prevents
malaria. There are some genetic diseases we should screen for,
however, things that geneticists are completely sure are totally
harmful with no unpredictable benefits.
Whats far more more interesting to me is not the elimination of
genetic defects, but communicable diseases. As long as people are
tested thoroughly, early colonists should have very few of the
diseases that plague us today, the flu, etc. Of course, this means
that after the first generation no one would have any resistance to
anything and visitors from earth could likely start a plague.
On Apr 5, 12:24 pm, Jared Croft <wyj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some forms of intelligence are easily measured whereas others can be
> discerned, but not so precisely as to give us a numerical score.
>
> General Intelligence is easy to measure, and has been proven very
> relevant:
>
Paul D. Fernhout
"g, a Statistical Myth"
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
"Since Spearman's theory of g is about as refuted as a statistical
hypothesis gets, why does g still feature in arguments about social policy
and education? ... No part of my argument is at all original; it's old news
to people who actually study psychometric methods and causal inference in
general. In fact, even, or especially, if you think that what I'm saying is
weak-minded politically correct rubbish and I really ought to know better, I
strongly urge you to read the linked papers by Borsboom (with the
discussion) and by Glymour.
...
In primitive societies, or so Malinowski taught, myths serve as the
legitimating charters of practices and institutions. Just so here: the myth
of g legitimates a vast enterprise of intelligence testing and theorizing.
There should be no dispute that, when we lack specialized and valid
instruments, general IQ tests can be better than nothing. Claims that they
are anything more than such stop-gaps — that they are triumphs of
psychological science, illuminating the workings of the mind; keys to the
fates of individuals and peoples; sources of harsh truths which only a
courageous few have the strength to bear; etc., etc., — such claims are at
present entirely unjustified, though not, perhaps, unmotivated. They are
supported only by the myth, and acceptance of the myth itself rests on what
I can only call an astonishing methodological backwardness.
The bottom line is: The sooner we stop paying attention to g, the sooner we
can devote our energies to understanding the mind."
Also:
http://www.existenceiswonderful.com/2007/10/intelligence-assumptions-and-g.html
"Also, with regard to IQ predicting "life success", since the very inception
of IQ testing (which, incidentally, began in France and was intended to
identify schoolchildren who needed extra help with academics), most such
tests have been predictive merely of a person's likely success relative to
the prevailing status quo. If you look back at some of the earliest IQ
tests, they seem almost laughably inane -- one of them, which presumed to
test "mental age", required that a person with a mental age of 6 be able to
classify pictures of people as either "pretty" or "ugly and deformed".
Nowadays, aesthetic preference is not generally considered to be an earmark
of intelligence. But it certainly was at one point in time, and there are
probably things on modern IQ tests that will eventually have us scratching
our heads as to why we ever thought something like that mattered."
Although I'd concede there are many big factors related to health that in
turn affect behavior. Note that dietary habits like eating fish (omega-3)
tend to run in families.
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
"The UK prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were
fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent
offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%. Although no one is
suggesting that poor diet alone can account for complex social problems, the
former chief inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham says that he is now
"absolutely convinced that there is a direct link between diet and
antisocial behaviour, both that bad diet causes bad behaviour and that good
diet prevents it.""
Also:
"Chore Wars: Researcher Finds that Involving Young Children in Household
Chores Pays off Later"
http://nfb.org/legacy/fr/fr14/fr04se09.htm
""""
After examining these issues and studying all of the possibilities that
could influence the outcomes, Rossmann’s research indicates that the best
predictor for young adults’ success in their mid-twenties is that they
participated in household tasks at age three or four.
“Being involved in household tasks at a young age is what made the
difference for a positive outcome,” Rossmann says. “Through participating in
household tasks, parents are teaching children responsibility, how to
contribute to family life, a sense of empathy, and how to take care of
themselves.”
Common wisdom holds that IQ and motivation have a strong bearing on success,
but she found that these don’t matter as much as participating in household
tasks. Even Rossmann was surprised at the results. “I didn’t expect the
outcome,” she says. “I analyzed it and re-analyzed it. It seems like such a
simple area, but it’s a huge area.”
"""
[Mentioned in: _In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness_ by
Chris Mercogliano http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm ]
Anyway, even if IQ made sense as a measure, consider a likely current
problem at Google: :-)
"How Do You Find Programming Superstars?"
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/27/2034228
"""
Re:Appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
by Belial6 (794905) Alter Relationship on Thursday February 28, @01:56AM
(#22584718) Homepage
You touch on a piece that is often missed. It is a bad choice to only hire
'superstars'. Quite simply, not every problem is going to be interesting.
There is very often going to be grunt work, or simple things that just need
to get done. Your 'superstars' are going to get board really quick when they
have to do grunt work. You would be much better off, hiring people of
various skill levels, make sure that they know where they are, and match up
really good developers with some that are not as good. Of course, to truly
be a 'superstar', you have to be able to understand and appreciate the
contributions that those with less coding skill often bring to a project.
At my work, I am teamed up with another developer that will simply never be
a 'superstar'. She consistently needs help on code that is just not that
difficult for me to write. That being said, she is immensely productive. She
knows what level of code she can handle, and she does a LOT of work that,
while I could do if need be, I would be far less interested in than the work
I do. This would lead to lower quality code, and job dissatisfaction. Her
presence on the team gives far more to the company than any 'superstar'
could bring.
The key is that she knows what she does well, I know what I do well, and we
appreciate each others contributions.
Now, maybe the question wasn't about 'superstar' coders, but in employees in
general. If so, it didn't come off that way to me.
"""
Again, the value of diversity.
But here is the worst danger in thinking and planning in terms of IQ:
"How Not to Talk to Your Kids"
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/ [multiple pages]
"Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised
by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable
that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in
control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of
the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a
failure.” In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think
that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the
importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to
put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized -- it’s public proof
that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts. Repeating her experiments,
Dweck found this effect of praise on performance held true for students of
every socioeconomic class. It hit both boys and girls -- the very brightest
girls especially (they collapsed the most following failure). Even
preschoolers weren’t immune to the inverse power of praise."
And here is one other possible pitfall: "Dweck’s research on overpraised
kids strongly suggests that image maintenance becomes their primary concern
— they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down."
Also from the article: "Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with
high aspirations but 700 students whose main attributes are being
predominantly minority and low achieving. Blackwell split her kids into two
groups for an eight-session workshop. The control group was taught study
skills, and the others got study skills and a special module on how
intelligence is not innate. These students took turns reading aloud an essay
on how the brain grows new neurons when challenged. They saw slides of the
brain and acted out skits. “Even as I was teaching these ideas,” Blackwell
noted, “I would hear the students joking, calling one another ‘dummy’ or
‘stupid.’ ” After the module was concluded, Blackwell tracked her students’
grades to see if it had any effect. It didn’t take long. The teachers—who
hadn’t known which students had been assigned to which workshop—could pick
out the students who had been taught that intelligence can be developed.
They improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell
reversed the students’ longtime trend of decreasing math grades. The only
difference between the control group and the test group were two lessons, a
total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but a single idea: that the
brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter. That alone
improved their math scores."
--Paul Fernhout
Jared Croft wrote:
> Some forms of intelligence are easily measured whereas others can be
> discerned, but not so precisely as to give us a numerical score.
>
> General Intelligence is easy to measure, and has been proven very
> relevant:
>
> http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html
...
Paul D. Fernhout
what is the underlying social "disease"? :-)
Hint:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Let's pretend for a moment that work doesn't turn people into stultified
submissives. Let's pretend, in defiance of any plausible psychology and the
ideology of its boosters, that it has no effect on the formation of
character. And let's pretend that work isn't as boring and tiring and
humiliating as we all know it really is. Even then, work would still make a
mockery of all humanistic and democratic aspirations, just because it usurps
so much of our time. Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and
bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of
friendship and citizenship. He was right. Because of work, no matter what we
do, we keep looking at our watches. The only thing "free" about so-called
free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly
devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and
recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor,
as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to
and from the workplace, but assumes primary responsibility for its own
maintenance and repair. Coal and steel don't do that. Lathes and typewriters
don't do that. No wonder Edward G. Robinson in one of his gangster movies
exclaimed, "Work is for saps!""
