Re: Solar powered lasers in space

On Sep 21, 11:21 am, Ian Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 20 Sep, 22:35, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:> > I doubt that. If you are going to travel at 0.03c you want an ion

[snip] - replied to snipped material earlier...


A mirror based system has the following relation;

Pressure = 2 U / c

Where U = power per unit area, c = speed of light, Pressure = N/m2

So, 100 kg /m2 = 982 N/m2 implies U = 3e8 m/sec * 982 N/m2 / 2 = 147.3
GW/m2 - which is less than that required for the radiation pressure
mode - and actually, the radiation pressure mode above, doesn't
include the momentum that is obtained from absorbing the light energy
in the first place.. which can help or hinder the thrust effects
depending on how the cavity is arrayed relative to the energy being
beamed in.

Of course to keep temperatures under control requires VERY VERY highly
reflective mirrors. Before the invention of GBO films I would say
such things would be impossible. But the advent of GBO films that
have reflectivities in excess of aluminized coatings - suggest that
continued development along this path would allow mirrors that absorb
less than 1 part per million of the incident energy. This means that
the wings need only disappate 150 kW/m2 - which implies an operating
temp of 1,269 K - which can be sustained by known materials. So, the
ability to construct GBO type films that are 99.9999% or more
reflective - would allow the attachment of winglets that when
illuminated by very powerful laser pulses, could exert sizeable lift
on the vehicle.

1.47 GW per kg is 100x more energy per unit thrust than the 3,000 kps
LSD propulsion system. So, the energy level is 100x as great -
requiring 400 disks 6,000 km in diameter circulating above the solar
surface beaming energy continuously to spacecraft criss crossing the
solar system - at an average power of 1e22 watts !! Even at this
higher level, the sun produces 38,622x this figure!! So, we have
hardly impacted its ability even with this level of power usage.

You will have to get to that point gradually.

Depends on the details. Like I said, a factory on Earth that had a
rail gun launcher to launch thousands of 100 kg payloads each hour
that would fly to its operating altitude above the sun, joining with
others to create a huge power beaming infrastructure,we could do 1 gee
laser light wing spacecraft today - or within 3 to 5 years! and
supply all the worlds energy besides.


I think you will find that people want to live in settlements.

I think you are not familiar with the psychology, history, and
sociology of human beings.

They
try to strike a compromise between a city with its congestion and a
homestead.

Only by necessity. If you could obtain the services and benefits of a
big city like New York, without having to put up with New York - most
people would do it.

New York is where all the action is taking place.

Precisely my point.

That is basically
why people are there. In point of fact you could get rid of New York
wiithout a fantastic amount of space engineering.

You will always have places like New York. Given human sympathies we
may always have a New York! even if its an historic recreation
between Wall Street and Park Avenue! lol.

Consider an age where everyone has an O'Neill style spacecraft with
maybe 5 people on board, 2 adults and 3 kids. They travel in packs of
10 to 100 in a cluster. Each spacecraft has maybe 500 to 5000
humaniform robots. Each spacecraft also has in a box, the entire
complement of personalities of the human race - past and present. The
cluster is in direct instant communication with each other. The
cluster is also in contact through an interstellar network with every
other human settlement. So, the latest skills and personalities and
so forth - are available online - and can be made available via
humaniform robots - and avatars. So, if for example you needed a
medical treatment you would have your robo-doc software - with the
latest upgrades available. If you needed anything really, you could
make it on your own world. You could travel from cluster to cluster -
and your space colony has a number of interplanetary and interstellar
cruisers on board - piloted by robots and software... and there's
virtual reality.

Also, note that there is a difference between people who have not
reproduced yet, and those who have. That is, children have a tendency
to grow restless, break away from the group, find mates, and return to
a group once they have their own kids.

So, kids when they reach a certain age will break away from their
parents and group, and stick around communities where they can meet
others their own age. This will likely be in the guise of making it
on their own - despite the bulk of the work being done by automation,
or education, despite the availability of excellent education software
- it would likely be known though as socialization - and cross
fertilization.

This can also be done by developing terrestrial technology.

When you can fly ballistically at 1 gee to any point on Earth in 20
minutes or less (thrusting outward during the middle of the flight to
maintain altitude against centripetal force) - the Earth has in fact
become a global village. There is a strong psychological connection
between the time it takes to get somewhere and what you consider your
hometown. Wherever you can go in 40 minutes or less, you consider
your neighborhood. If it takes longer than 40 minutes, then it
becomes a bother. Longer than 2 hours and its a different place
entirely. So in the days of horse drawn carriages it took 4 hours to
go 10 miles. I live in Columbus Ohio. Within 5 miles of 'downtown'
which used to be Columbus proper, there is Clintonville, and 5 miles
beyond that Worthington. This was the day when average speed of
transit in a horse drawn carriage was 2.5 miles per hour. Today
average speed of transit by velocipede, automotive preambulator,
motorized carriage (which locals call simply 'car') - is 50 mph. So,
the same 5 miles that took 2 hours before - can be traversed in 6
minutes. The separate towns and villages surrounding Columbus, have
merged into a great metropolis, and these villages have become post
office boxes known as sub-urban areas - or 'suburbs' to the larger
city. In fact in two hour you can span over 100 miles - allowing the
City of Columbus to spread across Franklin county forming a single
integrated community. At automotive speeds the Cities of Cleveland
and Cincinatti, Wheeling and Indianapolis, are the nearby towns
today. In an age with high speed subsonic personal VTOL bizjets
capable of 500 mph - the Cities of New York, Chicago, St Louis, and so
forth, will absorb these towns.. and in an era of 50,000 mph VTOL
cruisers - just discussed - the entire Earth will psychologically
become one city - and the orbiting colonies and factories will be the
suburbs, and the moon will be a small nearby town...

One small
point. You are now inplicitly postulating VN machines. If all the work
is done by robots the colony is VN. I personally beieve O'Neill is
only credible in a Von Neumann context.

At some point we will have VN machines. Probably sooner rather than
later. The early work of Johnny vonNeumann was so successful and
suggestive of immediate progress, I wonder if this isn't being
supressed along with some of his other stuff related to secret codes.


How long should we wait. Go now for energy - quite right. VN is at the
end of the road, it has to be.

But we can do a lot in space in the interim. Beam energy from the sun
to provide Earth's energy and provide advanced transportation
technology (light-wing VTOL super-ballistic transport in every
garage) Survey all the small bodies in the solar system. Use the
laser capacity near the sun to capture the richest of these to bring
into MEO. Use the same factories and launchers to put remotely
controlled robots that are shot into space to operate by remote
control within MEO - hire the 1.6 billion unemployed in the world, and
pay them with output from the factory,sell the excess, and keep the
profit.

This might change even as well, if humaniform robots can take on super
accurate human sexual characteristics. That way sexually active teens
and young adults could interact sexually with a small group of
sexually compatible humaniform robots - selected from the entire
population of humans who ever were recorded - and have trysts with
them. This would work best if one could construct a virtual reality
world - simlilar to Star Trek's holodeck - where one could interact
with 'the world' - a virtual community consisting of the sum total of
human beings operating real time in a super computer virtual reality.
This would have the great advantage in that sexually maturing adults
could safely and completely sample a wide range of human cultures and
extract from the virtual world, personalities that suited them. In
the end, mating could be carried out by exchanging genetic materials -
or in more advanced form - exchanging genetic information with 'the
world'

If done properly this would lead to a vitilization of the remote
community - and the full participation of every human in the larger
community of man.

Ditto on terrestrial possibilities.

But that's not needed! There are 3.4 billion men and 3.4 billion
women within 1/7 light second of one another. Its a total waste of
energy to build sexual analogues of them when you can go meet them in
person! Better to spend money to make food production and
distribution more efficient.


