From: Chen Yixiong, Eric (cyixiong@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Aug 04 2001 - 08:40:19 MDT
<< If you do, then you don't have much confidence in your own ideas. These people are an enormous power, and if they can be shown that what you propose is ethical and practical, then you will have great support. >>
Unfortunately, a lot of innovations never have popular support because people don't believe in them. The first person who thought of the world as a sphere instead of a flat plane, the first person who dared to state that the Earth orbits the Sun, the first person who believes that humans can fly and the first person who believes that humans can visit the world, and more of such people, would find that they will face a lot of unfounded skeptism, even from those professionals who "should know better".
The only way to lay this to rest would require proving the concept's viability. This usually means implementing the concept. However, by the time one can implement the concept, someone would usually had resolved the most difficult problems (such as funding and design issues), and thus popular support has much less usefulness.
I can show the logically convincing logical proofs and the formulas, but this will not mean people, especially those who do not think logically, will believe me. The problem lies not with confidence with one's ideas, but with practical reality. Expecting a lot of critics and skeptics does not mean lack of confidence, but practical expectations of how others would react to revolutionary ideas. History shows that right ideas will always prevail over dogma in the long run, but as someone puts it, in the long run we will all had died.
> Moving physical mountains is just engineering and is indeed easily
> solvable, especially given sufficient money. But setting up safe havens is
> not just engineering, it is also a question about politics, law, economics
> and in the end culture - just the things you think are exceedingly hard to
> deal with.
I know enough about the difficulties to know I and some others probably cannot solve the problems easily, but this does not mean we should not attempt this. I still think this would provide the most viable and safest solution in the long run. So far, I had invented some concepts including the concept of Intellicracy (decision based on best solution, instead of equal votes) that never appeared in the materials I had read. This brought to me the possibility of developing an entire branch of Infostructure knowledge that never existed before, and that could guide us in resolving the tough questions facing our societies.
I think this concept has potential and it could lead to new Infostructure breakthroughs because we dare to go beyond our comfort zones. Precisely because of this complexity of designing a colony, that I know I have to ask others to help out in the design sooner or later. We will eventually go into space and set up colonies there, so why hesitate to pioneer this development (even if on paper) now?
> If you really think the powers of darkness are after you to the extent that
> it makes eminent sense to flee to a suitably built-up guoyt in the Pacific,
> why do you think they would not come after you?
I know fully well that international politics have lots of problems, and I will only participate reluctantly.
Precisely why I suggest a space colony where we can truly live independently. Meanwhile for the next 3 decades, we may have to live on Earth to await suitable technological developments. A colony without independence would have little difference to the status quo.
<< At this point one can start arguing about the amounts of armaments necessary for a stand off against the rest of the world, or some more clever political solution. >>
Once the colony can work in space, we can choose the path of non-interference. We do not interfere in other's affairs, including helping those with similiar ideologies but who choose to remain on Earth to fight. Then, in exchange, neither will they interfere with us. We would definitely need armanents.
I don't know how exactly we will protect ourselves, but probably a small nuclear stockpile will help both against overzealous nations and nasty asteroids who come too close. We can orbit far away from Earth, perhaps at the opposite side of the Sun, so that those on Earth won't bother with us. I think we can avoid a war with Earth, because these people would prefer the status quo and if we let them exist in their own ways and routines, then they will not cause trouble us too. In short, non-interference instead of continous conflicts.
<< And again you get dragged into the swamp of politics, debate and making sure many others think that your island is something great and worth supporting politically and economically. So what you have really achieved is going a few thousand kilometers and built a lot of (hopefully cool, at least) stuff in order to acheive exactly the same thing you would need to do if you stayed in whatever nation you live in and worked on making at least part of that place progress-friendly. >>
Sorry for your assumption of a simplistic view, the colony would have to justify itself, at least 4 times better than our current societies in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and must provide new freedoms impossible in our societies (including perfect information flow to the extent technically possible with the aid of computer networks and pervasive sensors).
Anything requiring a major change in our lives fundamentally (read: a revolution) would have to justify itself many more times in the returns it could provide. Otherwise, no one would deploy it. I know of this consequence.
I had considered a lot of such factors and variances involved, including questioning whether the idea will have any viability. I had considered and questioned both the possibility of resistance, and the possibility of independent seperate living.
If any of you here want to launch a serious discussion attacking or questioning my theory, please quote from my paper (for I had consolidate my thoughts to avoid having to explain it at every instance). You may find a lot of your answers answered, and have new questions to raise that would take months to arrive at by normal debates.
If you have problems getting or viewing the paper at http://sociologistics.webhop.org, please inform me and I will personally send it to you. Alternatively, you can also visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sociologistics.
> A side note: this tendency to assume that everybody who doesn't agree with
> us is either misinformed, stupid or narrowmindedly zealous is another thing
> to look out for. We do it all the time. The greens do it all the time.
> Clearly it is not entirely true, and the people who see through it and
> manage to speak to the people who can indeed be made to change their minds
> or at least see your point of view are going to be the memetic winners.
Yes, I know of this danger.
There really does exist some people with minds so closed that they laugh and scorn at me when I speak of my ideas and insist that these ideas have no practicability whatsoever. They have no patience to listen to my explainations, and give me that silly smile like they know it all even though they never took the effort to study politics, economics, information science and the other subjects that I routinely read about. To top it all, they keep giving me a few, incomplete and inconsistent explainations whenever I raise the topic. They do not consist of a few people but the majority I know.
What then, do you call these people and what do you propose we do about them?
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