[clapstyx]

Well Vox I'd be comfortably satisfied with a situation where the general depth of thinking was in stable accelleration, where we were frequently surpassing the limitations that prevent people from thinking constantly full scale full throttle and we were resolving (at least) senseless negativity of the kind that people have sometimes even to their own position because they havent thought sufficiently enough to realise.

Now at this point I am a little bit perplexed by the Dalai Lama on this issue because his rock credibility is based on having an advanced state of consciousness and a handle on the mechanics of realisation so why cant he backsolve why other people arent realising fast enough and often enough to catch up with where his thinking is presently at so that the issues of resolve that he meets can be met by the mass balance. OK lets go theoretical here.

Lets say the Dalai Lama wants to work out how to raise the level of thinking of humanity overnight to a level that by morning we have a resolve on why some people are negative to saving their own planet so that the irrationality is solved. If we knew that this is what was perplexing the Dalai Lama and he could translate to us how far he had advanced in the pursuit of that resolve then the mass intellect could focus on the resolve of the immediate dilemma. I mean its not that hard. Now OK some would say why the Dalai Lama, fair enough, write a movie script, have a character that is working out how to save the planet and work it the same way. eg Character gets to the point where she/he/it says "Shit Ive got to solve how to make people really smart really fast" so you send it to the global brains trust. "Right OK solved that but now I have to harmonise their thinking to the same consciousness mainframe so that they are in harmony with the same assortment of tangents of consideration so we make realisations virtually identically in common at the same time and set up telepathy in the process to create the potentiality of perfect relativity and understanding of the moment as a moment of reali life that they are a party to" and so on. But weve got to be on the same tangent thinking to roughly the same depth on the continuum of mindscale. Set out to surpass Christ for a start we'll get reasonably close with that. Islam will be OK with that and if the pope can be comfortable with Christ being used as the benchmark of inspiration who's bothered...only the stupid ones that argue we shouldnt be setting out to surpass Christ because it cant be done..he was just too perfect. Same ones who think its crazy to try and save the planet because it takes too much thinking..stuff em ..make em think..if their brains explode just put it down to natural selection and accomodate Darwin into the process.

[Boerseun]

Well, if you want humanity to think full-throttle, all the time, then you're doing something horribly wrong, economically speaking. You see, under Capitalism, machines will be invented, made and sold to dispense with humanity's need to think at all. The only thing worth thinking about will be what television show to watch next, or which form of mindless, brainless entertainment to indulge yourself in. Sure - there will be a tiny core of dedicated scientists with the freedom to apply their grey matter to issues requiring deep thought, but if they don't end up continuously supplying the fat lazy blobs with new forms of entertainment, they will be run out of town and burnt at the stake.

Democracy and Capitalism's great claim to fame is that they give the individual the opportunity to become a very good and productive member of society, or a parasitic sofa blob surfing the 'net for ever more porn, becoming fatter by the second and forever looking all over the place for new forms of instant gratification. The individual must decide for him or herself which path to take, but ironically, and thanks to the freedom enjoyed by the scientists in the companies' employ who make it easier to take the second route through more advanced and impressive forms of self-defeating entertainment, more people will become lazy fat sofa blobs and fewer will become bona fide scientists.

But I think the eventual and inevitable outcome of Democracy tied with Capitalism is the complete opposite of what you expect from humanity, vis-à-vis thinking. The opportunity will be there, however. I think the movie Idiocracy might be closer to the truth than we might believe.

[clapstyx]

Well at least we know who to blame for the promulgation of mindlessness then its science..that lets religion off the hook. I had been blaming God for the fear some people seem to have about advancing their depth of mind because of the harshness of the response towards Eve in the Garden that day. I still assert that she was right to eat that apple and that it was an oversight on Gods part for not realising that Eves strategy for higher love was the experience of an increase in mutual realisations. Science cant fix that either UNLESS (and this has just occurred to me) the capitalist free market sponsors the reconstruction of the DNA sequence of the first woman and the Pope Saints her as a gesture to the ideal of fixing divine errors. Richard Branson would probably stick in a few million so he could have an ambassador for Virgin. See capitalism could theoretically work.

[Vox]

clapstyx said:

Lets say the Dalai Lama wants to work out how to raise the level of thinking of humanity overnight to a level that by morning we have a resolve on why some people are negative to saving their own planet so that the irrationality is solved.