Somewhere there is a compromise that suits the majority of
people.

This is only by necessity of our limited technology involving
primitive forms of communication, transportation and production.

I am not so sure. The question I am asking is why do business
executives keep travelling to meetings which are completely
unecessary, even with present day technology.

Because of our primitive forms of communication. I mean, Bill Deming
demonstrated the importance of gathering quality data during the 1940s
and integrated into production systems that made weapons and so forth
- to solve quality problems with weapons. The Japanese adopted these
techniques across their industry - and the resulting improvements in
quality, volume, and cost allowed them to make very sophisticated
products (automobiles, consumer electronics) very competitively with
established manufacturers, by the 1960s they were making inroads in
the US and Europe, and around the world, by the 1980s, US and other
manufacturers began adopting some of the techniques, it wasn't until
2000 that most manufacturers were ISO 9000 compliant - and this is but
ONE detail where science has impacted manufacturing. There a whole
host of findings that are gathering dust, vonNeumann didn't just
postulate and do work on SR machines, he built prototypes! and its
been a dead letter. Norbert Weiner, Ken Arrow, Wassily Leonteiff,
have huge bodies of work - just to name a few - with Buckminster
Fuller acting as cheerleader. But all these folks worked in the
1950s. With the exception of Eric Drexler, I haven't seen any follow
up on any of this. And these fols suggest small steps to improve the
efficiency and quality and cost of our productive systems across the
board using cybernetics and advanced math.. haha.. but folks haven't
adopted it. Or have been slow to adopt it. I will say retailers have
adopted retail automation - this is something I had a small part in.
But this is just the smallest drop in a rather large bucket that if we
tapped into it, we could transform life on Earth today without VN
machines - by understanding adopting and adding to the bodies of work
that lie dormant in our collective abilities.


If the lifespan of people radically increased, if people
started having "second families" you might have more of a case.

I have a case based on the fact that humans throughout most of their
history lived in small bands of nomadic people who subsisted in the
environment without outside assistance. Sociologically we are set up
to operate that way. We adapt to the 'pressures' of civilization
because of the huge benefits it confers each of us. The reason modern
society accentuates sexuality and sexual adventure is because its one
of the few hooks that society has for promoting super sociable
behavior. Folks who have a satisfactory sexual coupling and are
happily building a life together are viewed in modern culture as a
nearly unattainable goal, rather than as a normal maturation process
once we are somewhat past our teen years. That's because folks in
this idyllic situation become much less controllable and tend to go
their own way.

I presume that such demands for social control will be removed in the
not too distant future and we will operate once again in a saner age
where such large scale socialization is not needed.

We are basically designed for a hunter gatherer existence. Tis is
perfectly true. Hunter/gatherer bands were (probably) round about
50-100. With that number of people objectives are fairly well agreed.

Correct. One interesting possibility in the near future, if everyone
has access to ballistic transport and the internet, folks can organize
along lines that are most productive and complementary - rather than
geographically.


The
case, as I see it at the moment, is for a solar powered Earth with a
population of 9 billion. Space based solar power may quite possibly be
the answer.

I agree. I am working on low-cost terrestrial solar and I'm exploring
the potential of augmenting that with space based power in the next 5
to 7 years. Beyond that, developing what I call reforming satellites
that redirect laser energy - and then sun centered powersats within
the next 15 to 20 years.

One of the facts about human habitation is that 90% of the worlds
population lives on 10% of the surface. If you do have abundant solar
power, one of the things that could be done is to desalinate and make
the desert fertiile. People who are not space enthusiasts will ask the
following questions.

1) Lots of people live in the so called Sahel region of scrubland
which is on the southern fringe of the Sahara. Can this area be made
reliably fertile?

Yes. Thin film low cost inflatable structures that have well defined
optical properties can be made into low cost habitats, and low cost
green houses. Combined with desalinated seawater available at low
cost -large areas can be irrigated without the problem of evaporation
and degradation of the soil. Aeroponics is also promising in this
context.

2) Could cities be constructed in air conditioned domes, again in the
Sahara?

Yes, with adequate power from space. These might be considered
elementary tests that must be solved before building habitats off-
world.

These are all arguments which will be raised by the skeptics. I don't
think there will be any skepticism about energy. I don't think
colonization will be a stated goal for a long time.

Well you disagree with what Werner vonBraun said in The New Horizons
study done for the US in secret following World War 2. VonBraun said
we could have begun colonization of the moon in 1948 and urged the US
to take the leadership position. The work was classified for a number
of years, and his advice ignored until Sputnik.

Fact is, we could start to colonize the inner planets and the moon and
cislunar space today if we had the will to do it.




NASA has already been sold on the idea. It has produced the report. It
is putting quite a bit of effort in.

They will get money to look for possible collisions and do lab work to
develop possible solutions. They will write reports, and it will go
away. But unless a collision is immenent they will not build anything
of substance.

However, the same data in the hands of a commercial developer could
garner significant money today.

Consider that the US government - the world's richest government -
will spend $2.9 trillion in 2008 - which is a large segment of the $12
trillion US economy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_federal_budget

But consider now that the global economy produces $65 trillion and
that 9.5 million high-net-worth people have a nest egg totalling $32
trillion. Most of this is liquid - and looking for reasonable
investments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_wealth_report

If a group of scientists along with a number of high-tech vendors got
together and made a reasonable plea for a high-tech investment along
the lines we're describing -with some sort of immediate payoff
(marketable security worth a goodly fraction of the present value of
the future income) - you might be able to garner $3 trillion to $4
trillion very quickly!! And do significant things again very quickly
- without a lot of the politics.

If you can get onto a downward spiral of costs then things will indeed
happen quickly.

Yes. This is achieved by choosing a valid metric of measurement -
continually reviewing it - and then investing in improving it. We
cannot expect progress in any endeavour until all of these steps are
carried out. Once they are we can expect exponential improvements in
cost in very short times.

Consider that between 1948 and 1968 we went from the V2 to Saturn V
moonrocket. If our goals were directed a little more rationally, and
LBJ hadn't cut back on nuclear propulsion systems, we could easily
have had some of Philip Bono's NOVA rocket, a Saturn with a nuclear
upper stage, or even Kraft Erikhe's nuclear cruiser to colonize
mars.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/heliosa.htm

Basically if you take an outsized Atlas type rocket, that burns
hydrogen and oxygen, put a nuclear thermal sustainer on it, and two
lox/hydrogen engines on the outside, you have a dandy 1 stage rocket
that can take off from Earth, the LOX tanks and sustainers form liquid
boosters that fall off and glide back to the launch center.

The hydrogen fueled sustainer operating at 1,200 sec Isp - blasts the
payload into a Mars trajectory - with sufficient propellant to execute
a soft landing on Mars after an aerobrake entry.

Refueling on Mars from local water found there - and decomposed using
a space power version of the nuclear thermal core (built around the
nuclear core of aircraft carriers and nuclear sub power plants being
built at that time) - the vehicle is refueled and takes off from mars
without the boosters (because mars is 1/3 gravity) - and flies back
to Earth, aerobraking here to re-enter and then land - to be fully
reused.

This mars cruiser was designed and could have been built at the same
time the SR-71 was designed and built - 1957. WE CHOSE NOT TO. Using
the same nuclear technology that gave us the nuclear jet cruise
missile (secret) the nuclear sub, the nuclear powered aircraft carrier
and the nuclear airplane.


In terms of politics I think that one significant
factor may well be "What is the smallest quantum of money which will
start the ball rolling.. You can get significant amounts of solar
energy with a fairly large collection area fairly simply. To have a
cheap space launch based on lasers requires another stage.

