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I want separate bathrooms for cyborgs. What if I'm standing at the urinal and a cyborg is staring at my junk, but zhe's streaming it directly for zher sicko cyborg friends.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:50
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XyloJW posted:I want separate bathrooms for cyborgs. What if I'm standing at the urinal and a cyborg is staring at my junk, but zhe's streaming it directly for zher sicko cyborg friends.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:53
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Eripsa, please make a separate thread for all your crazed cyborg ramblings. It'll be great.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:54
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One of my students made this back in 2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4WXmf4gNfc edit: I love the custom title. Thanks! RealityApologist fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 04:57
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RealityApologist posted:I have no doubt that all the talk in this thread of "Glassholes" are just the early stirrings of a coming culture war over the rights of cyborgs as a protected class, and that the broad outlines of this culture war will bear a strong resemblance to the political struggles of the LGBT community over the last 30 years. How much Deus Ex fan fiction have you written? Be honest.
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Mar 25, 2014 05:04
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Soon... Soon the future will be awesome... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPX-AF8ccXQ
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Mar 25, 2014 05:06
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more friedman units posted:How much Deus Ex fan fiction have you written? Be honest. Never even played it. Yiggy posted:Soon... Soon the future will be awesome... The future is now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLXVinyXjgA
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Mar 25, 2014 05:10
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RealityApologist posted:One of my students made this back in 2007: That is cute but your ideal society is much more likely to result in Terminator except instead of Skynet it'll be insular fascists shooting marbles out their eyes or something. Edit: I mean as opposed to something as banal as people griping about cyborg rights or whatever. What in the world makes you think people rich enough to be cyborgs are going to be oppressed in any way, shape, or form? Odds are they will be the ones doing the oppressing. AstheWorldWorlds fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 05:10
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I feel kinda bad for RealityApologist because I really, really wanted the singularity and all that poo poo to be real when I was in my teens and early twenties. Like, I was banking on my augmented consciousness surfing down the cyberstreams of nano-reality by, like, 2040 tops. I think it was because the future where every technology with amazing potential is just another toy for rich white people was far too depressing 
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Mar 25, 2014 06:23
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shrike82 posted:Arguments like this always devolve into "what's middle class and what's upper class".
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Mar 25, 2014 06:37
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$150k a year is closer to the "average American making median?" In 2012, the median U.S. household income was $51,371 and the average was $71,317. $150,000 a year isn't the 1%, but it is very, very well-off.
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Mar 25, 2014 06:50
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Eustachy posted:I sometimes like living in a flyover rust belt city that gets made fun of because even though it's an independent metropolitan area of almost 1 million people, ranging the gamut I always felt from the penniless to the rich, there is nobody who drives a car worth more than $100k. I think I've seen cars potentially worth more than that driving around 2 times in my life. If I lived somewhere that I regularly encountered people owning $100k cars describing themselves as middle class I'd have to throw up I live there pretty much. It's basically several DC suburbs or outlying communities- whether Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Arlington, Alexandria or Potomac. You can get a really skewed perspective on this country if you just lived in those areas all your life. Shammypants fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 06:53
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There's pretty wide variance in cost of living across the country though, so $100k might mean a very, very comfortable existence in some places and a firmly middle class one in areas with higher costs of living (e.g., NYC).
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Mar 25, 2014 06:55
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Sir Mat of Dickie posted:There's pretty wide variance in cost of living across the country though, so $100k might mean a very, very comfortable existence in some places and a firmly middle class one in areas with higher costs of living (e.g., NYC). Wrong. In NYC 100k is still upper class.
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Mar 25, 2014 07:00
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I mean, you can live in NYC or DC for far less than 100k. What a higher salary gets you is a fancier lifestyle- it doesn't grant you previously declined access necessarily. Hell, you can live in most expensive places in and around DC for 1200 a month, but the house will be smaller and your other needs will be impacted by the higher rent.
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Mar 25, 2014 07:02
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Install Windows posted:Wrong. In NYC 100k is still upper class. What do you define as upper class?
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Mar 25, 2014 07:04
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shrike82 posted:What do you define as upper class? I know you asked him, but I would probably place lower class under 35,000 or so, middle class from 35,000 to 70,000, upper-middle 70,000 to 90,000 and anything above that is upper class. I wouldn't necessarily define lower, middle or upper class by salary alone, but maybe debt, education and other factors.
