In order for “progress” to be worthwhile, it must meet some requirements. One of those requirements is testability – there must be a control group against which to test the claims of progress. Another is consent – it shouldn’t have to rely on forced adoption.
Tag: technology
Change Their Culture for The Worse
The fear that some nativists express that an influx of foreigners will change their culture for the worse expresses a lack of confidence in the virtues of their existing culture and a failure to imagine how their culture might be enriched, rather than despoiled, by encounters with other cultures.
ARK3 Returns, The Year 2020, & Changing Statists’ Minds (1h7m) – Episode 353
Episode 353 welcomes back Alex R. Knight III to chat with Skyler on the following topics: the tumultuous year 2020; coronavirus hysteria; looking forward 10 years and what we should expect; reducing statism through technology instead of ideological persuasion; Kamala Harris’ possible ancestry; what becoming a politician does to people; why voters are rationally ignorant; who’s to blame when democratic government fails; inconsistency in the behaviors we tolerate from other people, government and not; postmodernism; the effectiveness that communist defectors have on getting people in freer countries to see the mistake in pushing for more government; 2020 US presidential election prediction; and more.
Let’s Adapt to Something Positive
Humans are adaptable. More so than any creature other than, possibly, cockroaches. It’s our greatest strength. We have adapted to living almost everywhere on the planet and, soon, with the right technology — an adaptation we’ve created — off-planet, too. We’ve adapted to a different diet than our ancestors ate. In some cases, we probably…
MOVE Bombing: The Story of How Philadelphia Became “The City That Bombed Itself”
The case of MOVE is an unusual one, because they cannot simply be shoe-horned into the usual “they were just minding their own business and then the cops came in with overwhelming force” narrative that more or less applies at Ruby Ridge or at Waco. This is not to imply that the actions taken by the Philadelphia Police Department were appropriate – there were children inside the MOVE townhouse. However, it is important to note that MOVE had a history of violence.
Ten Years After Lieberman’s “Internet Kill Switch,” the War on Freedom Rages On
In 2010, US Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Thomas Carper (D-DE) introduced their Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. Better known as the “Internet Kill Switch” proposal for the emergency powers it would have conferred on the president, the bill died without receiving a vote in either house of Congress. A decade later, the same fake issues and the same authoritarian “solutions” continue to dominate discussions on the relationship between technology and state. The real issue remains the same as well.
The Private Space Race
This week, American astronauts returned to earth. Their trip to the space station was the first manned launch from the U.S. in 10 years. By NASA? No. Of course, not.
Flemming Rose: Censorship and Self-Censorship (1h34m)
This episode features a discussion with Danish journalist Flemming Rose from 2017. Twenty-five years ago, the pioneers of the Internet believed that they had created a tool to do away with censorship once and for all. Today, anyone with a smartphone is able to publish and communicate whatever they want, and yet, censorship still exists online. Just as the printing press, radio, and TV that came before it, while the Internet promised to be a breakthrough for freedom of speech, the government has found ways to control and limit our ability to freely disseminate information online. What does censorship in the 21st century look like? How does digital technology affect the way we communicate today? Is outright censorship easier to deal with than soft censorship and self-censorship? In this lecture, Flemming Rose explores these questions and more.
Curiosity: The Master Impulse
Curiosity is the greatest threat to concentrated power and prestige, so those who have power and prestige labor endlessly to create the mind-killing opposite of all curiosity. Consensus. Obedience. Being seen as “normal”, “in the know”, “respectable”.
Are Kids Learning More at Home During COVID-19?
More than one billion students around the world are currently missing school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several US states have already canceled school for the remainder of the academic year, turning to online learning when possible, and other states are likely to extend their school closures soon. Some educationists panic about learning loss while children are at home with their families, and headlines abound about how “homeschooling during the coronavirus will set back a generation of children.”