Well, I've designed very low cost solar panels. And I've incorporated
them into solar synfuel process to create tremendous value. Once
that value is realized, additional facilities will be built.
Additional profits will be earned. And there will exist many large
central solar collector sites that can be improved by simple space
laser. So, I can see things moving rather easily from where I am
today, to where things can be tomorrow.

Once you successfully delivered on the promises made on the first go
round - you'd find another $8 trillion to $10 trillion available...

At that point -supposing you'd provide a 30% or more ROI - the whole
project becomes self funding. You'd get a bubble - but it would be
supported by increased outputs and so forth. In all, you'd kick up
the global economy from 4% per annum to something like 14% per annum -
which would support your growth.

That is, success would be self- propelled after the first and second
go round. In short, you'd be bankable.. and you'd have access to the
world's banking assets at that point - and after that, access to your
own self generated revenue stream. This is the benefit of profits.
You can use them to sustain growth, while throwing off payments to
those who took the early risk.

I profoundly disagree.

You are profoundly wrong.

We have indeed been lied to about Iraq,

That's one type of lie. There are others. For example, that smoking
cigarettes will make you sexy. Or that drinking to excess will make
you happy. Or that spending in excess will make you successful.

These lies benefit those who tell them, at the expense of those who
believe them.

Cigarette advertising has now been banned.

On television here in the US. It still exists in other forms. And
the thoughts exist and are repeated even without the ads. Look at the
advertising budgets of the cigarette companies. The product
placements in movies as well as people on the street handing out
cigarettes to every adult passerby. Go to a nation that doesn't have
such bans and you can see the impact.

but let
us remember this. It is the Iraqis and not the Americans that have
produced 4 million odd refugees. 2 million within Iraq and 2 million
is surrounding countries. I shall be going on a tour of Syria late on
the October. There are 1m Iraqis there.

America created the concept of the rouge state shortly after opec
flexed its muscle over oil supplies. This after the US oil production
reached its peak and entered secondary production. The US knew that
it only had 40 to 50 years before the world's oil production reached
its peak as well. (this is quite different than the the world running
out of oil - which won't happen for 200 years or more) - which is now
only 10 years away. The market is already adjusting to the changing
value of oil - increasing the price from $10 per barrel in the 1980s
to over $60 per barrel today.

All rogue states were oil rich countries - and together they comprised
50% of the world's oil reserves.

N Korea is a rogue, but is not rich. I will agree some of the Middle
Eastern rogues are rich.

Is the average Libyan rich? the average Iraqi? the average Iranian?
I don't think so. They have oil and that's it. By not trading with
them that oil is placed in storage - and the remaining oil is
overdeveloped to take up the slack. When the produced oil runs out,
the oil in storage can be brought on line - and overdeveloped as
well. This is a way of producing an extended period of stable prices
for the US. The US can afford to pay high prices moreso than any
other nation. This policy creates an extended period of stable
moderately high price oil that is very beneficial to the US.


The US had plans to put these
reserves in storage - and let the others use their oil profits to
expand output above that which oil companies would have deemed prudent
in a world where ALL producers were competing in the market - this had
the impact of moderating the price of oil - at the expense of those
who were nominally benefitting - by accelerating their usage of oil.
This benefitted the US by stabilizing prices at around $12 per barrel
- 6x the price enjoyed by the consumer when the US had excess capacity
(oil was $2 per barrel before 1970s shortages). Now, when Saudi
Arabia, Indonesia, and other major OPEC members are entering secondary
production - the US finds reason to institute regime change in these
former rogue regimes - and bring them online.

I would like references to this. The problem I have always had with
linking US foeign policy to oil is that spending money on defense is
simply not a cost effective way of obtaining oil.

We obtain the oil by buying it always. Taking it off the market and
putting it on the market adjusts supplies, which given the demand,
adjusts the price. It takes very little or no money at all to say -
hey, we're not going to trade with these guys - and don't you trade
with them either. How much did it cost to find out that Libya was a
rogue state? Nothing.

look at figure 2 in this report

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html

Look at the exponential increase through 1970... that's greater than
5% growth btw. It was this strong global economic growth since the
1950s that led to so many rosy scenarios about a wonderful future!
haha.. anyway (sigh) continue that 7% annual growth rate forward -
on top of 1973 - and you'll see you'll reach the peak that is coming
now in 2026 - by 1986 -

Without the oil crisis we would already be in secondary production.
And what moderate that output? Why did we meander along the
horizontal and not have strong growth for 30 years? Because SUPPLY
was removed from the market.


Far better to spend
your money on nuclear power (peaceful), terrestrial solar power, more
exploration if not space lasers.

Agreed. If you don't step on the toes of special interests who have
invested heavily in acquiring control of reserves. They want to make
sure that the reserves are fully used, and of course get as much
profit as possible from those reserves. This was the view of the
business community in 1950s. Soon science would make nuclear power
too cheap to meter and the age of oil would be gone. This was
derailed at that time. Very similar to the tension between the
electric light and gas lamp in the 1880s. But instead of the new
technology winning out. The old technology won out. Then, in 1964
LBJ aske Brookhaven National Labs to conduct a study to resolve the
looming energy shortages. We KNEW that by 1970 the US would be
entering secondary oil production. BNL came back with a plan. Direct
thermochemical decomposition of water into hydrogen and use the
hydrogen directly or in synfuels by upgrading low grade carbons. LBJ
got bogged down in Vietnam, did not run for re-election and his Great
Society program along with this little piece, was scrapped by Nixon.
The shortages came, the economy went in the dumper, the US went off
the gold standard, OPEC flexed its muscle. There was increased unrest
in the Middle East. The US stop trading with half the reserves and
got everyone else to stop trading too. This created a period of no
growth - but a period where US was in charge of everything. No major
money was spent. People wanted the growth back, an wanted things like
they were in 1960s. Carter came to office - a nuclear engineer -
promising to do something about energy. Before he could turn around
TMI happened and he was urged to drop all references to nuclear power
in his plan. The US spent more money on energy research than in going
to the moon and never produced one damn thing that challenged big
oil. This despite all the expert opinion and all the studies done up
to that time. NONE of the programs that were suggested by the nuclear
industry were adopted. Nothing nuclear came out of the research.
Which brings us to our present situation. Now the hard stop - or real
end of oil on a global scale - will happen in 2026 - and the DOE has
rediscovered the 1964 BNL study and proposed a GEN 4 nuclear program
which is basically that program - to start in 2030. Why 2030? That's
when oil prices will start to falter due to economic depression. The
oil companies have successfully executed their end game - at great
cost to everyone else. .

Did we use up all the stones before we ended the stone age? no. Did
we burn all the trees before we switched to coal? no. Did we burn
all the coal before we switched to oil? no. Did we burn all the oil
before we switched to space power or nuclear power? yes.

Its not a matter of technology. Its a matter of politics and lack of
true concerned leadership.

Clearly this long term policy was planned - there are even papers
available from US state department and others. Plainly it was a way
to moderate the supply of oil in a way the benefitted the US relative
to all other players in the market. Obviously this is our primary
motivation. Just compare our attitudes of WMD in Iraq and need to
invade Iran because of a nuclear power program versus our continuing
lack of interest in Pakistani nuclear weapons - which already exist,
and the nuclear program of North Korea (which was of no real interest
until the North shot off a rocket capable of reaching US homeland)

The one reason for attacking Iran is failure in Iraq.

You are looking at the tactical situation we face today and ignoring
the strategic discussion I am trying to have with you.

The fact is that
when the US withdraws Iran will take over the country, either in terms
of a more of less client state (which I think they would prefer) or as
an organic part of a united Persia.

So what? Iran was trying to take over the country when Saddam ran
it? Syria won't sit still and neither will Saudi Arabia. Turkey and
the Kurds will have a say too. So what? That oil means nothing if
we switch to another source. And that only matters to the oil
companies. That's all I'm saying.

