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My comment on blog post

I believe you missed the point of the movie; Starting with an annoyance of childishness displayed by Jake Sully (which also annoyed me a little) you damned the entire movie on the basis that the opposite of Sully's childishness, "modernity" could be something we might need or want.

Modernity is by no means the end of our species' evolution. We are not stuck with industrial age development and all its ills. Going after concentrated resources is an unsustainable modern problem, to which various different alternatives will exist.

Pandora is trying to imagine a post-modern world, where humans can connect to every other being through their bio-hair-thingies (Internet anyone?) and there is an ecobalance in the planet. The non-growing humanoid population is a bit idealized and, with a planet actually able to attack "the company" it borders on ecoterorism, Postmodernism with a big P, however the opposite of Gaia/Pandora is also idealized, that is, turned into an dark, unmistakable evil in order to offer a starker contrast IMHO. Some stuff I did not like? The "return" of savior storyline for example.. I mean, the way American scifi so often falls into religionistic, savior/Jesus/prophet fervor does not always appeal to me, but in this case, it wasn't enough to mess things up that I did not enjoy the storytelling or the visual effects of the rest of the movie.

Furthermore, I do not agree with the selfishness argument at all. JS has every incentive to go get his legs, and return to his normal life. But instead he goes back to Pandora, to a new family, new life. There is also a subtle criticism of post modern world here, that we still have not figured out how to make sense of our ultra-fast living, that someone like JS finds a connection somewhere, and that's where he settles (he 'does' change tribes however, apparently he feels better about the quality of the connection in Pandora). We still have not figured out how to do that, a new social order is still lacking, is behind our technological prowess.

At the end of the day, I ask myself: has it been a boon a movie like Avatar was made? My answer is yes. Would I watch it again? Yes again. The movie with all its frills, message was enough entertainment for me. Also: the story's paralels to Iraq War is unmistakable. On that factor alone, this movie had enough enticement to pull me to movie theather, as a last visit on year 2009.

Singularity

There is a lot of talk on this subject: that technology so rising in complexity, with dazzling applications that at one point, some form of AI will surpass human intelligence. This view was exemplified by an early pioneer in robotics research. He said (I paraphrase) "I believe the day will come an AI capable robot will look down to a human as we look down a dog. And I confess, I am rooting for the machines".

Ok. A bit rough but, there it is.

Working with robotics and seeing the algorithms, methods used, I can say that this event in fact is plausible. Technology can get there. Then (let's rationalize all of this) could we perhaps see this AI as an "evolution" of ourselves, that our growth is actually leading us this way? Great, I feel better now. The robot is me! Only better.

But evolution can also go in another direction: in a way that'll result in a human being evolved in such a way that can interface with a computer so efficiently that this 'combination' will never let any kind of singularity event come to fore. Or, make it uncessary.

I believe this is a more likely scenario. We love our tools. Even without a Matrix like plug-in, we get so good interfacing to our tools through our "old-fashioned" "limbs" that some feel whatever tool they use becomes an extension of them. If we can do this, what is stopping us fusing ourselves so well with a computer that can do all heavy lifting while we concentrate on more "human" tasks? This interfacing ability would get inherited and 'chosen' through successive evoution and become stronger, more effective.

So I am not 'scared' in any way. Just the fact that we are talking about this today will assure it happening less likely. Sure some crazy scientist can work on a T-4000000 complete with an Austrian accent and let it loose on humans, but this all comes back to MAD rationale again. Why use a technology when in some day it might come back and bite you in the ass? I don't think so.

We are safe. Sleep soundly humans.

Projects, Risks

My comments on post:

Stiglitz has an interesting take on such issues: What we are actually deciding is how to decide projects that get funded (encouraged), and which are not, also by whom. Projects can be anything that is relevant to the survival of the human race.

Now: if the failure of a project means extinction of human race, those decisions are better-off centralized. If however, we need to "try" bunch of projects, don't care of failures, but success will push everyone forward in some way, there we need decentralized projects, that is, people start them on their own, take the risks, and the benefits as well. The latter would be capitalism (or any other free enterprise based system), fhe former central, government. The paper is here http://bit.ly/3uUhkf