Nothing matters anymore - we are all doomed

[thedarkman]

Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?

This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.

On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.

Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.

We are all doomed. And so are our children.

[Arindam Banerjee]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.

We still have bees in Australia. Frogs are rare, though.

Hmm, loving einstein, gandi, marx and upping pornography, violence,
greed, selfishness, cowardice, laziness, snobbery, meanness, hard-
heartedness, etc. - these are the top people and qualities to have for
what is thought as success. Now that certainly exists for some, that
are corrupt to the core, and the rest want to follow their glorious
lead! What can the engineer do, if he is only a puppet controlled by
racketeers?

Post by thedarkman
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

Thinking and behaving like robots, dulls the pain, I guess.

Cheers,
Arindam Banerjee.

[Joseph]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.

Good. It's a horrible bloody noise at 4am!

[123Jim]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

Too many objectionable people in the world anyway, good riddance :))

What matters is that you live in peace for as long as you can and not to the
detriment of anything else.

Trouble is it might end up in a fight to the death for diminishing
resources.

[Svenne]

On Sun, 2 May 2010 11:42:34 +0100, "123Jim"

Post by 123Jim
Trouble is it might end up in a fight to the death for diminishing
resources.

Whaddaya mean "might."?

Svenne

[Kent Wills]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

You're such a ray of sunshine :)

[Akira Bergman]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

Animals and most humans only learn through punishment. It is natural
for things to to get worse before they get better. Every human who has
learnt a good lesson mostly learnt it through bad experiences and
survived it. This is how nature builds wisdom.

But we have reason for hope. Our technology and science have matured
enough to address planetary scale problems fairly quickly. What we
need are political and economic will. There is a positive change but
not enough yet. It is also natural for some people like yourself to
panic and be unable to have hope. But it is also natural for many to
be hopeful.

It is above natural to be wise and balanced in the face of disaster,
and see all options and make choices with cool analytical minds and
warm compassionate hearts. This is what we are against. This is a
planetary scale exercise of building self. This is both a looming
disaster and emerging wisdom of the earth. This is choice at the
planetary scale.

We have a lot to lose, a lot more to gain.

Choice is the word.

[unknown]

Post by Akira Bergman
Animals and most humans only learn through punishment.

Complete crap, both learn by reward and generally both learn better by
reward than by punishment.

[Akira Bergman]

Post by unknown

Post by Akira Bergman
Animals and most humans only learn through punishment.

Complete crap, both learn by reward and generally both learn better by
reward than by punishment.

Yes you are right. A gross error. Maybe it was too early for me.
Hopefully the rest of the piece still stands.

I am not sure about learning better by reward though. Maybe we learn
better by a critical mixture (in both time and space) of both, since
if either reward or punishment is easy to predict, then motivation to
learn would suffer. If there is too much reward then we get slack, if
there is too much punishment then we lose hope and motivation.

Nature (re)normalizes and balances in many scales all the time. All
excesses are ironed out in due process. Again, there seems to be a
curly symmetry operating the reward-punishment duality. It is not
linear.

[Cynic]

On Sun, 2 May 2010 18:09:23 -0700 (PDT), Akira Bergman

Post by Akira Bergman

Post by unknown

Post by Akira Bergman
Animals and most humans only learn through punishment.

Complete crap, both learn by reward and generally both learn better by
reward than by punishment.

Yes you are right. A gross error. Maybe it was too early for me.
Hopefully the rest of the piece still stands.
I am not sure about learning better by reward though. Maybe we learn
better by a critical mixture (in both time and space) of both, since
if either reward or punishment is easy to predict, then motivation to
learn would suffer. If there is too much reward then we get slack, if
there is too much punishment then we lose hope and motivation.

No, it is much simpler. Reward works best as a method of encouraging
behaviour that is desirable, punishment works best for discouraging
behaviour that is undesirable. Thus neither is really a substitute
for the other (unless the particular undesired behaviour and the
desired behaviour are mutually exclusive, which is not often the
case).

So I might reward a child for sharing his sweet with his younger
sister, but I would not punish a child for not doing so. OTOH I might
punish a child for hitting his younger sister, but I would not reward
him for *not* hitting her.