And:
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is
that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird
people’s rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been
distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and
men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing
cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems
of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As
machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion
of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and
unrelated government measures—unemployment insurance, social security,
welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a
historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is
subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when
sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone
in the U.S. The existence of this paradox is denied or ignored by
conventional economic analysis."
And:
"Confessions of a Recovering Economist"
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=3996
"Every other addiction has a Twelve Step program, laced with tough love and
blunt self-honesty. Why not a Twelve Step program for economists?
God knows, they've done enough damage with their arrogant, drunken
prescriptions. Here's how each and every economist can face up to their
inner demons, and make their own small contribution to setting things right."
And:
"BUDDHIST ECONOMICS" by E. F. Schumacher
http://www.schumachersociety.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to
enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a
common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming
existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To
organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring,
stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of
criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people,
an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the
most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for
leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete
misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that
work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and
cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of
leisure."
All issues a post-scarcity F/OSS economy will hopefully have resolved --
making pyschopathy a local problem, not a global one (or larger).
Sci-Fi example:
_Voyage from Yesteryear_ by James P. Hogan
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=29
"Earth attempts to assert control over a distant colony at another star. But
what happens when the usual methods fail to persuade or intimidate
descendants of a first generation that was never conditioned to respond by
conditioned human adults?"
Overall I remain hopeful that things like free software and cheaper
manufacturing and the internet will help everyone around the world to have a
better life, whatever US foreign or domestic policy is. In 20 years, for
example, computers will likely be 10000X or more faster than now (and
capable of storing *all* recorded music on a desktop) and cars will
routinely drive themselves and people might print pizza in 3D the way
we print documents in 2D now:
"Funny video of a person interacting with a future computer"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=topeBoB-ApQ
"Printing sushi"
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/02/03/0330238.shtml?tid=133&tid=126
"GPL'd 3D printer"
http://www.reprap.org
If one looks at humanity's hunter-gather past, it is much easier to
understand, for example, why most humans have trouble saving for tomorrow
(or even repaying debt) instead of partying and sharing with neighbors. The
meat of a large wild animal killed by one hunter rots fairly quickly. A
stock of seeds gathered by one gatherer may be eaten by mice. And the
natural world produces so much all the time if there are few people and you
know where to look and enjoy or accept a diversity of meals.
So modern Americans with hunter-gatherer genes and outlooks end up poor and
bankrupt in a US capitalist society run by the few people who think
differently or have iron wills (and yet who are in some sense shunned as
violating the most basic hard-wried human norms about sharing, behind the
rich/poor divide, which is why the rich have learned to hide, like in
out-of-sight mansions).
"Class: A Guide Through the American Status System"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671792253/
"The Super Rich Are Out of Sight"
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1227-06.htm
Poor trapped Billionaires: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates'_house
"Gates often entertains the rich and powerful at his home. Once, when Bill
Gates had a private party for the National Governors Association at the
house, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a "temporary
security zone" around Gates' Lake Washington home which locked down all of
Lake Washington south of the Highway 520 bridge and stayed in effect for two
days."
So, the wealthy still live in fear. Just a different sort than the rest of
us. :-(
What I would advocate here as a mission statement aspect is the creation of
a culture and technology of abundance (a gift economy) which will allow
*all* humanity to return to a world of relative abundance compared to human
population pressure. Then, those evolved inclinations will be a better fit
than using ration-unit based capitalism for most things.
This almost gets it right, except "for-profit" is obsolete in a gift economy:
"Virgle: An Open Source Planet"
http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
"A post-post-industrial economy
What does “open source” mean in the context of a distant, planet-wide,
century-long enterprise? Today's industrialized (and post-industrialized)
(and, one imagines, post-post- industrialized) economies are sustained not
so much by physical wealth as by advanced systems of shared knowledge whose
marginal productivity grows as more is accumulated. "Shared," however,
doesn’t mean valueless; we see Virgle as a decidedly for-profit venture that
will develop most efficiently via decentralized models of effort, authority
and reward. If the first economic revolution was agricultural, the second
industrial and the third digital, the fourth will be Open Source -- the
birthing of a planetary civilization whose development is driven by the
unbound human imagination."
For 100000 years, "affluence" was the human birthright:
"The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other
group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent
society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's
material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is
therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to
bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a
tragedy of modern times."
And the main point: "Reports on hunters and gatherers of the ethnological
present -- specifically on those in marginal environments -- suggest a mean
of three to five hours per adult worker per day in food production. Hunters
keep banker's hours, notably less than modern industrial workers
(unionised), who would surely settle for a 21-35 hour week."
These "bankers hours" today are on marginal land! Imagine the life of
such people in the productive Caribbean. We don't have to imagine. Look at
Columbus's diaries, before he and his men started brutally killing and
enslaving:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
Columbus wrote: "They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears
and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks'
bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were
well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear
arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the
edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears
are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we
could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. ... [The
natives] are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has
not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have,
they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...."
The rest is a horror story by Columbus and those who followed -- murder,
theft, enslavement, and so on. The destruction of paradise. Pyschopathy?
What you see there now, with the hotels encroaching towards all beachfront
property, and the three jobs per worker, is just the end of a long saga.
Now, I'm not saying we can all live the way today as the people in the
Carribbean used to, because rising populations means there is less land per
capita than needed to support this lifestyle. But clearly I can point to a
time when people had a lot more free time (everything left over after at
most maybe 20 hrs or so of "work" by a small fraction of the able population
to support everyone). That free time was spent in leisure, including making
up stories and singing songs and just enjoying the natural world. A
hunter/gatherer tribe today on marginal land is not even close to the way of
life many people in the Caribbean has a few generations ago -- since beach
areas are generally very productive of food per-capita. Is it any wonder the
people in the pre-Columbus Caribbean were so happy and willing to share from
their abundance? There are bad things about those times -- including high
infant mortality, difficult to treat parasites, and a lot of local feuding,
but there are core aspects of such a life that were very good -- much better
in social terms than anything we can probably even imagine if raised only in
the USA. But the truth you can see in Caribbean history is that people are
adapted to such an environment of abundance for hundreds of thousands of
years. People are naturally artists and free and open source culture
developers. It is only the current bureaucratic ration unit managing system
which is so incredibly artificial and restrictive and gets in the way or
artistry -- where you need to earn ration units to get the food which is
almost all kept under lock and key, system. That system takes pursues its
own logic even to the point of killing off or driving away free and joyful
people to take their land or gold that lies beneath it (or, now, what lies
next to it, the water view).
What changed? To greatly simply, the very success of the hunter/gatherers
led to rising population, which in turn lead to an increased pressure on
food supplies, and in turn a need for agriculture, and from such
concentrations, militaristic hierarchical bureaucracies emerged, like
storms. People back then were not dumb; they just really didn't have a need
for most modern technology. Human stature actually shrank with agriculture
due to worse diet (anthropologists document the shorter adult skeletons) and
it is only in the last 100 years or so that adult height has come back up to
pre-agricultural norms. Along with agriculture was the rise of militaristic
bureaucracies to defend immobile agricultural lands or to fight for uniquely
productive coastal estuaries. And Columbus came to the Caribbean as a
representing of such bureaucracies. And outlined above in his words and the
words of another contemporary was the result.
Naturally, there are good things about hierarchies too. I don't want to make
this completely one sided. I'm more for a balance of hierarchy and
"meshwork", like Manuel de Landa outlines here:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
IMHO the (pre-Columbus) history of the Caribbean shows this to be true.
There is a enough to go around, even given increased populations, and even
ignoring the potential growth of humanity into, say, space habitats.
