Creating an elaborate web of rules that attempts to prevent abuses is futile and ultimately counterproductive.

Though the concept of lobbying and private campaign contributions (of any kind) are sound in the abstract; they are simply too easily gamed and abused in practice. The real answer to much of what ills the American political process is the is the abolishment of organized lobbying and a complete revamp of the campaign process to a shorter, solely publicly funded model. Would these changes engender significant negative consequences? Certainly, but the advantages greatly exceed those negative consequences.

On a somewhat tangential note, a logical response to government corruption and ineptitude shouldn’t be hostility to the very idea of government; it should be hostility to those who are corrupting the government and the democratic ouster of inept officials (of course, we seem to have an inept public, so there is that). Contemporary first-world governments, as dysfunctional and corrupt as they may be, are still doing their part to maintain the greatest societies humanity has ever known. Technology and markets certainly have an equal share of the credit, but, as I have said on /. many times, there are numerous examples of societies with small, weak governments and they are not dreamy utopias of human freedom and economic prosperity. Its no accident that the most economically powerful nations with the most civil liberties in history have huge governments: governments work, even when they suck. So, the answer isn’t to be hostile to the idea of government, but to play a citizen's role in helping government more closely approach its ideal potential.

It's better to have a bloated, current government that preforms the function of governance reasonably well, than a lean, clean government that is incapable of doing so. Reality is messy. We would all like perfect solutions, but sometimes we have to live with solutions that provide the most pragmatically positive result.

PS it is appalling nevertheless.

News flash: new powerful tool has great potential for both good and ill!

I’m not trying to discount the potential misuse of data-intelligence such as this, but data-tracking will inexorably become ubiquitous in our lives. Djinnis don’t go back into bottles. Not only will it become increasingly difficult to opt out of such data-tracking, the public will to opt out is diminishing as younger generations concept of privacy shifts. (I lazily try to opt out where I can, but I have no illusions.)

Again, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care who has the data or how it’s used; and I know this is the cogent point for many in this thread. My point is simply that one shouldn’t get sidetracked by the tools themselves. Focus on the only realistic solution: that being laws that define how collected data can be used, shared, etc. It’s an imperfect solution, but the problem isn’t going to go way for lack of a perfect solution.

The market forces that bear upon the toy industry do not apply to universal education. If an individual toy company fails, the impact on society is negligible; not so with the national educational system. I made the comparison to emphasis our social value system.

My original point was that proper funding is a necessary condition for a quality educational system, though it is not sufficient. In other words there are reasons our educational system is failing aside from funding, but the answer is not to cease funding the educational system properly.

This is somewhat of a tangent from that point, but since the market comparison has been made, I feel it is important to emphasis the need for public funding of the primary educational system. It is in the public interest to have an educated citizenry, and it is incumbent upon all citizens to both fund the educational system and have a stake in its efficacy. Markets are not well suited to provide a quality universal education system. Markets are excellent at providing quality private schools that augment the base educational system because individuals have a clear and direct incentive to fund the education of kin (kin used here in the broader anthropological sense which exceeds blood relations). There isn’t as clear an incentive to fund the education of perfect strangers. The educational level of perfect strangers, however, is a kind of externality: the educational level of perfect strangers directly impacts the prosperity of the larger society. Moreover, the children who generally need the most educational resources come from families that have the least ability to fund their children’s education.

That isn’t to say that market concepts like incentives, competition, etc. aren’t important in the educational system, but they have to applied in the framework of a publicly funded, universal educational system. Educators should compete for incentives commensurate with the social gravitas of their role. That’s where I got into the point about shared social values; our society underestimates the gravitas of public education when it comes down to things like funding. Educators should be more respected and better compensated, thus incentivizing competent individuals to excel in the service of public education. It’s kind of naive to expect enough educators to excel purely out of a passion to educate (though that shouldn’t be underestimated either).

I don’t want to get into a huge tangent on this topic, but rest assured there are plenty of school districts in the US that don’t have enough money. While I agree that throwing money at these districts indiscriminately won’t solve anything, it’s pretty hard to build a quality educational systems without sufficient funding. This is especially true in districts where the educational system has to contend children who have difficult home lives and parents who are themselves undereducated. Money certainly can't solve the problem, but it is a significant part of the equation.

We live in a society where those who sell children toys make exponentially more than the people who educate children. That a very simplistic statement, but it touches on the matter of our shared social value system. This gets into a lot of issues concerning market based vs universal public education, but, again, that’s a tangent. The major point is simply that when we move beyond lip-service and rhetoric, education isn’t a core value for our society.