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Mar 25, 2014 07:09
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shrike82 posted:What do you define as upper class? Let's say about 3x the median individual income of the city
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Mar 25, 2014 07:14
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XyrlocShammypants posted:I know you asked him, but I would probably place lower class under 35,000 or so, middle class from 35,000 to 70,000, upper-middle 70,000 to 90,000 and anything above that is upper class. I wouldn't necessarily define lower, middle or upper class by salary alone, but maybe debt, education and other factors. Isn't the entire point of banding demographics into classes to say that members of each class share common values or characteristics? I don't see the point of arbitrarily setting cutoffs by income. Using your cutoff, every single fresh graduate joining the tech flagships parachutes immediately into the upper class given that the starting salary these days is 100k+. I think it makes more sense to lump everyone into 2 classes nowadays - those able to live off their capital and those that can't.
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Mar 25, 2014 09:12
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shrike82 posted:I think it makes more sense to lump everyone into 2 classes nowadays - those able to live off their capital and those that can't. Why can't we just call them what they are -- takers and makers  That reminds me: does anyone have a link to that article written by some completely awful rich person wherein they explain that no, you just don't understand, 200k/yr is still middle class, and it's not like we have all this money lying around after paying for the gardener and the condo and such. This thread smacks of people approaching that argument in earnest.
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Mar 25, 2014 09:33
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more friedman units posted:$150k a year is closer to the "average American making median?" It's about the top 10% last time I checked (or I think ~$100k was).
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Mar 25, 2014 12:42
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XyrlocShammypants posted:I mean, you can live in NYC or DC for far less than 100k. What a higher salary gets you is a fancier lifestyle- it doesn't grant you previously declined access necessarily. Hell, you can live in most expensive places in and around DC for 1200 a month, but the house will be smaller and your other needs will be impacted by the higher rent. lol no you can't. you probably couldn't even find a studio in Georgetown for $1200, definitely not in Potomac or McLean. Good chunks of Alexandria, Arlington, and Falls Church would be entirely inaccessible as well. My girlfriend and I make around $70,000 combined and we live in Alexandria, around a mile from Del Ray and Shirlington and we pay $1300 for a ~600 sqft one bedroom. edit: "the house" lol. please show me a house that's $1200/mo inside of the beltway
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Mar 25, 2014 13:58
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computer parts posted:It's about the top 10% last time I checked (or I think ~$100k was). $100k is about top 6.5% individual income.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:54
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RealityApologist posted:This was before bitcoin was a thing on anyone's radar, and the very idea of such fundamental changes was considered so sci-fi/fantasy that it couldn't be taken seriously. So I got banned and the whole forum took a turn towards Jaron Lanier and Evgeny Morozov, and I've been dealing with harassment and custom titles ever since. Bitcoin is still fantasy that can't be taken seriously, although I'm not terribly surprised that you're into it. Are you the "hey guys why can't we set up the legal system through the blockchain" guy? shrike82 posted:Isn't the entire point of banding demographics into classes to say that members of each class share common values or characteristics? Yes, yes they are. That's one reason why they have so much trouble understanding the troubles of the non-techies in their region - they went into the upper class right our of college and have never genuinely had to be a poor person, so the conditions and experiences of the lower classes are utterly alien to them. Though I'd add a fourth class for the millionaires and above; wealth inequality is so bad that while the top 10% has no concept of what the bottom 80% lives like, the top 1% has no concept of what the rest of the top 10% lives like.
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Mar 25, 2014 16:47
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I, in my personal opinion, think all technology should be abolished.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:19
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Eripsa did anyone come to your awful conference that you were going to have at Columbia? I checked its page 5 days from the event and it still said a space was TBD and 0 people were attending, so I assume it was a massive failure but if it was actually a happy time of cyborgs touching ports together I'd love to know.
