"When are ordinary, yet intelligent people going to refuse to live in and contribute to such a state ?"

When the leading food-related health problem becomes starvation, not obesity. Fat, warm (cool in summer), entertained, people do not rebel.

If the British had Big Macs and X-Boxes back in 1776, we'd still be talking English now.

PS: For those who are going to think you're oh-so-very-clever and point out "Duh, we are talking English now, dummy!", the sentence above was an attempt at "humor". A common form of humor is making self-evidently incorrect comments. This is "funny" because most humor derives from some form of contradiction between the expected and the actual, especially if it involves weasels. A common indication of low intelligence is being unable to identify that an incorrect statement is being made deliberately, and attempting to appear smart by correcting it, thus indicating extremely poor understanding of basic human communication tactics, such as irony and sarcasm.

What's that saying?
"If the mind were simple enough to understand, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand it."?

In an era when access to facts is a click or a tap away, it becomes much more important to be able to know how to use those facts, than to have a mental storehouse of them. Because the scope of human knowledge is orders of magnitude more than any person can grasp, we are forced to rely on the opinions of others in all but our own narrow areas. If I read an article on, say, a potential cure for cancer, I know I lack the scientific knowledge to replicate the research or even build a good mental model of what's supposed to be happening, biologically, except on a very crude level. So to make judgment, I have to engage in pattern-matching, not fact-checking. Does this article contain the kinds of keywords, phrases, and tone that I've come to associate with woo-woo fringe theories, or does it seem in line with things I already know to be factual? Is it presented in a forum which has a reputation for rigor, or is it in a site featuring articles on aromatherapy and aura reading? Does it discuss limited results, provide caveats, and discuss risks, or does it promise instant and universal cures with no drawbacks and talk about how "they" are "terrified" of this discovery?

This applies in virtually every field of knowledge. We can't judge most things on the facts, because we can't know all the facts. We have to rely more and more on pattern matching and abstraction to reach conclusions. Most of us devote our "locally hosted fact storage" to that data pertinent to our daily lives, our jobs, and our favorite hobbies. A big chunk of what's left goes to meta-information about how to GET facts when we need them, and what's left is devoted to deciding if what someone is presenting as a "fact" is actually true, and to evaluating the value of each fact as it weighs in our opinions.

(It's a common mistake that if a person disagrees with you, it's because he doesn't know the FACTS! Odds are, he DOES know them, at least if he's anyone worth having a disagreement with. He just *weighs* them differently, because people apply facts as a means towards achieving their values and goals. Only in Jack Chick tracts and the like do people suddenly change their minds because a random stranger spews a series of "things you didn't know!" at them. Hell, even if you can prove beyond doubt that a particular justification for an opinion is objectively wrong, people will retain the opinion and look for new "facts" to support it. (Note how no matter how many times someone debunks a particular myth about Obama, or Creationism, or 9/11, or "free energy", or vaccines, the people who believe in conspiracies never change their beliefs -- they just find some new "proof". "OK, so the original study that linked vaccines to autism was proven to be a complete and utter fraud? So what, there's plenty more "proof", and besides, I don't believe it was a fraud, it was a frame up by the evil corporations!")

"....people should only give accurate details to trusted sites such as government ones."

I think my irony meter just exploded.

"Do not trust those fiendish corporations that want to sell you things, Loyal Citizen Unit! Trust only the government with your personal information! We just want to put you in GitMo, not show you ads! Remember! Failure to report mutants and commies is treason! Keep your laser handy!"

Magicians, being experts on how humans can be fooled, deceived, and manipulated, are the best people to call in as experts when doing studies on how people respond to manipulation. This is why "psychics" can easily fool many scientists, but not magicians. The utility of science in this is not determining THAT humans can be fooled, or even what tricks work best, but, rather, the underlying mechanisms that cause humans to behave as they do.

Given how much of human society is built around manipulation and deception, at all levels of interaction from the personal to the political, dismissing those who are experts in it is foolish.

President Bush authorizes torture, indefinite detention without trial, and invokes Executive Privilege to keep secrets.
Conservatives: A great President, fighting to keep America safe from terrorists!
Liberals: Bush is a fascist pig who stole the election!

