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Technology is a double-edged sword, but science and reason have made our lives immeasurably better overall—and only through science and reason can we hope to make a real difference in the future.
We live in an imperfect world. Poverty, disease, lack of education, environmental destruction—the problems are all too obvious. Many people don’t have clean water, let alone enough food, and the unsustainable lifestyle of the wealthy few is storing up catastrophic climate change.
Can we do anything about it? You bet we can.
Over the next three weeks, New Scientist will explore diverse ideas for making the world a better place, and the evidence backing them.
That’s how New Scientist magazine introduces their special series titled “Blueprint for a Better World.” As a start, they offer these ten Big Ideas:
1. Beware of common sense - If governments are serious about achieving their aims, they must base their decisions on hard evidence and not received wisdom.
2. Legalise drugs - Far from protecting us and our children, the war on drugs is making the world a much more dangerous place.
3. Give police your DNA - The only fair, effective answer to the question of whose DNA profiles police should keep is: everybody’s.
4. Redefine the bottom line - Governments need to find better ways of measuring progress than simply looking at wealth.
7. Learn to love genetic engineering - The technology environmentalists love to hate really could play a big role in saving the planet.
8. End the pillaging of the high seas - We must put a stop to the free-for-all out on the oceans to have any chance of saving their riches from the ravages of climate change.
9. Generate a feed-in frenzy - Paying people who generate green energy and feed it back to the grid is the best way to boost uptake of renewable energy.
10. Take Friday off… forever - The four-day week could boost employment, save energy and make us happier.
Their suggestions all seem pretty good to me. Click on the links above to read more about each item.
Mike Treder is the Managing Director of the IEET, and former Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
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COMMENTS
Charley, you took the words out of my mouth. I can hopefully posit, however, that Mr. Treder included "compassion and empathy" (not to mention leadership that is able to promote such qualities) in the arena of "reason."
Whilst "common sense" may be deemed as subjective, especially where it concerns selfishness, riches, revenues and political careers, a little spoonful of this may be just what the world needs?
A hard fact is that the world is overpopulated, yet we don't act on this alone, we have the wisdom and "common sense" to realise there are currently no easy answers.
Do we all have a "common sense" of what is wrong with the world today, and what we can do to make things better? I think we do, and most folks are not that dumb at all, however, if you replace "common sense" with something a little more objective : wisdom, (experience and knowledge), things would be even better. This seems to be what every nation around the world seems to lack these days : experienced and wise management. Most politicians are either selfish asses, lack confidence in their own judgements, or fear ridicule to even talk about global and economic change.
I remember reading something from Confucius regarding leading by example, and the greatest emperor is one that is both wise and compassionate : which in turn encourages the same from his peoples.
2. Legalise drugs :
Why? Only the poorest masses are condemned to the addiction of substances, and poverty : ah yes, the answer lies in taxation of these masses and more revenue for the government. Yes let's not get folks off drugs, let's tax 'em!
3. Give police your DNA :
Why? Ah yes, think of all those rights of the individual that can be swept aside with one stroke of governmental control. Once the government has your genetic code, who owns it? Now I'm surprised this would even be sanctioned here?
And it makes detective work a breeze also, no more legwork required, just swab and arrest anyone that comes close. Fairness : you cannot get everyone's DNA, and villains especially organised groups, will be the first to scam their way out of this, so it can never be equal or fair.
4. Redefine the bottom line - Governments need to find better ways of measuring progress than simply looking at wealth.
Maybe, yet money is still king, its still the bottom line, it still buys food and clothing and other trade for the people, just share it out a little more.
5. Find out if we can cool the planet - We need to do our homework rather than simply assume geoengineering can stave off disaster.
Agreement here. Once you begin along a path of geoengineering there may be no turning back : best make the right choices.
6. Tax carbon and give the money to the people :
why not aim to stop using carbon fuels altogether? Come on guys!! Banks get the money first, and we all know they don't pass it on.
7. Learn to love genetic engineering :
Learn to be healthy, learn to love yourself, and then see what happens with genetic advancement : it will happen, (perhaps you mean "embrace"?)
8. End the pillaging of the high seas :
the oceans are a big area to police, is this practicable? Extend fishing agreements, and stop killing whales : now that's a start?