Naturally I can say only what "I understand" currently, I can not state anything about how others will think or see things..but from my opinion you got sidetracket in that very first sentence. "Developing consciousness" in not to develop thinking in linear ascending manner. Consciousness is to understand that "I think, therefore I am" is not how human is but as an opposite, I am, therefore I think. To "develop consciousness" is to realize that real "I" is the observer and ego is the illusory "I" , the thinker. Thinking is tool for humans , you can do "good" and "bad" with it. But if you do not use it all is back to natural state, no good nor bad. Therefore for example one way to save the Earth is not to do anything ..Let´s assume; if humans would dissapear and thinking likewise..Earth would be saved and saved from Ego´s first messing up the Earth and then thinking how to save the Earth. Remember Ego´s are always doing "things" in the future or mourning the past, not now, this way it can ensure it´s illusion survival. Therefore the realization of the individual awareness is to understand real me as observer not the compulsory thinker is the one way to stop "negative things/"thinks"" to appear.."Just do nothing and Earth will be saved", sounds paradoxical for thinking mind due thinking and doing is what keeps ego alive, conflicts, contrast, arguments and objects in the future to be achieved is the necessary fuel for Ego. Animals do not think about saving the Earth therefore Earth is saved, if animals would be the "highest lifeforms" in Earth and Nature is back to it´s natural flow. The answer is individual awareness, not the masses as such, masses are multiplied "me". We always hope that Earth "will be saved" in the future , threfore it "will not be saved".

[clapstyx]

Hmm Ive never been a huge fan of the "I think therefore I am" statement..what does it mean .. I think therefore I am thinking..what if I am not thinking does that mean I am not? Lets face it some brains just love a challenge and maybe you know what its like when you set out to resolve something that you expect others to say cant be done because there is a satisfaction in outdoing the mass balance of consciousness. Its like thinking of something that has never bee thought of before and then advancing your thinking about it so you create your own bit of mindspace in the universe of consciousness where you are just ahead of everybody else..Ok its lonely because no one relates to the moment in consciousness time that you are up to because their not advancing along the same tangent of consideration. Settting out to save the planet and advancing is like that by the way it was probably the same for anyone who advances on huge aspirations of an evolutionary scale or greater at any time in time. By the time they catch up youve already advanced 10 cognitive steps past that.So its always a case of having the upper level perspective on their relative stupidity. Maybe its only that some people have ego's that refuse to fail that keeps the thinking of humanity in constant advance. Question is whether we realise that for the most part most people dont have the time to think deeply and uninteruptedly for extended periods of time and can capitalism pay people basically just to think. I mean I see a problem re saving the planet that lets say it takes 500 points of cognitive advance to reach the point of a resolve ..whos got time..basically nobody. In response to that I said "OK work out how to accellerate the frequency of realisation" Maybe thats what we have to start with. But again we have the issue of if we create a whole lot of new tangents of contemplation so that we have an advance somewhere sometime on all of them all of the time (as the conceptual ideal) are we physiologically prepared or (as has been the case) will people start to vomit after they have made 6 or 7 deep realisations in quick succession. Thats the problem with releasing really advanced thinking into consciousness because it might take a person 6 months of perpetually deeper thinking to arrive at a realisation of truth that shifts the level of consciousness of others where that person has gone through certain personal barriers and found comfort enough to continue but the person you give the deep concept to has to basically go through all of them in an instant. Thats where you get the thing about brains exploding..saving the planet is just too heavy duty and threatening for some people because to accept that a strategy is required means accepting that we are actually in really deep shit.

[Michaelangelica]

Quote

Whilst China's success is mostly thanks to a vastly and artificially undervalued currency,

1.Whilst USA's success is mostly thanks to a vastly and artificially over-valued currency,
2. The Chinese save half their income; Yanks spend their incomes and then borrow and spend the Chinese savings on Chinese made bling.
3. This keeps the Chinese employed so they can save, and the Yanks. . . . . .etc etc

This post has been edited by Michaelangelica: 10 August 2010 - 05:12 AM

[Vox]

clapstyx said:

..Saving the planet is just too heavy duty and threatening for some people because to accept that a strategy is required means accepting that we are actually in really deep shit.

I think you got it..Increasing entropy concerning the human egoistic thinking and keeping other human characteristics the same, we can surely expect more complex problems created in now and only few yesterdays problems solved. And with current standard approach that we can hope to fix the problems in the future. Not good.. If only we could fix the problems now , there would be real possibility to save the Earth. Then again, if individual awareness is changed....