President Obama authorizes torture, indefinite detention without trial, and invokes Executive Privilege to keep secrets.
Conservatives: Obama is a Stalinist Muslim who stole the election!
Liberals: A great President, fighting to keep America safe from terrorists!

Yes, because the radio, television, magazine, and newspaper industries were unable to survive without targeted advertising...

(Yes, many of those are dying now, but it's not because targeted advertising is infinitely better in every way. Programs that block/hide ads are more likely to be a threat to ad revenue than limiting targeting. Good old fashioned "People on a site about cats probably will respond to ads for cat food" logic ought to be good enough to sustain the sites. And, if there isn't a way to generate sufficient content on ad revenue, then, people will begin to pay for the content they like, or they will do without it, or the entire system will evolve in ways not easy to predict. As another person mentioned, there is no "right" to any business model, just as there is no "right" to have access to content for free. Solutions will evolve, and the first people to find them ones that work will get very rich.)

You beat me to posting it, darn it!

Vaguely. I used to know/care a lot more than I do now. It was up when I wrote that, then down a bit later, now up again. It's worrisome. The loss of even one reader represents about a 50% drop in my traffic!

Can I wave?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0n2vurSBIQ

Anyway, my site (mrlizard.com) is hosted at GoDaddy and seems to still be up, so both my readers can rejoice.

Seriously. Wouldn't it make sense to launch several unmanned "shipping containers" of food and supplies well ahead of the manned craft, set to land near the proposed landing site, and to continue to send such craft during the mission timeline? (I'm aware that Earth and Mars are both in motion and travel times vary, but given the long run-up to a manned mission, there would be a lot of viable windows to launch such "advance craft".) Make plans for at least one, if not more, such launches during the on-ground mission time period. (Also, include the most advanced 3-D printers of the time on the main craft, and backups on the "shipping containers", along with plenty of raw material to feed them. The odds of needing to create a spare part, or a custom tool, to deal with unexpected events are pretty darn good, and it's better to send "tools to make tools" than to try to guess what parts you're most likely to need a spare of.)

(Hell, while we're dreaming.... why not send some kind of self-assembling farm? I'm serious. Robot craft lands. It release a greenhouse-like structure that unfolds and assembles itself. It begins drawing water from the atmosphere -- there's not a LOT, but there's some -- or from the frozen ground (am I wrong, or is there evidence of lots of sub-surface ice locked in the soil? No time to check now...). When enough is gathered, it starts off a hydroponic process. As the plants produce oxygen, it's drawn off and stored, and CO2 is drawn from the surrounding Martian environment. Yes, I know sunlight is much dimmer on Mars. I do not think it's unreasonable that some plants can be found on Earth which can survive on lower levels of sunlight, or at least genetically engineered to do so. Even very simple plants can be processed into something edible, if not necessarily gourmet.)

I'm not claiming this technology exists off-the-shelf today, but nothing strikes me as beyond 10 years or so of focused development efforts. It shouldn't require breaking any laws of physics or lifter/booster technologies orders of magnitude beyond what we currently have. (Regular, incremental improvements in lightweight materials, genetic engineering, and robotics are safe predictions, as such things go. Expecting significant breakthroughs in the cost of getting anything into orbit is probably not a safe prediction, so it's best, to my mind, to think about "What's kind of stuff could we put in a payload in 10 years?" than "How can we lift a bigger payload in 10 years?")

Because there's no difference between protecting a child from the stupidity of their parents, when they are incapable of making the decision for themselves, and altering someone's mind because the government doesn't like what they're thinking, when they haven't committed a crime or been shown to be in the process of actively planning to commit a crime in the near future.

