... in the Eye of the Beholder

"That's because we haven't yet played Cowboys and Muslims, but it's a'comin'."  (punchline to a joke about a conversation between an American Indian, a Muslim exchange student, and an old cowboy waiting at a small town airport in Montana.)

George Rebane

Readers should be clear by now that I don’t record these thoughts to endear myself to as many hearts as possible.  I saw a piece on today’s WSJ online edition that called to mind the important things that I believe our country (world?) is facing.  And it isn’t global warming or healthcare or immigration reform or … .

Instead, according to my lights the world shaking issues we are facing are 1) the approach of the Singularity, 2) the entrenchment of national dumbth, 3) the race between tyranny and the war between civilizations.  Singularity’s approach is driven by AI, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering.  It’s byproducts are universal online education, destabilizing systemic unemployment, accelerating inequities, and species threatening ‘plague’.

The country's dumbth (google it) is here and politically ineradicable.  The national commons has been established and is well on its way to being destroyed, while the attempts to maintain it will take America to the brink of revolution.

Due to the inexorable course of issues 1 and 2 our present progress toward a post-constitutional tyranny is also well established and abetted by technology.  And given our refusal to acknowledge the dominant dynamism of Islam, its colonization of infidel lands will accelerate, punctuated by ever greater incidents of terror that will have the weaker societies suing for peace at any cost – adoption of Sharia being the least of them (more here, here, and here).  Only a ‘great awakening’ in the west, of which no harbinger is evident, would preclude such a pre-Singularity future.  If the Singularity ‘wins’ this race, all bets are off by definition.

These are all issues and predictions that have decorated these pages for years now.  I see no observables that would cause me to recant any of this record.  So I was surprised to see an interview with Jaan Tallinn in the 2jun13 WSJ.  Tallinn is the inventor of Skype and co-founder of the early stage company that capitalized the technology.  He is now building a new company “MetaMed, which promises customers personalized health-care research and analysis of their medical conditions.”  (These are the kind of innovations that will wind up providing the real improvements in healthcare.)

In the interview Tallinn goes on to outline his own apprehensions about mankind’s shared future which are eerily in lockstep with what I have been trying to alert my family, friends, and RR readers.

What risks worry him? "The first one is artificial intelligence," he says. "The second is the things that technological progress might create that we're unaware of right now." … His third fear is biological risk. "There could be synthetic viruses that evolution doesn't even know how to create," says Mr. Tallinn. For all practical purposes, he suggests, evolution stopped with the advent of gene technology. "The future of the planet depends much more on technology than evolution," he adds.

When one’s notions are so frequently out of step with popularly received wisdom, it is heartening to run across yet another respected co-traveler with similar views.  Maybe it’s just an Estonian thing, but I don’t think so.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

In reference to "MetaMed" I recall a study in the 1990s at one of the major universities Harvard, Yale, or maybe evan Carnegie Mellon, that discovered a patient was more honest about their symptoms and medial history when answering question on a computer terminal, than when they were when answering the same questions for a doctor. I aways thought this had great potential in medical science, but we would need a Watson to take advantage of the input. It would take a strong AI device to makes a valid diagnosis. There is a strong educational component to moving from diagnoses to better health. AI technology can administer that component of a patients health as well. I would trust a computer over some of the doctors that have attended to me over the years. We are on the cusp of some major changes in our lives. I am looking forward to interacting with "MetaMed."

[Russ Steele]

Recommend Reading:

Breaching the Gates of Paris and Memphis: Dhimmis Bow and Scrape as Jihadis Sharpen Knives

http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2013/06/breaching-gates-of-paris-and-memphis.html#comment-form

[Bill Tozer]

It has to be at least 3 decades ago when I was following reports on the Islamic threat coming out of the southern Asia region of the USSR, maybe longer. The Muslim regions of the USSR were not assimilating into the culture, to put it very kind. Later reports out of France and the regions just south of Northern Africa.