[Kriminal99]

Michaelangelica said:

I am not sure intelligence is selected for in any system
People who get ahead have the right parents, the right contacts, the right old-school tie, the right socio-economic group, and lots of luck.
Look at Bush for example Did he get to the highest post in the land on intelligence? I think not.
You may have a far too romantic view of the world

It's contained in the definition. Yes I know that nowadays we have empowered the idea that people skills are more valuable than effective and practical intelligence (at the cost of mass economic and other kinds of failure). This is what happens long term when an economy becomes dominated by ancient corporate giants that would not go out of business no matter how bad the decisions they made due to the sheer amount of capital at their disposal.

Perfect capitalism implies perfect flow of information which would mean awareness of what makes workers effective and what does not.

Also, it would entail perfect testing methods to rank potential employees according to how effective they would be in the field they were trying to enter.

[Kriminal99]

Donk said:

All the different flavours of communism, whatever their stated aims, quite rapidly turned into the normal human form of government: a "star group" which owns everything, including the people.

The same can also be said of theocracy, feudalism, monarchy, dictatorship... we're a tribal species and we can't seem to manage without the chieftain class.

The United States tried to get out of the trap by creating a constitution that put strict limits on what the government was allowed to do to its people, watched over by a judiciary that had the power to tell the government to go to hell. A noble aim, and one which worked quite successfully for a couple of centuries, but it seems to be going the way of all the other Utopias we've tried - a star group which owns everything, including the people.

Pity

A viable alternative to this is to have ideas run the country. We could vote on belief sets, and people only in so far as they championed those belief sets. Then those people would be responsible for supporting laws that coincided with the elected set of beliefs. People do not have time to vote on separate issues, but the action taken on each of these issues could be related logically into a single belief set.

[Kriminal99]

Michaelangelica said:

I think this thread is showing a lot of illogical, sloganeering thinking. and making wild assumptions that are unproven.

At the moment it seems The USA system is failing the Chinese system (whatever that is) is achieving its aims of unlimited growth.
China's economy has been growing at double digit rate for a long while and will soon surpass the USA, which it practically owns.

It seems whenever a Yank starts to talk about political systems the conversation all seems to get silly and simplistic. Is this because of their political education/brainwashing?

I'm not sure which part you are referring to. You seem to dislike the concept of the G factor, which is a scientifically verified phenomenon. Some people are just born less capable than others. Scores on any type of IQ test are correlated for the same person, and they are all correlated to the amount of time required to process small amounts of information or reasoning. (Complex reaction time).

This iq is 80% heritable between generations. This has been shown to be the case even when identical twins are split up and raised in different socioeconomic class households. Nurture has at best a temporary limited effect.

The more you understand this phenomenon and how IQ tests are supposed to test it the more obvious and beyond doubt it is.

This post has been edited by Kriminal99: 10 August 2010 - 07:09 AM

[phillip1882]

capitalism works only in an educated society in my opinion. businesses bottom line is almost always profit. i think george carlin said it best, they want you tto be smart enough to run thier machines, but dumb enough not to realize you're getting a raw deal.
however, i don't think there is any other economically vaible system. capitalism's corrective nature is disgruntled employees. facism's corrective nature is government, which has a vested interest in keeping big businesses big, and running smoothly. socialism's corrective nature is also government, but in this case, the corrective nature is the voter, which gernally has a vested intest in keeping the people currently in power, there.
america currently has a mixed system of these three, and it's hurting us severely.

[Kriminal99]

Boerseun said:

Fact is that both systems when taken to the extreme will result in human suffering and misery in general. Capitalism is only possible as long as poverty exist. There is no way after all to be defined as "rich" if there are no poor people to be measured against. Sad, but true. If everybody had a million bucks, a quarterpounder and cheese will cost thousands because the guy flipping the burgers won't work for peanuts any more - he's got a few million of his own, after all. Minimum wage won't do it for him. So wages will have to rise dramatically, resulting in much more expensive burgers, effectively wiping out the value of the million bucks the burger flipper has until it becomes worthwhile for him to flip burgers again. A re-adjustment will have to be made in order to re-establish poverty, so that the rich can be rich again, and the poor can be poor. Without poverty, capitalism simply cannot work.

