[Double-A]

There are plenty of historical examples of oppressive governments that existed long before the latest technological revolution. In fact, the most oppressive governments in history have been those that kept technology out of the hands of their citizens. I would claim that technology is responsible for freeing far more people than it has enslaved.

You raise a valid point. However I feel I should probably elaborate a little more on what I said. Nowadays most notebook computers come with webcams and microphones built in. This enables governments to watch what people are doing and listen to their conversations. Also, with the invention of the cell phone came the ability for governments to track people. I could go on and on with more examples but I think you understand where I'm going with this.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

You raise a valid point. However I feel I should probably elaborate a little more on what I said. Nowadays most notebook computers come with webcams and microphones built in. This enables governments to watch what people are doing and listen to their conversations. Also, with the invention of the cell phone came the ability for governments to track people. I could go on and on with more examples but I think you understand where I'm going with this.

There are other points about these realities.

1) I've put gaffer's tape on all front cameras on my devices. Can't do anything about the mics since I use them (I don't use video for calls) but at least I can reach down and scratch my balls without anyone watching and noting that I only rubbed alcohol on my hands between that and going back to typing.

2) Have we so easily forgotten the days when we had no tracking and surveillance systems at all? Car's gone, bam! Nic Cage and Giovanni Ribisi have it in a container van off to a 3rd world corrupt politician's collection. Kid goes missing, bam! Last anyone saw her, it was the Mom when she turned around too busy to watch the kid - no video showing where she went, who took her, we can't track convicted predators other than their parole officer check-ins. Maybe we'll find her skeleton with the panties missing or something. I get lost with my hand stuck under a rock, phone has no signal and no GPS locator, bam! Hack off the hand.

 

[Double-A]

There are other points about these realities.

1) I've put gaffer's tape on all front cameras on my devices. Can't do anything about the mics since I use them (I don't use video for calls) but at least I can reach down and scratch my balls without anyone watching and noting that I only rubbed alcohol on my hands between that and going back to typing.

2) Have we so easily forgotten the days when we had no tracking and surveillance systems at all? Car's gone, bam! Nic Cage and Giovanni Ribisi have it in a container van off to a 3rd world corrupt politician's collection. Kid goes missing, bam! Last anyone saw her, it was the Mom when she turned around too busy to watch the kid - no video showing where she went, who took her, we can't track convicted predators other than their parole officer check-ins. Maybe we'll find her skeleton with the panties missing or something. I get lost with my hand stuck under a rock, phone has no signal and no GPS locator, bam! Hack off the hand.

First off, good job on the tape on your cameras . . . I do the same thing. Second of all, I never said that we should get rid of all of these new technologies. All I'm saying is that with the good that comes with these technological advances (and don't get me wrong there is good that comes with said technological advances) there's also great evil that comes with them. I certainly do not think that our modern day technologies should be disposed of . . . I only wish that the governments of the countries in this world would be less corrupt/more responsible and not use these technologies to spy on their citizens. They use terrorism as an excuse to do this but the real reason they do this is so they can tighten their grips on their citizens and keep them subservient.
 
EDIT: It's just like how some people in the U.S. Government would like to ban guns. They say that this is because doing this would decrease gun killings but really it's because then the Government's control over the American people would be complete. Any government that has absolute power is absolutely corrupt. I would like to ask this question of the U.S. Government: should we ban motor vehicles as well because lots of people die from motor vehicle crashes every year?
 
EDIT: Also, if the primary reason that these people wanted to ban guns was that lots of people die because of them then you'd think that they would be seeking to ban abortion because abortion claims a lot of lives as well but no they aren't.
 
EDIT (Wow I'm editing this post a lot aren't I?): And before anyone bothers telling me "if you aren't breaking the law in any way then you shouldn't worry about government snooping because you don't have anything to hide" I'm going to assume that is probably going to come from someone (not even necessarily someone that has already posted in this thread so I'm not pointing any fingers) and get my response out of the way before the statement even pops up. To that I would say (and I already stated this in a separate thread): I do have something to hide it's called my privacy.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Here's a thought that just came to me: modern technology is NOT good for the gene pool. 2,500 years ago weak infants would be discarded by the Spartans, which is horrible in a lot of ways, but now while we can save sickly children into becoming adults that contribute in ways that Athenians and Romans would appreciate, we are also saving jackarses who shouldn't breed. Back then, if you were enough of an idiot and you screw around, it'll likely take you out of the gene pool. Now, you can catch a bunch of idiots ending up in the ER and live long enough to breed...and possibly enough of a scumbag to not care for the child enough that it grows up into another ******.
 