Dr. Rebane also but it too kind when he used the word "colonization". The Islamic threat is not the traditional plundering some territory for land or wealth or some political gain. Nay, it is a single minded goal of subduing the globe with forced submission to Allah. Peace be with you, God is Great. Not up for negotiation, can't buy your way out. No living peacefully with neighbors of different goals. Much more than mere colonization.

Touching the more upbeat topic of issue #1, the UN is concerned about issue #1. Talk about "in the eye of the beholder":

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/un-envoy-urges-end-to-plans-for-battlefield-killing-machines-8637692.html

[Ben Emery]

A person doesn't have to go past the Supreme Court for your post-constitutional tyranny. Nowhere in the US Constitution does the Supreme Court have the power of judicial review, nowhere. They have the ability to decide on a case-to-case basis not to strike down laws/ legislation outright.

No law has ever been passed stating corporations should receive human constitutional rights, which would flip our entire current government on its head. Governments are instituted among men (human beings)and given their powers by the consent of the governed.

[George Rebane]

BillT 722am - perhaps 'colonization' is too gentle of a notion here, but I do mean it in the sense that, say, Great Britain colonized North America. They promoted the New World as a place for not only the English, but other Europeans to come, set down roots, subdue the natives, and convert them to Christianity. A massive social process that pitted two (or more) civilizations against each other in which one side had little chance to determine any outcomes.

BenE 820am - I think we have already danced the corporate personhood dance before and found surprising concord between our views. Also review my comments on corporations seeking peerage with sovereign nation-states.

[Joe Koyote]

I pretty much agree with all of your assessments with one exception. The threat of Islam, like the commie threat of the last half of the last century is a paper tiger that is being used to manipulate the dumpth population. The real threat is from the corporatists who are seeking to install their world and cultural views on the rest of us while blaming others.

[fish]

The threat of Islam, like the commie threat of the last half of the last century is a paper tiger that is being used to manipulate the dumpth population. The real threat is from the corporatists who are seeking to install their world and cultural views on the rest of us while blaming others.

You might ask yourself why the corporatist/globalist crew is so favorably disposed to political Islam (as opposed to Christianity) and rethink your question.

[Gregory]

"No law has ever been passed stating corporations should receive human constitutional rights, which would flip our entire current government on its head." -Ben

No law has ever been passed to establish that individual rights to free speech and against unreasonable search and seizure etc are lost when two or more people incorporate to do business.

Corporations have and retain the rights of the individuals who form them. It's a simple concept, Ben, and if the congress' intent was different than the SCOTUS decisions, they could change it.

"In the United States today, virtually every small business, college and charity is incorporated. To suggest that corporations lack speech rights would affect a great many rights and protections that we have come to rely on. Be careful what you wish for."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112711410

[Bill Tozer]

Post-Constitutional tyranny sadly might be the future generations' status-quot.

It seems odd to me that our forefathers left the tyranny of Merry o' England to have personal freedoms. Freedoms like to associate with whom you please, freedoms against unlawful seizure, freedom of the press, etc. Blood was spilled in the New World to obtain these basic fundamental universal liberties that a free people crave to thrive and prosper.

I ponder the Civil Rights movement, the emancipation of the slaves, the struggles of the Native Americans to secure their rights. I ponder the women's rights movement so a woman can buy a business without her husband's signature of approval. Some came to North America within the last 80 years to escape tyranny in Europe, others came here in the last few weeks to escape religious and/or political persecution. To be free!~ "Give me liberty or give me death!" has come out of the mouths of people everywhere for eons.

Seems a crying shame that we are just going to throw all the bloodshed and struggles down the toilet and remove all the signs proclaiming "Lest we forget".

It may be totally different in the future, but I think our current way of life is worth fighting for and preserving. History is usually on the side of outnumbered inferior forces fighting against larger superior foreign aggressors when it comes to fighting for the homeland, the soil between one's toes.