I’m always stunned by the hostility and ignorance displayed on /. in regard to climate change. The preponderance of scientific data indicates that human activity is accelerating global climate change. That shouldn’t be a debate within an educated community like this.

The question is, of course, what to do about it? I agree that only systemic change and a dose of directed technology can address the issue; reducing one’s individual footprint, though admirable, is inconsequential. Sadly it has far more impact on one’s ego than the environment. That being said, I’m baffled by the ‘ahhh f*#$ it’ attitude. I’m especially baffled by the hostile FI attitude. I have my theories, but that’s not important.

What is important is that public attitudes change significantly enough that governments and corporations (perhaps forced by governments) begin to change. The FI attitude maintains the status quo. Sure, China and India are huge problems, but saying ‘FI, we aren’t even going to try here until they start trying there’ is simply entering into a suicide pact with those nations. If we change the way our governments, corporations and consumers act, we might have a chance to exert pressure, on multiple fronts, on other nations. It’s the only way to get the ball rolling.

Though I also want better choices, anyone who thinks the choices we have are equivalent isn’t paying attention at all.

The current administration takes no prizes if compared to ‘idealistic, dream’ administrations, but if compared to the last actual administration there is a huge qualitative difference. Enumerating the difference is off topic, but it certainly does matter whom you vote for. Put differently, even if both options suck, one most likely sucks a lot worse.

Though certainly a lot of both, evolution is more the story of cooperation than competition. Complexity requires a cooperation of sorts from quantum particles to DNA and beyond . Molecules ‘work together’ to make DNA, cells themselves are made of more primitive biological structures that banded together, organs are made of cells working together, and so on to organisms, species, ecosystems and, in a roundabout way, even the solar system itself.

Sure, we aren’t talking about cognitive choices, but there is a distinct pattern of epiphenomenal sums arising from cooperative parts. Self-similarity is a theme in evolution (i.e. the pattern of cooperation is self-similar across various scales of scope), and cooperative patterns are easy to spot in human history and culture. These patterns are key and forge a trajectory of slow progress despite (and also due to in no small part) self-interest.

Now some like to argue that cooperation is just enlightened self-interest, and that might be true from the perspective of the individual. On larger scales, though, enlightened self-interest is simply a mechanism that pragmatically engenders cooperation.

The Trek reboot was a summer blockbuster and little more. I was entertained by it; even while being deeply disappointed. It squandered a relatively unique opportunity; played to the masses, and made a mint. From one perspective it is exactly what a movie should do. It wasn't the movie I wanted (but perhaps the movie I deserved...said in gravelly voice), but no one was obligated to make the movie I wanted.

That being said, it is a shame from my perspective. The reboot offered Abrams one of the most fertile story franchises in human history on a platter. It offered a chance to blend action, wit, science, a little sex appeal, commentary on the human condition, and special effects together in a package with a guaranteed viewership. It offered the chance to take a risk and make something great. Instead the film played it safe, and I suspect it will go down in history as meh.

This is no easy topic to handle concisely, and I wouldn’t argue with any of your point in particular. I would simply say that the spectrum of religious institutions and beliefs is extremely expansive in its breadth. Though you can lump all religions into a tidy package as you have, it’s not extremely useful in the long run. To me your statement is kind of like saying "Yah from my perspective, Navajos are more or less like Igbo."

Moreover, and I don’t mean this in any kind of sweeping false-equivalency, atheists engage in myriad forms of behavior that closely resemble patterns of religious personal/social activity. You might use the cult of Kurzweil as an example. My point here is the boundary of religious and atheist behavior is blurred (in some cases), further expanding the ‘spectrum’ and making homogenizing statements about religions problematic.

I’m not sure what your point is exactly.

I am not denying that the term ‘terraforming’ can have various, graduated connotations. If you wish to argue that farming is a form of terraforming or that human driven climate change is a form of terraforming, I can see the point. That is not the connotation of terraforming I am using though, and that should be clear.

I think that you may also be arguing that because we have altered Earth’s biosphere it strengthens the case that we can do so elsewhere through a mix of technology and biological processes. I don’t believe I argued otherwise. There is, however, a very large difference between altering a biosphere already capable of supporting intricately complex biomes and ecologies and transforming a planet like Mars into a planet that into one that can support similar biodiversity and complexity.

