Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

The people occupying that niche tend to leave it or stop it and find what they deem to (probably) be less restrictive niches because modern psychiatric practice is almost entirely pill-pushing after a certain amount of visits/etc. due to insurance companies being dumb. Not saying don't try to, just saying it'll be less than optimal for you, I imagine.

I agree in a rear facing view of the future economy it would be completely sub-optimal. However, mental health issues are skyrocketing, and I expect the trend to continue/grow. When cultural foundations get shaken, it affects even the best of us. Not only that, but insurance companies are becoming as insolvent as all other financial institutions due to mismanagement and excessive risk taking to insure increasing profits, so insurance coverage is less of a concern in the future than it might be now.

People won't be able to afford the insurance, prescriptions, or the copayments even if they wanted to, and many reject the pills already (as you personally know).

The current western popular lifestyle feeds mental instability, both through action and diet. It is systemic. It is not something that pills can fix, only potentially, temporarily mask.

Edit: I'm also not expecting the economic landscape in general to look anything like it does now, in 8-10 years (at the latest), so doing a small practice without insurance payments wouldn't be an issue, relatively speaking.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Decent points, tbh. If you're all for it I wish you luck and shit.

 

[Dak]

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-trial-may-never-happen-judge-says-120420/

A US judge has put a bomb under the Megaupload case by informing the FBI that a trial in the United States may never happen. The cyberlocker was never formally served with the appropriate paperwork by the US authorities, as it is impossible to serve a foreign company with criminal charges.

The US Government accuses Kim Dotcom and the rest of the “Mega Conspiracy” of running a criminal operation.

Charges in the indictment include engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.

While the prosecution is hoping to have Megaupload tried in the US, breaking news suggests that this may never happen.

It turns out that the US judge handling the case has serious doubts whether it will ever go to trial due to a procedural error.

“I frankly don’t know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter,” Judge O’Grady said as reported by the NZ Herald.

Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that Megaupload was never served with criminal charges, which is a requirement to start the trial. The origin of this problem is not merely a matter of oversight. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken says that unlike people, companies can’t be served outside US jurisdiction.

“My understanding as to why they haven’t done that is because they can’t. We don’t believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,” Rothken says.

Megaupload’s lawyer adds that he doesn’t understand why the US authorities weren’t aware of this problem before. As a result Judge O’Grady noted that Megaupload is “kind of hanging out there.”

If this issue indeed prevents Megaupload from being tried in the US, it would be a blunder of epic proportions. And it is not the first “procedural” mistake either.

Last month the New Zealand High Court declared the order used to seize Dotcom’s property “null and void” after it was discovered that the police had acted under a court order that should have never been granted.

The error dates back to January when the police applied for the order granting them permission to seize Dotcom’s property. Rather than applying for an interim restraining order, the Police Commissioner applied for a foreign restraining order instead.

The exact ramifications of the failure to serve will become apparent in the near future.

Update: Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom responds, and he’s not happy.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Last week, Steve Forbes was speaking on C-Span and he suggested that Mitt Romney should appoint Ron Paul as the FED chairman. Oh boy, can't I dream.

 

[Prismatic Sphere]

Cops give EYE-talians a bad name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc&feature=player_embedded#!

 

[Dak]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/01/presidential-proclamation-loyalty-day-2012

 

[SentinelSlain]

Seeing as there's been some Brit bashing going on in the males and females thread, here's some British intelligence and some all American stupidity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=5A7iWC14dvo

 

[Dak]

Seeing as there's been some Brit bashing going on in the males and females thread, here's some British intelligence and some all American stupidity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=5A7iWC14dvo

I didn't say America was much better . America is traditionally about 20ish years behind Britain in the down-the-shitter movement.

 

[SentinelSlain]

Well England is much less religious than America, which is one way that we are ahead of America, not towards the shitter but in finally crawling out of it.

 

[Einherjar86]

So... has anyone else read about this?

http://singularityu.org/

With the support of a broad range of specialists in academia, business and government, Singularity University creates a global network of like-minded entrepreneurs, technologists and young leaders to participate in crafting a road map to guide the evolution of these disruptive technologies. SU helps create solutions and applications of these technologies for the benefit of humanity through its Graduate Studies and Executive Programs. SU is based at the NASA Research Park campus in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Here's an excerpt from an article about it:

The Singularity University's USP and founding ideology is based on doing better. Its belief in progress is so hard-wired that at times it has a retro-futuristic 1950s flying-cars-and-rocket-packs air about it.

Even the name – the Singularity University – sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel. Largely because its name is something out of a sci-fi novel. "The Singularity" is a term that its co-founder, the writer and futurist Ray Kurzweil, appropriated from an essay by sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge, and although definitions vary, it's usually taken to mean the point at which computer intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Which, according to Kurzweil's predictions, and he does have some form on this, will be in 2029.

