A Doctrine for change (re-building a renaissance).

A motion...

...to promote the values of Science, Math, Art, Education and Reason above all else.

-To no longer choose to venerate shallow personalities who manipulate the media over the brilliant minds of scientists of philosophers (i.e. Kim Kardashian over Richard Dawkins)

-To promote reason in every situation over antiquated precepts and religious scriptures.

-To stand up against pointless war and killing and the victimization of innocent peoples over silly disputes that no one actually understands.

-To expect proof and substance as the backbone of any argument or action

-To alleviate the disparity created by a capitalist system gone wild

-To boycott corporations which serve no good to the common man (or at least try to).

-To embrace technology as a source for unifying people instead of driving them further apart.

-To focus on the larger picture, to tackle the issues which face humanity, and not get caught up in our small-minded idealism.

-To promote all values non-violently through the power of mass appeal, by creating a trend towards reason and logic, by debating the issues intellectually as opposed to resolving them physically.

-To remain open minded in all situations.

-To create complete equality amongst people of all races and genders.

-To change the hierarchy of importance such that the our fellow man is at the top of that list.

-To use history as guide for what not to do, not as trap for repetition.

-To keep coming up with precepts to guide a progressive renaissance of thought.

I grow weary of Atheism

You see I've pretty much always been non-theistic. I've enjoyed cultural aspects of the religion I was raised with, but I was never particularly fond of the preachings themselves and I quickly tired of them and convinced my immediate family that it was a waste of a time. So I was raised in a fairly secular household. 


Now I've happily allowed myself to be swept away in this most wonderful Atheist movement, and it's truly been a pleasure. I've read innumerable posts on the Project-Reason web forum, watched every Sam Harris debate, I read constant articles on Reddit.com/r/atheism, I thoroughly enjoyed the Hitchens v. Blair debate, and so on. In other words I've recently steeped myself in all things Atheism. And in the process I've also cultivated a new found love for math and science, so it's been great. But the whole idea of Atheism is beginning to strike me as unproductive. Granted someone should fight the established systems of religion, they are far too volatile and far too powerful, but I don't think it's enough. I think the Atheist movement is inherently stagnant (if it is to be a movement as it seems Dawkins and the Atheist community promote). The argument against religion is too paramount to the Atheistic movement, it's the central focus, and yet that creates just as little progress as religions themselves, not to mention it doesn't make for much substance to get behind. And I would like to make the appeal to reason that there is something more to inspire the youth of this world and those who are "on the fence" about religion to rally together about. The Atheist argument is simply the negation of the current system, but it fails to instate a new premise. And if any movement is going to actually make waves and make a ripple it needs to promote progress and not simply negate the current failings, the old adage "if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all" comes to mind. But I've found that this is not the case of the Atheists (in general), though I often find them engaging in heated battles about the mythology of religion, I also find that they are group consumed with the consumption of knowledge, the promotion of Reason and Logic, notions of civil equality and many other good things (which many theists would have you believe are sentiments which are produced primarily by a faith in their particular god). So I think it's time people stop coming and saying what they Aren't and start coming out and expressing what they are.

Vox Populi

I recently wrote an entry about overpopulation being a very pressing issue. I deleted that article. Not because I don't think overpopulation isn't a pressing issue, rather because I think there is something much more important . And that is global communication. I think the biggest problem with the world today is that there are great lines of communication, but the signal is fuzzy. Yes, I believe that if there was a way to disseminate information from the people who are most knowledgeable about it to the people who most need that knowledge, we could truly solve all the worlds problems. The best way to start is to build a network that can provide completely democratic, user based solutions. Of course it would have to be (at least in the beginning) invite only, so that the proper community of moderators and operators can build itself from the inside out.

The Social Network too.