9. Generate a feed-in frenzy - Paying people who generate green energy and feed it back to the grid is the best way to boost uptake of renewable energy. :
Do energy companies really want to sell you energy or buy it from you? How long will these pseudo ideals last?
10. Take Friday off forever :
LOL well I like this one, and why stop at Friday's only? But seriously "job sharing" would go a long way towards easing poverty and unemployment, especially at times like the present recession.
The fact that someone could make this statement, reinforces the need not to rely on common sense but on scientific research.
A special report on ageing populations. A slow-burning fuse:
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13888045
Ten reasons why population control is not an answer to climate change: http://links.org.au/node/1076
Norman Borlaug dies at 95; revolutionized grain agriculture and won Nobel Peace Prize: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-norman-borlaug14-2009sep14,0,2393886.story
@ Mark..
You are correct, "common sense" is purely subjective. You are correct to highlight my poor judgment. I should have stated, "A hard fact is that the world population growth is a problem."
Wiki says - "Overpopulation does not depend only on the size or density of the population, but on the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. It also depends on the means of resources used and distributed throughout the population".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
16 September 2009 : A senior United Nations adviser has called on world governments to reduce population growth and work together to keep climate change from causing an immense human catastrophe, starkly warning: "We're on a trajectory that is absolutely unsustainable and profoundly dangerous."
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32074&Cr=climate+change&Cr1;=
Not everyone agrees the world is overpopulated but there is agreement that there are real issues with an expanding population, of which food supplies are just the most obvious.
Data from the World Resources Institute (WRI) suggests that global population will increase by 34% by 2050 - an extra 2.3 billion people. To consider that the entire global population was 2.5 billion in 1950 gives an idea of the challenges which lie ahead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/2009/sep/02/world-population-growth-resources-control
We are living in a world of unprecedented demographic change. After growing very slowly for most of human history, the world's population more than doubled in the last half century to reach 6 billion in late 1999. By 2006 it had reached 6.7 billion. Lower mortality, longer life expectancy and a youthful population in countries where fertility remains high all contributed to the rapid population growth of recent decades.
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/trends.htm
Mike I think you are on to something with number two. Debaters debate the two wars as if Nixon's civil war on Woodstock Nation didn't yet run amok. One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights or to Cuba for political prisoners. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under banner of the war on drugs. If we're all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar's Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. There's trouble on the border. My shaman's second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God's gift. God didn't screw up. Canadian Marc Emery sold seeds that enable American farmers to outcompete cartels with superior domestic herb. He is being extradited to prison, for doing what government wishes it could do, reduce demand for Mexican.
The constitutionality of the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) derives from an interstate commerce clause. Only by this authority does it reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Official policy is to eradicate, not tax, the number-one cash crop in the land. America rejected prohibition, but it's back. Apparently, SWAT teams don't need no stinking amendment. Father, forgive those who make it their business to know not what they do.
Nixon promised that the Schafer Commission would support the criminalization of his enemies, but it didn't. No matter, the witch-hunt was on. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA halted all research and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn't need a specific church membership to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. Denial of entheogen sacrament to any American, for mediation of communion with his or her maker, precludes free exercise of religious liberty.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn't enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers decreed that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers' self-exploration.
Since people don't ordinarily listen to silly old me, I am making this suggestion to you. I think you'll like it.
What I propse is to tax all imports of which the average wage of the manufacturers is not known, or known to be very low. Call this a 'slave labor' tax and state clearly importing countries cannot compete equitably.
Of course when implementing this the WHO will go crazy. So my next proposal would be to collect this taxes, with minimal overhead (interest over the collected amount should be sufficient to pay for the collection) after which the collecting agency finds the manufacturers - in particular the slaves - and sends the money back to them. Or: the laborers can make a claim against that money of they can prove with great certainty they are entitled to a share of that cash.
And if sending it back is impossible, say, China protest against the tax measure AND disallows foreigners to give their slaves money - the collecting country helps supporting peaceful democratization, unionization, health education, health care, general education, etc etc in the manufacturing country. With solid cash.
Funny thing is, as soon as I make this suggestion, nobody protests. Everybody keeps very very quiet. In all fairness, nobody can argue against it, without condoning slavery, right? And they can't argue it isn't fair either - we give the money BACK to the manufacturers. So IF I get a response this idea it's something like "It's communist ZOMFG!" or "that's stupid!" or "that'll never work". I get no arguments what that should be the case...