[Joe Koyote]

“Corporations have and retain the rights of the individuals who form them.” I disagree, it’s like double or triple or quadruple dipping. Corporate owners already have the right to contribute to political organizations as individuals. By extending that right to paper entities, it gives corporate owners more political power than non-corporate owners who can only contribute as individuals. The same idea applies to trade associations, non-profits, PACs, super PACS, unions, or any other organization that takes contributions and uses them for political purposes. However, all of the unions in the nation put together did not raise and spend as much money as Karl Rove’s Crossroads group alone. So it becomes a matter of equality in the zeros department. A person who earns $40k and donates one tenth of one percent contributes $40. A person who earns $40m contributes $40k, $4 billion contributes $4m. Four million goes a lot farther than forty bucks. Given our campaigns are mostly conducted through expensive media, more money equals more power negating the one person one vote foundation of a democracy.

[Gregory]

If I give half my money directly to some political cause and half to a corporation because I agree with their plans for the money, I've not doubled my money.

And no matter what I do with my money, I have but one vote which I can choose to cast or to not cast. I can't give it to a corp to cast for me, though some Dem groups want the right to 'help' the elderly and infirm to fill out their ballots.

Rove sure ruffles feathers, what a shame he's not on my side.

[Joe Koyote]

You are missing the point. Because individuals can only contribute a limited amount, by allowing corporations to contribute as well as those individuals who own the corporation, those owners are able to contribute more money more often, thus giving them more influence on voting outcomes. One individual can make one contribution, but a person who owns five corporations can contribute six times and unlike individual contributions, corporate contributions are unlimited giving their viewpoints an unfair advantage over other viewpoints.

[Russ Steele]

I wonder if JoeK is, or has ever been, a stock holder in a corporation? Or, for that matter any of the lefty intellectual giants that populate is blog from time to time crying about the strength of corporation, all without ever mentioning the unions that prey their members. Stock holders can come go as they find the corporate investment philosophy not to their liking, but union members are trapped by the corruption. In many states and professions they are not free to come and go freely.

[Ben Emery]

Learning from the likes of Walmart, Apple, Microsoft, Nike, HP. But what the hell they are only workers, they are expendable because there are 1.3 billion more people to exploit.

http://www.newsday.com/news/world/fire-locked-doors-kill-119-at-china-poultry-plant-1.5392612
BEIJING - (AP) -- A swift-moving fire trapped panicked workers inside a poultry slaughterhouse in northeastern China that had only a single open exit, killing at least 119 people in one of the country's worst industrial disasters in years.

[George Rebane]

When I first heard of the Chinese chicken factory fire, I wondered if anyone here would make the connection to an American corporation, and firmly plant the blame where it obviously belonged. Wait no more.

[Joe Koyote]

Russ: What does your response have to do with the inequality that the Citizens United decision created with regard to campaign spending? Does being a stockholder blind a person to inequality? Your comparison between stockholders and union members has nothing to do with campaign contributions. Comparing the economic power of corporations to that of unions is absurd. In the last election cycle, all of the unions put together did not raise and spend as much money as Karl Rove. You seem to blindly support corporate wealth and power and attack those who disagree with ad hominem attacks rather than a rational discussion of the issues. It seems that the righty intellectuals with their pre-recorded attacks they got from some lame pundit like Drudge or Limbaugh that blog here make up the dumpth population and that's why they don't grasp the issues of our time. They need to do a better job of aligning their attack's content to that of the comments they seek to counter. Otherwise it becomes like presidential debates where a topic just elicits a predetermined response that states a position but does not provide any actual response to the question at hand. And FYI, most large corporations are really evil and they really do put profit above people, from 1,100 people dying in a sweatshop collapse to an explosion in Texas, it's all the same game and anyone who blindly supports the blatant disregard for human life that is the standard operating procedure of many multinational corporations might want to consider a re-adjustment of their moral compass because somewhere they made some wrong assumptions about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Steve Frisch]

Just goes to show you Joe, if you don't own stock you don't know shit in America. Gordon Gecko has spoken.