I've received a great deal of commentary regarding this expansive idea which I'm posing and much of it was precisely the type of critique I was hoping for. The main problem with any social network is how do we weed out the noise, the spam, the phishing and problematic members of the community. Well upon the creation of this website I believe it should be invite only (also, as posed by an anonymous commentator: there could be the option to e-mail one of the higher ranked members for an invite). But we want this to be expansive and very open to the public, so whatever limiting invite-only type of methodology we use, it will eventually be dismissed and the floodgate let open for the masses to join in.  So that brings up many issues, the first of which is how do you stop people from spamming and attacking the site. Well that is where the highly developed rating system comes in:

The Rating System is common throughout social networks and forums all across the internet, a reward of votes places you in higher standing amongst whatever community you are posting within, what I'm proposing is an even more interactive and integral version of this. Each new member is only allowed a certain number of posts a day, maybe only one or two on the first day until they receive a rating from other members who have already established themselves. Each person is also given an allotment of ratings which they may dole out per day, the higher ranked you are the more ratings you can give out, an unrated person would not be allowed to rate anyone at all. Also the higher your rating goes the more privileges you're granted. For instance programming changes and changing content of certain pages may be granted to people with the highest ratings. All major changes, before being made, will require a vote by other members (voting of course would come after hitting a certain level).  This allows the more trusted members of the community to have more access to changing the shape and the feel of the website. The users will thus be able to decide which users are the most suited to be moderating and running a website of this magnitude.

Of course this has it's flaws, but the idea of this site is that every system and network that is created should be critiqued and amended until it's as well honed as we can get it.

Another commenter asked about specialized users who maybe represent a magazine or a group. I think this is a perfect example of where this website can go. Every field could have it's own specialized area and the rating system could factor that in, allowing people to be rated and ranked by their specific contributions and talents.  Once the ball gets rolling on the website the potential is limitless.

(also I'm dropping the whole STEVE thing, that was too silly).

-Mr. Internet

Reconceived Notions

History repeats itself is my least favorite adage of all time. Evolution and the technological progress of man is enough to refute that point immediately. The problem with this adage is that it has become ingrained in our minds, it's a sort of constant. We see the terrible things that have happened, and they weren't even too long ago, and the idea to try and progress past them seems futile when we come back to the old cliche of "history repeats itself". But I'd like people to start laughing in the face of this mock catch-phrase. I think the strongest argument against that notion is the creation of the internet. Now the internet is still just an infant, and it's currently in a highly developmental stage. Once the internet comes into it's own, blossoms into it's full potential and becomes even more accessible to the great masses, well than it will have the power to change the world in ways we've ever known. And it's not going to be the product of some blogger saying "peace on earth" or preaching utopia, it's merely part of the internets evolutionary trajectory. It has already proven to unite people in ways we never knew we were capable of, and it's only going to grow in that realm.

Now the benefit of this interconnectivity will be a sort of global reason which will be possible to achieve amongst the human populace. Now I don't say that we will come across this "global reason" lightly, I think it will take much progress and a great deal of fine tuning to our ever changing internet, to get us to that point. But the fact is that it is a point which can theoretically exist. If we as a species were to reach it, we could easily rally against an injustice anywhere in the world, simply by collective reasoning. Okay, sounds like socialism, sounds like sugar coated utopian ideals with limitless pitfalls on the way. And of course the barriers are indeed many, and the idea is indeed abstract and somewhat sugar coated. But there exists now, via the internet an ability to connect with an inconceivable number of people. This has never existed before. There was never a way for the everyman to dialogue back with the masses, mass media was always one directional, a single source being purveyed to the masses (one to many): newspaper, radio, television. Now we are in the realm of many to many, we just need to figure out how to use it.

So when the phrase history repeats itself comes to mind, what do we think of? We think of the terrible dictators who have massacred millions and committed atrocities that are nearly inconceivable. But say we start to see the seeds of a figure rising up, say something obviously wrong is brewing in a far away land. We can now say "Hey! That just isn't right!". Okay so again I'm oversimplifying. But we are little by little developing a global conscience, a sense of moral values that transcends a single group of people and embraces people as a whole.

