Women: asks you to critically investigate their body.
OP: chose to not to take the hint.
Things Jesus was:
Not a real individual, but a conglomerate of stories compiled by people who had contradictory understandings of history.
A reforming fictional figure of classical Jewish doctrine, but a driver of its veracity, meaning his story still preached the truth of the old testament God, whome he was said to be one with, and was all of the negative things described on the right side of this slide.
Driver of "Love thy neighbor" meaning other people of the Jewish faith and followers of his particular reformation, definitely not gentiles, atheists, etc. All the others were dogs and worthy of burning in hell btw.
Fictional dude who's story says he spit on homeless people to cure them of blindness, despite having all the faculties of a omnipotent being who could have done that shit without spitting on them, but chose to spit directly into a poor bums face just for shits and giggle. Pray to Shiva that Jesus doesn't come up with a cleaver way to cure your rectal cancer with this type of mentality. MOON RIVER.
I have very little belief that any of the major tech billionaires were Sci-fi "readers". All were brought up rich and maintained their wealth by failing upwards in an industry that basically threw money at aristocratic families and their offspring. All the sci-fi from prolific figures specifically target those groups as the reason for societies hardships. Herbert, Asimov, Heinlein, etc. all have major works which denounce the inherent vileness of those classes that rule from privileged positions without merit. If they did read any of those most influential books of the genre they definitely took the wrong messages from them. More likely than not, they probably only paid attention to the hypothetical technology in those universes to copy to theur model for "their" ideas, rather than paying any attention to the moral messages usually described about the use of the technology... Which usually ends up fucking the people who use it. Musk driving for human computer integration chips with reckless abandon tells me he has not read any sci-fi which would help him understand the possible hiccups he's going to run into. I also doubt his endeavour is anything more than a stunt which conflates the use cases of the technology which is probably just revamped HCI technology that already exists to transmit motor cortex impulses to areas of the body that have been damaged due to injury. (I work in neuromodulation research) Even if they read the best scifi now, they would probably take away the wrong messages from them, the lens that you bring to a reading changes how you view it. As a billionaire, they just lack the ability to ground themselves enough to understand the social cautionary messages.
As a psych major I always push people towards the field, but I'm not versed on books that teach general critical thinking or philosophy. Do you have any specific titles that guided you? Fiction or non-fiction. I feel like the foundation was one of my favorites that taught utilitarian ethics.
I did not know that that was a book that existed. Thank you. I've read all the robot, empire and foundation books. Huge fan.
The Atheist Compendium has a nice ring to it. I'm well ready on all the major religious texts, atheist texts, etc. Combing opinions on what to include without saying what my library already includes is helping me to be unbiased in what to include. Helps me assess what is really necessary. If I end up labeling the tool the Atheist compendium I'll reach out to cite you for the suggestion.
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Abortion is a religiously mediated litmus test for politicians. As a Catholic, Biden's personal religious delusions conflict with truly supporting the pro-choice stance. This isn't something that will change soon. Voting Americans hate atheist/agnostic morality, and we are likely to get every single other denomination of president before we have an atheist one or even an agnostic one. (Wormald, 2014) The big issue is that abortion was not a political litmus test until subversive alt-right groups made it one after they failed to succeed with their segregationist ideologies. Just know that it all links back to creating a caste system where white, rich, and religious individuals are at the top. (Stewart, 2022)
Stewart, K. (2022). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Wormald, B. (2014, July 16). How Americans feel about religious groups. Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-groups/
Not a shoe person, or a fan of long ads, but the way this video host described smelling a person, "oh you smell good. what is that smell? a good credit score..." That was a good quip/compliment that I'm going to use for the rest of my life. Keep up the good energy and reduce the ads time. You got a good style.
After reading Four Battlegrounds, by Paul Scharre, and Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zubuff, I have no faith that our government can protect us from the CCP or Silicon Valley. The CCP wants to have all of our biometric data so that it can profile us within it's social credit system and thus stiffle our political opposition to authoritarianism. Silicon Valley tech companies exercise their unethical behavior modification techniques at scale to drive consumerist behaviors and as an offshoot they also drive massive amounts of people toward extremism. There seems to be no technically savvy intellectuals in government that can thwart these changes and I foresee a crisis event being the only wakeup call for us to drive change.
I won't argue on definitions of topics I am not an expert in. If you feel the Terran Federation meets your broad definition of fascism peace be with you. The only point of contention I'll offer is that you are flatty wrong about Heinlein being fascist. If he were alive and you called him that to his face, he'd look down on you in confusion probably combing his mind over his years of service fighting actual fascists which gave you freedom to confusingly missaply it to him.
You are correct that the US is more xenophobic than the government depicted in StarShip Troopers. That being said the US isn't the government on display in either the movie or book, it is the Terran Federation. The Terran Federation also isn't fascist. It is a secular militaristic limited democracy. Every single person who wishes to become a citizen may do so through voluntary service. Unlike our current military recruitment which limits based on country of origin, physical ability, and other qualifiers anyone can join. Stephan Hawkings would have been turned down for service in America, while the Terran Federation would have found a place for him. There are also harsher judicial punishments for those who gain citizenship if they break the law than non-citizens so that citizenships is a privilege and a duty. This hierarchy diminishes the strength of oligarchy, because money has no bearing on voting. Only those who display and demonstrate their true public service affect how the federation operates. Many people who read the book come away thinking that Heinlein was some fascist militarist, but they overlook his criticism of the hypothetical system of government he proposes in the book. He was a Navy officer before being a writer and his righting reflects his admiration for his families long history of public service. There are thinly veiled critiques of the military throughout that my go unnoticed by non-veterans. The psychological manipulation of Rico is definitely something that Heinlein hammers. The movie recast the Phillipino Rico for the hyper Caucasian Casper Van Dien, so while the movie was trying to critique the book if fell flatly on its face white washing the diversity on display in the book, it also more than the book enhances the glory of blind militarism, while is not the type of militarism from the book. All in all both the movie and book's Terran Federation are forms of government that are better than the shadow fascist oligarchical governments that we enjoy across multiple countries in 2023.
It will be interesting to see how the post-strike/pandemic era of the MCU plays out. The 2007 strike made for like 5 years of shit movies. The pandemic and this strike were significantly longer and had a much higher toll on every level of movie making. I don't harp to much on scripts from serialized content, but I do imagine it will get better in time for the X-Men and Fantastic era of the MCU.
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Toguro and his brother were perfectly designed. I love it. They murdered our boi Kuwabara though. Overall it looks like a fun adaptation. Excited to watch.
Ben Goertzel (2014). Ten Years to the Singularity If We Really Really Try.
This dude has a backlog of books about the singularity and it's impending arrival.
Then there is this:
Ben Goertzel (2018). The Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports. McFarland.
I'll spare you the read... For an author about writing about the certainty of precognition, he ironically has demonstrated a aptitude for failing to see the future.
My head cannon is that a society that places personal autonomy as a core value avoids utilizing surveillance of their people as a means of societal control. It just does not occur to them to place cameras everywhere because it is so antithetical to their core values. That is also a reason Data gets so much leeway to act autonomously. Aside from people who want to diminish that freedom, everyone is just fine with the blanket protection of personal autonomy. Check out the book Surveillance Capitalism by Zuboff. It highlights the evergrowing behavioral manipulation tech companies are utilizing with surveillance and unethical behavioral shaping. Considering Star Trek is beyond capitalism, it makes a lot of sense that they would stop the unethical monitoring of individuals.
I just saw this on my drive. Prepare yourself, we live in in a simulation that's stuck on repeat.