The problem isn't the level of abundance -- it is more the current world
view and all the interlocking bureaucratic systems which support it. Maybe
this world view was justifiable in Europe hundreds of years ago -- maybe
everything Columbus did in the Caribbean was somehow justifiable at the time
for some noble cause of advancing Western Civilization (though I doubt it,
looks like plain-old theft and murder and slavery to me, with a bit of
accidental introduction of plagues). But today, there is no reason for the
starving artist. As the "Triple Revolution" letter from 1964 suggests,
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
with increasing productivity through automation, there is no good reason to
link access to the essentials of life with productive work. And as the OLPC
project shows, or GNU/Linux, amazingly productive cooperations to make free
designs are not only possible, they are happening.
Still, I can acknowledge, that is is difficult to live in two worlds -- to
survive with one foot in an economy designed around creating and managing
scarcity while also having one foot in an economy based on abundance. It's
not an easy thing -- either careerwise or psychologically.
Google must face that issue in planning, and Virgle is a nervous laugh. :-)
Flexible self-replicating 3D printers that can robustly
work with a variety of materials remain in the future, even as I can point
to steady progress like RepRap. And even then, I doubt they will make
anything we would want to eat for a long time. Still, I can also point
just to the history of agriculture and all the wonderful self-replicating
fruits and vegetables and beans which we have now from 10000 years of
cooperative work on plant-breeding -- even as big corporations now seek to
shut that down and impose a scarcity even on seeds via biopiracy. :-(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopiracy
But even there, disadvantaged people are still trying to protect themselves:
"India hits back in 'bio-piracy' battle"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4506382.stm
"With help from software engineers and patent examiners, Ms Kala and her
colleagues are putting together a 30-million-page electronic encyclopaedia
of India's traditional medical knowledge, the first of its kind in the
world. The ambitious $2m project, christened Traditional Knowledge Digital
Library, will roll out an encyclopaedia of the country's traditional
medicine in five languages - English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish -
in an effort to stop people from claiming them as their own and patenting them."
So the struggles continue. First gold, then ocean front property, now seeds.
So Virgle is just a return to an older non-pyschopathic way of life IMHO. :-)
--Paul Fernhout
mike1937
lack of a better word, materialism without employing some inherently
flawed system that doesnt even truly address the problem, such as
communism; or at least join the fight against it. Because fixing our
society is just as important as duplicating it, I would agree that it
should be included in the mission statement.
On Apr 5, 5:33 pm, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
> what is the underlying social "disease"? :-)
>
> Hint:
> http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
> "Let's pretend for a moment that work doesn't turn people into stultified
> submissives. Let's pretend, in defiance of any plausible psychology and the
> ideology of its boosters, that it has no effect on the formation of
> character. And let's pretend that work isn't as boring and tiring and
> humiliating as we all know it really is. Even then, work would still make a
> mockery of all humanistic and democratic aspirations, just because it usurps
> so much of our time. Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and
> bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of
> friendship and citizenship. He was right. Because of work, no matter what we
> do, we keep looking at our watches. The only thing "free" about so-called
> free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly
> devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and
> recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor,
> as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to
> and from the workplace, but assumes primary responsibility for its own
> maintenance and repair. Coal and steel don't do that. Lathes and typewriters
> don't do that. No wonder Edward G. Robinson in one of his gangster movies
> exclaimed, "Work is for saps!""
>
> And:
> that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird
> people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been
> distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and
> men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing
> cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems
> of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As
> machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion
> of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and
> and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks'
> bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were
>
> read more >>
Jared Croft
The debate over intelligence and intelligence testing focuses on the
question of whether it is useful or meaningful to evaluate people
according to a single major dimension of cognitive competence. Is
there indeed a general mental ability we commonly call "intelligence,"
and is it important in the practical affairs of life? The answer,
based on decades of intelligence research, is an unequivocal yes. No
matter their form or content, tests of mental skills invariably point
to the existence of a global factor that permeates all aspects of
cognition. And this factor seems to have considerable influence on a
person's practical quality of life. Intelligence as measured by IQ
tests is the single most effective predictor known of individual
performance at school and on the job. It also predicts many other
aspects of well-being, including a person's chances of divorcing,
dropping out of high school, being unemployed or having illegitimate
children [see illustration].
Illustration of occupational achievement and social outcomes relation
to IQ: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox2.html
By now the vast majority of intelligence researchers take these
findings for granted. Yet in the press and in public debate, the facts
are typically dismissed, downplayed or ignored. This misrepresentation
reflects a clash between a deeply felt ideal and a stubborn reality.
The ideal, implicit in many popular critiques of intelligence
research, is that all people are born equally able and that social
inequality results only from the exercise of unjust privilege. The
reality is that Mother Nature is no egalitarian. People are in fact
unequal in intellectual potential--and they are born that way, just as
they are born with different potentials for height, physical
attractiveness, artistic flair, athletic prowess and other traits.
Although subsequent experience shapes this potential, no amount of
social engineering can make individuals with widely divergent mental
aptitudes into intellectual equals.
Early in the century-old study of intelligence, researchers discovered
that all tests of mental ability ranked individuals in about the same
way. Although mental tests are often designed to measure specific
domains of cognition--verbal fluency, say, or mathematical skill,
spatial visualization or memory--people who do well on one kind of
test tend to do well on the others, and people who do poorly generally
do so across the board. This overlap, or intercorrelation, suggests
that all such tests measure some global element of intellectual
ability as well as specific cognitive skills. In recent decades,
psychologists have devoted much effort to isolating that general
factor, which is abbreviated g, from the other aspects of cognitive
ability gauged in mental tests.
The general factor explains most differences among individuals in
performance on diverse mental tests. This is true regardless of what
specific ability a test is meant to assess, regardless of the test's
manifest content (whether words, numbers or figures) and regardless of
the way the test is administered (in written or oral form, to an
individual or to a group). Tests of specific mental abilities do
measure those abilities, but they all reflect g to varying degrees as
well. Hence, the g factor can be extracted from scores on any diverse
battery of tests.
Conversely, because every mental test is "contaminated" by the effects
of specific mental skills, no single test measures only g. Even the
scores from IQ tests--which usually combine about a dozen subtests of
specific cognitive skills--contain some "impurities" that reflect
those narrower skills. For most purposes, these impurities make no
practical difference, and g and IQ can be used interchangeably. But if
they need to, intelligence researchers can statistically separate the
g component of IQ. The ability to isolate g has revolutionized
research on general intelligence, because it has allowed investigators
to show that the predictive value of mental tests derives almost
entirely from this global factor rather than from the more specific
aptitudes measured by intelligence tests.
In addition to quantifying individual differences, tests of mental
abilities have also offered insight into the meaning of intelligence
in everyday life. Some tests and test items are known to correlate
better with g than others do. In these items the "active ingredient"
that demands the exercise of g seems to be complexity. More complex
tasks require more mental manipulation, and this manipulation of
information--discerning similarities and inconsistencies, drawing
inferences, grasping new concepts and so on--constitutes intelligence
in action. Indeed, intelligence can best be described as the ability
to deal with cognitive complexity.
This description coincides well with lay perceptions of intelligence.
The g factor is especially important in just the kind of behaviors
that people usually associate with "smarts": reasoning, problem
solving, abstract thinking, quick learning. And whereas g itself
describes mental aptitude rather than accumulated knowledge, a
person's store of knowledge tends to correspond with his or her g
level, probably because that accumulation represents a previous
adeptness in learning and in understanding new information. The g
factor is also the one attribute that best distinguishes among persons
considered gifted, average or retarded.
Several decades of factor-analytic research on mental tests have
confirmed a hierarchical model of mental abilities. The evidence,
summarized most effectively in Carroll's 1993 book, Human Cognitive
Abilities, puts g at the apex in this model, with more specific
aptitudes arrayed at successively lower levels: the so-called group
factors, such as verbal ability, mathematical reasoning, spatial
visualization and memory, are just below g, and below these are skills
that are more dependent on knowledge or experience, such as the
principles and practices of a particular job or profession.
Some researchers use the term "multiple intelligences" to label these
sets of narrow capabilities and achievements. Psychologist Howard
Gardner of Harvard University, for example, has postulated that eight
relatively autonomous "intelligences" are exhibited in different
domains of achievement. He does not dispute the existence of g but
treats it as a specific factor relevant chiefly to academic
achievement and to situations that resemble those of school. Gardner
does not believe that tests can fruitfully measure his proposed
intelligences; without tests, no one can at present determine whether
the intelligences are indeed independent of g (or each other).
Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent Gardner's intelligences
tap personality traits or motor skills rather than mental aptitudes.
Other forms of intelligence have been proposed; among them, emotional
intelligence and practical intelligence are perhaps the best known.
They are probably amalgams either of intellect and personality or of
intellect and informal experience in specific job or life settings,
respectively. Practical intelligence like "street smarts," for
example, seems to consist of the localized knowledge and know-how
developed with untutored experience in particular everyday settings
and activities--the so-called school of hard knocks. In contrast,
general intelligence is not a form of achievement, whether local or
renowned. Instead the g factor regulates the rate of learning: it
greatly affects the rate of return in knowledge to instruction and
experience but cannot substitute for either.
Some critics of intelligence research maintain that the notion of
general intelligence is illusory: that no such global mental capacity
exists and that apparent "intelligence" is really just a by-product of
one's opportunities to learn skills and information valued in a
particular cultural context. True, the concept of intelligence and the
way in which individuals are ranked according to this criterion could
be social artifacts. But the fact that g is not specific to any
particular domain of knowledge or mental skill suggests that g is
independent of cultural content, including beliefs about what
intelligence is. And tests of different social groups reveal the same
continuum of general intelligence. This observation suggests either
that cultures do not construct g or that they construct the same g.
Both conclusions undercut the social artifact theory of intelligence.
Moreover, research on the physiology and genetics of g has uncovered
biological correlates of this psychological phenomenon. In the past
decade, studies by teams of researchers in North America and Europe
have linked several attributes of the brain to general intelligence.
After taking into account gender and physical stature, brain size as
determined by magnetic resonance imaging is moderately correlated with
IQ (about 0.4 on a scale of 0 to 1). So is the speed of nerve
conduction. The brains of bright people also use less energy during
problem solving than do those of their less able peers. And various
qualities of brain waves correlate strongly (about 0.5 to 0.7) with
IQ: the brain waves of individuals with higher IQs, for example,
respond more promptly and consistently to simple sensory stimuli such
as audible clicks. These observations have led some investigators to
posit that differences in g result from differences in the speed and
efficiency of neural processing. If this theory is true, environmental
conditions could influence g by modifying brain physiology in some
manner.
Studies of so-called elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs), conducted by
Jensen and others, are bridging the gap between the psychological and
the physiological aspects of g. These mental tasks have no obvious
intellectual content and are so simple that adults and most children
can do them accurately in less than a second. In the most basic
reaction-time tests, for example, the subject must react when a light
goes on by lifting her index finger off a home button and immediately
depressing a response button. Two measurements are taken: the number
of milliseconds between the illumination of the light and the
subject's release of the home button, which is called decision time,
and the number of milliseconds between the subject's release of the
home button and pressing of the response button, which is called
movement time.
In this task, movement time seems independent of intelligence, but the
decision times of higher-IQ subjects are slightly faster than those of
people with lower IQs. As the tasks are made more complex,
correlations between average decision times and IQ increase. These
results further support the notion that intelligence equips
individuals to deal with complexity and that its influence is greater
in complex tasks than in simple ones.
The ECT-IQ correlations are comparable for all IQ levels, ages,
genders and racial-ethnic groups tested. Moreover, studies by Philip
A. Vernon of the University of Western Ontario and others have shown
that the ECT-IQ overlap results almost entirely from the common g
factor in both measures. Reaction times do not reflect differences in
motivation or strategy or the tendency of some individuals to rush
through tests and daily tasks--that penchant is a personality trait.
They actually seem to measure the speed with which the brain
apprehends, integrates and evaluates information. Research on ECTs and
brain physiology has not yet identified the biological determinants of
this processing speed. These studies do suggest, however, that g is as
reliable and global a phenomenon at the neural level as it is at the
level of the complex information processing required by IQ tests and
everyday life.
The existence of biological correlates of intelligence does not
necessarily mean that intelligence is dictated by genes. Decades of
genetics research have shown, however, that people are born with
different hereditary potentials for intelligence and that these
genetic endowments are responsible for much of the variation in mental
ability among individuals. Last spring an international team of
scientists headed by Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in
London announced the discovery of the first gene linked to
intelligence. Of course, genes have their effects only in interaction
with environments, partly by enhancing an individual's exposure or
sensitivity to formative experiences. Differences in general
intelligence, whether measured as IQ or, more accurately, as g are
both genetic and environmental in origin--just as are all other
psychological traits and attitudes studied so far, including
personality, vocational interests and societal attitudes. This is old
news among the experts. The experts have, however, been startled by
more recent discoveries.
One is that the heritability of IQ rises with age--that is to say, the
extent to which genetics accounts for differences in IQ among
individuals increases as people get older. Studies comparing identical
and fraternal twins, published in the past decade by a group led by
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., of the University of Minnesota and other
scholars, show that about 40 percent of IQ differences among
preschoolers stems from genetic differences but that heritability
rises to 60 percent by adolescence and to 80 percent by late
adulthood. With age, differences among individuals in their developed
intelligence come to mirror more closely their genetic differences. It
appears that the effects of environment on intelligence fade rather
than grow with time. In hindsight, perhaps this should have come as no
surprise. Young children have the circumstances of their lives imposed
on them by parents, schools and other agents of society, but as people
get older they become more independent and tend to seek out the life
niches that are most congenial to their genetic proclivities.
A second big surprise for intelligence experts was the discovery that
environments shared by siblings have little to do with IQ. Many people
still mistakenly believe that social, psychological and economic
differences among families create lasting and marked differences in
IQ. Behavioral geneticists refer to such environmental effects as
"shared" because they are common to siblings who grow up together.
Research has shown that although shared environments do have a modest
influence on IQ in childhood, their effects dissipate by adolescence.
The IQs of adopted children, for example, lose all resemblance to
those of their adoptive family members and become more like the IQs of
the biological parents they have never known. Such findings suggest
that siblings either do not share influential aspects of the rearing
environment or do not experience them in the same way. Much behavioral
genetics research currently focuses on the still mysterious processes
by which environments make members of a household less alike.
Although the evidence of genetic and physiological correlates of g
argues powerfully for the existence of global intelligence, it has not
quelled the critics of intelligence testing. These skeptics argue that
even if such a global entity exists, it has no intrinsic functional
value and becomes important only to the extent that people treat it as
such: for example, by using IQ scores to sort, label and assign
students and employees. Such concerns over the proper use of mental
tests have prompted a great deal of research in recent decades. This
research shows that although IQ tests can indeed be misused, they
measure a capability that does in fact affect many kinds of
performance and many life outcomes, independent of the tests'
interpretations or applications. Moreover, the research shows that
intelligence tests measure the capability equally well for all native-
born English-speaking groups in the U.S.
If we consider that intelligence manifests itself in everyday life as
the ability to deal with complexity, then it is easy to see why it has
great functional or practical importance. Children, for example, are
regularly exposed to complex tasks once they begin school. Schooling
requires above all that students learn, solve problems and think
abstractly. That IQ is quite a good predictor of differences in
educational achievement is therefore not surprising. When scores on
both IQ and standardized achievement tests in different subjects are
averaged over several years, the two averages correlate as highly as
different IQ tests from the same individual do. High-ability students
also master material at many times the rate of their low-ability
peers. Many investigations have helped quantify this discrepancy. For
example, a 1969 study done for the U.S. Army by the Human Resources
Research Office found that enlistees in the bottom fifth of the
ability distribution required two to six times as many teaching trials
and prompts as did their higher-ability peers to attain minimal
proficiency in rifle assembly, monitoring signals, combat plotting and
other basic military tasks. Similarly, in school settings the ratio of
learning rates between "fast" and "slow" students is typically five to
one.