The saying "History repeats itself" can go fuck itself.

The Regressive War

I've been following (and adding to) the comments beneath Rob Dunbars TED speech on climate change and ocean acidification. In those comments there is a relative war being waged between two sides who pretty much agree with each other on all but the smallest of points. We aren't talking about High school students here either, these are adults who have full careers as scientists, engineers, artists, etc, etc... and they are arguing quite intensely over the most semantic of issues. And whats more is both sides are well versed and steeped in research which backs their points, stemming from notable sources. So what is the answer? Well if we can't solve the minor arguments between likeminded forward thinkers than how do create the conversation which solves the problems which stems from idealogical disparity?

Well first I'd like to assess what this battle is:

There are seemingly two sides, those who believe that the CO2 being produced by humans and thrown into the air is affecting great climactic change and will be the harbinger of our ultimate demise, and the others who believe that climactic shifts are simply naturally occurring phenomena of planet whose temperature has seen fluctuations for more years than we can conceive of.  Both sides agree that great problems such as pollution, poverty, overpopulation, economic distresses, disease, hunger and so on, are all problems facing humans as a species.  So they agree on most points, but when it comes down to our inconclusive knowledge about what CO2 emissions is actually doing, a war is being waged. A simple difference in standpoint is enough to create a vehement rivalry between two groups who could otherwise be spending their time hashing out theories for more globally minded change. Those who don't think CO2 emissions are a problem feel that those who do are zealous "Environmentalists" who think that humans need to regress to the stone age in order to get ourselves back on track. Those who think CO2 is affecting the world, believe that the "Deniers" are selfish and close minded and cannot see beyond the immediate present. Both parties are right, and both parties are wrong. The judgements decreed about their rivals are, just as the slander of any war would be, way off. But the ideas that both groups represent are inherently correct: The "Deniers" may actually be the more forward thinkers, they see that environmental problems are last on the list of things that are facing us at the moment, they see that the exponential growth rate of our population is where our major failing lies and that any problem is symptomatic of that. The Environmentalists don't believe that we should regress back to the stone age, but rather that our advanced technology should harmonize with the world we live in, so that there is no issue regarding what exactly CO2 emissions will one day do when paired with the ever growing needs of our ever growing population.

So both groups see the need for change, but refuse to open up the proper dialogue because of how vehemently the are opposed to each others minutely different perspectives. So this again brings up our intense need for a better platform for which these well honed minds can argue, in front of a larger, more interactive audience, who can interject and add and actually come to some sort of agreement and than go from arguing about semantics to dialoguing about actual problems.

STEVE (system to engage virtually everyone)

I proposed this in my metaphorical TED speech and on TED.com in a comment beneath Chris Anderson's How web video powers global innovation. So now I want to extrapolate a little bit more as to what I believe this new network could be. 

So how does it work?

It would have to be completely powered by the users themselves, something Viacom can't come in and buy. In order to get it started we can start by recruiting like minded thinkers (drawing from the TED community and other similar sources) to become the moderators, administrators, editors, debuggers, programmers, designers and such for the creation of the new site. It would be completely open and infinitely changeable, depending on the latest and greatest idea for it. The shape of the site would be determined by user opinions. The website would be like the internets first ever global democracy.  The rating system would be crucial in determining the value of each member in the community and their sway.  

The site would have a forum, a chatroom, and sort of public domain, where videos can be uploaded and ranked by all users. There would also be a more exclusive section where only videos that are chosen by the high ranked users make it through, as well as ideas or mission statements chosen by these same respected community members. 

The whole thing is open to suggestion... Actually thats kinda the whole point.

I think the rating system would have to be very calculated. Maybe: you can give out Ten ratings per day, something like that. Every rating you give out is listed. Your ability to rate people is respective of your own actual rating. (In order to stop people from creating multiple identities and boosting themselves up).  The higher ranked you are the more freely you can rate things. 

Well it all needs tweaking. Right now it's an understructure which I hope people can use to build off of and expound upon.