Pacal_II

But there's a difference between making an atheist commune on an island and joining for example Dawkins' foundation to promote atheism and an interest in science to the general public.

Yes, but agorists isolate themselves from society, that's not the point here. Thanks a lot, though all of these seem to be focused on software development, know something outside of that realm.

Recently I've had a talk with my friend about what we'd basically want to do in the future. Both of us consider voluntaryism and the ethics, philosophy and values that go together with it important for us. Another thing we share together as both an interest and something we find important is technology. We've already talked about how technological progress has improved human standards of living and in many cases made humanity more free (those two often come hand in hand). Usually this was in the context of how technology's more indirect effects worked on enhancing human freedom. Technology allowed people to be healthier and find more resourceful ways to fulfill basic needs through advances in medicine, agriculture or industrial technology. This in turn allowed people to have more leisure time, for self-improvement, for taking better care of their children and so on. Moreover, technology helped people educate themselves better, from the invention of writing, then the printing press and now the internet, which provides people with a universal and practically free source of infinite knowledge.The other part of our conversation was about how lately different technologies developed or are still being developed help voluntaryist goals. Inspired by the article “21 technologies that will decentralize the world” we thought about several technologies that provide alternatives for sectors that are today in the hands of or highly regulated by the state. The obvious ones here would be crypto-currencies, 3-d printers, free-web projects, social media, cryptography or technology that provides easy and cheap medical analysis and diagnosis.We concluded that this is what we'd want to do .i.e. work to either develop technology that improves human freedom and that provides peaceful alternatives to the brutal hierarchical state system or to go about introducing and installing existing technologies in communities or society in general for this purpose. We also wondered about how there must be people out there doing just what we aim to. Hence the question we ask: are there any companies, organizations or groups that aim at doing what I just described; ideally institutions that associate themselves with voluntaryism or libertarianism and aim at achieving these goals without state support or regulations.

Edit: I know "weird" is a subjective sense and I'm not really able to give a clear definiton of what I mean by it. That's why I gave many examples bellow, of stuff I'd consider weird so that people could get the feeling of what I mean. I've been wondering recently about why some people, me included, like weird stuff. Let me elaborate on what I actually mean by weird stuff. In my case this relates mainly to the types of books, games paintings, films etc I like. I mean weird in both the visual/aesthetic sense and also in the sense of story/narration. Stuff people call mind-screwy or trippy. I'll give examples of what I mean by just mentioning works in different forms of media, so most will probably recognize something among those and get a better understanding of what I'm talking about. Films: Works by Terry Guilliam, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Jodorovsky, also films like Pi, Space Odyssey or Memento. Books: Fantasy books, but not ones with the Tolkien-esque settings and archetypes. Most known examples, books by China Mieville and Neil Gaiman. Books by Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Jacek Dukaj, also Master and Margarita, The Magus, The Brothers Karamazov. Cartoons: When I was younger obviously: Billy and Mandy, I am Weasel, Cow and Chicken, Samurai Jack Games: Planescape: Torment, Zeno Clash, Sacrifice, Morrowind, Oddworld series Art: I'm not much into art, but I really love the works of Hieronymus Bosch. Anime: Spirited Away, Nausicaa, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ergo Proxy, Serial Experiments Lain, Tatami Galaxy Comic books: Sandman, The Maxx Ok, I'm pretty sure that anyone who reads this will recognize at least some of the stuff and get an idea of what I mean by “weird”. Of course lots of people have similar tastes, but on the other hand lots of people don't. Often people will call stuff like this stupid, pretentious, or just won't have an opinion at all. People also will get disappointed by obscure and what I call mind-screwy endings of books/films/games etc. I on the other hand love that feeling, when I really don't exactly know what I've seen and I have to take a longer time to think about it, create my own interpretation or read what others have figured out. I might add that this doesn't really go into other realms of my life. What I mean by this is, that I don't wear odd clothes, I don't eat weird/exotic food, tattoo my body or anything like that. I am considered as a weird person, but that's more related to my interests or just my sense of humor and the way I talk. I might come up to a friend and tell him something like: “I heard you weren't a grasshopper until you were born at the age of minus seven” or “Did you hear that if a child doesn't learn to sit before it turns four, it won't be able to learn how to sit at all?”. Just random stuff like that. So, summing up. Why do some people like weird stuff like this? Could this be considered as something unhealthy or negative trait? Is it the effect of our environment or rather something that is encoded into our nature (pretty sure, that's no it though). Is this somehow related to childhood? Or is it just an effect of some other, seemingly un-related brain function or trait. Just why do some people like weird stuff, and why some do not?