Pick up a book on the Ottoman Empire and read it. You might also want
to read the first chapter of THE COMING WAR WITH JAPAN by Merideth and
Lebar I think. Great stuff. Talks about what the US has done to
maintain its strategic position in the world, and suggests what it
might do in the future. Which is not to put the US down. If the US
weren't number one - someone else would be, and things would likely be
far worse than they are.

But at some point, the US has to have an end game. At some point the
entire Earth will be politically integrated and peaceful. JFK wanted
to start down that path in 1960. Switch to nuclear power from oil.
Switch from a nuclear competition of the cold war to a space race.
Use our intelligence community to inspire peace and cooperation rather
than seek advantage in pointless competition. JFK lost. Nixon/
Eisenhower won. The economic collapse of the United States in 1975 -
including our failure in Vietnam is the result.

I hold no brief for Bush, it is all his handiwork,

Bush, like any President is doing his best for America and all
Americans. America elected him. He truly believed we would be
greeted as liberators. We were not. He had no game plan for if he
was wrong. Now he's stuck and he's reviled. This really is
incidental to our long-term strategy. If in the summer of 2004 a
great peace settled over Iraq, and a free Iraq inspired Iran to throw
off the yoke of their ultra-religious zealots and embrace freedom -
and both nations were pumping tons of oil into the world market - and
oil was $22 per barrel - and this made it so that Putin would have to
kiss the West's ass for money - Bush would be hailed as a great genius
and liberator and would be given the Nobel prize by the Europeans as a
means to apologize for not helping him.

BTW - The current plans for Iran include "letting the anthill sort
itself out at the end of the strikes". Quite clearly nothing to the US
liking will emerge. There is even the possibility of an intervention
by a third country. Possibly Putin under the unberella of the Central
Asian Federation.

Yes. The chinese are already building an oil pipeline into the
region. This is bad for the US, but not bad for the oil companies
that supply the US. China will have access to low cost energy. The
US will have access to low cost chinese labor. The US will pay more
to the oil companies for the reserves they DO control (they just
signed some deals with Libya) - and they'll get top dollar for those
by the time the US does what it should have done 45 years ago.

That is, the reasons for going in don't matter as much as what is
achieved after we got in.

The question we should be asking is why we weren't greeted as
liberators? And what would it have taken for that to happen?

9/11 can be called an intelligence failure. I think the week after
the Iraqi people pulled down statues of Saddam, there was a similar
intelligence failure - they hadn't prepared the ground for victory, or
given sufficient thought to how to handle the various factions and
bring in their neighbors in a positive way.

Of course in retrospect, Bush lost New Orleans to Katrina largely due
to his inattention to details - so, getting the details wrong isn't
surprising.

I believe that a better President who paid attention to the details
that mattered - COULD have affected a regime change and gotten out
with the oil flowing. Those details may involve some culpability.
Halliburton, and others close to the VP may be involved. Their greed
may have alienated stakeholders in the Iraqi population who needed
consideration to make a peaceful outcome possible. If so, this needs
to be revealed and corrective action taken.

Ditto for Afghanistan, although its not so important to American
interest as an oil rich state, but Afghanistan is important to long
term relations with the muslim world. The fact that a gas pipeline
from Russia to the Indian ocean got built while heroin still flows
unaffected - is only one indicator that we are not doing all we can
for American interests in the muslim world - but we are here caving in
to powerful special interests in America under the guise of serving
America.

History is what actually happenned, not what might have happenned.

That's a ludicrously stupid statement. History isn't just what's
written in the press releases of the White House. Its what's written
in the secret documents, private agreements, and actions of otehrs as
well.

Knowing WHY history happened the way it did is important - and to
understand that, you need to look at the strategic thinking that
informed those decisions and what opportunities they had at that
time. Why don't we do all we can to stop heroin production in
Afghanistan? No one has an answer for that. Why doesn't anyone in
the news media Fox or CNN ask this question? No one has an answer for
that either.


One
thing that someone looking into America from the outside, I am in fact
British, finds hard to appreciate is the fact that America wins large
numbers of Nobel prizes, but has repeated intelligence failures in the
area of public policy. The official CIA report on 9/11 shows almost
criminal negligence - not to mention of course the initial error of
supporting OBL in the first place (that is when he was fighting Soviet
forces).

Agreed. And what's more, Americans for a New Century met in DC in
2000 and concluded that they needed a Pearl Harbor type event to
galvanize public opinion behind their goals of US dominance through
direct military intervention. Also, the folks that were responsible
for the FIRST attack on the WTC were largely apprehended, but some got
away. And those that did were being tracked and monitored by the
FBI. But, when they came back into the US, the US lost track of
them. No explanation. And those guys were on the flights that
crashed into the WTC.

Meanwhile, rather than address these serious questions, you have crazy
folks marginalizing this whole avenue of discussion by saying bombs
were put in the WTC by US intelligence community and so forth.

getting rid of
Saddam Hussein opened up Pandora's box.

Nearly all muslims in Iraq hated Saddam. More than they hated each
other. This was the fundamental reason Bush felt we would be greeted
as liberators. And he was in the main right. But details count, and
he got the details wrong - if he even knew of them in the first
place. The intelligence community needed to get their act in gear and
really get the details right. Like I said, getting rid of Saddam
could have inured to our benefit. WE let things get out of control
because details were not attended to. That was too bad for us.

However it does rather rubbish
the Rousseau theory.

Not at all. If New York City were under the dictatorial control of a
single person who raped them financially, someone who knocked that guy
out would be greeted as a hero - depending on what happens after!!!
We did a lot of things wrong after - bowing to field commanders and
others with short term tactical goals - at the expense of long term
strategic goals. There are lots of different factions who live in New
York and they don't all like one another. If they were set at each
others throats for 20 years to empower a dictator - and then that
dictator fell. There would be a day or two of celebration - but
without strong police, fire, and public services, without immediate
economic benefits - no matter how slight - flowing from the liberation
- without identifying and eliminating individuals who form the centers
of resistance before the liberation fight is started - New York would
quickly fall into turmoil.

It has nothing to do with Rousseau or the propensity of New Yorkers
toward violence. It has everything to do with going into something
without getting all the details right. I mean, a surgeon can say you
need to have an open heart surgery to clear a blocked artery and tell
you all the benefits that will have for you. But if the surgeon gets
one little thing wrong - you're dead. So, there's a lot of planning
and a lot of training and a lot of thought going into your surgery
before he starts cutting. If the surgeon tells you you have a blocked
artery and you don't, and then doesn't pay attention to some detail -
ordering nurses from the OR who bother him with those details - and
you die as a result - are you going to believe the surgeon that says,
well I tried, some people don't make it, he had a weak heart! no -
you'd sue his ass for negligence. But before you did that you'd
collect the evidence. You'd get the video of the OR, you'd get
testimony from dismissed nurses, and so forth. Of course if the
surgeon also works for the courts, he might supress certain evidence
and deny access to certain people and information - and all the while
question your family who was trying to cash in on the death of their
father/husband - would you side with the surgeon?

Being a surgeon is tough. Being a president is tough. But we need to
think clearly about what's going on and do what's appropriate given
our situation and opportunities at this time. I think a new president
can work with the UN to increase their level of involvement - while
reducing US involvement - and attempt to try again being greeted as
liberators. That is, we don't want to encourage those who think that
by bombing Americans they can get them to leave. This will encourage
extremists to bomb Americans at home. As many military folks warned -
America doesn't have the resources to have a war in Iraq, a war in
Afghanistan and meet our global military commitments - so, we need the
UN before we go in. So, lets go get UN support like we did in Bosnia
and the first Gulf War. And then leave it to them - but getting the
details of the hand off right - so that THEY are greeted as
liberators. See?