The scholarly content of many IQ tests and their strong correlations
with educational success can give the impression that g is only a
narrow academic ability. But general mental ability also predicts job
performance, and in more complex jobs it does so better than any other
single personal trait, including education and experience. The army's
Project A, a seven-year study conducted in the 1980s to improve the
recruitment and training process, found that general mental ability
correlated strongly with both technical proficiency and soldiering in
the nine specialties studied, among them infantry, military police and
medical specialist. Research in the civilian sector has revealed the
same pattern. Furthermore, although the addition of personality traits
such as conscientiousness can help hone the prediction of job
performance, the inclusion of specific mental aptitudes such as verbal
fluency or mathematical skill rarely does. The predictive value of
mental tests in the work arena stems almost entirely from their
measurement of g, and that value rises with the complexity and
prestige level of the job.
Half a century of military and civilian research has converged to draw
a portrait of occupational opportunity along the IQ continuum.
Individuals in the top 5 percent of the adult IQ distribution (above
IQ 125) can essentially train themselves, and few occupations are
beyond their reach mentally. Persons of average IQ (between 90 and
110) are not competitive for most professional and executive-level
work but are easily trained for the bulk of jobs in the American
economy. In contrast, adults in the bottom 5 percent of the IQ
distribution (below 75) are very difficult to train and are not
competitive for any occupation on the basis of ability. Serious
problems in training low-IQ military recruits during World War II led
Congress to ban enlistment from the lowest 10 percent (below 80) of
the population, and no civilian occupation in modern economies
routinely recruits its workers from that range. Current military
enlistment standards exclude any individual whose IQ is below about
85.
The importance of g in job performance, as in schooling, is related to
complexity. Occupations differ considerably in the complexity of their
demands, and as that complexity rises, higher g levels become a bigger
asset and lower g levels a bigger handicap. Similarly, everyday tasks
and environments also differ significantly in their cognitive
complexity. The degree to which a person's g level will come to bear
on daily life depends on how much novelty and ambiguity that person's
everyday tasks and surroundings present and how much continual
learning, judgment and decision making they require. As gamblers,
employers and bankers know, even marginal differences in rates of
return will yield big gains--or losses--over time. Hence, even small
differences in g among people can exert large, cumulative influences
across social and economic life.
In my own work, I have tried to synthesize the many lines of research
that document the influence of IQ on life outcomes. As the
illustration shows, the odds of various kinds of achievement and
social pathology change systematically across the IQ continuum, from
borderline mentally retarded (below 70) to intellectually gifted
(above 130). Even in comparisons of those of somewhat below average
(between 76 and 90) and somewhat above average (between 111 and 125)
IQs, the odds for outcomes having social consequence are stacked
against the less able. Young men somewhat below average in general
mental ability, for example, are more likely to be unemployed than men
somewhat above average. The lower-IQ woman is four times more likely
to bear illegitimate children than the higher-IQ woman; among mothers,
she is eight times more likely to become a chronic welfare recipient.
People somewhat below average are 88 times more likely to drop out of
high school, seven times more likely to be jailed and five times more
likely as adults to live in poverty than people of somewhat above-
average IQ. Below-average individuals are 50 percent more likely to be
divorced than those in the above-average category.
These odds diverge even more sharply for people with bigger gaps in
IQ, and the mechanisms by which IQ creates this divergence are not yet
clearly understood. But no other single trait or circumstance yet
studied is so deeply implicated in the nexus of bad social outcomes--
poverty, welfare, illegitimacy and educational failure--that entraps
many low-IQ individuals and families. Even the effects of family
background pale in comparison with the influence of IQ. As shown most
recently by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute in
Washington, D.C., the divergence in many outcomes associated with IQ
level is almost as wide among siblings from the same household as it
is for strangers of comparable IQ levels. And siblings differ a lot in
IQ--on average, by 12 points, compared with 17 for random strangers.
An IQ of 75 is perhaps the most important threshold in modern life. At
that level, a person's chances of mastering the elementary school
curriculum are only 50-50, and he or she will have a hard time
functioning independently without considerable social support.
Individuals and families who are only somewhat below average in IQ
face risks of social pathology that, while lower, are still
significant enough to jeopardize their well-being. High-IQ individuals
may lack the resolve, character or good fortune to capitalize on their
intellectual capabilities, but socioeconomic success in the
postindustrial information age is theirs to lose.
The foregoing findings on g's effects have been drawn from studies
conducted under a limited range of circumstances--namely, the social,
economic and political conditions prevailing now and in recent decades
in developed countries that allow considerable personal freedom. It is
not clear whether these findings apply to populations around the
world, to the extremely advantaged and disadvantaged in the developing
world or, for that matter, to people living under restrictive
political regimes. No one knows what research under different
circumstances, in different eras or with different populations might
reveal.
But we do know that, wherever freedom and technology advance, life is
an uphill battle for people who are below average in proficiency at
learning, solving problems and mastering complexity. We also know that
the trajectories of mental development are not easily deflected.
Individual IQ levels tend to remain unchanged from adolescence onward,
and despite strenuous efforts over the past half a century, attempts
to raise g permanently through adoption or educational means have
failed. If there is a reliable, ethical way to raise or equalize
levels of g, no one has found it.
Some investigators have suggested that biological interventions, such
as dietary supplements of vitamins, may be more effective than
educational ones in raising g levels. This approach is based in part
on the assumption that improved nutrition has caused the puzzling rise
in average levels of both IQ and height in the developed world during
this century. Scientists are still hotly debating whether the gains in
IQ actually reflect a rise in g or are caused instead by changes in
less critical, specific mental skills. Whatever the truth may be, the
differences in mental ability among individuals remain, and the
conflict between equal opportunity and equal outcome persists. Only by
accepting these hard truths about intelligence will society find
humane solutions to the problems posed by the variations in general
mental ability.
I have no good reason to trust this blog: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
, more than SA when SA seems much more thorough and agrees rather than
conflicts with what I have learned in psychology classes.
"Also, with regard to IQ predicting "life success", since the very
inception
of IQ testing (which, incidentally, began in France and was intended
to
identify schoolchildren who needed extra help with academics), most
such
tests have been predictive merely of a person's likely success
relative to
the prevailing status quo."
success as opposed to how well they are doing relative to people with
different IQs who are in the same broad enviroment? I am either
misunderstanding the arguement being made, or else that arguement is
dishonest.
http://nfb.org/legacy/fr/fr14/fr04se09.htm :
"She analyzed variables--including parenting styles, gender, types of
household tasks, time spent on tasks, and attitudes and motivators
associated with doing the tasks--to determine their impact on the
children. She then measured each individual's "successes." "I looked
at the outcomes when they were in their mid-twenties, focusing on what
they were doing in regards to completing their education or being on a
path to complete their education, getting started on some type of
career path, their relationships with family and friends, and whether
or not they were using drugs," Rossmann explains. She also considered
IQ's when doing her analysis.
After examining these issues and studying all of the possibilities
that
could influence the outcomes, Rossmann's research indicates that the
best
predictor for young adults' success in their mid-twenties is that
they
participated in household tasks at age three or four."
Obviously not all schools and carreer paths are created equal. Not
all "some type of career path"s deserve the same weight.
My great grandfather got two college degrees by the age of 16, but he
still loved farming.
You may have a point here, but it really depends. Sweeping doesn't
take much of my focus, but I can listen to podcasts while I do it, and
so I love sweeping-the split focus is really stimulating, and of
course I am learning interesting stuff while do it.
I would think, though this isn't something I know much about, that for
something like programing, the superstars could just work faster than
the less well endowed and so except for not needing to use creativity,
they could occupy their minds just as thoroughly doing dumber work as
they can doing smarter.
I think many occupations of a greatly fixed working speed (e.g.
cashiering, driving) can be given over to machines. A super stop &
shop near where I live has three automated chasiers. Kind of
frightening really...
In regards to psychopaths, like so many other things in psychology (g
among them) it is said to be 50% genetic and 50% enviroment derived.
Frequently, signs of it are apparent in childhood. I have to go to
bed, but i'll give time to the rest of your sources, and what should
be in the mission statement (not intelligence eugenics certainly)---
tomorrow.
Paul D. Fernhout
> Text of: "The General Intelligence Factor"
> http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html
Related movie:
"Gattaca"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
"In a "not too distant" future, where genetic engineering of humans is
common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class, Vincent
(Ethan Hawke) is conceived and born without the aid of this technology.
