Information storage and communication increases our ability to discover and accumulate knowledge. And if Stephen Pinker is to be believed, humans have become more peaceful over time. However, the connection between better access to information and our softer world
The most important things for the writers is to adopt the new style which supports its new styles and normally there are three styles usually followed by the writers and their students as well.
I do like Romney's business experience, but his Gordon Gecko-esque tenure at Bain Capital concerns me. I also have a problem with him calling himself pro-life. In fact, Romneycare provided for taxpayer funded abortifacients (Pharmaceuticals that cause spontaneous abortion) How many evangelicals and catholics know this? He also is continually calling himself a christian to gain votes, when most of us learned in Sunday school that this is not the case.
The most common response I hear when I mention global catastrophic risks of all kinds is that ‘people have always been concerned about apocalyptic scenarios, and we’re still here, right?
True, that past does not predict the future. (And won't, say, stop a mile-diameter asteroid from Ruining Our Collective Days.)
But it does also tell us something about us, which is that we're prone to predict catastrophe even when it's not going to happen.
I have to say I agree.Anyhow the problem would be bigger without free print.Money worshipping is obviously another interconnected problem, that allows a financial dictatorship if we rely on this superstructure.
"Honestly, I think the bigger worry politically are populist-corporatist hybrid democracies. These might turn out almost as awful as old totalitarian states."
Really? What evidence do you base this off. I'm not sure of your exact definition, but my measure the US, Canada, Australia, most of Western Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan all look like they pretty closely fit the mold of "populist-corporatist democracies.
And yet all of them qualify as among the most prosperous, peaceful and free civilizations in human history. I'm not saying they don't have flaws, nor am I saying that there aren't superior alternative systems that have not or only lightly been tried.
But what I am saying is that there's a clear scale of how well different systems perform. And it's pretty clear that "populist-corporatist democracies" (which when you come down to it pretty much describes every capitalist democracy) have performed far superior than Marxist and fascist governments.
I'm not saying that all totalitarian movements must contain an element of suppressing information, but all of those you mentioned in your post, real and fictional, certainly did. Could someone honestly think that's nothing more than a persistent quirk of dictators, and that an information drought really doesn't help dictators maintain their totalitarianism? I'm of the opinion that it makes totalitarianism a whole lot easier.
If we start there, which should be uncontroversial, we see a pretty good argument for political optimism, as long as we remain optimistic that access to information will continue to grow harder to suppress by would-be dictators. I wouldn't go so far as to say that totalitarianism can't survive, and nobody ever thought that information by itself sets you free (that's just a straw man; of course you also need literacy). But it's not wrong to think that unimpeded access to information gives us a never-been-better a chance of resisting dictatorships.
Honestly, I think the bigger worry politically are populist-corporatist hybrid democracies. These might turn out almost as awful as old totalitarian states, and they can survive even in a climate of unfettered access to information. But with increasing literacy and information, I do think that old-school strongman dictatorships are on the road to obsolescence.
The most important things for the writers is to adopt the new style which supports its new styles and normally there are three styles usually followed by the writers and their students as well.
I do like Romney's business experience, but his Gordon Gecko-esque tenure at Bain Capital concerns me. I also have a problem with him calling himself pro-life. In fact, Romneycare provided for taxpayer funded abortifacients (Pharmaceuticals that cause spontaneous abortion) How many evangelicals and catholics know this? He also is continually calling himself a christian to gain votes, when most of us learned in Sunday school that this is not the case.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
The most common response I hear when I mention global catastrophic risks of all kinds is that ‘people have always been concerned about apocalyptic scenarios, and we’re still here, right?
True, that past does not predict the future. (And won't, say, stop a mile-diameter asteroid from Ruining Our Collective Days.)
But it does also tell us something about us, which is that we're prone to predict catastrophe even when it's not going to happen.
Grain of salt and all that.
I have to say I agree.Anyhow the problem would be bigger without free print.Money worshipping is obviously another interconnected problem, that allows a financial dictatorship if we rely on this superstructure.
"Honestly, I think the bigger worry politically are populist-corporatist hybrid democracies. These might turn out almost as awful as old totalitarian states."
Really? What evidence do you base this off. I'm not sure of your exact definition, but my measure the US, Canada, Australia, most of Western Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan all look like they pretty closely fit the mold of "populist-corporatist democracies.
And yet all of them qualify as among the most prosperous, peaceful and free civilizations in human history. I'm not saying they don't have flaws, nor am I saying that there aren't superior alternative systems that have not or only lightly been tried.
But what I am saying is that there's a clear scale of how well different systems perform. And it's pretty clear that "populist-corporatist democracies" (which when you come down to it pretty much describes every capitalist democracy) have performed far superior than Marxist and fascist governments.
I'm not saying that all totalitarian movements must contain an element of suppressing information, but all of those you mentioned in your post, real and fictional, certainly did. Could someone honestly think that's nothing more than a persistent quirk of dictators, and that an information drought really doesn't help dictators maintain their totalitarianism? I'm of the opinion that it makes totalitarianism a whole lot easier.
If we start there, which should be uncontroversial, we see a pretty good argument for political optimism, as long as we remain optimistic that access to information will continue to grow harder to suppress by would-be dictators. I wouldn't go so far as to say that totalitarianism can't survive, and nobody ever thought that information by itself sets you free (that's just a straw man; of course you also need literacy). But it's not wrong to think that unimpeded access to information gives us a never-been-better a chance of resisting dictatorships.
Honestly, I think the bigger worry politically are populist-corporatist hybrid democracies. These might turn out almost as awful as old totalitarian states, and they can survive even in a climate of unfettered access to information. But with increasing literacy and information, I do think that old-school strongman dictatorships are on the road to obsolescence.