But won't intelligent machines learn like us? That means they won't have built in ethics, they'll just have to learn like us, although the process might be easier then us. Who knows, maybe AIs will manage to completally out-perform us in philosophy.

Stef and many people on this forum claim that peacefull parenting is the best way to achieve a stateless society, and that this would be a multi-generational process. So what effect would biological immortality have on this. I won't be going in to all the reasons why biological immortality is possible because that's not the point. Just write in michio kaku, ray kurzweil or aubrey de grey + immortality in google and youtube. So according to some of these predictions we might achieve biological immortality available to most people in 30 years. What does would mean is that we're stuck theoretically forever with people who were beaten, abused and propagandised by the state. Even though new children would be born the old generations would not pass, and also we see a tendency in developed countries of less children being born. Which would mean that the older generation could possible stay the majority for a pretty long time. So I ask, what effect would this have on our society? Would it mean that our progression towards anarchy would be slowed down. In my opinion it won't, but that's because peacefull parenting and improving relations isn't in my opinion the main way to achieve anarchy. Or rather it is, but rather as an effect of something else which is more in our control, which is technology. In my opinion it's thanks technology, which leads and has lead us towards improvements in our societies. Basically it as a means which effeciently helps us fulfill our needs and thanks to that people don't feel the nead to use agression in your lives. So in a society with cheap food, medicine, housing and a society where most labour is automatic parents will be less stressed out and will have more time and patience for their children and in effect it will help them raise them peacefully and philosophically. On the other hand brain augmentation might help grown up people with reflection and self-knowledge practically avoiding the pain and huge amounts of time consumed involved with therapy and self-reflection. In the end the passing of generations won't be required for the progress of society because we'll find ways to improve our lives here and now, rendering governement and possibly violence and psychopathy absolete.

Stef and many people on this forum claim that peacefull parenting is the best way to achieve a stateless society, and that this would be a multi-generational process. So what effect would biological immortality have on this. I won't be going in to all the reasons why biological immortality is possible because that's not the point. Just write in michio kaku, ray kurzweil or aubrey de grey + immortality in google and youtube. So according to some of these predictions we might achieve biological immortality available to most people in 30 years. What does would mean is that we're stuck theoretically forever with people who were beaten, abused and propagandised by the state. Even though new children would be born the old generations would not pass, and also we see a tendency in developed countries of less children being born. Which would mean that the older generation could possible stay the majority for a pretty long time. So I ask, what effect would this have on our society? Would it mean that our progression towards anarchy would be slowed down. In my opinion it won't, but that's because peacefull parenting and improving relations isn't in my opinion the main way to achieve anarchy. Or rather it is, but rather as an effect of something else which is more in our control, which is technology. In my opinion it's thanks technology, which leads and has lead us towards improvements in our societies. Basically it as a means which effeciently helps us fulfill our needs and thanks to that people don't feel the nead to use agression in your lives. So in a society with cheap food, medicine, housing and a society where most labour is automatic parents will be less stressed out and will have more time and patience for their children and in effect it will help them raise them peacefully and philosophically. On the other hand brain augmentation might help grown up people with reflection and self-knowledge practically avoiding the pain and huge amounts of time consumed involved with therapy and self-reflection. In the end the passing of generations won't be required for the progress of society because we'll find ways to improve our lives here and now, rendering governement and possibly violence and psychopathy absolete.

Sure, I know we don't have, but that's not exactly my question. It's not "Why do we have to conform?", it's "Why do others want us to conform?"But thanks for the film anyway, I'll be sure to watch it.

So my friend recently added an question on facebook, I'm pretty sure before I became a voluntaryist I would of considered it childish or naive, but now I really wonder what is the answer to it. So I translated it into english and here it goes; Why do we actually "have to" do things this way or another, becaue "we have to, it seems appropriate"? Why do we automatically adjust to other peoples expectacions? Why do others impose on us, our priorities, how to live, how to be gain succes, if and how many children we should have, if we should have a family? Why do we all stereotypically have to finish as regular empoyees, with a an official and "stiff" work, whose peak of relaxation is sitting in front of the tv for a couple of minutes. Why do we all have to be the same? Why do we give ourselves limits for our age and period of life. Why are dreams treated as madness. If it will always be like that, so I want to be mad! So this is more or less what he posted. I wouldn't use the word "have to" as much as he does, because society doesn't force us to conform, but it does tell us to. And we are tought, especially in school to conform. So... what do you think would be the answer to these questions?

So I've always thought that Stefan Molyneux was against copyright laws like most acaps are. So my friend recently wrote to me that on the bottom of the forum page we see: Copyright 2005-2012 By Stefan Molyneux. Is there any explenation for this?