But fortunately, I don't have to solve this problem - and so, it
doesn't matter if I'm right or not. But this is my thought on the
subject.

My thoughts are different. Dictatorship arises when democracy fails to
answer the problems of a society.

Dictatorships arises for the same reason religions arise and for the
same reason any form of government arises - people have an irrational
relationship to their own power and irrationally give power to father
figures. This has been discussed at length by Freud and Miller.

Islamic society contains one major
contradiction.

Just one? haha.. All religions have multiple contradictions stemming
from poor child rearing. Emotional needs that are not addressed in
childhood, continue buried in the concious of the adult. Sort of like
a mental club foot arising from poorly fitted shoes. So they have a
mental limp! Its easy for bullies to push them over. Same here. The
forms of government that humans adopt have far more similarities than
differences. Those similarities stem not from any rational cybernetic
need - but from irrational emotional needs. Those needs are not
present in properly raise children, or adults who have successfully
completed a valid course of therapy. Those sane individuals are by
far a very minute minority in the population.


Islam sees the spiritual and secular rulers to be one
and the same.

If God exists then every individual is created by God and has a
capacity for direct personal revelation and direct contact with their
creator. According to those who have had such revelantions such
contact is natural and a source of great joy and great wisdom and
peace that surpasses understanding.

Religions exist to extract temporal power from people by removing the
individual from his or her natural connection with the divine and
substituting a connection with the religious institution. This is the
worst form of blasphemy. Religions are successful at this with people
who as children suffered certain types of mental and physical abuse as
outlined by Miller and others. Religions also promote rules related
to free sexual expression and child rearing that promote the very
abuse that makes it easy for them to retain their power through the
generations. Religions also align themselves with other temporal
powers to maintain their power and control as well.

The Islamic religion is not unique. It shares many features with all
other powerful religions in the world.

Modern psychotherapy and many aspects of the self-help movements -
stand in stark contrast to these traditional forms of religion.

As Echart Tolle has said, its all madness, and you can say nothing
about it other than that it is mad. To say any more is to be drawn
into the madness. It will collapse in time, and in time, the peace
and the joy and the wisdom that life offers each individual from
within - will be expressed.



This is one factor that generates tension perhaps more
than any other.

As children we have a great joy in life and look toward the future
with great hope. That hope is destroyed by our parents. We can't be
the cowboy or the astronaut we always wanted to be. We must be
realistic. But joy in another guise persists. Well, I can have love
- if I can find a good mate and raise a family - this becomes a source
of hope until about the ages of 40 to 60 - and by then, you give up
and become bitter. Until you turn inward to the small still voice
that has beenthere all along. Then you realize its all bull***. But
then, you're an old fart and no one listens. haha.. But it doesn't
matter.

But I can see that in the better schools around the world and better
homes - better meaning the parents are knowledgeable not necessarily
rich or powerful - a growing trend toward encouraging children to tend
to their inner vision and inner voice - and to retain the joy and
convert that hope to courage and certainty - and grow to be awesome
awesome adults that will transform the world... and all our little
*** we did before.

Get past personalities and so forth and look at the facts.

In fact I would put things the other way round.
Governments in fact reflect the prejudices of their populations.

There is an interaction. Despite what we tell ourselves markets and
governments are incapable of doing what we expect of them. This is a
scientific fact. Arrow proved it. There is not good solution - and
this knowledge is used by specialists to expand the control of
specialists at great cost to everyone else.

That is, people make irrational choices collectively that they
wouldn't make individually and so often they make collective choices
that are not in their own interest. Condorcet first noted that cycles
of voting can occur over long periods. Arrow explained in detail why
in the 1950s. Rather than correct this shortcoming, specialists have
exploited this shortcoming to manage political processes. Where
applicable, and to a lesser extent, the narrow shortcomings of the
market due to this are exploited by marketers to increase profits.
But the major unraveling of government began in earnest in the 1950s
and have accelerated ever since. The military's failure in Vietnam to
win the hearts and minds of the American public, has highlighted the
importance of infowar to modern warfare. So, this hasn't helped
candid public discourse either - and a possible return to
representative government.

Hearts and minds have not been won in the Iraq war either.

They could have up to about 2 days after the statues were pulled
down. But asking the man who lost New Orleans to plan for the post
invasion strategy is asking a bit much. But like I said, this oil is
going to China, and Libyan oil is going to the US, and by 2026 - the
oil companies will have played their end game.

This last
paragraph is a little bit contradictory. The military has tries to win
hearts and miinds, but has failed.

The military must rely on their commander and chief to create a
strategy with the expertise he can draw on, central intelligence,
state, others who advise the White House - to come up with a workable
strategy. To throw it on the field commanders or generals even, and
then say they failed is to do them a disservice.

It's knowledge is clearly
incomplete, its control of the sources of information incomplete.

Yes. What is reported on CNN is self-consistent. But is incomplete.
Fact is, there is a lot more opportunity for action than you recount
here. Fact is,these were ignored. Fact is, Bush had no idea how to
handle post invasion.. Fact is he had no idea because he gave it no
thought - had he given it some thought and authorized action on it -
he would have had a workable plan. But that didn't happen. Fact is,
the President is responsible for this failure and he has not stood up
and taken full responsibility for it.

You know my perennial hobbyhorse AI. Now in the future television
programs are going to be sent to us via the Internet. Google is going
to control our hearts and minds.

This proceeds from the false assumption that people are merely robots
that respond to inputs. Fact is, we have the capacity to create our
own ideas and follow through on them - stemming from deep seated
desires.

Now Google is in fact international.
I have talked about Radio Reloj (which in fact is the name of a radio
station in Cuba) in the context of SETI. Sync pulses can be obseved
tens of parsecs away.

You are making non-sequitor statements.. this makes no sense in the
context of what we were discussing.

Quite clearly the demise of Radio Reloj will have a lot to say about
how we perceive the word. We have to be certain that AI provides a
neutral picture. So far Google seems to be doing.

You are not making any sense at all. I thought you meant AI =
Artificial Intelligence. I know what Google is. I don't no what
Radio Reloj is. But if you think that by listening to a media source
you can change life experience in any tangible way you are mistaken.

There
was anti semitism in Germany after WW1. Hitler did not create it. He
expoited it in an extremely cynical way, but it was there all the
time.

Anti-semitism still exists. But there is an interaction. Governments
can serve as a bulwark against irrationality, or they can catalyze
irrationality. In the modern age of the rise of special interests at
the expense of society at large, irrationality has increased. It is
easy to see in our erstwhile enemies. Harder to see in ourselves.

Absolutely right.

I was absolutely aghast when Einar, I think i was, suggested that
religious groups should set up colonies in space. She should go with
me to Syria and continue to the Iraqi border.

Religious practice has devolved as well as political practice into the
irrational. Many modern scientific minds believe religion to be akin
to noise or the definition of irrationality.

They ignore that there is a mysterium tremendum - as Freud called it -
that is an integral part to the human experience and part of being
human. It is often the most cherished aspect of being alive.

I think we should distinguish between religion and belief in God.

I think you need to distinguish between belief in something and the
direct experience of that thing.

Science is neutral about belief in God as such.

Science is a greek word for knowledge. The scientific method arose
around the 13th century when a group of priests had an argument over
the meaning of the Word of God as passed down to them through Text.
They hit on the idea that God create nature and if there was a
reliable way to read Nature, then we could understand God that way,
without worrying about the truth or untruth of this or that word. To
distinguish this form of knowledge, derived directly from the natural
world, these folks called the results of their method after the Greek
word for knowledge, Science - and the method the Scientific Method.