Case in point - there was a meth addict here a few years ago who sliced off his own member then put it in a pickle jar or something, sitting long enough so the doctors can't reattach it. Now imagine if the family found him like that sooner, and the doctors were able to reattach it (something only made possible a few decades ago on digits) - that means that someone with the genes that have a predisposition for addiction will survive and make babies. Worse, he might be enough of a scumbag to not do his part raising that child, increasing the risks of the child - essentially, that child is genetically risky, then will be "raised" in a high-risk environment. BAAAAAD.

Heck the mere fact that I am alive is no wonder of science. It can treat diabetes and cancer, and heck my own Dad was saved from polio at the right time, but I'm also at risk for diabetes, cancer, and suffering gout at 29. I and my brother have opted to not contribute to the gene pool. Problem is, there are still too many people who won't think of the collective good - the mere fact that they can't afford childbirth doesn't deter them from knocking people up (then blaming government when quality healthcare for their sickly kid isn't free).
 
----------------------------------
 
Quote:

  First off, good job on the tape on your cameras . . . I do the same thing. Second of all, I never said that we should get rid of all of these new technologies. All I'm saying is that with the good that comes with these technological advances (and don't get me wrong there is good that comes with said technological advances) there's also great evil that comes with them. I certainly do not think that our modern day technologies should be disposed of . . . I only wish that the governments of the countries in this world would be less corrupt/more responsible and not use these technologies to spy on their citizens. They use terrorism as an excuse to do this but the real reason they do this is so they can tighten their grips on their citizens and keep them subservient.

 
Yes, of course - my concern is that now I have too many people who are otherwise in "normal" society but espousing what amounts to be the current iteration of the tinfoil hat crowd, and I have to deal with these people everyday. They think that my devices are proof positive that I'm either ignorant about privacy issues (and they think that "vigilance" is total disconnection, to the point that you can't reach them in an emergency unless you have the same resources as whoever Ethan Hunt works for) or they whip that quote from Benjamin Franklin all too quickly. When they do the latter I tell them to tell that to the crime victims or their families who had the bad guys, stolen property, or the victims tracked by all this "perpetually wired" technology infrastructure. It's so much easier for Will Smith and Gene Hackman, plus Sandra Bullock if we'd go that far, to cause fear with one movie than for all the crime shows (drama or docus) every night showing how useful technology can be.
 
Just recently I saw some kind of internet meme saying that ironically snail mail is now more secure. For the love of God, how the heck did they get to that conclusion?! Snowden comes up and now everyone seems to have forgotten they have to shred the contents of their mailbox, and depending on how accessible that box is, you wouldn't even know if one envelope was stolen already and the info on it already being used against you. Over here because of cheap labor many households have housekeepers, so the middle class can march off to work and someone at home can receive stuff like credit cards. Then I visit my brother in the US and find FedEx leaving hundreds of dollars worth of stuff on the door step when I stepped out to smoke, when I was right freakin' there watching TV in the living room the whole day waiting for that package. What if that had been a credit card or other similar info slipped into the mailbox? Any crafty locksmith can pick that before anyone walks past the crook tinkering with the box, given the population density in an American suburb.
 

  EDIT: It's just like how some people in the U.S. Government would like to ban guns. They say that this is because doing this would decrease gun killings but really it's because then the Government's control over the American people would be complete. Any government that has absolute power is absolutely corrupt. I would like to ask this question of the U.S. Government: should we ban motor vehicles as well because lots of people die from motor vehicle crashes every year?

 
That's because it's proven to be effective in the past, assuming you can actually execute it right. Hideyoshi banned movement through the social castes, then Ieyasu banned swords in the hands of anyone that isn't a samurai, as well as all guns - and since he was the Shogun, Samurai were expected to swear an oath of loyalty to the Shogun through their Daimyo's oath (any Ronin were slowly put to work under the Shogunate, or if they had been bandits, they were eventually hunted down). Japan stayed in relative peace for 300 years. I imagine that in modern society where people won't just give up rights easily, and are also not privy to a hundred years of civil war, would give up their guns - and government forcing such a measure might actually ignite civil war. Of course, it's easy to see that it also made it possible for the technolgy gap that Commodore Perry took advantage of when he sailed into Edo Bay, and at that time they haven't really figured out Vietnam and Afghanistan (Soviet and US-coalition invasions); add to that the plan for the Shogunate to get the tech and use it to take the fight to the foreigners (with the Meiji doing the same, and fanaticism being what it is, they did so with more disastrous results for all Asia).
 
