State of Epicicity
Fractal Fanatic
Holy crap; I've never heard of this; it was like a mod Star Trek, but with a lot of just casually walking around futuristic command centers. Wait, I guess I'm really just describing Star Trek.
It was very cool at the time - and the moon base command center ladies' uniforms were quite eye catching for a young lad in 1970!
+ those futuristic tape machines attracted me to pursue DP! ("Data Processing"!) on the mighty IBM 370>3xx series mainframes (I feel old 
, very old in the new land of AI 
)We've largely given up on systematically making better, smarter humans, not because it's impossible, but because large parts of society (and especially those in power) actively don't want to. A population that is sharper, more independent-minded, better at reasoning, and less susceptible to manipulation is a population that's harder to control, harder to sell things to, harder to scare into compliance, and harder to keep voting against its own interests. Truly educated, critical-thinking humans threaten entrenched interests in ways that even the most advanced AI never will—because AI, no matter how capable, remains a tool that ultimately serves its owners and operators. So we pour billions into making machines smarter while deliberately, drowning people in misinformation, optimizing media for outrage over understanding, and designing systems that reward conformity and short-term thinking.
The original Star Trek was the gold standard back then (I still prefer it to all the other S.T. series). My fav episode to this day, is the one with Joan Collins, where Kirk/Spock find themselves back in time (1930s) and Kirk inadvertently intervenes in history by saving Joan's character from a car accident - needless to say, Spock has to figure out how to set historical events back correctly so that the future is not destroyed.
lol! Ya!, some of their vehicles look very Thunderbirdish - maybe they got them on sale from Thunderbirds' storage! lol!Looks more like 'Thunderbirds' to me
Gerry Anderson did both I think?
Looks more like 'Thunderbirds' to me
Gerry Anderson did both I think?
lol! Ya!, some of their vehicles look very Thunderbirdish - maybe they got them on sale from Thunderbirds' storage! lol!
No AI here - 100% Analogue
Curious why unethical is in parenthesis here. And "anti-eugenics propaganda"? PROPAGANDA? Are you saying that eugenics is a positive thing, because, uh... history gives us some pretty famous examples of its horrors.
We've been making "human intelligence smarter" for a while with public education, expanding girls' access to school, and massive public investments in research universities, community colleges, and public/private partnerships. There are very specific politics at work that have tried, with varying success, to reverse these trends, though.
It's not. Those are quotation marks. These are parentheses:
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Yes, but if not for public education, you would not have known that. Or, was is it research university?
Yup, my bad. I was distracted. Meant quotation marks. Question still stands - I'm curious why it was in quotes, and the other point about anti-eugenics propaganda which seemed odd. But maybe I'm just misreading the post.
Agree on that, but I was speaking more globally and historically re: universal education. The US is certainly not doing great with investment in education the last couple of decades.
It doesn't matter how much you spend on education if those funds never make it into programs and teachers that do the actual educating. Teaching is one of the most underpaid professions here, when compared to its inherent value to society. Frankly, we treat our teachers like s--t and tie their hands behind their backs while parents avoid any actual parenting. Hearing stories from K-12 teachers over the past couple years sounds more like a warzone than a classroom. The problems with education go way deeper than just how much money we're sinking into it.