Yep - they're assholes.

First of all technicians will work for the going rate. Technicians aren't running society, they just work for the man like everyone else. Why are they the target of these morons? Are they copying Ted Kaczynski? He's a loon.

Secondly, 'the man' is everyone.

Thirdly, acts of terrorism are nothing but a gift to the forces of authoritarianism. These jokers probably realise this, but don't mind because they see giving rise to such forces as a way to more rapidly 'bring it all down man'.

Of course anarchists don't realise that they are living in anarchy right now. Government is the result of anarchy.

Baselessly predicting that the world will 'inevitably' move in a certain distopian way and using that as an excuse to commit exciting acts of resistance for one's own entertainment is just sad nutjobbery. They commit acts of terrorism and live the 007 lifestyle, with the selfish purpose of megalomanically magnifying their own sense of importance in the world so as to compensate for being complete losers in real life.

Finally, attempting to 'bring down' a system that seems intent on it's own destruction can only serve to perpetuate it longer.

If these folks would honestly ask themselves what they get out of 'trying to save the world' they would end up with the answer: Ego Masturbation.

Purpose is a concept that human brains use to organize their own actions. Things (or processes) in the real world don't intrinsically have purposes. WE assign purposes to them.

I pretty much agree. Except... The word purpose exists, and I don't want to give it up. For instance, I have purposes (goals) from time to time. When I get dressed in the morning, my purpose is to get ready for whatever I had planned to do that day. Sentient things each have their own purposes distinct from each other.

Discovering a Purpose, with a capital P is likely to be misguided. Yup. People often start with some ideal, or aesthetic which may not be shared by all and make achieveing that ideal their Purpose, and then define the world in Good/Evil terms where Good is that which aids their purported Universal Purpose and Evil as that which harms it. Seems very likely to be misguided. However when the capital P ( and capitals G and E ) is dropped, it seems logical. If my purpose is to start my car, shoving the key in the ignition is a good ( small g ) idea. Shoving a bananna in the ignition is a bad ( small b ) idea.

There's nothing wrong with goal oriented thinking. It's necessary to thinking and logic. Prolog programmers know this. Maybe general notions of purpose are necessary to logical thinking about a domain? Something to think about. However, universal Purpose based on an ideal - ech.. Very GIGO prone.

I am looking at the general thermodynamic trend toward entropy, and the fact that life seems to produce all the entropy it can, to make the hypothesis that the Purpose of life is to create entropy, and that other purposes are either subgoals pursuant to that Purpose, or will tend to be selected against over time by the process of evolution.

Anecdote: If I start the day thinking: How can I create the most disorder, I find that following this Purpose usually doesn't significantly change my behavior from what it would have been. When my behavior does deviate from what it would be if my purpose were the Purpose of creating the most entropy, I wonder why, usually finding that I have reasons for my behavior that I haven't considered and that I am actually creating as much entropy as I can, or at least trying to.

I'm not saying anyone should do anything. I am saying that after the fact it seems that life creates entropy on Purpose. Isn't that funny.
 

Ok, notwithstanding the number 42, and ignoring the more popular question 'What is the meaning of life?' ( which by the way has been long settled with the answer to be found in any dictionary under the entry for 'life' ), it seems that it might be interesting to consider 'What is the purpose of life?' since evolution pertains mostly to life here on Earth.

I'll venture that the purpose of life seems to me to be responsible for creating the most entropy possible. The prevalent M.O. seems to be for life to extract the Gibbs Free Energy from the environs to produce offspring, and then to die. By dying, one creates disorder, which is the purpose of life. However, by first creating offspring, the life form is responsible not only for the entropy directly created by it's own demise but indirectly for the disorder created by any offspring and their offspring. Use Gibbs Free Energy to Copy then Die.

Is there another strategy for producing entropy that could be more successful than life?

It would seem not, though I don't know for sure. Evolution has produced many variations on the theme, suited to different niches, but life seems to stick to this general gameplan.

I guess an old or cheap new computer running Windows might be what I want then, with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I have a Wii. It's almost 100% used for watching Netflix. My first grader doesn't care for games, and though I was a gamer once, neither do I. I want something more computer like, yet dirt simple to hook up to the TV so I can watch Netflix, YouTube and do light Web Browsing, and maybe email checking.

Maybe there is already some kind of Roku thing that does it. I got YouTube vids running briefly though Opera which runs on Wii, but it wasn't smooth. I'd get some wireless keyboard to keep on the coffee table if this were done well.

I'll probably get some such device soon. I tend to really delay in getting devices unless it's bothering me a lot only upgrading when I have to - waiting means you get more when you finally plop down your money. Spring is here, so I'll at least wait till the winter TV watching season before updating my devices.

Having the ability to play games is a nice to have, but why would one need more gaming power than what the Wii offers already, ever? Higher res? Maybe. But I won't pay for it. I'll take it if it comes naturally because the current hardware has better performance for the same price, but although I do enjoy lil' flash games from time to time, 99.99% of the enjoyment I will ever get from playing a 3d game happened while playing Doom for the first time. I saw the third dimension on screen, and was duely wowed, and then it completely lost any appeal. It's been 16 years since I played Doom for the first time, and no 3d game has made me waste more than a few hours - including Doom which wasn't great other than that it was the first real 3D game. I played Wolfenstein before Doom, but it wasn't totally textured, so I count Doom as the first one I've played.

3D games suck for some reason, and it's been long enough that if it were going to change, it would have.

I was going to say that: Give a mouse like this as a pet, for MURDER!!!!! The mouse will go get mouse-plague and give it to it's owner by peeing on them.

If you have one of these mice, you can test lethal plagues to find a strain you are immune to, and then spread it to the rest of the world and be OMEGA MAN!

This is a good point. There ought to be at least a clause where they have to harvest the brain first. I agree with the GP that there are MANY things above dead that are not worth being. It would be long drawn out torture to be that way. I guess I'd still rather have my organs harvested Unit 731 style than live that way for years.

No FDA approval needed for Chaumurky. Just create a vector that will train someone's T-Cells to go for antigens specific to the target ( but not you ) and you can put some in each of your drinks. Have them select which one, and you both drink up. They become deathly allergic to themselves and die. You become allergic to them, but this doesn't cause a problem since you weren't going to eat them anyway.

If poisoning is suspected, they can test all they want. There is no poison.

This isn't for criminals trying to evade the cops. I wouldn't be surprised if 'the cops' can order them to bug specific IPs etc. This is for the legions who don't want a long-lived list of what they are searching for stored indefinately where it might - far in the future, and under unknowable different future circumstances be used against them.

More importantly Duck Duck Go is a simple way to escape your search bubble. This is a serious problem I've noticed most acutely with YouTube. Your craziness is validated and so magnified by others like you after a while.

The search bubble phenomenon is definately fractious. I'm not saying that fractiousness is good or bad, but one must be careful with things that can alter one's perception, including mass appeal, mental masturbation, and other drugs.

I really like your signature.