Gun control is just too annoyingly extremist in my view. On one hand you have pro-big government using feminist critiques to target guns, when all their buy-back programs did was to subsidize the purchase of newer guns (sometimes I think the Democrats are the ones in the NRA's payroll) since the bad guys aren't likely to give up the main source of their livelihood (or more accurately, life in da hood). On the other hand, the pro-gun argument goes that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" ignores errors or disputes between legally "good" people - the Hatfields and McCoys weren't criminals, and all guns did was allow the feud to escalate instead of people suing and countersuing. Neither of them makes a good case about school shootings in the US vis a vis China's school stabbings. Yes, people kill people, but the problem with the pro-gun side is that they're against funding social programs that seek to minimize children's developmental exposure to risk. Contraceptives? That's sin! Feed your child? Not with my taxes! Crack ho's kid grows up a criminal - we have a God-given right to shoot that person! So why not just try to keep people from getting pregnant?! It's not like government will march into a Lexus dealership and force the owners to stop competing with the baby mills on international TV; it's just going to encourage people to remember that  if they don't have the money to buy condoms, they sure as hell can't feed children.
 

 
EDIT: Also, if the primary reason that these people wanted to ban guns was that lots of people die because of them then you'd think that they would be seeking to ban abortion because abortion claims a lot of lives as well but no they aren't.

 
See my post above regarding the problem with Democrats and Republicans going at it over gun control and abortion. It is precisely that abortion (and personally I prefer subsidized contraceptives) are not as widely in use that makes it necessary to shoot people.

 

[xnor]

What has privacy to do with evolution? Aren't you going completely off-topic?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  What has privacy to do with evolution? Aren't you going completely off-topic?

 
You're right, completely missed that. However, if his stand on the gun and abortion issues are any indication (or how Republicans are so sad about the state of privacy under Obama, when they were cheering for the Patriot Act under Bush, which is what made all this legal to begin with), it's possible someone was messing around with what he could have learned about evolution every Sunday.

 

[xnor]

  No, I do not believe that technology intervenes with the evolution of humans.

 

 

 
 
Maybe you could expand on why you think that? Clearly natural selection is one of the main (if not the main) mechanisms for evolution. Clearly technological advances, especially through science in the last couple of hundred years, have interfered with natural selection, no?

 

[paradoxper]

How does technology not intervene with the evolution of humans?
 
If you take natural selection which ensured only the fittest survived and look at our technological advances,
it's clear to see this is no longer true. Although natural selection hasn't completely been eliminated what's to come
when we're all hooked up to computers.
 
The question should be will we ever stop evolving due to technological advances intervening taking over completely..

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  How does technology not intervene with the evolution of humans?
 
If you take natural selection which ensured only the fittest survived and look at our technological advances,
it's clear to see this is no longer true. Although natural selection hasn't completely been eliminated what's to come
when we're all hooked up to computers.
 
The question should be will we ever stop evolving due to technological advances intervening taking over completely..

 
Well, to be fair about it, even without technology natural selection was kind of skewed too. Look at war for example - cowards and rats will either try to not get into war, or get into war, spread their seeds on the vanuished women, and if defeat is imminent they are the ones likely to run first. The ideal persons - if we take it to mean that not only is there a genetic basis for their choices but also that they will raise their children in ways that would likely emphasize turning them into rats as well - are more likely to charge at the front or fight a last stand. That's true even when the highest technology available was making stuff out of iron and bronze.
 
Now, however, it just gets worse. Back then Leonidas will pick 300 Spartans with sons; now, if you have enough of a brain, you'd either use condoms, or know that if you can't buy a box of condoms like you're just buying candy, you'd know you can't afford children (and really get into using them). By contrast idiotic douchebags are planting their seed everywhere and people can't get abortions easily, or these women are similarly douchey enough to live off welfare while the thinking ones have less money because they're paying taxes to feed the douchebags' babies.

 

[billybob_jcv]

Does no one see the irony of complaining about technology on a internet forum visited by thousands of people from all over the world?

You can't have it both ways - you can't believe there is a huge government conspiracy to control all human behavior AND also believe the government is full of lazy, bumbling idiots that can't find their own @ss. No one that has ever worked for or with a government organization could EVER believe our government is competent enough to form and maintain a worldwide conspiracy. Heck, our President can't even get a BJ without it becoming a CNN special.

