Tag: ethics

Can we know what animals are thinking?

A nice article from the economist on animal minds. 
https://medium.economist.com/can-we-know-what-animals-are-thinking-83991bc994c4 
“In 1992, at Tangalooma, off the coast of Queensland, people began to throw fish into the water for the local wild dolphins to eat. In 1998, the Dolphins began to feed the humans, throwing fish up onto the jetty for them. The humans thought they were having a bit of fun feeding the animals. What, if anything, did the Dolphins think?” 
It is astonishing to me how fashion, peer pressure, and group think mentality, inhibit even supposedly critical thinkers. Only slowly are we coming out of this cloud of denial regarding the minds of animals. I am far from being anti-science, but just because subjective mind is currently beyond the realms of what Science can opine on, doesn’t mean it is not real. Denying animal consciousness because we don’t understand human consciousness is just another ravenous bugblatter beast of traal. 
(image Richard Svensson)

The Unnecessariat: We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary.

Pretty chilling:
https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

“Here’s the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as “Young Gods” believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy, and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don’t worry, the recession’s over and everything’s better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!”

Cory Doctrow says, “Human beings are the gut flora of immortal, transhuman corporations”.

Life as gut flora is not very glamorous, but need not be too bad. We are beneficial, and that gives us some measure of security—our hosts like to keep us around to stave off IBS. But when we add nothing of value to their fitness, our hosts, the corporations, are no longer incentivized to support us. We become unnecessary and start dying in droves.

“If there’s no economic plan for the Unnecessariat, there’s certainly an abundance for plans to extract value from them. No-one has the option to just make their own way and be left alone at it. It used to be that people were uninsured and if they got seriously sick they’d declare bankruptcy and lose the farm, but now they have a (mandatory) $1k/month plan with a $5k deductible: they’ll still declare bankruptcy and lose the farm if they get sick, but in the meantime they pay a shit-ton to the shareholders of United Healthcare, or Aetna, or whoever.”

Mark my words, this is how it ends. #FermiParadox

My #top100 #scifi Num:48 The Robots of Dawn

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2gYlBGa

Spoiled by reliance on robots, lacking a spirit of adventure the human colonisation of the galaxy has ground to a halt. I tend to think the Fermi Paradox is all about apathy in the end, this book might have been the seed that planted the idea.
Asimov begins tying his worlds together here with the first mention of psychohistory…
Isaac Asimov