(I have to wonder, though, if there's a way to contain the harm morons do to their children without forced vaccinations. I dislike forced anything, on principle, and the use of force to prevent harm to others should be the last resort. I'm thinking we start with a "No Vaccination" list, like a sex offender list. This at least informs parents, so they can keep their kids away from the children of morons. Businesses should not be forced to deny entrance to unvaccinated children, but they could be required to publicly post a policy stating if they do or do not. This would be especially applicable to restaurants, movie theaters, or any other business where large numbers of children congregate. Most non-moron parents will not patronize businesses that choose to allow unvaccinated children entrance, and the free market does the rest. Of course, this requires some kind of "proof of vaccination" card you can show, but that's relatively trivial. A final option is to require, as part of getting an exemption from vaccination, the purchase of insurance that will pay for the medical care of vaccinated children who nonetheless contract a disease they have been vaccinated against (vaccines aren't perfect, and the more unvaccinated kids are around, the better the odds of a germ slipping past the defenses). The actual mechanics of this will have to worked out based on the number of unvaccinated kids nearby, etc. I leave such matters to the bean counters.)

Some may note this plan is harsh on the kids. Yes. There's this thing called "evolution". If a trait possessed by a parent causes their offspring to be less likely to survive to breeding age, or reduces their ability to breed even if they live, it will be slowly but surely edited from the gene pool. "Bad parenting" is one such trait. Even if the children of morons don't catch anything fatal, they will be psychologically harmed by a childhood of being shunned, and this will reduce their chances of proper socialization, mating, and reproducing. It's cruel, but the long-term effects inflict much greater cruelty on a much larger group of people. There is a right, I think, to raise your children as you see fit; there's no right to be protected from the social consequences of your decisions. It is very likely that the prospect of a child being marked and shunned will, oddly, be more likely to convince a parent to do the smart thing than any amount of scientific evidence, since it's obvious that parents who deny vaccination do not think rationally, but emotionally. Therefore, appeal to their emotions.

If someone else is going to fulfill my "needs and wants" (that latter word is the really key part) without demanding anything in return, I'll spend the rest of my life engaging in activity that is productive and fulfilling for me, but not necessarily of value to anyone else (i.e, I won't be fulfilling anyone else's needs and wants, just my own). Certainly, I could choose to produce things of value to others for purposes of ego gratification and praise, but that's a weak motivation, at best, and it presumes that the things I *want* to produce are of sufficient quality that people will "pay" me for them in the form of praise and respect. This is not guaranteed; the things I'm skilled at (to the point where people would rather have me do them, than do them themselves) and the things I'd prefer to do if I didn't care if I got paid or not are not always the same.

If I can't get my "needs and wants" fulfilled without offering something to someone else in return for their time, labor, or knowledge, then it's still capitalism by another name. If I am told that I will be given 2000 calories a day in the form of processed protein paste, a cot to sleep on, and the most basic of clothing and medical care, thus fulfilling my "needs", but anything beyond that (my "wants") requires me to produce something of value to others, same thing. The more generously you grant my "needs" (better and more varied food, access to entertainment, private living quarters, the resources to pursue hobbies), the more you dissuade me from working for anyone else's benefit. You might argue that with advanced technologies, only a very small minority will be needed to maintain the system, and there will always be those who will choose to be in that role, who will gain enough pleasure from the notion of "service" that this is what they will choose to do so without being compelled. This is almost certainly true. The problem, of course, is that such a structure also attracts those who, by nature, gain pleasure from others serving THEM, and they will then use their elite position as maintainers of utopia for their own benefit.

In any event, it's a foolish notion, because there is no such thing as a post-scarcity society. Scarcity is an ever-moving target. There will always be things where the demand exceeds the supply, whether it's a house with a particular view or in an especially nice location, seating at a live event of any kind, original works of art, or the personal services of skilled professionals whose time and willingness to work is less than the desire of others for their work. The instant you have any kind of scarcity, you need a means of exchange, and the nature of humanity is such that no matter what system of exchange you create, some people will be better at manipulating it than others, and some people will find their greatest skill is the provision of the service of "manipulating the means of exchange" -- that is, middlemen. No amount of declarations that all work is equal will alter the fact that some things will always be more valuable to one person than to another. Thus inequality is inevitable, no matter how egalitarian the starting point. Attempting to prevent the development of markets, however unofficial or called by whatever name, by law or regulation, simply hastens the process, as those most able to manipulate the system become the lawmakers and regulators.