Suffering from the nearly eradicated physical dysfunctions of myopia and a
congenital heart defect, as well as being given a life expectancy of 30.2
years, Vincent faces extreme genetic discrimination and prejudice. The only
way he can achieve his life-long dream of becoming an astronaut is to break
the law and impersonate a "valid"."
I read somewhere that of all the NASA tests of mental and physical fitness,
the only one that correlated with actual astronaut success was the one on
how long they were willing to keep their feet in a bucket of ice water. :-)
> I have no good reason to trust this blog: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
> , more than SA when SA seems much more thorough and agrees rather than
> conflicts with what I have learned in psychology classes.
Gee, what else conventional "class rooms" teach? :-)
"The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
"1. CONFUSION
2. CLASS POSITION
3. INDIFFERENCE
4. EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY
5. INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY
6. PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
7. ONE CAN'T HIDE"
Not "Pioneer Spirit" or "Democracy". :-(
Those are more likely learned a place like here:
"the Albany Free School"
http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/overview.shtml
"There are not any tests or grades either, because we have discovered by
trial and error over the years that learning happens best when it happens
for its own sake. Again and again, our experience has confirmed that a
child's innate desire to learn is a far more powerful motivating force than
any external reward - or threat. For a long time our unofficial motto has
been: "Never a dull moment, always a dull roar." But perhaps we should also
borrow the Stork Family School in the Ukraine's motto, "First love, then
teach." For we have always placed the greatest emphasis on the fostering of
loving, caring relationships. Observant visitors frequently comment on how
closely connected the students seem, how carefully they look out for each
other. The visitors note the brightness in the kids' eyes, the spontaneous
joy, the natural exuberance. This is how children appear who are secure in
knowing they are loved, and who are free at all times to return that love.
... Though we are by no means a special school for problem children, we
frequently serve as a safety net for children who have been falling through
the cracks of the conventional education system. At any given time,
approximately half of our students are referrals from the public and
parochial schools. Our reputation with students that are struggling
academically and/or behaviorally, and whose needs the system has failed to
meet, is such that an increasing number of kids are coming to us having
previously been tagged with labels like ADHD and placed on Ritalin and other
biopsychiatric medications. Their parents seek us out because they're
concerned about the side effects of the drugs and because they've heard that
we work effectively with these children without drugs of any kind. Our
active, flexible, individually structured environment renders the drugs
entirely unnecessary. ... Another hallmark of the school is its
permeability. There are frequent exchanges between the school and the
surrounding city, which we utilize as a "classroom" on nearly a daily basis.
Older students participate in a wide-ranging apprenticeship program. They
have worked alongside area artists, veterinarians, actors, attorneys,
carpenters, dancers, models, midwives, archaeologists, magicians, chefs,
computer programmers, and even pilots - the sky is literally the limit. They
also seek out community service opportunities, volunteering at places like
food banks, soup kitchens and infant day care centers. Some students become
active in local environmental and preservation issues as well. ... There are
a couple of other distinctive features to the school: We operate a small
organic farm on the block, where students learn the basics of animal
husbandry, composting, and growing flowers, herbs and vegetables."
Which environment focuses on labels? Which focuses on love?
Which is more likely to produce happy and successful Virgle colonists?
Or better bunkmates or parents?
More:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue6.htm
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers
to warrant the careers devoted to tending to them will seem incredible to
you. Yet that is my proposition: Mass dumbness first had to be imagined; it
isn’t real."
Also:
"I Am Sam"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Sam
"Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), a man with intellectual disabilities, is living in
Los Angeles and is single-handedly raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota
Fanning), whom he fathered from a homeless woman who wanted nothing to do
with Lucy and left him the day of her birth. Although Sam provides a loving
and caring environment for the 7-year-old Lucy, she soon surpasses her
father's mental capacity. Questions arise about Sam’s ability to care for
Lucy and a custody case is brought to court. Sam is a man with a mental age
of 7 who is well adjusted and has a great support system consisting of four
similarly developmentally disabled men. His neighbor Annie (Dianne Wiest), a
piano-player and agoraphobic, befriends Sam and takes care of Lucy when Sam
can't."
> "Also, with regard to IQ predicting "life success", since the very
> inception
> of IQ testing (which, incidentally, began in France and was intended
> to
> identify schoolchildren who needed extra help with academics), most
> such
> tests have been predictive merely of a person's likely success
> relative to
> the prevailing status quo."
>
> And that isn't relevant? We should be looking at peoples absolute
> success as opposed to how well they are doing relative to people with
> different IQs who are in the same broad enviroment? I am either
> misunderstanding the arguement being made, or else that arguement is
> dishonest.
Virgle is not exactly "the prevailing status quo". :-)
Maybe success will come from different directions. Like:
"Study shows compassion meditation changes the brain"
http://www.news.wisc.edu/14944
"Can we train ourselves to be compassionate? A new study suggests the answer
is yes. Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain
regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental
states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published
March 25 in the Public Library of Science One, the study was the first to
use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to indicate that positive
emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion can be learned in the same
way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport. The
scans revealed that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were
dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing
compassion meditation. ... Compassion meditation can be beneficial in
promoting more harmonious relationships of all kinds, Davidson adds."
> Two or more of her measures of success have artificial cielings.
> Obviously not all schools and carreer paths are created equal. Not
> all "some type of career path"s deserve the same weight.
Exactly. :-) We just do not know how to weigh them. :-)
See:
"Douglas Adams right again: Lack of phone sanitizers will doom planet"
http://collateraldamage.wordpress.com/category/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/
"As you doubtlessly remember, somewhere in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series Mr.
Adams told the story of the The Golgafrinchans, a race of people who sent
their Telephone Sanitizer population away. The Sanitizers were sent along
with another third of the planet’s population who were also deemed useless
to form a colony on a remote planet (Earth as it happens). Of course, the
remaining Golgafrinchan population was then wiped out by a virulent disease
contracted via unsanitary telephones."
> "How Do You Find Programming Superstars?"
> http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/27/2034228
>
> My great grandfather got two college degrees by the age of 16, but he
> still loved farming.
A tough act to follow. :-)
Still, heard at a big research lab: "We hire the most competitive people
from the most competitive schools and then are surprised when they can't
work together." :-)
Also: "Why Laziness is a Virtue"
http://www.wilkesbeacon.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=0a693a2f-7b1c-4687-b37e-29895f0cd768
"Look at the world today and all of the great things that we have: cars,
pothole filler machines, wheelbarrows, spoons, those plastic bottles that
cheap vodka comes in, and even some of the not-so-hot things we have like
the bureaucratic processes and night sticks, and you will see that they all
evolved from laziness. If people did not have the characteristic of
laziness, no improvement would have ever been made in society and technology."
> You may have a point here, but it really depends. Sweeping doesn't
> take much of my focus, but I can listen to podcasts while I do it, and
> so I love sweeping-the split focus is really stimulating, and of
> course I am learning interesting stuff while do it.
What if the entire colony depended on someone's 100% perfect "sweeping"
everyday? Would "split focus" be acceptable? Or boredom?
See: "The Autumn of the Multitaskers"
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking
"Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us
down and driving us crazy. One man’s odyssey through the nightmare of
infinite connectivity"
To do two things at once is to do neither.
—Publilius Syrus, Roman slave, first century B.C.
(Taken from the scene where Beppo, a road sweeper was speaking to Momo)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_%28novel%29
"""
“You see, Momo,” he told her one day, “it’s like this.
Sometimes when you have a very long street ahead of you,
you think how terribly long it is,
and feel sure you’ll never get it swept.”
He gazed silently into space before continuing,
“And then you start to hurry,” he went on.
“You work faster and faster, and every time you look up,
there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before,
and you try even harder, and you panic,
and in the end you’re out of breath and have to stop ---
and still the street stretches away in front of you.
That’s not the way to do it.”
He pondered a while. Then he said,
“You must never think of the whole street at once, understand?
You must only concentrate on the next step,
the next breath, the next stroke of the broom,
and the next, and the next. Nothing else.”
