On the more real side of things, switching off mobile phone networks whenever you have some suspicion is about as useful as nuking things.

Against terrorism, yes. But against demonstrations and protests it could be very effective.

who wants exactly what was joked about, to take everything from those who have more and give to those who have less, which is the ultimate in tyranny

Really? Because from what I've seen, most forms of tyrannies take from those who have less and give to those who alrady had more. Please explain why you think that situation is better than the reverse?

Also, coming to think of it, such typical tyrannical pastimes as murder, torture and imprisonment also seem slightly worse than mere property redistribution, but perhaps I have my priorities scewed.

A lot of things we have now were never even addressed in Star Trek. For instance, nobody in Star Trek carried around a digital camera.

Of course not, that's from Star Wars: R2-D2.

What's "bleak" about Startship Troopers?

This sounds pretty bleak:

The author does mention past troubles in the book - those having to do with the universal franchise, which, in his not so humble opinion is a mistake

Because when every fucking thing under the sun is "racist" or "sexist", absolutely nothing is.

On the contrary, if anything is racist or sexist then it would be pretty weird if everything wasn't. If you think that one gender is superior, then of course that's going to show on all your interactions, and thus infect any and all social structures you participate in.

It was written far too broadly, and should be rewritten, or, even better, repealed entirely.

But then how will "driven, talented" prosecutors show that their "productivity more than compensates for their high pay"? Besides, violent mobsters might fight back, and in any case there's not enough of them to slate the public's bloodlust.

It's not a few or even many individual bad laws; it's the entire American legal system that's hopelessly broken. It doesn't uphold justice or even enforce laws, it's just a monster that's always seeking new prey to devour.

"Better that thousand innocents burn in hell than a single guilty has it any better than they deserve" is the true motto of the entire American society, from the legal system to economy to religion. And it's the poison that's killing it, since any decision that might make anyone's life better is intolerable to everyone else.

It's a bitcon article so asking if the suckers drawn in the scheme are retarded is considered rude.

More importantly, calling people who use Bitcoin retarded or suckers doesn't actually constitute a strong argument against it.

only not backed by anything of value

Bitcoin is backed by the goods and services available in exchange of it, just like any other currency.

and it's founder has gone into hiding.

The founders of most currencies currently at use are dead.

So he admits they just think that they are helping keep people safe. Or that they have convinced the lower echelons that public safety is their goal, when higher-ups like him know better.

Or he's simply pointing out that - correctly or not - the NSA sees themselves as the good guys. Just like both Hitler and Churchill did. Admitting your self-image is subjective doesn't mean admitting it's wrong, much less purposeful self-deception.

So then make voting compulsory so that people who are not invested have to get off their arse and do their duty as citizens by voting - you'll get more room for choice then.

Those who don't simply toss a coin will make their pick based on superficial factors or propaganda, making the problem worse. You can force people to vote, but you can't force people to care.

An unused vote is a vote of non-confidence. The only thing compulsory voting does is hide those. That's fine if your goal is to create an illusion of a working democracy, and useless otherwise.

Cue people who say that an important part of freedom is not having to do their duty as citizens in 3 .. 2 .. 1.

If you anticipate such a response, why don't you answer it pre-emptively? Or do you simply not have an answer?

Also, simply because you wish to regard something as a duty does not make it so.

If there was a God, he'd have solved that problem for us already.

What problem? Democracy?

There are no rights, just a bunch of nations all acting in their own interests. Often, these interests align, and that gives the impression of "rights".

That is a cynical view of things. But a pragmatic cynic might also recognize that sometimes it's useful to take a made-up concept like "rights" and repeat it over and over and over again until everyone forgets it's made up. Because at that point it becomes part of reality, just like the concept of nations or constitutional rights or laws did.

Just like we build physical infrastructure to make our lives better, we can and do also build social infrastructure. So the question is not whether "rights of nations" in general or in some specific set are "real" or merely an illusion, the question is whether they're useful.

As technology continues to advance, and weapons of mass destruction come ever easier to come by by anyone feeling slighted, continuing power politics is a road to extinction. Of course, that doesn't mean people or nations will necessarily give up them upr; but I think it's likely that any possible future that has people will also have a world system based on law, not might. How likely such bright futures are, compared to those where the world burns to cinder, is another matter.

And also Israel isn't actively involved in exporting Islamic terrorism around the world.

Are you quite sure of that? Because it certainly benefits from the ongoing conflict, at least in the short term. Remove misguided Christianity and scaremongering about Islam from the equation and what do you have left? The South Africa of Middle East.

Just goes to show that basing your national identity on a persecution complex, even one historically justifiable, is a really bad idea.

The cat is fully capable of observing its own state of being. It can't be in a superposition of alive and dead without collapsing it.

Like I said in another post, no it won't. Observing something is merely the act of making your own wavefunction correlate with theirs. If someone observes the status of the cat, they're now in a superposition themselves: if asked about the cat, they might say it's alive or it's dead. We don't know which until asked, at which point we think we got a definitive answer but in reality we've merely entered a superposition of having just heard the cat is alive or having just heard the cat is dead. Someone else wouldn't know which, unless they asked us, and so on.

The whole issue is just the space/time division all over again: we usually deal with wavefunctions with a single very sharp peak, so our brains make a simplifying assumption that everything has a definitive state. And then we project that assumption to our theoretical models. Once you stop doing that, and accept that nature operates in terms of superpositions, lots of problems like "spooky action at a distance" just go away.

In what I consider the real world where the food and materials that people in cities consume comes from I just can't see it happening. I don't see folks trading their pickup trucks in any time soon.

And, to put it bluntly, nobody will care, any more than anyone cares about the Amish sticking to horses. Welcome to the third millenium, where 80 percent of US population live in cities and agriculture is a vital, but tiny, niche industry.

I imagine watching cars travelling 65mph -- even when they're nearly bumper-to-bumper -- will make many logjammed drivers in the human/slow lanes think twice about their insistence on being in "control".

Why "nearly"? If a computer can handle that, it can also handle hooking them up into a car train and traveling at ~100mph. With properly designed physical and software interfaces, a battery truck could sell electricity to such trains, allowing electric vehicles to conserve their own batteries or even recharge as they go.