h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"This ought to be fixed curriculum for all engaged in journalism, communication and politics" [Bo Lidegaard, columnist, former editor-in-chief of Politiken, one of Denmark's biggest dailys]

https://www.ft.com/content/eef2e2f8-0383-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9

" ... smoking kills 480,000 Americans a year. This is more than 50 deaths an hour. Terrorists have rarely managed to kill that many Americans in an entire year. But the terrorists succeed in grabbing the headlines ... "

" ... watchers now worry that Trump may achieve the same effect. In the end, will people simply start to yawn at the spectacle? Jon Christensen, at UCLA, says: “I think it’s the most frightening prospect.”

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http://www.ft.com/content/eef2e2f8-0383-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9


*fixing link for us Ripley adherents

"watchers now worry that Trump may achieve the same effect." [a quotation given by Pierce]

Which effect? Killing 480,000 Americans per year? Yawning whenever Trump speaks? William Weld has urged News media not to overreact to trump's tweets, as they only serve to call attention to his narcissistic self. Trump *wants* to horrify people. The people who put him in office want revenge on serious, thoughtful, truth-seeking people. Trump is payback.

As in stop making sense. [with apologies to Talking Heads]

Yawning, paulh. Read the article.

- - -

Thanks, Rob

This is for Donald Trump (from another article I read today):

"The rhetoric from both left and right-wing politicians has been that free trade and globalization is to blame for American workers losing their jobs. But a number of studies, including a recently published from Ball State University, shows that free trade only accounts for 13 percent of job losses from 2000 to 2010, while the introduction of technology accounts for 85 percent.
So it is in fact the technology, you should scold, rather than Obama, Mexico and China."
[Jarl Frijs-Madsen, futurist and associate partner at the Institute for Futures Studies, former head of the Danish Trade Council, Ambassador and Consul General in New York.]

If we weren't locked into this worldview that capitalism is the backbone of civilization, maybe we could improve things.


We believe that everyone should work for a living (with reasonable exceptions). Worker productivity has gone up greatly, especially over recent decades. Many of the poorest work the most hours, often at multiple jobs. Conservatives like to blame the poor for their predicament describing them as lazy even though the most strenuous jobs are often the least profitable. But with overall worker productivity going up, wages have been stagnant.

Why can't we enjoy this increased productivity afforded us by technology in more leisure time? Why are we still working 40+ hour weeks? Why does everyone have to work for a living?

Work is good, don't get me wrong, especially when it's rewarding. But I can imagine a world where people work for reasons other than monetary reimbursement. Some would work for the betterment of society or themselves or just to create. If we ever have plentiful, non-polluting energy, either through renewables or safe nuclear energy (fusion?) strenuous labor would be unnecessary as would the justification for raw capitalism. We could spend our hours in more positive pursuits.

I want to live in the worlds of tomorrow as foretold by the SciFi authors I read as a child. I want sky hooks and planetary colonization.



just some idle thoughts...

Some good points there, Baron

I will not translate the whole article, but Jarl Frijs-Madsen among other things says:

"Analyzes by McKinsey and Oxford University show that up to half of all jobs could be automated within the next few decades."

"But as with globalization that does not [necessarily] mean that it is positive for the individual. Put simplistically, it is the minority who have capital placed in assets that score gains, while the vast majority of employees will feel like losers."

"Because something is possible, is it necessary? Does it benefit the majority of society?

If not, there is a political market in being against."

We are headed for interesting times - as if they were not intesting enough already

"Yawning, paulh. Read the article." [Pierce]

Okay, now I've read the article. I still think the author could/should have been clearer. I've tried to avoid hearing the last three presidents speak, and this new one belongs in some other galaxy,preferably one far away, though I'd settle for Andromeda, which will do.

"I want to live in the worlds of tomorrow as foretold by the SciFi authors I read as a child. I want sky hooks and planetary colonization." [baron Grim]

That makes two of us -- more, if you allow for large-scale sharing of personalities in multiple bodies, as in "Ancillary Justice."

We may be living in a SciFi future, just not one of the optimistic ones of Clarke and Heinlein, but maybe some collaborative project of Dick, Orwell, and Huxley.