Again he paused for thought before adding,
“That way you enjoy your work, which is important,
because you make a good job of it. And that’s how it ought to be.”
There was another long silence.
At last he went on,
“And all at once, before you know it,
you find you’ve swept the whole street clean, bit by bit.
What’s more, you aren’t out of breath.”
He nodded to himself, “That’s important too.” he concluded.
"""
Mentioned in:
"The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy"
http://books.google.com/books?id=uKJWEsd4j3kC&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56
"As a road sweeper Beppo has been deliberately slow, even Zen-like in his
total attention to the present moment.
Real example:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050630_rtf_tpsscanner.html
"Checking each of the about 30,000 ceramic tiles aboard a space shuttle
after every flight is a long process, and one that Lavelle hopes the new
laser scanners can shorten. Shuttle tiles are built to withstand up to
2,300-degree Fahrenheit (1,260-degree Celsius) temperatures that space
shuttles encounter each time they return to Earth. Each of those tiles is
checked for new damage or flaws after a flight to determine if repair is
required. "Right now it's a very manual process," Lavelle said. "They use
their eyes and take photographs many times, and it's extremely
time-consuming." "
Who can do that with pride and without podcasts?
One critical aerospace assembly line had the "smartest" people put on it
(being critical) but they got bored and made many mistakes; mildly
"retarded" people replaced them and were proud to do a much better job.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_retardation
"One common criterion for diagnosis of mental retardation is a tested
intelligence quotient (IQ) of 70 or below and deficits in adaptive functioning."
Maybe NASA could consider people with a mild intellectual disability for
checking ceramic tiles?
http://eeo.gsfc.nasa.gov/disability/publications.html
"NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is dedicated to the principle of
inclusion for people with disabilities. We have made great strides in making
our physical environment convenient for all people. In recent years, Goddard
has been proactive in recruiting people with disabilities as interns, and as
participants in our cooperative education program, in addition to other
student "pipelines." As always, we continue to recruit and hire individuals
with disabilities into our permanent work force."
> I would think, though this isn't something I know much about, that for
> something like programing, the superstars could just work faster than
> the less well endowed and so except for not needing to use creativity,
> they could occupy their minds just as thoroughly doing dumber work as
> they can doing smarter.
Speaking from many years of programing, I doubt anyone could.
> I think many occupations of a greatly fixed working speed (e.g.
> cashiering, driving) can be given over to machines. A super stop &
> shop near where I live has three automated chasiers. Kind of
> frightening really...
Maybe. Maybe not. Dust. EMP. Bitrot. Trust.
Still:
"When will computer hardware match the human brain?"
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
Note that computers can more easily professors than plumbers:
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/1983/mit.txt
"The intelligent machine effort has produced computer programs that
exhibit narrow reasoning abilities at the performance level of amateur adult
humans and perceptual and motor skills on a par with a grasshopper. The
level of research effort on the two areas is the same. Why do the low
level skills seem so much harder than the high level ones? While our
sensory and muscle control systems have been in development for a billion
years, and common sense reasoning has been honed for probably about a
million, really high level, deep, thinking is little more than a parlor
trick, culturally developed over a few thousand years, which a few
humans, operating largely against their natures, can learn [2] [8] [21].
As with Samuel Johnson's dancing dog, what is amazing is not how well it is
done, but that it is done at all."
So, again, multi-dimensional diversity is more valuable IMHO.
"Horses for courses"
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Horses+for+courses
"Horses for courses: something that you say which means that it is important
to choose suitable people for particular activities because everyone has
different skills."
And there are always the smarter(?) people back at "Mission Control". :-)
--Paul Fernhout
Doram
me!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Well let's pull this back for a moment. Let's see if we can agree on a
few key facts here.
1) By the mere fact that we all
A) Found Virgle by act of curiosity and interest
B) Argued on Virgle that this needed to not be a joke
C) Created/joined OpenVirgle Group and Code to MAKE it real
We are all capable and enthusiastic people, who are dedicated to
the continuation and development of this project, and are at least
some part natural leaders. We will also naturally desire additional
similar people to properly grow this project.
2) By the sheer amount of learned and researched verbiage that I just
waded through in this thread, we are all at least of average
intelligence or higher, as current society defines it. We are also
capable of reasonable and civilized discourse in pursuit of the
resolution to some of the thorniest issues of human interaction that
humanity has ever tackled.
3) By the fact that we are attempting to pin down these facts so
doggedly, we are all of the opinion that current society lacks the
skills and language, or at least a consensus of such, to properly deal
with the task of extending the human experience beyond the nurturing
environ of it's current home without simply carrying on its
destructive tendencies elsewhere. This would require significant time
spent on redefining/redesigning human social moirés, in order to
assure that future human colonies do not fall prey to the (relatively)
preventable problems of interpersonal strife, and lack of future
sustainability through inflexibility. We also wish to further the
general betterment of humanity, as it exists on this planet, in an
effort, for lack of a better phrase, to "solve society's ills" through
social discussion, charitable efforts, beneficial technologies, and
fair business and social practices, and we will work these threads
into this project when reasonable and possible.
4) That the best process to make this real includes, but is not
limited to, the following goals:
A) To assure that all members of this project, on all levels, are
of similar mind and temperament - reasonable, capable, flexible, and
dedicated - both in an effort to ensure maximum efficiency to this
project, as well as in an effort to ensure that the people that will
make up the final expeditionary force will be able to create a
resilient, self-supporting, non-violent, non-prejudiced society to
bloom and grow on the surface of mankind's new home.
B) To design new technologies that will allow for reliable,
elegant, sustainable living on Mars, but with an eye to its adaptation
on any planet, Earth included, for the benefit of all.
C) To create a plan for such expansions that includes the general
betterment of humanity's ability to carry on further explorations and
expansions, including the creation of communications, construction,
and resource gathering/management infrastructures. This also will be
influenced by general altruistic efforts for the betterment of living
conditions for humans remaining on Earth.
5) We are all, occasionally, easily sidetracked. (Guilty as well ;)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I propose, amongst other things, that we return to the subject of
coming up with a simple, yet clear, set of goals to define the general
purpose and methodology of this project, and leave the details of how
we are going to implement them to the future, as immediate as that may
be. Furthermore, I would suggest that this mission statement be
created as a "Page" in the "Pages" section of this group, in order to
have a simple and immediate resource to point to during discussions,
as well as serve as an informative and easy-to-find document for
newcomers.
Discuss.
On Apr 6, 4:14 am, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
> > Text of: "The General Intelligence Factor"
> Adams told the story of the The Golgafrinchans, a race of people who sent
> their Telephone Sanitizer population away. The Sanitizers were sent along
> with another third of the planet's population who were also deemed useless
> to form a colony on a remote planet (Earth as it happens). Of course, the
> remaining Golgafrinchan population was then wiped out by a virulent disease
> contracted via unsanitary telephones."
>
> > "How Do You Find Programming Superstars?"
> >http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/27/2034228
>
> > My great grandfather got two college degrees by the age of 16, but he
> > still loved farming.
>
> A tough act to follow. :-)
>
> Still, heard at a big research lab: "We hire the most competitive people
> from the most competitive schools and then are surprised when they can't
> work together." :-)
>
> pothole filler machines, wheelbarrows, spoons, those plastic bottles that
> cheap vodka comes in, and even some of the not-so-hot things we have like
> the bureaucratic processes and night sticks, and you will see that they all
> evolved from laziness. If people did not have the characteristic of
> laziness, no improvement would have ever been made in society and technology."
>
> > You may have a point here, but it really depends. Sweeping doesn't
> > take much of my focus, but I can listen to podcasts while I do it, and
> > so I love sweeping-the split focus is really stimulating, and of
> > course I am learning interesting stuff while do it.
>
> What if the entire colony depended on someone's 100% perfect "sweeping"
> everyday? Would "split focus" be acceptable? Or boredom?
>
> See: "The Autumn of the Multitaskers"http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking
> "Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us
>
> read more >>
mike1937
1) Colonization provides a remarkable opportunity for mankind to learn
from its mistakes, and everything from societal structure to the state
of natural selection in todays society should be critically evaluated.
