In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph

[Joseph Tracy]

On Mar 15, 2012, at 11:25 AM, David Morris wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Ian Livingston
> <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My focus is on our projecting our own pathology onto these
>>> technologies as expressed in TRP's and his predecessors' fiction. Our
>>> "roots" being apes that gained "sentience."
>> 
>> And none are more terrified of sentience than are Americans.
> 
> Sadly, yes.  But really only a minority that's been let run amok by
> the elite that has played them so well for many years.  The GOP's
> monster.
Good stuff from Driftglass, but the hatefest is hardly a one party party. From LBJ to Obama the democrats have been equal partners in the mass killing, imperial bombast, feeding of the MIC, corporate purchase of government,and red/terror/drug dealer/muslim baiting. Democrats have also let Fox and the Military dominate the conversation, compromising the constitution' to the status of toilet paper. This is a little like a lamb focusing on the terrifying qualities of a Jackal while telling itself it will be much safer with a wolf in charge, by not really considering the wolf's history or eating habits.

I personally think every prediction of AI so far is absurdly premature. The premise still seems fundamentally bizarre to me. I just can't imagine self generated thought apart from the kind of innate will that comes with being in a bodily form with natural desires attributes and limits. The idea that you can program curiosity, or desire to formulate and solve a problem into an electronic device designed only to process  binary code just seems real iffy. 

Sentient monkeys invented binary code and the tools to process it. Unless silicone and copper and silver have their own plans.  

> 
> Driftglass is a great blogger:
> 
> http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/03/american-conservatism-is-democracys.html
> 
> American Conservatism is Democracy's Retrovirus
> 
> The Conservative Hate Virus that was cultivated by Nixon and went
> pneumonic under Reagan destroyed Conservatism decades ago and replaced
> it with a slowly-rotting corpse.  A shambling, gibbering, mindless
> thing that, for a time, served both the RNC's electoral interests and
> Rupert Murdochs's business interests.  It put every bitter clinger,
> crackpot, bigot, gun-nut, Christopath, homophobe, Klansman, brownshirt
> and anti-woman douchbag and anti-science glibertarian in-harness
> together to pull the GOP to victory and to make thugs like Rush
> Limbaugh very, very rich.
> 
> And the formula for turning hate into a profit-center is so damn easy!
> Just wave a flag in front of their big, vacant eyes, poke 'em with a
> stick (ACORN!  Commies!  Sluts! Kenyan Usurper!) every few minutes,
> call 'em super-patriots for jerking off to Sean Hannity and Ann
> Coulter, and point them where you want them to go.
> 
> The Conservatism Retrovirus left us open to infection from a whole
> suite of  opportunistic wingnut disease, and from Falwell to Limbaugh
> to Beck, Conservatism has permitted each of them and all of their
> mutant imitators to breeze past democracy's natural antibodies -- an
> educated electorate, an honest press, a respectful politics -- and
> settle in for a nice, long parasite feast.
> 
> Andrew Breitbart was just such an opportunistic disease: another
> ratfucking bastard child of Lee Atwater and Roy Cohn who took a
> sociopath's glee in the wide, pestilential path he carved through
> America's political media. He destroyed people and pissed on their
> graves for fun and profit and prospered because he completely
> understood and embraced what a collection of monsters and meatsticks
> the Right truly is.