Kurzweil is a genuine one-off. He's a scientist, an inventor – he developed one of the first speech recognition systems – an author and a transhumanist: he believes that if he can stay alive long enough for the technology to be invented he'll be able to stay alive for ever. But what he's best known for is being a futurist. He predicted the break-up of the Soviet Union, the growth of the internet, the year in which computers would beat the best human chess players, the e-reader, online education, and dozens more. By his own count 89 of 108 predictions he made in 1999 about where the world would be in 2009 were correct, and another 13 were "essentially correct".

At the heart of all of Kurzweil's predictions is Moore's law. This is the rule that computing power doubles every two years, first noted by Gordon Moore, who went on to co-found Intel, in 1965, and who predicted the trend would continue "for at least 10 years". In fact, it continued for the next five decades, and there's still no end in sight. Computing power shows exponential growth: one becomes two, and two becomes four, and four becomes eight, and when plotted on a chart, it looks like a rocket taking off.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/29/singularity-university-technology-future-thinkers

 

[Dak]

Had not, but it's a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the world.

 

[Einherjar86]

How so exactly? I'm not saying I disagree, I'm just wondering about your opinion.

 

[Dak]

How so exactly? I'm not saying I disagree, I'm just wondering about your opinion.

I think, in an effort for simplification, I can describe the developments in this, and also in most developments in history,as being "in-organic", or "synthetic".

Those utilizing the illusion of power (echoes of Varys) make the most of those blindly exercising the will to power, until the whole crumbles beneath the weight of itself. This is actually a good thing, but the destruction of the organic from beginning to end of the process is often irreversible.

 

[Zephyrus]

Argument that we evolved from aquatic apes.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html

 

[Einherjar86]

I think, in an effort for simplification, I can describe the developments in this, and also in most developments in history,as being "in-organic", or "synthetic".

Those utilizing the illusion of power (echoes of Varys) make the most of those blindly exercising the will to power, until the whole crumbles beneath the weight of itself. This is actually a good thing, but the destruction of the organic from beginning to end of the process is often irreversible.

How do you mean "inorganic"? Are you describing two processes by which historical process happens naturally, or organically, and unnaturally, or by radical human intervention?

 

[Dak]

How do you mean "inorganic"? Are you describing two processes by which historical process happens naturally, or organically, and unnaturally, or by radical human intervention?

It is a simplification, but yes. I readily admit that almost all of history is inorganic, in that respect, and that even a concept of organic development has, by now, rendered mostly theoretical, as all developments after the first synthetic interruption leave future generations "building with rubble".

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not quite understanding what you mean. Do you not think that radical human intervention is, itself, organic historical development?

 

[Dak]

I'm not quite understanding what you mean. Do you not think that radical human intervention is, itself, organic historical development?

An inorganic development comes from one or men seeing themselves as [god], while all other men are animals, and successfully acting on this perspective.

War is an example of this, as is the modernly labeled "social engineering", which has existed, although in less refined forms, since the beginning of history.

 

[Einherjar86]

That's interesting.

I, personally, don't see singular groups like this as the true movers of history (one of the many flaws, in my opinion, of the democratic process of voting for a president who will offer "change"; that's an illusion), so I don't necessarily see efforts like the Singularity University as negative for the "inorganic" developments it will bring about. They might be a manifestation of some greater occurrence taking place beneath the superficial layers of the historical process; but this is something so complex that we cannot hope to perceive it.

I believe there are no "accidents" in history, so to speak. History is a process that is not predetermined, although it is also not random. It has structure. Individuals that take charge in a "god-like" fashion, as you describe it, aren't contributing to the detriment of history or adulterating it. The technological and industrial development of humanity is part of the historical process, and it only makes sense that it will be absorbed into the organic structure of history.

 

[Dak]

That's interesting.

I, personally, don't see singular groups like this as the true movers of history (one of the many flaws, in my opinion, of the democratic process of voting for a president who will offer "change"; that's an illusion), so I don't necessarily see efforts like the Singularity University as negative for the "inorganic" developments it will bring about. They might be a manifestation of some greater occurrence taking place beneath the superficial layers of the historical process; but this is something so complex that we cannot hope to perceive it.

I believe there are no "accidents" in history, so to speak. History is a process that is not predetermined, although it is also not random. It has structure. Individuals that take charge in a "god-like" fashion, as you describe it, aren't contributing to the detriment of history or adulterating it. The technological and industrial development of humanity is part of the historical process, and it only makes sense that it will be absorbed into the organic structure of history.

I feel I must point out that the pursuit of the singularity, as many other developments in history, as blind grasping, or maybe a better analogy of human history is: running uphill looking at stars, thinking we are on the way, only to fall off the cliff at the end of the path. That which survives the fall tries again. This is the cycle of history. Progress is mostly an illusion. It is vain striving, and those who focus on the proverbial star and lead the charge are pushed along by some they inspire, and drag others (screaming or indifferent) on the way to the collective doom.

This is not to be confused with Luddism, although I know it may sound similar.

Edit: I know that analogy needs to be fleshed out a little more, for grammar if for no other reason.