[Akira Bergman]

Post by Cynic
On Sun, 2 May 2010 18:09:23 -0700 (PDT), Akira Bergman

Post by Akira Bergman

Post by unknown

Post by Akira Bergman
Animals and most humans only learn through punishment.

Complete crap, both learn by reward and generally both learn better by
reward than by punishment.

Yes you are right. A gross error. Maybe it was too early for me.
Hopefully the rest of the piece still stands.
I am not sure about learning better by reward though. Maybe we learn
better by a critical mixture (in both time and space) of both, since
if either reward or punishment is easy to predict, then motivation to
learn would suffer. If there is too much reward then we get slack, if
there is too much punishment then we lose hope and motivation.

No, it is much simpler.  Reward works best as a method of encouraging
behaviour that is desirable, punishment works best for discouraging
behaviour that is undesirable.  Thus neither is really a substitute
for the other (unless the particular undesired behaviour and the
desired behaviour are mutually exclusive, which is not often the
case).
So I might reward a child for sharing his sweet with his younger
sister, but I would not punish a child for not doing so.  OTOH I might
punish a child for hitting his younger sister, but I would not reward
him for *not* hitting her.
--
Cynic

Yes it is simple when you constrain the test in that way.

Imagine a test with two outcomes, in which you are punished and
rewarded in random amounts and sequences. These tests can be made very
complicated and it would be almost impossible to figure out what to do
and when to do.

Do not forget to be a cynic about your own cynicism.

[Cynic]

On Thu, 6 May 2010 14:22:52 -0700 (PDT), Akira Bergman

Post by Akira Bergman
Yes it is simple when you constrain the test in that way.

But that is exactly how it is constrained in real life (so long as the
parents/justice system are halfway reasonable).

Post by Akira Bergman
Imagine a test with two outcomes, in which you are punished and
rewarded in random amounts and sequences. These tests can be made very
complicated and it would be almost impossible to figure out what to do
and when to do.

I know the answer to that one. It was an experiment we learnt about
in first year psychology.

A cat was placed in a cage containing two saucers, one filled with
milk and the other a mixture of milk and ethanol. There were also two
buttons with lights. If the cat pushed the button that showed a light
it would get food. If it pushed the other button it would receive an
electric shock. The cat was soon conditioned to press only the button
that showed a light every time, and it was noted that the cat never
drank from the laced milk even when the other saucer was empty.

Then the relationship between the lights and the reward/punishment was
removed and the buttons delivered either food or a shock completely at
random. The cat's behaviour became abnormal at all times, its sleep
pattern completely altered and it started drinking the laced milk.
IIRC it ended up becoming a deranged and alcoholic animal.

[Ste]

I know the answer to that one.  It was an experiment we learnt about
in first year psychology.
A cat was placed in a cage containing two saucers, one filled with
milk and the other a mixture of milk and ethanol.  There were also two
buttons with lights.  If the cat pushed the button that showed a light
it would get food.  If it pushed the other button it would receive an
electric shock.  The cat was soon conditioned to press only the button
that showed a light every time, and it was noted that the cat never
drank from the laced milk even when the other saucer was empty.
Then the relationship between the lights and the reward/punishment was
removed and the buttons delivered either food or a shock completely at
random.  The cat's behaviour became abnormal at all times, its sleep
pattern completely altered and it started drinking the laced milk.
IIRC it ended up becoming a deranged and alcoholic animal.

Lol! I bet you don't find this on any modern psychology course.

[Cynic]

Post by Ste

I know the answer to that one.  It was an experiment we learnt about
in first year psychology.
A cat was placed in a cage containing two saucers, one filled with
milk and the other a mixture of milk and ethanol.  There were also two
buttons with lights.  If the cat pushed the button that showed a light
it would get food.  If it pushed the other button it would receive an
electric shock.  The cat was soon conditioned to press only the button
that showed a light every time, and it was noted that the cat never
drank from the laced milk even when the other saucer was empty.
Then the relationship between the lights and the reward/punishment was
removed and the buttons delivered either food or a shock completely at
random.  The cat's behaviour became abnormal at all times, its sleep
pattern completely altered and it started drinking the laced milk.
IIRC it ended up becoming a deranged and alcoholic animal.