2) The best path towards colonization is a truly open organization
that is chaordic and does not attempt to profit in any way that
hinders participation from as many groups as possible.
3) A database of all current information needs to be created, to
convince the public that its not a stretch, to decide what still needs
to be learned, and provide information to anyone willing to help.
Writting isnt one of my strengths, but heres an attempt to synthesize
a mission statement out of that:
Our goal is to create a truly open environment in which anyone can
help improve the future of mankind by planning and executing the best
course towards extraterrestrial colonization through research and the
development of better technology and societal organization.
Its kind of long, I'm sure one of you can improve on it
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Paul D. Fernhout
Some issues for me:
A) "the final expeditionary force" vs. "any expeditionary force"
(also though, F/OSS leadership is usually "herding cats" re: "assure" :-)
Maybe we should leave crew etc. issues for down the road; they are obviously
divisive. :-( Sorry, Jared.
B) "on Mars" vs. the more general "in Space"
See also: http://www.luf.org/intro.html
So, how about merging/simplifying with mike1937's statement:
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support a Chaordic community of individuals and
groups playfully building free and open source knowledge, tools, and
simulations which lay the groundwork for humanity's eventual joyful,
compassionate, and diverse expansion into space (including Mars, the Moon,
the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe)."
IMHO, that's enough to keep us all busy for a decade (or more. :-)
Plus it doesn't sound *too* nutty or grandiose as a hobby. :-) See:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html
"Date: 25 Aug 91 I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't
be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been
brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. ... Linus"
And someday it could be a non-profit charter -- including for running
conferences and workshops, hosting MMPORPGs, managing grant funded R&D, and
so on (all usually in partnership with other space groups).
--Paul Fernhout
mike1937
work and leisure need to be combined into a more free spirited venture
in whitch one does what they enjoy. Or are they an allusion to the
relaxed atmosphere intended? I would be amenable in either case to
them being added into the mission statement, but as they are
revolutionary concepts they also might be somewhat divisive, which is
why I was tucking them away under the "better... societal
organization" umbrella. A compromise may be needed, lets wait on input
from some other group members.
On Apr 6, 9:07 pm, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
Bryan Bishop
> I assume "playfully" and "joyful" are refering to your essay on how
> work and leisure need to be combined into a more free spirited
> venture in whitch one does what they enjoy. Or are they an allusion
> to the relaxed atmosphere intended? I would be amenable in either
> case to them being added into the mission statement, but as they are
> revolutionary concepts they also might be somewhat divisive, which is
> why I was tucking them away under the "better... societal
> organization" umbrella. A compromise may be needed, lets wait on
> input from some other group members.
This is quite the formal take on what's going on. Do we need this
formality? Can't we just get down to business? Just dump as much
information as you can on the web and let anybody get their hands on
it. Problem solved. Same with the equipment schematics to get to Mars
or whatever.
- Bryan
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Roadmap
Paul D. Fernhout
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To build F/OSS knowledge and tools for humanity's
expansion into space."
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support building F/OSS knowledge and tools for
humanity's expansion into space."
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support building free and open source knowledge and
tools for humanity's expansion into space."
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support individuals and groups building free and
open source knowledge and tools for humanity's eventual expansion into space."
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support individuals and groups building free and
open source knowledge and tools for humanity's eventual expansion into space
(including Mars, the Moon, the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe)."
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support a community of individuals and groups
building free and open source knowledge, tools, and simulations which lay
the groundwork for humanity's eventual expansion into space (including Mars,
the Moon, the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe)."
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support a Chaordic community of individuals and
groups playfully building free and open source knowledge, tools, and
simulations which lay the groundwork for humanity's eventual joyful,
compassionate, and diverse expansion into space (including Mars, the Moon,
the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe)."
--Paul Fernhout
mike1937
already. This debate is fun, however, and I don't believe its too
distracting to partake in it. It also may be advantageous to get some
of these semantics taken care of now before we begin recruiting a
larger number of members to contribute. By all means, go ahead and
start working on the wiki and simulations if you would like; I agree
its a far more productive activity; deciding on the mission statement
doesnt require everyone, just their ratification or silence.
Paul D. Fernhout
An allusion to the April fool's joke (which many people were angry about)?
Maybe also thinking of:
"Institute of Play"
http://www.instituteofplay.com/node/100
"Working across a diverse community of players, the Institute of Play
leverages games and play as critical contexts for learning, innovation, and
change in the 21st century. We bring non-traditional audiences into
innovative spaces of production and learning through partnerships with the
game industry, academia, government, science, technology, and the arts."
Or:
"Informal Science Education (ISE)"
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5361
"The ISE program invests in projects that develop and implement informal
learning experiences designed to increase interest, engagement, and
understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by
individuals of all ages and backgrounds, as well as projects that advance
knowledge and practice of informal science education. Projects may target
either public audiences or professionals whose work directly affects
informal STEM learning. ISE projects are expected to demonstrate strategic
impact, innovation, and collaboration."
Or mostly a book I'm reading:
_In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness_
By Chris Mercogliano
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=MAB3CciL40UC
http://chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm
"As codirector of the Albany Free School, Chris Mercogliano has had
remarkable success in helping a diverse population of youngsters find their
way in the world. He regrets, however, that most kids' lives are subject to
some form of control from dawn until dusk. Lamenting risk-averse parents,
overstructured school days, and a lack of playtime and solitude, Mercogliano
argues that we are robbing our young people of "that precious, irreplaceable
period in their lives that nature has set aside for exploration and innocent
discovery," leaving them ill-equipped to face adulthood. The "domestication
of childhood" squeezes the adventure out of kids' lives and threatens to
smother the spark that animates each child with talents, dreams, and
inclinations."
Which references:
_Homo Ludens_ or "Man the Player," written in 1938 by Johan Huizinga.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens
http://www.amazon.com/Homo-Ludens-Johan-Huizinga/dp/0807046817
"The important thing for the reader to understand is that Huizinga does not
think that play is in any way trivial or less than serious. In fact, he
argues that play is a wider, more all-embracing concept than seriousness.
Because the idea of seriousness excludes play, whereas the idea of play can
very well be taken seriously. In the latter portion of his book, he laments
the fact that play has been ripped from its organic place at the heart of
communities and transferred to commercialized spheres of sport."
Looking at Chris' site again and other book titles,
http://chrismercogliano.com/biography.htm
might want to add "Creating Learning Communities" somehow:
"OpenVirgle Purpose: To support a playful learning community of individuals
and groups chaordically building free and open source knowledge, tools, and
simulations which lay the groundwork for humanity's eventual joyful,
compassionate, and diverse expansion into space (including Mars, the Moon,
the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe)."
From Wikipedia:
"Learning community"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_community
"A learning community is a group of people who share common values and
beliefs, are actively engaged in learning together from each other. Such
communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary
approach to higher education. ... The people who facilitate learning
communities may contribute from several distinct fields of study."
From Wikipedia:
"Chaordic"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaordic
"The portmanteau chaordic refers to a system that blends characteristics of
chaos and order. The term was coined by Dee Hock. The mix of chaos and order
is often described as a harmonious coexistence displaying characteristics of
both, with neither chaotic nor ordered behavior dominating. Some hold that
nature is largely organized in such a manner; in particular, living
organisms and the evolutionary process by which they arose are often
described as chaordic in nature. The chaordic principles have also been used
as guidelines for creating human organizations -- business, nonprofit,
government and hybrids -- that would be neither hierarchical nor anarchic."
--Paul Fernhout
Alejandro
Seccondly, (and this is just my opinion) I believe that exactly what's
happening here is part of what holds groups like NASA back - an
overdose of beraucracy. Granted, it is a good way to spend a little
bit of time when we've hit a researcher's block, but it's not
something that needs to take up much of our time.
I'll make a page with my idea on it, and we can edit it until we get a
version that everyone's OK with. Then, the statement could also be
easily revised over time. The page will simply be called "Mission
Statement 0.1", and when we all agree on it, we can simply copy and
paste that version into a "Mission Statement 1.0" page.