From that time to this Science has accumulated in its power and its
capacity in human affairs. Religions based on interpretations of
ancient texts have not. No system of government has accumulated power
except by abrogating to itself the results of Science. An approach to
examining the human mind has only been developed in the last century
by Freud. In the past decade a few brain chemistry researchers and
therapists have suggested using DMT in a controlled setting to bring
about religious insights to people who seek them and have prepared
themselves for them.


As far as orgainized
religion is concerned the difficulty I have with it is the intolerance
it shows.

Any temporal power must explain its shortcomings to the faithful.
Since religious organizations exist only to perpetuate their temporal
power, they create stories that explain their shortcomings in a way
that expands their power. This leads naturally to stories where they
and the faithful are blameless, while others who are not part of the
faithful are to blame for any and all shortcomings.

There are a lot of religions saying contradictory things.

Because things are said to take advantage of the irrational feelings
people have and need not be logical or consistent - the only
requirement is that the faithful are filled with shame remorse and
self-loathing, and at the same time hope for the future, by
surrendering themselves to the authorities and through promises to
come to understand and adhere more closely to authorities in the
future.

Now, this is distinctly different than surrender to God, or to the joy
and hope within that sees shame remorse and self hatred as a form of
madness.

They can't all be right.

None of them are,

Either one of them is right or they are all
wrong.

They are all mad. Various individuals certainly had a direct
revelation of the divine at some time in the past. And some of them
were able to organize followers and some sort of institution to pass
on the wisdom of the individual. Those institutions responding to the
pressures that temporal power exerts, chose temporal power over the
divine message. In fact, the message was edited and reformed many
times to meet the needs of this or that dictator. Look at what
Constantine did to the Gnostics! It happens in all religions. So, I
feel quite confident in saying they are all mad. When you have
churches urging young men to go to war in the US, or when you have
mosques recruiting young women to blow themselves up in crowded places
- is one very different from another? no. they're all mad and have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Organized religion claims to have a red phone - dial "A" for
Allah. He does not seem to have taught them how to live in peace.

Peace can only come about by loving yourself and honoring the voice
within and knowing that nothing at all can threaten what is and that
what is is perfect. Religions seek to undermine this 'oceanic
feeling' and create generation after generation of people that die
bitter and frustrated.

Younger folks may feel it when they fall in love - or when they give
birth, or raise children.

One in three astronauts who went to the moon had profoundly moving
experiences due to their journey. Some sought psychiatric care,
others started new age type movements, still others entered religious
orders.

Such feelings are also common - though less frequently - among
survivors of great tragedies or great battles.

Others seek such 'oceanic' feelings by imbibing mind altering drugs,
or engaging in a variety of self-hypnotic practices, or religious
practices or retreats.

It is very likely that anyone who lives aboard a spacecraft that
leaves Earth and is transported across the solar system would have a
large percentage of their population transformed in a religious sense
by the experience.

A genuine religious experience?

It doesn't take much. Given that God created you and is still in
contact with you. But religions would have you think its the most
difficult thing. Or make you feel guilty if you think you had one.
Or demonize you if you stuck to your guns. Otherwise, they'd lose all
authority relatively quickly.

Possibly, but organized religion is
not about religious experience.

Interesting that you say that. That's the problem.

On the personal level. People are drawn to religions because they are
seeking something that is missing in their lives. Maybe they suffered
a loss of a loved one. Maybe a financial reversal. Maybe they're
battling alcohol or drug addiction. Maybe they're doing well in every
part of their life, but feel empty anyway. They are seeking a
connection with the divine. they are seeking a religious experience.
And the religion is telling them they have the answer. they know the
way. they know the truth. And people surrender to the religion and
adopt its precepts and they're stuck since the religion doesn't offer
the experience they seek - merely exploits their need for it.

On the theoretical level. Religions have a book, writings of holy men
and women. These people are holy because they have been transformed
by their religious experience. These people started out quite
modestly. They had an insight an experience. They shared it. It got
recorded. And a religion began.

It is about in groups and out groups.
I will kill you if you don't say your prayers as I say them.

It depends what sort of stresses exist within the religious
community. Certainly, if the religion feels threatened by the
faithful blaming them for their discontents, they crack down on the
faithful and cast blame on to the non-faithful. If the religion feels
powerful and discontent doesn't exist among the faithful, then the
religion can take responsibility for the good feeling and generally
they laugh at others misfortunes blaming their lack of faith for that.

Religious
experience on the other hand tends to be "Buddhist" in a very broad
sense, and spans the different traditions.

Buddha said talking about religious experiences is like a finger
pointing at the moon. If you have a dog, and you point at something,
the dog looks at your finger. Because dogs aren't that abstract in
their thinking. haha.. But a religious experience is not based on
words, or logic even. So, this is where the religions get into
trouble right at the outset. Words can only point at what is
important - what is important cannot be expressed in a word. So
they're only approximations to the truth. They're never the whole
truth. But there are Christian retreats designed to invoke a direct
connection through Christ. There are Muslim activities directed toward
having a direct revelation. These are highly controlled and anyone
not following the party line can quickly get into trouble. For
example, there was a Muslim leader who organized the destruction of a
Buddhist icon in Afghanistan about 10 years ago. They got together
and prayed and then went about destroying one of the largest buddah's
in existence. As he clambered to the top of the statue and started
breaking it apart with a sledge hammer - he had a revelation. He
realized that a thousand years ago he was a Buddhist who invaded this
region and erected this statue. That was what he thought. He stood
up and looked around and started telling people to stop. They thought
him mad but out of respect stopped. He went to the Mullah and
explained what had happened. He sent him to a mental hospital and
extracted a recanting from him using modern medical techniques of
torture. As it stands, the guy went bonkers and his story is of no
account. But that's only the history the way it was written by those
there. The reality is that the guy had a direct revelation - which he
believed to be very personally powerful to him and answered questions
for him that he personally had asked.


I will touch on religious morality later.

Can we not and say we did? haha..

One Jesus, one Buddah, on Lao Tzu, one Ghandi, one Martin Luther King
- in a 100 generations is highly disruptive to society and the powers
that be. They are crucified, shot, deported, or transform their
society - or both - having 5% to 10% of the entire population EACH
generation having such oceanic beatific and transcendant insights into
the human condition - is an unknown factor in human affairs. Against
such a reality - religions brought along from Earth will be radically
altered and may be of no account whatever.

How can this be cured.

What? Irrationality?

Well, Freud showed that belief in a male God figure is directly
connected to the drama of a child's relationship with his or her
father. Change that relationship - and belief in God is diminished.

Alice Miller showed that adult fascination with power money violence
and death - stems from the drama of a child's powerlessness. Change
the way children are reared so that they are empowered and self
actualized, and fascination with power money violence and death
disappear.

I am not so sure.

Well if you'd actually read the references I give you could form a
reasoned opinion.

Joseph Campbell showed that fascination with religions stem from the
meaning it gives to our banal existence. It is the hero task of the
modern age to create deeply satisfying meaning from rational thought
and scientific understanding and capacity. This has not been done.
If it is not done science will serve to fuel our self destruction and
the promise of science and rational thought will have failed us.

One aspect Campbell discussed quite extensively, is his concept of the
monomyth - this cycle of adventure, discovery and rebirth - common to
all religions according to Campbell - stems from our history as a
species that expands its range by means of innovation - creating in
the process frontiers - regions that are newly habitable by dint of
new technology, but contain only resources and no competitors. The
frontier occupies the same emotional space as heaven, and the drama
surrounding the development of the frontier - mimics the drama and
meaning surrounding entry into heaven. Campbell suggested that this
mythic connection may provide an answer for science to provide the
bulk of humanity deeply meaningful and accurate connections to science
and technology. Space travel, with its endless frontier, offer a very
reap potential field for this development.

