Hooligan Gang Fight Narrated by David Attenborough Francis Fukuyama Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. Fukuyama is best known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement,[2] from which he has since distanced himself.[3] Early life[edit] Francis Fukuyama was born in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Education[edit] Fukuyama was the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University from 1996 to 2000. Writings[edit]
How German sounds compared to other languages Transhumanist Values - Nick Bostrom 1. What is Transhumanism? Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades.[1] It promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology. Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The enhancement options being discussed include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities. Other transhumanist themes include space colonization and the possibility of creating superintelligent machines, along with other potential developments that could profoundly alter the human condition. Transhumanism does not entail technological optimism. 2.
Kenan Malik's review of Our Posthuman Future by Francis Fukuyama Capitalism, Francis Fukuyama announced more than a decade ago, is the promised land at the End of History. The collapse of the Soviet Union confirmed that there was neither an alternative to the market, nor a possibility of transcending capitalism. Not even the events of September 11, which have led many critics to mock the 'End of History' thesis, have given Fukuyama cause to change his mind. The end of history, Fukuyama argues, means not the termination of conflict, simply the recognition that nothing can improve upon capitalism. Why? Because, as he puts it in Our Posthuman Future, capitalist institutions 'are grounded in assumptions about human nature that are far more realistic than those of their competitors'. Yet even Fukuyama has come to worry that the reports of History's death might have been a mite exaggerated. Fukuyama's argument runs something like this. While most worried about genetic engineering, other technologies also concern Fukuyama. And therein lies the problem.
Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology (Lev Grossman writes about books here on Wednesdays. Subscribe to his RSS feed.) This post is by way of a reply to Arthur Krystal’s “Easy Writers,” a thoroughly thought-provoking piece about the relationship between genre fiction and literary fiction that ran in the New Yorker this week. I was happy to see the New Yorker weighing in on this, because I think it’s an important part of what’s going on in fiction right now. I think about it a lot. [I want to be clear, by the way, that this is a response in the sense of a (probably one-sided) critical conversation. What Krystal does in “Easy Writers” is introduce the idea that the distinction between genre fiction and literary fiction has, of late, gotten less clear. (MORE: The Year in Novels So Far) Personally, I think the situation is more complicated than Krystal makes it out to be. So let’s go over the grounds on which Krystal’s conclusions rest. Personally I don’t think it’s anywhere near that simple. LIST: Top 10 Novels of the 2000s
enemyindustry People and cultures have some non-overlapping beliefs. Some folk believe that there is a God, some that there is no God, some that there are many gods. Some people believe that personal autonomy is a paramount value, while others feel that virtues like honour and courage take precedence over personal freedom. These core beliefs are serious, in that they make a difference to whether people live or die, or are able to live the kinds of life that they wish. People fight and die for the sake of autonomy. Some folk – the self-styled pluralists – believe that respect for otherness is a paramount political value. According to Philip at Circling Squares Isabel Stengers and Bruno Latour think that this position should enjoin us to avoid ridiculing or undermining others’ values or ontologies. I’ll admit that I find first part of this principle this damn puzzling. b) allows us to have beliefs so long as they are unexpressed. So I take Philip to embrace c). References Habermas, Jurgen. 1995.
Obama campaign ads: How the Analyst Institute is helping him hone his message Two weeks ago, top Obama campaign advisers Jim Messina and David Axelrod announced a $25 million national television buy, a figure rightfully acknowledged with a sense of wonder, given that there were still six months to go before Election Day. But anyone waiting for coast-to-coast shock-and awe must be disappointed. Sasha Issenberg is the author of The Victory Lab about the new science of political campaigns. But scattered, unsustained messaging has become the unlikely hallmark of the well-funded Chicago campaign. If these forays seem random, it’s because at least some of them almost certainly are. The Obama campaign’s “experiment-informed programs”—known as EIP in the lefty tactical circles where they’ve become the vogue in recent years—are designed to track the impact of campaign messages as voters process them in the real world, instead of relying solely on artificial environments like focus groups and surveys. Illustration by Robert Donnelly.
Philip K. Dick, Sci-Fi Philosopher, Part 3 The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. This is the third in a three-part series. Part 3: Adventures in the Dream Factory In the previous post, we looked at Philip K. Philip K. Leif Parsons Dick’s gnosticism also allows us to see in a new light what is the existentially toughest teaching of traditional Christianity: that sin lies within us in the form of original sin. On the gnostical view, once we see the wicked world for what it is, we can step back and rediscover our essential goodness, the divine spark within us, our purity, our authenticity. Aside from “The Matrix” trilogy and the direct movie adaptations of Dick’s fiction, there are strong gnostical themes in the two most recent movies of the Danish film writer and director Lars von Trier. Dick’s gnosticism can enable us to understand the paranoid style of American politics. The morality of gnosticism is also oddly relevant to our current situation.
Online papers on consciousness Search tips There are three kinds of search you can perform: All fields This mode searches for entries containing all the entered words in their title, author, date, comment field, or in any of many other fields showing on OPC pages. Surname This mode searches for entries containing the text string you entered in their author field. Advanced This mode differs from the all fields mode in two respects. Note that short and / or common words are ignored by the search engine.
Interview: Vernor Vinge by The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Vernor Vinge is the author of many novels, including Hugo Award-winners A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, and Rainbows End, as well as acclaimed novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. His latest novel is The Children of the Sky. This interview first appeared in Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire interview and the rest of the show, in which the hosts discuss various geeky topics. You’re famous for coining the phrase “The Technological Singularity.” I used that term first, I think, at an artificial intelligence conference in 1982. That is a consequence of this particular type of progress—that is, in making creatures that are smarter than humans. What are some of the scenarios for how the Singularity might unfold? I think there are all sorts of different paths to the Singularity, at least five pretty different paths.
A Modern-Day Copernicus: Peter H. Duesberg by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), a mathematician and astronomer, questioned the long- held belief that the Earth sits at the center of the universe and the Sun and planets circle around it. Aristotle posited and Ptolemy (85–165) codified this geocentric (Earth-centered) system. Peter H. Harvey Bialy has written a book about Duesberg titled Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. In Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006), William Vollman praises Copernicus for having the good sense to die shortly after the publication of his paradigm-altering work, thus avoiding the cruel punishment then accorded heretics. So far, this has been Duesberg's fate: Admired as a "wunderkind" in the 1970s, the NIH (National Institutes of Health) awarded him a long-term Outstanding Investigator Grant; he was a candidate for the Nobel Prize; the U.S. scientifically flawed."
Discover Magazine: The latest in science and technology news, blogs and articles - AIDS "Dissident" Seeks Redemption... and a Cure for Cancer Over the next four decades, Duesberg would throw himself into his passion for science, traveling thousands of miles from his homeland. Even so, he still peppers his conversations, no matter the topic, with World War II metaphors and references to Hitler and his henchmen—and to the “good Germans” who did as the government demanded. It is hard to understand him at times, not just because of his sharp German accent and odd phrasings but because he makes mental leaps that can leave a listener exhausted. In rapid-fire sequence he jumps from scientific minutiae to grand political comparisons (viruses, bacteria, oncogenes, even researchers who study these entities can be transformed into Goebbels or “good Germans”), and then he might toss in an entirely new idea before returning to his original topic—all within seconds. “We’re supposed to be ‘good soldiers,’ following orders from higher-ups.”–Peter Duesberg The reaction was explosive.