I missed the part where there had to be a rich and a poor for capitalism to work. It is true that in an absolutely perfect capitalism, you could just upload knowledge of how to be a doctor for instance to a person as easily as you could train a burger flipper. Thus supply and demand would dictate they earn the same wages. If anything burger flippers would make more money, because it would be less satisfying than being a doctor thus decreasing demand. All of this is of course assuming that burger flipping didn't become automated in such an efficient economy.

But where is the problem with this? Everyone wouldn't be rich, they would all be middle class. In an absolutely perfect capitalism (free flow of information) even successful entrepreneurs wouldn't be rich because everyone could do it. It is true that some ventures might not be viable any more. This is obvious and accepted in the perfect capitalism scenario. Think about a live in maid or butler. This person spends all their time serving the petty needs of a single other person. If this takes up so much of their time that the person they are serving couldn't do the exact same in return it means by definition that their time is worth less than their master's, which contradicts the perfect capitalism scenario.

In other words, there are no butlers in a perfect capitalism. Do we really need them?

But the issue that I was considering was a slightly more realistic version where there was no way to train people instantly and intelligence was still a limiting factor. IMO this would increase the flynn effect and raise the intelligence of the general population, but we act as creating such an environment is somehow wrong and discriminatory against stupid people who work hard.

This post has been edited by Kriminal99: 10 August 2010 - 07:28 AM

[maikeru]

Kriminal99, on 10 August 2010 - 07:22 AM, said:

I missed the part where there had to be a rich and a poor for capitalism to work. It is true that in an absolutely perfect capitalism, you could just upload knowledge of how to be a doctor for instance to a person as easily as you could train a burger flipper. Thus supply and demand would dictate they earn the same wages. If anything burger flippers would make more money, because it would be less satisfying than being a doctor thus decreasing demand. All of this is of course assuming that burger flipping didn't become automated in such an efficient economy.

But where is the problem with this? Everyone wouldn't be rich, they would all be middle class. In an absolutely perfect capitalism (free flow of information) even successful entrepreneurs wouldn't be rich because everyone could do it. It is true that some ventures might not be viable any more. This is obvious and accepted in the perfect capitalism scenario. Think about a live in maid or butler. This person spends all their time serving the petty needs of a single other person. If this takes up so much of their time that the person they are serving couldn't do the exact same in return it means by definition that their time is worth less than their master's, which contradicts the perfect capitalism scenario.

In other words, there are no butlers in a perfect capitalism. Do we really need them?

But the issue that I was considering was a slightly more realistic version where there was no way to train people instantly and intelligence was still a limiting factor. IMO this would increase the flynn effect and raise the intelligence of the general population, but we act as creating such an environment is somehow wrong and discriminatory against stupid people who work hard.

There is no perfect capitalism, just as there is no perfect communism. Your definition of "absolutely perfect capitalism" as the "free flow of information" is inherently problematic. It misses the whole point of capitalism. Capitalism is about *capital*, i.e., inputs, resources, energy, or money, and how it is invested and owned, mainly through private ownership, and arrangements of owners and workers in a profit-driven society. You can spin out a few more definitions of capitalism if you want, but I have never seen one that revolves solely around information and its flow. Information is still inherently dependent on inputs, resources, and energy for its maintenance, propagation, storage, analysis, and utilization. Information != capital. Information can be used to augment capital, production, ownership, etc. but it is not equal to or a replacement for capital.

[Katherine Reeds]

Kriminal99, on 31 July 2010 - 11:41 PM, said:

In some communist countries, people's intelligence and any natural abilities are measured, and they are assigned occupations accordingly. Since occupations are based on this, and pay as well, there is no motive for people to try hard in their jobs. The economy as a whole suffers. Everyone suffers.

But a perfect capitalism might have a similar effect. Such an environment would entail free flow of information. Because of this, business owners would realize how much their companies would suffer in efficiency by allowing mangers to play favorites in assigning responsibilities. Meritocracy would be the standard in every place of employment, and ways to implement this would be successfully developed and put into place.

Those that had the intelligence would rise up through the ranks, and those that did not would simply not be able to provide the results. According to the G factor, they probably would not be able to provide the results anywhere as well as the more intelligent people.

So in such a cold and heartless place, where no one cared how many years you put in, would the system collapse as fast as a communist economy?

I believe it would not. I believe that in such a society, the flynn effective of increasing iq's between generations would skyrocket. I believe that people would always push the limits of their intelligence.

Communism stands for equal sharing of work, according to the benefits and ability. But in capitalism, an individual is responsible for his works and if he wants to raise the ladder, he has to work hard.