Lol! I bet you don't find this on any modern psychology course.

I doubt you would be encouraged to repeat the experiment to verify the
results, anyway.

[Ste]

Post by Cynic

Post by Ste

I know the answer to that one.  It was an experiment we learnt about
in first year psychology.
A cat was placed in a cage containing two saucers, one filled with
milk and the other a mixture of milk and ethanol.  There were also two
buttons with lights.  If the cat pushed the button that showed a light
it would get food.  If it pushed the other button it would receive an
electric shock.  The cat was soon conditioned to press only the button
that showed a light every time, and it was noted that the cat never
drank from the laced milk even when the other saucer was empty.
Then the relationship between the lights and the reward/punishment was
removed and the buttons delivered either food or a shock completely at
random.  The cat's behaviour became abnormal at all times, its sleep
pattern completely altered and it started drinking the laced milk.
IIRC it ended up becoming a deranged and alcoholic animal.

Lol! I bet you don't find this on any modern psychology course.

I doubt you would be encouraged to repeat the experiment to verify the
results, anyway.

I'm sure I could manage the experiment with an unruly child, but not
with animals. ;)

[tooly]

Post by Akira Bergman

Post by unknown

Post by Akira Bergman
Animals and most humans only learn through punishment.

Complete crap, both learn by reward and generally both learn better by
reward than by punishment.

Yes you are right. A gross error. Maybe it was too early for me.
Hopefully the rest of the piece still stands.
I am not sure about learning better by reward though. Maybe we learn
better by a critical mixture (in both time and space) of both, since
if either reward or punishment is easy to predict, then motivation to
learn would suffer. If there is too much reward then we get slack, if
there is too much punishment then we lose hope and motivation.
Nature (re)normalizes and balances in many scales all the time. All
excesses are ironed out in due process. Again, there seems to be a
curly symmetry operating the reward-punishment duality. It is not
linear.

There may be some sort of global self organizing...who knows; surely
evolution continues whatever. But I think you guys overlook a simple
fact of life...we are all 'surviving' here...most of us 'just getting
by' as individuals to be all that concerned for global impact. What
you guys contemplate are for the elites; the rich who have too much
time on their hands and little relative worry. The rest of the 99.9%
of us have mortgages, jobs with mean bosses to appease, bills up the
arse, kids with snot nosed raggedy assed friends who corrupt them,
wives who sleep around, yards to mow, houses to pain, and cars that
are breaking down even you could afford the gas.

I'm glad you guys are winners in life. I really am. But if you want
a more responsible general citizenry, try and do something to
alleviate the sheer misery and pain the rest of us feel; the worry,
the forever sense of living on the edge of destruction and ruin...

Ha, and you expect me to classify my garbage?

Marie Antionette said it best, "Let them eat cake".

[Akira Bergman]

Post by tooly

Post by Akira Bergman

Post by unknown

Post by Akira Bergman
Animals and most humans only learn through punishment.

Complete crap, both learn by reward and generally both learn better by
reward than by punishment.

Yes you are right. A gross error. Maybe it was too early for me.
Hopefully the rest of the piece still stands.
I am not sure about learning better by reward though. Maybe we learn
better by a critical mixture (in both time and space) of both, since
if either reward or punishment is easy to predict, then motivation to
learn would suffer. If there is too much reward then we get slack, if
there is too much punishment then we lose hope and motivation.
Nature (re)normalizes and balances in many scales all the time. All
excesses are ironed out in due process. Again, there seems to be a
curly symmetry operating the reward-punishment duality. It is not
linear.

