The Official Treehouse Articles Thread

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  • #829
This is one of those things that is kinda far out there but I'm posting because it seems real enough, potentially, to be a thing. And it's not too long, idk, less than 10 min

And along the way, it makes interesting points such as-

Technological progress follows an exponential curve. Compare how the world looked 15 years ago (no smartphones, really), 150 years ago (no combustion engine, no home electricity), 1,500 years ago (no industrial machines), and 15,000 years ago (no agriculture).

Moore's Law for Everything

We need to design a system that embraces this technological future and taxes the assets that will make up most of the value in that world–companies and land–in order to fairly distribute some of the coming wealth.
moores.samaltman.com moores.samaltman.com
 
Yup, it will be the thing that finally brings about a utopian society, or more likely bring about the end of it. To be clear, there has always been enough for everyone, this will simply remove the need for massive human labor to achieve it.
 
Reminds me of this Buckminster Fuller quote,.

"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."

Buckminster Fuller
 
This article entirely ignores the ecological/ social damage that technology seems to cause. Rose colored capitalist glasses.

IMO These techno optimists won't be happy until the life support functions of this planet have been destroyed and replaced by a private service. That will really grow the GDP, & folks should be thankful for their increased "dividend".
 
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  • #833
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money." Cree Indian Proverb
 
Capitalism is completely incompatible with life in the not too distant future. Our corrupted version of it isn't even compatible with life now.
 
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  • #835
Yo this article is f'g savage. I'm half way thru it and close to tears multiple times

www.huffpost.com

Kip Kinkel Is Ready To Speak

At 15, he shot and killed his parents, two classmates at his school, and wounded 25 others. He’s been used as the reason to lock kids up for life ever since.
www.huffpost.com www.huffpost.com
 
Pretty deep delving into schizophrenia...a hard read. I had a cousin that I am pretty sure was schizophrenic....he took his own life at age 17.... .22 rifle shot to the heart. He was a very talented artist but always seemed "different". Troubling stuff.
 
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  • #837
Damn.

From Kip's article- the first time he heard the voice at age 12 he turned around to see who was there.....

Crazy stuff, sad, troubling, as you said.
 
www.peoplesworld.org

Louisiana’s Angola: Proving ground for racialized capitalism

When the U.S. Civil War ended, Edward A. Pollard “of Virginia” immediately wrote a history of Confederate military operations—The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates—where he insisted that human slavery was immune from moral blame for the just concluded conflict...
www.peoplesworld.org www.peoplesworld.org

Good ole marxist literature on Angola prison in Louisiana.
 
Here's a fairly lengthy article on obesity. Honestly, I didn't fully read the whole thing, and it was a bit of a scatter shot of ideas, but that may be the nature of the beast. The most interesting thing I got out of it, was the increase in weight of lab animals. That shouldn't happen under the strict controls of a lab setting. Anyway, check it out, or not...

getpocket.com

The Obesity Era

As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us.
getpocket.com getpocket.com
 
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  • #841
That article was pretty interesting. What I got from it is that we just don't know what causes obesity and it could well be caused by some really far out crazy factors some of which are hard to recognize, rather than just weak people overeating.

And that notion of widely, seemingly disparate, things causing effects that are surprising or currently unknown or unproven, is pretty fascinating and far reaching. It seems to apply to loads of different things and concepts
 
Yea, I think I could do that. Lot of nighttime predators. I wonder how you handle that? Do the sheep just bed down in one place, or do you wake up and they could be anywhere?
 
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  • #844
Not sure, I'm still a noob
 
cory said:
That article was pretty interesting. What I got from it is that we just don't know what causes obesity and it could well be caused by some really far out crazy factors some of which are hard to recognize, rather than just weak people overeating.

And that notion of widely, seemingly disparate, things causing effects that are surprising or currently unknown or unproven, is pretty fascinating and far reaching. It seems to apply to loads of different things and concepts
Click to expand...

I’ll be honest. I didn’t read the article, but I’ll enter the debate on obesity.
If you went back to 1975 and walked around my school you would struggle to find anyone overweight let alone obese.
Drive around now and there’s really fat kids everywhere.
Why? Food is cheaper, parents buy any amount of fatty foods and sugar to give to their kids (and themselves) plus kids have money to spend to and from school.
Coupled with the switch from kids running around outside in the past to a sedentary lifestyle in front of devices you have the perfect storm.
 
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  • #846
yup.

Plus other reasons according to the article
 
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  • #848
You have young ones, what do you tell them, just curious.

I asked this to my neice and her husband, they have 3 kids under 5 y o. She barely knew there are issues cuz she's so busy with raising family and some work too. Btw, she's very intelligent, fwiw.

He said technology caused the problems, technology will solve the problems. He's a banker and just financed/built 'the world's greenest office building". It's constructed with mass timber and solar powered.
 
I'm with Mick on the obesity issue. Right on.

I'm over weight by 25 lbs, according to my doctor. 215 lbs. Can't seem to get any lower. I'm not getting enough exercise these days. I'm sure that's the problem in my case.
 
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