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Posts by Obbe

  1. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by inb4l0pht No need for Europe to worry, Trudeau will enthusiastically sign off on dumping them all here. Open wide our borders and let the jedis use us as their toilet.

    While still not doing anything about the BC/Alberta pipeline bullshit.
  2. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
  3. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
  4. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    THE FUTURE

    171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decades and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human beings a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically and psychologically. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter.
  5. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by benny vader the fact that algorithms and analytics has been all the rage these days is FACT that this manifesto was wrong.

    as facebooks and targeted ads had shown …. the system can and will be tuned to sastify human needs and the only thing that stood in the way is technology.

    iphone was so successful becos it wrapped itself around out lives instead of making us wrapping around its.

    Humanity doesn't need advanced advertisement methods or increased connectivity due to iPhone - on the contrary this increased connectivity has made everyone more lonely than ever before.
  6. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by Fox Paws Have you ever had an original thought in your life? Lol

    Edit: OH WAIT there’s no such thing as an original thought, because every thought is just a reaction to external stimuli!

    Every thought is an original thought but the thinker is not responsible for his thoughts.
  7. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by Lanny I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? Do you think Kaczynski's writing speaks to or against the post you quoted?

    I think it added to it but at the same time I think both of you are wrong - you can try to resist the system, fight back or change the way it is, but the system is bigger than you. Eventually humans will lose their humanity, and things like how "disgusting" society is won't matter to us.
  8. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
  9. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by Lanny Wouldn't you give up some portion of your material wealth if meant living in a society you didn't feel disgusted by?

    The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social or moral ideology that may pretend to guide the system. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity.

    Of course the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn’t function if everyone starved; it attends to people’s psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn’t function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system.

    To much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity. and for good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse.

    The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.
  10. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
  11. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
  12. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by Zanick Unless you're content for you and your family to be kept as livestock by a superior predator, bred with one another and eventually slaughtered hanging upside down in a barn, you cannot justify that you do it to another species. You scream about preserving the hierarchy of nature, but when it gives you something you don't like, you'll want to declare an exception.

    The vast majority of people are basically livestock, except instead of meat the harvest is taxes. The system sucks but you can't really reject it unless you go live in the woods like the Unabomber and even there he still was dependent on society buying his supplies in town. Eventually it will happen to all of us too, the system will eat us up and destroy our humanity and we will become post-humans.
  13. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Nobody wins.
  14. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by Malice I am not a morning person.

    Who else thinks about suicide every single day right after waking up? I mean, it's a pretty mild desire relative to the worst I've ever felt, I know what it feels like to be right on the edge, but, still, the happiness/pleasure I feel in life doesn't come close to being worth putting up with this bullshit for the rest of my life.

    I think about sex every morning.
  15. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Depends on your blood sugar and shit like that. I smoke daily. If I smoke too much at the wrong time it can be too much. Drinking can affect this. If it's something you WANT then drink like 3 or 4 beers quickly and then smoke a fat joint and you will be fucked.
  16. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by greenplastic because your thread was garbage

    My thread was based on scientific research. This thread is based on made-up "moral obligation".
  17. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    So wait Lanny banned finny for shitposting in this thread? But when people were spamming my plant intelligence thread with shitposts he just let it happen.

    Why is that?
  18. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by lempoid loompus thinking someone is a fucking retard = obsessed

    Sarcasm = Defeat
  19. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
  20. Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by lempoid loompus you're basically the opposite of logic and reason. you're like a poster boy for spiritual sounding mumbo jumbo

    Maybe. If I am, I guess it's working for me... I have nothing to complain about.

    Still doesn't explain your obsession with me.
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