Would it be impossible to terraform Mars in this grand sense? I’m certainly not qualified to say, but my guess would be that it is possible. My point, to state it again, is that I don’t think that’s the direction humanity will go in. I think that the path of least resistance, so to speak, is the virtualization of human society and mind in general. That path is woven of many unrelated trajectories that are all being followed of their own accord. Just to give a few examples I would offer the building more realistic games and VR media, medical treatments (amputees, neurology, etc.), social networking, AI research, and so on. There is a confluence of myriad smaller paths that are leading toward the virtualization of human society; it will develop organically and without any single entity (i.e. a government or corporation) having to engage in a focused and extensive engineering project. It is simply a direction that humanity is already going in. I think that once we begin to expand into virtual space in earnest, the impetus for things like terraforming will lessen. I’m not implying that it will dissipate entirely, but it will cease to be a necessity for the long term (and we are talking crazy long term here) survival of mind. It will become a luxury that may or may not be realized. You simply don’t need to create planetary biospheres to maintain virtual environments.

I hate to sound like some supplicant to the cult of transhumanism, because I’m not. I’m very far from that, but I can’t see any empirical reason why it won’t happen eventually. It is simply my guess that it will happen before we start terraforming planets or building Dyson Spheres.”

I alluded to this point when I said “assuming we are terraforming for us.”

Indeed, Mars’ lower mass/gravitational field strength is a major factor in atmospheric degradation, but Mars has enough mass that it could hold onto an atmosphere should it have a stronger magnetosphere. Of course it could hold on to a more substantial atmosphere with more mass, but the radiation would still be a factor if you wanted Mars to be Earth like. Neither is likely to happen, but I suppose it would be easier to generate a surrogate magnetosphere than increase the mass of the planet. Moreover, creating a magnetosphere or similar shield would kill two birds with one stone. Again, I'm not suggesting this will happen any time soon or at all for that matter.

That’s a matter of semantics I suppose. We have certainly altered the biosphere of Earth, intentionally and unintentionally, but I personally wouldn’t count that as terraforming in the most colloquial connotation. I get your point, but it’s really usurping my comment to make a separate point. My point is that it is more likely that technology will go in the direction of virtualization of mind than immense scale engineering projects like making a planet like Mars, which cannot support an Earth like biosphere, into a planet that can.

One of the problems with terraforming Mars (and potentially lots of other rocky, goldilocks zone planets) is the lack of a substantial magnetosphere. Earth’s magnetosphere greatly mitigates solar wind and radiation. Solar wind can strip a planet of its atmosphere and solar radiation isn’t good news for ‘earth like’ life.

The conditions for life might be quite common in the universe, but the conditions for complex Earth like life are much, much more rare (but perhaps still substantial given the numbers). We have a lot going for us here. We are part of a solar system in a ‘quiet’ part of the galaxy. The vast majority of stars in our galaxy, and most others, are in areas of great cosmic violence. They are too close to the galactic core, or too close to a star that goes supernova or hypernova during the evolutionary process. There are planets that don’t have a moon or nearby supergiant plants (like Jupiter, Saturn, etc.) to protect them from comets and asteroids, and they don’t have strong magnetospheres. Of course a planet like Mars does have a lot of these things going for it, it doesn’t have a strong magnetosphere which is a sizable technological hurtle to terraforming (assuming we are terraforming for us).

Most likely humans will become largely virtual data based organisms long before we develop the technology or focused the resources on things like terraforming planets. If this happens, the need to do things like terraforming other planets kind of goes away.

Though it’s a long way from being an interstellar probe; Deep Space 1 used ion drives (inadequate but new), self-repairing mission AI, and self-navigation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_1

Also, NASA is working on a warp drive.

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

This comment is a good synopsis, but of course there is a matrix of factors in any group’s collective behavior pattern, and plenty of nuance for any given individual. I think Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ concept is apropos here (no time to really explain that). In short, individuals draw from a larger pool of contributing traits common to the group. When you look at the group as a whole you see the commonality, even though any two individuals in the group may share very few traits if any. In the case of nerds and geeks there are some common factors that contribute to their particular brand of arrogance (IMO):

Nerds’ particular utility to society is in ascendance.

Nerd knowledge is arcane and esoteric.

Nerds are generally more intelligent and educated; they are therefore particularly adept and perceiving and articulating the ways in which they differ from 'others.'

Nerds are typically focused of mind, and therefore less likely to appreciate alternate worldviews and forms of competence and intelligence.

Nerds tend to be socially challenged at a biological or genetic level. There is a lot of research that links aptitude in math and science with mild autism (where autism is seen more asymptotically).

Many nerds are compensating for being picked on. They were at the wrong end of a lot of power dynamics most of their lives and are now indulging in new found power.

Conversely, being a nerd is becoming cool.

Nerd communities tend to be insular and create self-reinforcing feedback loops.

Etc.

All that and, as has been said, you are in a giant hormonal pool of young adults who are all trying to assert themselves and adjust to a broader more cosmopolitan social milieu than most of you are used to experiencing.