 

[Double-A]

   
Yes, of course - my concern is that now I have too many people who are otherwise in "normal" society but espousing what amounts to be the current iteration of the tinfoil hat crowd, and I have to deal with these people everyday. They think that my devices are proof positive that I'm either ignorant about privacy issues (and they think that "vigilance" is total disconnection, to the point that you can't reach them in an emergency unless you have the same resources as whoever Ethan Hunt works for) or they whip that quote from Benjamin Franklin all too quickly. When they do the latter I tell them to tell that to the crime victims or their families who had the bad guys, stolen property, or the victims tracked by all this "perpetually wired" technology infrastructure. It's so much easier for Will Smith and Gene Hackman, plus Sandra Bullock if we'd go that far, to cause fear with one movie than for all the crime shows (drama or docus) every night showing how useful technology can be.
 
Just recently I saw some kind of internet meme saying that ironically snail mail is now more secure. For the love of God, how the heck did they get to that conclusion?! Snowden comes up and now everyone seems to have forgotten they have to shred the contents of their mailbox, and depending on how accessible that box is, you wouldn't even know if one envelope was stolen already and the info on it already being used against you. Over here because of cheap labor many households have housekeepers, so the middle class can march off to work and someone at home can receive stuff like credit cards. Then I visit my brother in the US and find FedEx leaving hundreds of dollars worth of stuff on the door step when I stepped out to smoke, when I was right freakin' there watching TV in the living room the whole day waiting for that package. What if that had been a credit card or other similar info slipped into the mailbox? Any crafty locksmith can pick that before anyone walks past the crook tinkering with the box, given the population density in an American suburb.
 
 
That's because it's proven to be effective in the past, assuming you can actually execute it right. Hideyoshi banned movement through the social castes, then Ieyasu banned swords in the hands of anyone that isn't a samurai, as well as all guns - and since he was the Shogun, Samurai were expected to swear an oath of loyalty to the Shogun through their Daimyo's oath (any Ronin were slowly put to work under the Shogunate, or if they had been bandits, they were eventually hunted down). Japan stayed in relative peace for 300 years. I imagine that in modern society where people won't just give up rights easily, and are also not privy to a hundred years of civil war, would give up their guns - and government forcing such a measure might actually ignite civil war. Of course, it's easy to see that it also made it possible for the technolgy gap that Commodore Perry took advantage of when he sailed into Edo Bay, and at that time they haven't really figured out Vietnam and Afghanistan (Soviet and US-coalition invasions); add to that the plan for the Shogunate to get the tech and use it to take the fight to the foreigners (with the Meiji doing the same, and fanaticism being what it is, they did so with more disastrous results for all Asia).
 
Gun control is just too annoyingly extremist in my view. On one hand you have pro-big government using feminist critiques to target guns, when all their buy-back programs did was to subsidize the purchase of newer guns (sometimes I think the Democrats are the ones in the NRA's payroll) since the bad guys aren't likely to give up the main source of their livelihood (or more accurately, life in da hood). On the other hand, the pro-gun argument goes that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" ignores errors or disputes between legally "good" people - the Hatfields and McCoys weren't criminals, and all guns did was allow the feud to escalate instead of people suing and countersuing. Neither of them makes a good case about school shootings in the US vis a vis China's school stabbings. Yes, people kill people, but the problem with the pro-gun side is that they're against funding social programs that seek to minimize children's developmental exposure to risk. Contraceptives? That's sin! Feed your child? Not with my taxes! Crack ho's kid grows up a criminal - we have a God-given right to shoot that person! So why not just try to keep people from getting pregnant?! It's not like government will march into a Lexus dealership and force the owners to stop competing with the baby mills on international TV; it's just going to encourage people to remember that  if they don't have the money to buy condoms, they sure as hell can't feed children.
 
 
See my post above regarding the problem with Democrats and Republicans going at it over gun control and abortion. It is precisely that abortion (and personally I prefer subsidized contraceptives) are not as widely in use that makes it necessary to shoot people.

• I am under no illusion that you are ignorant about privacy issues and I certainly do not think that vigilance is "total disconnection." The fact of the matter is: I have an email address just like everybody else, I socialize on the web just like everybody else et cetera.
• I do not consider it a bad thing when the bad guys, stolen property, victim(s) (etc.) are tracked. What I object to is my phone calls being stored and scanned for keywords especially because I've done nothing wrong.
• Enemy of the State is not responsible for my concern over this matter and like I've already acknowledged in this thread: I know how useful technology can be and I don't need crime shows to confirm this fact for me.
• I'm with you in thinking that internet meme is ridiculous and Snowden hasn't made me forget anything of the sort.
• Here is an example of a government that is more responsible than the U.S. Government when it comes to gun control. I don't think that Switzerland's gun control laws are perfect and I would still change a few things but their laws are still a heck of a lot better than America's. I do not believe it is possible to execute banning guns correctly. The fact of the matter is: if guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns. I'd like to see proof that "Japan stayed in relative peace for 300 years." Show me, from a reliable source, what percentage of Japanese citizens were murdered every year for those 300 years on average and then I'll compare that statistic to the percentage of American citizens that were murdered last year. If the percentage is the same or larger then I'm saying BS to your claim.
• I don't like your argument that is in support of abortion. I don't like it at all. Innocent babies that haven't done anything wrong in this world yet should not be killed before they are even given a chance to grow up and prove the doubters wrong and do good in this world. People should not be killed just because you think you have reason to believe that they are going to be bad seeds in the future.