There may be some sort of global self organizing...who knows; surely
evolution continues whatever.  But I think you guys overlook a simple
fact of life...we are all 'surviving' here...most of us 'just getting
by' as individuals to be all that concerned for global impact.  What
you guys contemplate are for the elites; the rich who have too much
time on their hands and little relative worry.  The rest of the 99.9%
of us have mortgages, jobs with mean bosses to appease, bills up the
arse, kids with snot nosed raggedy assed friends who corrupt them,
wives who sleep around, yards to mow, houses to pain, and cars that
are breaking down even you could afford the gas.
I'm glad you guys are winners in life.  I really am.  But if you want
a more responsible general citizenry, try and do something to
alleviate the sheer misery and pain the rest of us feel; the worry,
the forever sense of living on the edge of destruction and ruin...
Ha, and you expect me to classify my garbage?
Marie Antionette said it best, "Let them eat cake".

"I'm glad you guys are winners in life."

You are making a mistake by putting the scientific and philosophical
inquirers in the same basket with the ruling elite and their servants.
I know that there is such a myth. But this myth is does not only
happen by itself. It is also propagated by the corrupt elements of the
ruling elite.

While it is true that there are many appeasers amongst the educated, a
growing number are getting quite vocal in their opposition. Do not put
us in the same basket with the brown noses. If anything, we have been
outsiders to the B&D ritual between the greedy ruling elites and the
ignorant majority of the farming and industrial societies.

"...most of us 'just getting by' as individuals to be all that
concerned for global impact."

Not true. The ignorant majority are to blame as much as the greedy
ruling elites. They are complicit in the plunder politics and economy.
Whenever their small time comforts are threatened, they side with the
greedy bully.

You know what happens when you question the abusive nature of many
dysfunctional marriages. In the end you get the blame from both sides.
There is usually a strong emotional bond between the capturer and the
captured. Something like the Stockholm Syndrome. Organised religion
has been working hard to keep this emotional bond.

[Kevin]

Post by Akira Bergman

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

Animals and most humans only learn through punishment. It is natural
for things to to get worse before they get better. Every human who has
learnt a good lesson mostly learnt it through bad experiences and
survived it. This is how nature builds wisdom.

Beating your negro certainly does not do any harm and if fact it might
do your negro some good... It's a no brainer.

[Sir Frederick Martin]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

More like trivialized,
unless that be a form of doom.

[Kevin]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

Then I should lead you by my example... There is always hope... if you
can make yourself the biggest pain in the ass that you are capable of
being.

[Day Brown]

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.
On the Andrew Marr programme this morning they also mentioned that
American bees have been decimated; the same thing is happening here,
and with songbirds.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is almost upon us. And in Greece, the
Government has thrown in the towel to the bankers, the dictatorship of
finance. Our last hope was breaking the power of the banks to free
technology to solve the world's problems, but it is now too late. We
are all doomed.
Enjoy life while you can, what there is left.
We are all doomed. And so are our children.

The fall of every great empire has been foreseen by some who got the
fuck outta dodge to some remote place whose apparent lack of resources
left it in obscurity. Christians have often done so, with disastrous
results in more recent times because they were not rational enuf,
relying on faith instead, to manage.

But this does not preclude a more rational cosmology with the vision to
see what is really going on and the wisdom to find a solution... while
the rest of the world goes to hell in a basket.

They wont be 'homesteadders' or 'survivalists' because a greater scale
of production and cooperation is needed. Native Europeans evolved in
agrarian villages of 150-300, some of which have existed for millennia
and still exist today while nation states rose and fell.

But not only do you need the vision to see what is really happening, you
need to reckon on how fast, so you organize the right resources at the
right time and the right way.

[Cynic]

On Sun, 2 May 2010 02:42:57 -0700 (PDT), thedarkman

Post by thedarkman
Can I not for the first time be the only person on the face of this
planet who sees what is really happening?
This oil spill off the East Coast is not simply a threat to Louisiana,
if it isn't stopped it could pollute and kill the entire Atlantic, all
the world's oceans.

Stop being such a drama queen. The spill might be pretty big, but the
size of the oceans are *much* bigger. Plus the fact that whatever
needs to be done *will* eventually be done to halt the spread even if
it cannot be plugged. The oil is valuable enough to be worth saving
of itself even if there was not the added pressure of limiting the
damages that will no doubt have to be paid to property affected by the
oil pollution.