I'd suppose the tax should be based on difference between effective wage of exporter and minimum wage in the importing country. So in theory some european countries would be able to levvy this import tax on goods imported from the US !
As an added benefit - this would reduce silly transportation of goods halfway across the globe, it would reduce societal and international disparities, it directly benefit poor people only, it would give an incentive in poor countries to increase effective wages, it would strengthen ties between countries and a fair negotiation basis, but most of all it would benefit domestic markets. And consumers have the knowledge that when they pay a dollar more that money is served to stop slave labour.
And any country can implement this law, without restriction. It's a wholly new category of tax measures.
- create four new categories of narcotics substances
(a) fully legalized. You can buy it in corner stores or specialty government stores, it's taxed, it comes in nice packaging and it'll be orange flavored. Comes with an obligatory health folder and minimum age. Cannabis, Alcohol. Tobacco. Khat. Most species of Mushroom. Some jobs may incorporate exemption laws that blankly disallow consumption of these substances. Some cities may bar consumption for certain places (public streets) but may not "enclose" consumption. You are always free to take closed packages of this product with you, and use it at home.
(b) restricted legal status. You can buy the product, but the product is heavily taxed for regular users, and in quite a few professions you are barred from consuming it. Requires registration to buy. Local states or cities can not bar sale of this product, but may choose to centralise or contain the product, or require the product is consumed on the premises, or inside an enclosed area. Hence some states may restrict the amount you may carry, or restrict ownership altogether except when inside a contained area ("pleasureville") ... Heroin. Cocain. Amphetamines. Ecstacy. LSD. DMT. Peyote. Government may require additives to these products; say a fast seratonin depleting narcotic may require medication to mitigate overheating, hearth racing or acute depression.
(c) compensation drugs. As (b) but these narcotics serve to stamp out category (d) narcotics - i.e. substances that are manufactured by pharmacologists to reproduce and displace acutely dangerous types of narcotics.
(d) Extremely disruptive narcochemicals - substances that by virtue of toxicity, neurological impairment, hallucinatory quality, addictiveness are completely disallowed. Trade is persecuted as with existing narcotics but all aspects of selling or using this substance are treated as an epidemicological situation rather than a moral one. Sellers are interned as being "conspiring to spread an epidemicological agent" and most either consent to a several week rehabilitation ("enhanced reprogramming") or face a an equal number of YEARS in a epidemiological containment (a prison solely for these category of people) ... users and addicts are interned in a clinic to treat the disease and will stay there (weeks? months? years?) until it is clear they have alternatives.
Methamphetamine. Crack. PCP. Nuke. Bantha Pudu.
Society should look at cost of any of the above. If an addict steals car radios all day and costs society tens of thousands of euro (and a lot of misery) in damages, then society should look at the cheapest, most humane, more sensible way to adress the pathology. As far as I care, heroin junkies (insofar they still exist) can go to a comfortable clinic, shoot up, would be provided with safety, clean needles, a TV with oil slides, a clean plastic bench, a nurse, a physician and a social worker. Yanno, free classes on "the needle and you" or "I have an itch, docter what should I do?"
I would favor full disclosure - precise consumption rates. precise compositions of products. geographic data. effects of the substances. it should be all immediately accessible and public. Voters must be able to argue all sides of this, and should understand what the consequences of prohibition as well as legalisation are.
If implemented, 'the era of legalisation' will be far better, for all involved (no less for tax payers who now pay near a thousand $ per year in the US on all this nonsense). Even addicts and traders will be better off, in essence. for example; Coca and Poppy would be produced in europe and US, in enclosed conditions (...by the state...) and would no longer finance "dead enders" and "nihilistic islam". The benefits of this run probably in the hundreds of billions per year of you count lost revenues, lost labour, theft, crime, disease, terrorism, silly ideologies surviving.
To finalize - when a politician votes against an end to prohibition, there is motive, opportunity and means to a crime. It is very easy for a narcotrafficante to help a prohibitionist lobby against legalisation, and attain a position of political power. I would go as far as presume that the majority of abolitionists are in fact tactitly supported, or bought, by the drug mafias. These mafias have unspeakable interests in keeping these substances illegal. And when prohibition end they will move into new markets. It would be best for law enforcement to start preparing for -
- criminals trading in rare minerals, such as colran,
- criminals trading in weapons
- criminals smuggling other "commodities" such as black market narcotics (which pose enormous collective health risks - already diseases are becoming treatment resistant because poor in the third world use dissuted black market medications...)