 

   
You're right, completely missed that. However, if his stand on the gun and abortion issues are any indication (or how Republicans are so sad about the state of privacy under Obama, when they were cheering for the Patriot Act under Bush, which is what made all this legal to begin with), it's possible someone was messing around with what he could have learned about evolution every Sunday.

I don't agree with the Patriot Act and I don't like Bush as he's a neoconservative and, in my opinion, neocons are RINO's. You need to be careful when you make assumptions.
 

   

 

 
 
Maybe you could expand on why you think that? Clearly natural selection is one of the main (if not the main) mechanisms for evolution. Clearly technological advances, especially through science in the last couple of hundred years, have interfered with natural selection, no?

You know, I've thought more about my answer and now I'll simply say that I'm not sure whether or not technology has intervened with the evolution of humans . . . I suppose it's certainly possible.
 
 

   
Well, to be fair about it, even without technology natural selection was kind of skewed too. Look at war for example - cowards and rats will either try to not get into war, or get into war, spread their seeds on the vanuished women, and if defeat is imminent they are the ones likely to run first. The ideal persons - if we take it to mean that not only is there a genetic basis for their choices but also that they will raise their children in ways that would likely emphasize turning them into rats as well - are more likely to charge at the front or fight a last stand. That's true even when the highest technology available was making stuff out of iron and bronze.
 
Now, however, it just gets worse. Back then Leonidas will pick 300 Spartans with sons; now, if you have enough of a brain, you'd either use condoms, or know that if you can't buy a box of condoms like you're just buying candy, you'd know you can't afford children (and really get into using them). By contrast idiotic douchebags are planting their seed everywhere and people can't get abortions easily, or these women are similarly douchey enough to live off welfare while the thinking ones have less money because they're paying taxes to feed the douchebags' babies.

I agree with how you feel about people living off welfare even though we seem to disagree on most other things.

 

[paradoxper]

   
Well, to be fair about it, even without technology natural selection was kind of skewed too. Look at war for example - cowards and rats will either try to not get into war, or get into war, spread their seeds on the vanuished women, and if defeat is imminent they are the ones likely to run first. The ideal persons - if we take it to mean that not only is there a genetic basis for their choices but also that they will raise their children in ways that would likely emphasize turning them into rats as well - are more likely to charge at the front or fight a last stand. That's true even when the highest technology available was making stuff out of iron and bronze.
 
Now, however, it just gets worse. Back then Leonidas will pick 300 Spartans with sons; now, if you have enough of a brain, you'd either use condoms, or know that if you can't buy a box of condoms like you're just buying candy, you'd know you can't afford children (and really get into using them). By contrast idiotic douchebags are planting their seed everywhere and people can't get abortions easily, or these women are similarly douchey enough to live off welfare while the thinking ones have less money because they're paying taxes to feed the douchebags' babies.

 
You've lost me in how this really relates to evolution/natural selection or technology, sorry.

 

[ToddTheMetalGod]

It's impossible to avoid natural selection. If we weren't strong enough to survive, something would come along and eradicate us. Humans are alive because we can work together in large numbers and use the technology that we put our brains together to make. We're the dominant species on Earth, so we no longer have to evolve in a traditional manner, we just need to work together. Whether this is a good thing or bad, time will tell. We won't evolve anymore because we really don't need to, but that doesn't mean our genetics aren't changing.

 

[billybob_jcv]

Everything evolves - as I have said previously, it is all a matter of timescale and perspective. Evolution of a single species is often not successful - and just because you are the dominant species, that doesn't mean you are immune from evolving into an unstable state and then disappearing. Just ask the dinosaurs, or the Megalodon shark or any species that tried to cope with a changing climate. I will say again: Your timescales are WAY too short. Humans haven't been around nearly long enough to even be in the same league as some of the past dominant species on this planet. You aren't going to see human evolution - but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

   
You've lost me in how this really relates to evolution/natural selection or technology, sorry.

 
I'm saying even before all this tech natural selection was already skewed.