This may be true. I think though in a very real sense the type of
framework provided by Organized Religion may in fact stop one thinking
in this sort of way.

Religions exist to perpetuate the power of the religions. If thinking
a certain way undermines a religion then the religion is against it.
If thinking a certain way empowers the religion then the religion is
for it.

The Pilgrim Fathers did not go because they were
awaestruck with America. They went because James I wanted rid of them.

That's right. But don't underestimate that. In today's world James I
would have no place to send them, and so would be forced to a final
solution of some sort.

Ken Arrow showed that individual human value was non-transitive.
Therefore any method that adds up measures of human value to make
collective choice are subject to certain types of failure. This
failure explains cycles in voting and cycles in markets. This
discovery was immediately siezed by advertizers marketers and
politicans to exploit for individual gain at the expense of the
general markets and political processes. There has been a slow
unravelling of both over the past 50 years. This trend will
continue. At present there is no solution to Arrow's Impossibility
Theorem.

I have suggested the adaptation of Wassily Leontieff's input output
method of econometric analysis be adapted to create a system I call
VECTOR MONEY. Since ordered lists of numbers also are non-transitive
like human values, its easy to show they are not subject to the same
limitations outlined by Arrow. I have even gone so far as to suggest
a method involving distributed decision making using vector money and
PDAs connected by internet - as a means to supplant all existing
political and economic systems. In the face of decreasing
effectiveness of existing systems, any workable system will displace
older systems naturally without revolution or any sort of concerted
action. All that's needed is that people be presented with the
opportunity to use something that works and they will ultimately
abandon systems that don't work.

Cetrtainly not by taking a wishy wasy Rousseau
position as you seem to.

I never mentioned Rousseau - so I don't know where you got that.

Governments have a responsibility to
eliminate prejudice as far as they can.

Why? Government is a product of human behavior. It doesn't exist
apart from humans. So, its proper scientific study is as a subset of
psychology.

Yes indeed, but I want governments to be elected that attempt to
better the lot of Mankind. This is one factor that will influence me
in my decision of who to vote for.

But Ken Arrow showed in 1950 that voting doesn't work the way we think
it does, so its all a sham. His data has been used to increase the
power of the specialists at great cost to the public. So your vote is
meaningless.

It is also possible that AI will influence the course of government.
Asimov talked about the laws of robotics.

This was just a part of a sci-fi story. It was only later that folks
wondered about it. As a practical matter it has yet to have any
impact on human affairs - except as an idea.

With the rise of digital
feeds Isaac Asimov immediately springs to mind.

But there are no Asimov laws in any software or hardware around
today. So, its weird to hear you speak as if Asimov's 3 laws actually
exist in some real sense. haha.. People talk about Santa Claus, but
they seldom talk as if Santa actually exists. Same here. The idea
exists certainly. The thing itself does not.

Content should be
provided and indexed impartially.

Should be? How?

Asimov I believe would have wanted
his robots to combat antsemitism.

Are you the person who said history is what really happened? Just
checking. haha.. Asimov was a science fiction writer and a popular
writer of science - a science journalist. He had a background in
biology. Wasn't very good at math. He never built any robots.
Robots of the type he imagined in his stories never existed and may
never exist. So his robots were incapable of doing anything being
ideas in Asimov's head. Asimov knew this, so I doubt Asimov wanted
them to do anything except be interesting characters in a story that
would sell.

As far as anti-semitism is concerne, Asimov was a Jewish emigre to the
United States -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

and the worlds he imagined for his robots did not involve anti-
semitism at all. Although his robots did have a sort of predilection
toward isolating humans from one another when they outnumbered humans
creating some interesting outcomes - IN FICTION!!!


The holocaut did happen though
negect as Asimov would put it. No robot should stand by.

You are totally off the wall - you have run off the rails - you are
making no sense. Asimov built no robots and no robots like Asimov
imagined in his stories actually exist and they may never actually
exist.

They have a duty also to
protect their countries (obviously)

Why? Countries are merely ideas that exist in the heads of people.
They are nothing more than ideas. How do you protect an idea? Why is
protecting an idea worth a human life?

This fascination with survival and dominance has been traced by Dr.
Miller to the powerlessness children feel when they are ignored by
adults. These disempowered children vow, and make good on on those
vows, to never be powerless as an adult. This fuels a fascination
with power, money, prestige, size, violence and death. Children who
do not feel disempowered do not have such a fascination and are far
more rational.

The rise of nationalism corresponded to changes in child rearing
practices in the 1880s - and have created a self-propagating series of
events that have made the identification with national identity
stronger with each succeeding generation. This is another disruptive
trend. Governments have not been shy in exploiting this connection
and creating institutions that institutionalize the abuse of children
for the purpose of building more compliant citizens - while at the
same time, eliminating troubling sections of their early training -
against the wishes of academia.

Clearly when we connect emotionally with governments because we feel
they can protect us from other nations - we do so because we
personally feel threatened and by those nations and this sense of
threat is diminished by the association. Unexplored is the
culpability of our nation in creating the situation in the first place
- or the possibility that everyone would be better off if we got rid
of nationalistic notions in the first place. Rarely is this idea even
broached - such as John Lennon's song - IMAGINE.

Today we do not feel as much threatened by other nastions as by
individuals who want to kill us and are often not too worried if they
kill themselves too.

I thought you said you were British? hmm.. Look, people surrender
power to those they think can help them accomplish what they feel
needs accomplished but cannot do it themselves. The modern nation-
state has exploited this process to maintain control over its people
using all the knowledge at its command.

All nations do this. In a world where the Soviet Union collapsed and
was no longer a credible threat, the US neede another enemy. So, we
turned a blind eye and let the second attack on the WTC happen.

But terrorism isn't new. We've had suicidal terrorists since Thomas
Rainsborough! (1647) haha.. and the powers that be have used them,
or any enemy they could impress the public with to raise taxes and
exercise ever more power over their subjects.

The thing is, we need to change the paradigm under which we operate if
we want to change our condition - and this takes a change in the way
we raise our kids and the way we deal with our emotions in adulthood.

but not to push the arms race
forward and always be prepared to sit down to discuss disarmament.

Why? Identifying ourselves with a nation is a means to possess power
when we would otherwise feel powerless. It evokes deep seated fears
and irrationalities that go right back to our earliest years when we
were powerless before all adults. No one sits down and talks
disarmament, unless they are talking from a position of strength, and
then they are forcing a lesser nation to disarm or face the dire
consequences of a superior force. This is what you mean when you say
that. You don't mean the US or whatever nation you're from - would
sit down hat in hand and agree to be bullied around by a superior
force do you?

You are believing many of the lies that have become part of the global
culture over the past 50 years. This warps and perverts your
thinking.

There is no reason to have nations in the modern age. There is a
reason to have a global police force - aimed at enforcing a peace, and
a global military to disarm everyone uniformly - and then like George
Washington - lay down his arms and return home when it was done.

Nation states have a monoply of force. I believe that a world without
nations would be an ideal to strive for.

No one has power over you unless you give it to them. The more people
that take their power back for themselves the weaker nations and
religions become. In the end, they will collapse as people find a
better way for themselves.

Quite clearly it is also an
idea that no one wants.

People who do not own their own power feel naked and threatened by the
idea of there being no nations and religions. People who own their
own power - are not beholden to anyone, and the nations will fall of
their own accord once a tipping point is reached.

Looking at the situation from Britain we have
the EU. Now governments, including Gordon Brown want to bring about a
common European sovereignity. Quite laudable you might say.

Depends on the details. None of this gets us past Arrows
impossibility theorem. So, its really quite mad to try to do anything
within a system that doesn't work.