- smuggling and exploiting slaves
- extortion based on terrorism
- cybercrime
I could care less about criminals making an income from copying versace bags, but I do resent criminals from making large amounts of money anyways - easy riches are very corrosive to society. For the same reason I regard a spamking, a pimp, an oil executive in the samelight - these people make money wayyy to easily. As a sworn "big government" statist and avowed post-capitalist fringe lunatic, neosocialist, radical democrat and libertarian socialist I say, TAX TAX TAX them back in their place.
As we know, we live in world of inequality. There are lots of debates about who is at fault, but the important point in this context is that any argument for population control will reflect the power balance of society. Therefore, these arguments should be approached with the utmost care.
Hmmmm "power balance in society"... does this in any way cause problems? Say, what if the population population in my country decides "muslims are breeding too fast, but they cant selectively restrict breeding - so they do so indirectly, by means such as (a) no longer pay child care support for kids living abroad or (b) cancel child care support for kid 3 and over - is this "fair"? This is one troubling discussion. I say forced overbreeding strategies is unfair, but societally outlawing (or taxing) overbreeding is a bit iffy too.
I am the first to acknowledge I have one huge prejudice against breeders (5 and up) and their snotnosed, under-educated kids. But even a devout christian of the church of smug can't feel a bit uncomfortable with the duggar horde and breeding warfare waged by those people. I mean, these people take space, and I say, no, let's negotiate about it.
From then on it is democratic argumentation, concessions and compromises. I'd even have these agenda points without being H+ian - I don't have any loafs, I don't want em, and I generally feel awkward about those people who do squeeze em out all over the place, and the memes those boundless swarms spread all over the place. Demanding birth quota is a win-win situation to me on everything except PR. For the time being!
I'm not quite sure what you are saying, but I'd like to remind that the "weak" can exercise power too by taking up weapons. So if we don't want a war of attrition we had better sit down and negotiate peer to peer, as Dale would say, or else "we all die".
Remarkably so - this is *precisely* what I am saying. Overbreeding is violence. Breeding quota is violence. A minority of society suspending all acknowledgement of the other side is engaged in violence.
Question is - are current political systems able to resolve some of these types of violence? .... parliamentary democracies... maybe...
Well you have opened a whole can of ethical and philosophical worms now! As we all have varied levels of knowledge, and so called wisdom and moreover, different and varied views regarding almost every idea and topic, we are doomed to misunderstand and disagree with each other. (Until societies, nations and humanity view themselves in connectedness, and not in terms of separation and selfishness?)
The only means we have to overcome these problems is to communicate, air and share ideas and thoughts, and have the wisdom and open-mindedness to listen to others and democratically come to decisions with the only resolutions and answers we currently have to hand. If you accept that freewill and choice are a reality, (in our separation from each other), then you must also accept the freedoms of life and values that are fused to these choices, and the freedom of the individual to choose
All views, all ideas are important in the political argument : to ignore or eliminate any possibilities or ideas is to restrict success, this would include the fine-tuning and tweaking of ethical ideas along the rocky road to posthumanity.
Sometimes I fear that all that swirl around the mad seething chaos at the center of the universe - azathoth, sag*A -
are all madly piping attendants to the yawning void of nothingness that is the axis of the galaxy. That would include CygnusX1. Did you actually know I made a model of a black hole in Second Life, at the Transvision sim. It makes a mighty roar. If you ever make it there tell me what it says?
It is a lovecraft reference. The allusion is to the cosmicism in the mythos, the idea that all the universe is hostile, based on conflict, incomprehensible and a mere glimpse of understanding would drive us mad. In this mythos Azathoth is "a seething nuclear chaos at the center of the universe", attended by a "court of mad piping monstrosities" - suggesting the nuclear furnace of the heart of the galaxy composed by thousands of neutron stars, wolff-rayet stars and black holes, surrounding a central black hole of 4 million solar masses. My overly opague poetic reference suggests there no discussion, no dialogue, no wisdom, no concerted planning, and each individual follows his own trajectory, and only pure inertia determines an outcome. It is the most terrifying vision and my greatest fear and interpretation possible of far post-humanity.
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