Obdicut fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 17:24
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Kind of relevant: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/24/i-wanna-get-this-white-trash-on-tape-google-glass-user-releases-video-from-bar-attack/ quote:The California woman who said she was the victim of a “hate crime” for wearing Google Glass eyewear in a bar released a profanity-filled video taken just before her dispute with patrons became physical.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:49
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Wait, SHE released that? In what world would that help her case in the public eye? If the place she was in was divey, she's lucky they just told her to piss off instead of beating the poo poo out of her.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:56
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Some accounts say her "male companion" threw the first punch as well.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:00
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Stanos posted:Wait, SHE released that? The tech world
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Mar 25, 2014 18:32
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XyrlocShammypants posted:I know you asked him, but I would probably place lower class under 35,000 or so, middle class from 35,000 to 70,000, upper-middle 70,000 to 90,000 and anything above that is upper class. I wouldn't necessarily define lower, middle or upper class by salary alone, but maybe debt, education and other factors. I've had this conversation before: income inequality is really, really bad. Bad enough that $250k/yr. really isn't upper class. Most people making low six figures are still labor, do not own, in any meaningful way, capital, and are definitionally middle class.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:43
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Eripsa is coming from a long tradition of advocacy for justice. Haven't any of you read Orwell's 1984? O'Brien, an innocent manager and technophile, is recording the relationship between his coworkers Winston and Maria. When O'Brien posts these up in public, he's subjected to abuse - people call him 'nosy' and a 'peeping tom' and say what he did was 'incredibly rude'. At the climax of the book, a mob is threatening to throw him out of a private bar because he's wearing a Google Glass, and he breaks down, and says 'no, let me stay, just throw my glasses out'. They made him tear a part of himself away, and he was never the same again. It's one of the most chilling books I've ever read. A powerful argument against the privacy fascists.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:44
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:I've had this conversation before: income inequality is really, really bad. Bad enough that $250k/yr. really isn't upper class. Most people making low six figures are still labor, do not own, in any meaningful way, capital, and are definitionally middle class. Define upper class and define middle class. Last I checked there aren't really hard and fast definitions. Obviously there are tiers of wealth above $250k/year, does that invalidate them as upper class? Are millioniares middle class because billioniares exist? I'm always amused by the amount of "what is middle class?" discussions that happen on these forums and yet nobody is willing to post a definition that doesn't involve a number.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:46
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:I've had this conversation before: income inequality is really, really bad. Bad enough that $250k/yr. really isn't upper class. Most people making low six figures are still labor, do not own, in any meaningful way, capital, and are definitionally middle class. capital ownership or not, comparing the quality of life/life experiences between someone making $250,000/year and someone making $35,000/year is silly. they are still upper class, regardless of their reliance on a wage.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:49
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this_is_hard posted:capital ownership or not, comparing the quality of life/life experiences between someone making $250,000/year and someone making $35,000/year is silly. e: whoops, enter. Basically you want the awareness that your boss is an rear end in a top hat but the guy who owns the company is also an rear end in a top hat. It is necessary to pursue some kind of action that addresses both or you'll just tread water.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:52
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If we're going to continue this, rather than just laugh at Eripsa as I'd hoped, we really do need to agree on how class is defined. The classic Marx-derived formula based on the relationship one has with capital and the means of production (with a vestigial upper class who draw their wealth from land rents or whatever) strikes me as more difficult than in standard industrial manufacture, since we've got a much squishier/less-defined means of production than in, say, a steel smelter. On the other hand, merely setting an income level for lower->middle->upper class strikes me as arbitrary, and entirely vulnerable to "well in [PLACE] you need way more than that just to rent a studio so someone pulling down a quarter of a million a year isn't really rich stop being so mean to those poor HINRYs" concern trolls. So I think we're better off finding a way to either make the first formula work, or agree some other method of defining class in modern America before we can even try to slot West Coast tech weenies into it.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:55
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Nessus posted:I do think a profitable (ha ha) distinction can be made though. Of course there's a point to be made in demonstrating who the owners of capital are, but it shouldn't really play into discussion about "what is middle class?"
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Mar 25, 2014 18:55
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I think that as long as nobody making more than $50K for their household doesn't cry "woe is I, anyone poorer than me wouldn't understand" this is a pretty useless discussion to have. Although it is absolutely true that someone making $100K in their 20s has a very different (and almost always, sheltered and vile) outlook on life, I also absolutely agree that at the end of the day, we are all still peasants compared to people who don't have to work to get by. The people who deserve our outrage should always be this latter class, first and foremost - as the former is merely their creation. Like, I don't hold out much hope in any highly paid SV types being any great driving force for positive social change, but neither am I particularly interested in taking them down, specifically. They are still being screwed over, far less than the vast majority of people sure, but we're all in essentially the same boat.
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Mar 25, 2014 18:56
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If we're going full Marxchat, then aren't highly paid techies pretty much textbook "petit bourgeois" in that they basically live at the pleasure of the real capitalists, but still ultimately work for their money. (Also the Marxist analysis for them is that they tend to lean towards fascism, and surprise surprise, works out here...)
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Mar 25, 2014 19:00
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Mr. Wynand posted:If we're going full Marxchat, then aren't highly paid techies pretty much textbook "petit bourgeois" in that they basically live at the pleasure of the real capitalists, but still ultimately work for their money. ya, this is why they tend to vigorously defend the actual bourgeois. it is still hilarious to see people who, by any real measure, live in extreme comfort compared to the vast, vast majority of Americans, refer to themselves as 'not ACTUALLY rich' or 'just middle class.' SV techies live a quality of life much closer to the bourgeois than to the bottom ~80% of the population they often choose to identify with. they are most definitely Part Of The Problem, even if they too are being exploited by the very bosses they love to defend.
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Mar 25, 2014 19:06
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