Governments have negotiated an EU treaty which the voters are throwing
out. Gordon Brown is not going to face a referendum here, he will get
the treaty ratified by Parliament. Governments are persuing what might
be termed rational policies as far as they can. They are definitely in
advance of their populations.

Nonsense.


Man is not Rousseau, Man is the Lord of the Flies.

Men and women are neither. People make ideas live, they don't live
for ideas.

The greatest threat humanity faces isn't from space. Its from
outselves. People sense that, and so talk of space shields and space
travel even, makes no sense to them.

This is true.

Yes and one of the greatest threats we face is when we objectify
other human beings on the basis of race, religion, national origin,
and so forth.

People want answers to the above questions.

No, they want security that was denied them as children, they want
support of their fellows, and they want to be accepted by their
fellows, and they want to be satisfied that they are doing all they
can for their families and themselves while they pursue happiness for
them and those they love no matter what changes occur in the world.
Any society that reliable and effectively offers this to everyone
alive will succeed. At present various nations promise this to their
citizens and where they fail attempt to cast the blame on others
outside the nation. This leads naturally to conflict, and irrational
acts of violence against the scapegoats. The only real solution is to
actually fix the problems we know about - and not use failure modes
for gain by the special interests - and create a social system that
works, and back it with industry and science - and make it freely
available to all - to bring peace and progress to humanity - and
fulfill the promise of science and technology.

Iraq is one nation. It is at war with itself.

The same can be said of Britain in Northern Ireland.

recently
there was a Poker contest between Man and Machine. I posed in
sci.maths that Von Neumann was right (about Poker at least). The
minimax strategy works.

This is a game. The real world is more complex. Any game involves a
tacit agreement to play the game. Minimax won't help you if one of
the players pulls out his six shooter shoots you through the head and
takes your wallet.

With this in mind, assuming that cooperation is impossible and
conflict is inevitable, then we are led inevitably the violence the
converting the civilized world to a version of Beruit. If you are
saying conflict is inevitable but everyone can agree on the game -
then I would say - why this game and not a different one? If you are
saying that the game has certain benefits in searching for better
survival strategies - then I would say wouldn't cooperation be better
suited in some instances.

I think you misundrstand, conflict is part of the game.

There is no game. Conflict beetween Shiites and Sunnis stem from the
need for each to project blame outside their own circle to solidify
control over their faithful. This is madness - and leads to madness -
and has nothing at all to do with the insights that the religion was
orignally set up to spread and honor.

The Sunnis and
Shiites each cose an outcome which led to 4 million refugees.

Its all madness - and its not a rational choice - and it cannot be
sustained.



The point is, we've nevr had a political system that works because
Arrow's paradox shows us that none of the political systems or market
systems are capable of fulfilling their promises to us. So it should
not be surprising that we are being failed by our political system.
What is especially grievous in the modern age is that our
understanding of our failures politically have been used by
specialists to exercise control over society at large for their
benefit - at the expense of society at large.

Howver the world is not a Poker game.

That is true.

The world is a stag hunt.

That is not true.

It is true that mutual cooperation will provide the highest score but
they contive not to.

Let us look at the outcome of a staghunt. The Tigres and Euphates are
powerful rivers. In the time of the old Babylonian kings 3 crops a
year were produced. That is before oil comes into consideration.
Nobody would have had to have left their homes there would be electric
power 24/7 and the country would be on the road to prosperity.
However ...... How basically do you get people to look after their own
interests.

By empowering them as children and teaching them to trust their own
inner voice.

Every
side will gain from cooperation.

That is true if we continue to develop frontiers where there are
untapped resources with no competitors around to bother us. This is
what led to human cooperativeness in the first place.

It is how you say your prayers - not resources.

No, in times when there is plenty, in times when things are going
well, the religions take responsibility for that, and point to anyone
not doing well as an examplar of what happens to unbelievers. They
could care less about how non believers pray.

In times of scarcity, in times when things are going badly, the
religions project blame to the non-believers, particularly if they are
doing better than them, and seek to destroy them - in their
destruction will the faithful win their release. This is true in the
modern age, as it was true in the time of the Inquisition. It was the
failure of Spain as a world power that led directly to the Spanish
Inquisition.

So, it is resources squandered in the hands of the irrational that
lead to religious conflicts.

There is enough in
Iraq for everyone there and for everyone to come home.

No there isn't. Not when the nation is isolated from world trade by
US edict. These tendencies toward conflict are then exploited to keep
everyone focused on local events and not project power outside the
region. Read the first chapter of TE COMING WAR WITH JAPAN and then
we can talk.

The problem is convincing people of
this.

No, the problem is finding and pointing out the stag. People who do
so are uniformly attacked by governments and other special interests
who see in the success of this strategy their own demise. We lack an
effective frontier on which we all can agree. JFK wanted us to turn
our high technology from head to head competition of the cold war, to
the far more fruitful competition of the space race.

Did he now. He, more even than Lyndon Johnston, was the architect of
Vietnam.

Nonsense.

Robert McNamara said that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out
of Vietnam after the 1964 election. In the film "The Fog of War", not
only does McNamara say this, but a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson
confirms that Kennedy was planning to withdraw from Vietnam, a
position Johnson states he disapproved of. Additional evidence is
Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 on October
11, 1963 that gave the order for withdrawal of 1,000 military
personnel by the end of 1963. He did get involved and overthrew the
Diem government. But Kennedy was generally moving in a less hawkish
direction in the Cold War since his acclaimed speech about World Peace
at American University the previous June 10, 1963.

After Kennedy's assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson
immediately reversed Kennedy's order to withdraw 1,000 military
personnel by the end of 1963 with his own NSAM #273 on November 26,
1963.

Nations of Earth
would compete with one another in developing resources and capacities
off world in the frontier of interplanetary space - much as Europe
developed sea faring capcities and avoided conflict for hundreds of
years - while engaging in powerful competition across the world. This
was his vision - that the US would be the first among all nations to
develop the opportunities and resources of interplanetary space for
the betterment of mankind.

He was shot in November 1963 and in December 1963 Lyndon Johnson and
Robert McNamara cut back on the nuclear propulsion programs of the
US, the scope and range of post- apollo landing, and spent more money
on Vietnam. In the end the US spent $20 billion on moonships with 5
dead, $200 billion on Vietnam, with 50,000 dead, and $2,000 billion on
ICBMs, with potential 5,000,000,000 dead.

The irony is that I am not asking for people to be unselfish.

Cooperation does not require one to be unselfish.

In
fact in some ways I am asking them to be more selfish.

Selfishness depending on context can be good or bad for society.

Spoken by a true bweiever the games theory. You can be selfish and
hunt the stag.

Transaction analysis - yes.


The 9/11
hijackers were unselfish when all is said and done. They were in fact
the Lords of Flies and were NOT promted by ...

Women in muslim societies are highly disrespected compared to men -
moreso than in non-muslim countries. They also are primary care
givers to children. Alice Miller and others note that this leads to a
generational sort of transaction. Women are abused as adults by men,
and so, they subconciously abuse their sons as children. Their sons
grow up to abuse the women in their live as a means to get even.

Yes and religion (org) also gives a double standard sexual morality. I
suggested sending those Iraqii girls from Damascus nightclubs into
space. This very much stems from the words on the Statue of Liberty.
They have said thier prayers the wrong way, they have been booted out
- and to cap it all they are now moral outcasts. This is organized
religion for you.

This would echo James I solution for the Pilgrims.

This
creates an increasing cycle of violence and unhappiness. This
unhappiness is exploited by religious and political leaders to gain
power. When the promises of those leaders remain unfulfilled, they
point to those outside their culture as the source. This causes those
people to project their unhappiness on those outside sources. This
leads to extremists who take action to redress the supposed abuses of
those outsiders.

- Ian Parker


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