I've seen movie versions of Dick works, but I haven't read the print originals. Can you recommend any?

Yes, all of them.

I've only read a few of Dick's books, but I loved reading each of them. But I found him very influential. For example, I find my life a constant struggle against the encroaching kipple in my home.

I've read _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_, _Ubik_, _Radio Free Albemuth_, and a few of his short stories.

I haven't read _The Man in the High Castle_, his HUGO winning alternative history where the Axis won WWII, yet...

Robert Heinlein forecast a rather grim future for our current era, from the story, "The Sound Of His Wings", http://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/_4L0KTnfyAU

Jason Robards, one of Heinlein's real life friends, starred in a TV movie version of this story, for which I've been unable to find credits.

The Heinlein concept was founded on 'pendulum swings' in mass political outlook, the licentious left era in popular entertainment following on the Father Coughlan era providing an example, just as the overall trend is currently swinging back to the right... as it happens, in the era in which Heinlein set the "The Sound Of His Wings".

I personally don't care for grandiose swings in political outlook, prefer a milder equilibration around the 'happy medium', the centrist mean of outlook.

With reference to utopian economic concepts, treated as a word problem, Heinein's economics math from "Beyond This Horizon" works out to quite a nice 0= formulation of the basics of Keynesian economics, scarcely a last word in economics, weak, not least, on inflation controls, but amusing.




Perhaps one day, the world will do the right thing, refinance the entire planet, see to it everyone gets an unalienable trust fund, without compromising opportunity for self improvement, in the process, abolishing most taxation, except things like licensing fees and excises needed for the regulatory process.




Meanwhile, on space resources development, rather than remaining forever frozen in the Carl Sagan era, it is time to move to a process of space resources development, focusing on robotic development of selected colonial sites, for example, Shackleton Crater on the moon.

The Chinese and India both have upcoming missions to Shackleton Crater planned.




A thought problem, supporting Lunar industrial development: take the total of ground to orbit cost of all the near Earth satellite missions mounted to date.

Figure the ground to orbit costs for those same payloads, had they been supplied from the moon on a basis of Lunar manufactures from Lunar raw materials.

Subtract the second transportation costs figure, from the moon, from the first, from the Earth.

Would the difference be enought to pay for the Lunar civil and industrial infrastructure it would take to actually do this?

I personally think it would.

Sometimes one has no option but to play a penny-wise, pound foolish game, the pound wise options not being available: sometimes, the time comes to start creating some pound-wise options.

I do believe satellite services are here to stay.




Besides the potential savings in ground to orbit transportation costs, expanding the terrestrial economy to include space resources development creates a potential for long term sustainable economic growth which can be relied on to produce increases in wealth and standards of living over a comparable time scale, centuries, comparable to increases in wealth and improvements in standards of living achieved on the Earth since the dawn of the colonial era and the advent of the age of maritime mercantilism.

I like your opinion of pendulum swings. The center seems a good place to aim for.

Before we can shoot for the stars, though, we need to be more secure about our future here on Earth. If warming pushes sea level up, will we need to put close-to-shore buildings on stilts, or perhaps think about floating cities?

I'd like to see inland areas designed with more respect for growing things. Plants, as we know, remove carbon dioxide from the air. But when we build houses, shops, and office buildings, we take land away from plant uses and create hard surfaces that force water to run off rather than sink into the land.

The ancient Roman villas had central courtyards, many of them with gardens. More modern structures have had a trend to skylights to let natural light inside. The best of these buildings also have gardens inside to take advantage of the natural light.

A friend forwarded this article to me. It addresses what might happen in the scenario I suggested earlier where in a world with increased productivity through automation huge swaths of the former working class no longer need to labor all day and that maybe through some form of guaranteed universal income they could find other pursuits.


This writer suggests that they could spend their time playing virtual reality games and that there already exists classes of unemployed people, a "useless class" that spend there time in a version of virtual reality, for example religion.


http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robots-sapiens-book

but will have to look into it later

Excellent!

Will have to share this on Fb

I took a few useless classes when I was in college.

They could still prove usefull one day