I'm A Cyborg, But That's Ok

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[yayfeminism]

One of my favourite stories from the experiments with Universal Basic Income in Canada and the US is that they found that divorces went up. Women had suddenly got financial independence to leave bad and abusive relationships.

Inventing the Future 

It’s interesting this was perceived negatively in experiments in the US. It actually caused some people to withdraw support for UBI:

“When the findings started to come in, it looked like the families that were receiving a guaranteed annual income might, in fact, have a higher divorce rate. And this became very political very quickly in the U.S. There were all kinds of concerns that this was an attack on the American family.”

(via yayfeminism)

If having resources to leave a bad or abusive marriage is an attack on the American family, then there’s something deeply wrong in the American family.

(via kerryrenaissance)

there is something deeply wrong

(via lavahag)

[postsingularity]

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or make it the last.

John F Kennedy, address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York City, September 20, 1963

[postsingularity]

...give yourself as broad an education as you can. Studying your own and other people's languages will give you insights into how our minds work. Studying sciences will give you insights into how the world works. And studying the humanities will give you insights into how societies work. All of these should make what could be a very long life an interesting one.

Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the death of capitalism

[postsingularity]

The question that young people (and their parents) naturally ask about the economic singularity is, how can I best prepare for the economy that we are moving towards? [...] The best answer is to study computing. Computers are at the heart of the changes sweeping the world in the information revolution, so it has to be valuable to understand how they work and what they can and cannot do. If possible, study machine learning, and in particular, deep learning. It seems a safe bet that these powerful techniques will remain important for years to come. Carrying out maintenance, supervision or development of hardware or software may keep you in a job for longer than most.

Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the death of capitalism

[postsingularity]

The declared purpose of many UBI experiments is to investigate the concern that when people receive money for nothing, they stop working. One of the biggest experiments conducted so far, involving all 10,000 people in the small town of Dauphin in Manitoba, Canada, found that the only two social groups which did stop working were teenagers and young mothers, and this was seen as a positive outcome.

Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the death of capitalism

[postsingularity]

I like to think  (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors  and joined back to nature returned to our mammal brothers and sisters all watched over  by machines of loving grace.

Richard Brautigan, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

[postsingularity]

It is often said that science fiction tells us more about the present than it does about the future.

Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the death of capitalism

[postsingularity]

And those in America and Europe who protest about the obscene amount of wealth of the 1% in their own countries seem curiously un-troubled by the fact that they themselves are often among the richest 1% of the world's population.

Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the death of capitalism

[postsingularity]

Imagine that you are in a football stadium (either soccer or American football will do) which has been sealed to make it water-proof. The referee places a single drop of water in the middle of the pitch. One minute later she places two drops there. Another minute later, four drops, and so on. How long do you think it would take to fill the stadium with water? The answer is 49 minutes. But what is really surprising - and disturbing - is that after 45 minutes, the stadium is just 7% full. The people in the back seats are looking down and pointing out to each other that something significant is happening. Four minutes later they have drowned.

Calum Chace, The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the death of capitalism