Seb Paquet › Comments

"I LOLed." - Seb Paquet

In classical physics, he says, there is no such thing as "if"; the future is determined absolutely by the past. So there can be no free will. In the multiverse, however, there are alternatives; the quantum possibilities really happen. Free will might have a sensible definition, Deutsch thinks, because the alternatives don't have to occur within equally large slices of the multiverse. "By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives," he says. "When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen." Let's hope that deciding to read this article was the right choice. - Seb Paquet

The What, Why and How for SME’s interested in Open Collaboration - Seb Paquet

Web interface to freenode IRC - Seb Paquet

The mission of the Metagovernment project is to support the development and use of Internet tools which enable the members of any community to fully participate in the governance of that community. We are a global group of people working on various projects which further this goal. We expect governance software to be firstly adopted in small communities and to spread outward with the potential to gradually replace many institutions of representative democracy with collaborative governance. We conceive a world where every person, without exception, is able to substantively participate in any governance structure in which they have an interest. We envision governance which is not only more open, free, and democratic; but also which is more effective and less fallible than pre-Internet forms of governance. - Seb Paquet

international collaborative project whose aim is to give voice to public opinion around the world on international issues. As the world becomes increasingly integrated, problems have become increasingly global, pointing to a greater need for understanding between nations and for elucidating global norms. With the growth of democracy in the world, public opinion has come to play a greater role in the foreign policy process. WorldPublicOpinion.org seeks to reveal the values and views of publics in specific nations around the world as well as global patterns of world public opinion. WorldPublicOpinion.org was initiated by and is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland - Seb Paquet

designs and leverages Internet and network technologies to create and cultivate sustainable wealth-generating ecologies, addressing the challenges of global and local communities in the 21st century. - Seb Paquet

"There are an abundance of copying in our culture because there are lots of people who are perfectly happy with copies; most of them also believe in money, which feeds the cycle. I think the real challenge underlying Doug’s ideas is to grow a culture where creativity is generally sought and valued. I believe this can be done virally: if each individual who understand the importance of creation began showing appreciation for genuine creators and helping enhance their reputation, this attitude could be expected to propagate out to others. A dynamic like this is already happening in a subset of the blogosphere, and elsewhere as well. Once they’ve got enough to eat, creators are free to accept things other than (scarce) global currency as payment. Local currency, attention, and social capital are alternatives. I’d say they are even more satisfying than money, once you’ve tasted them. I think what each person who is through with artificial scarcity should do is to invest their surplus into..." - Seb Paquet

Yes: "I have argued that universities will move to a superstar market for teachers in which the very best teachers use on-line instruction and TAs to teach thousands of students at many different universities. " - Michael Nielsen

In a blog post a few weeks back, I arrived at a similar "winner-takes-all" conclusion from a different direction: http://openresearch.sebpaquet.net/2009... - Seb Paquet

Most critics tend to think of modernity as corrosive of moral sentiments. They see clearly the way in which modernity breaks down older social bonds, but they are much less attentive to the ways in which it also builds new ones. This book offers an historically informed corrective to this common view. Sznaider demonstrates that compassion, understood as the organized campaign to lessen the suffering of strangers, is a distinctly modern form of morality. - Seb Paquet

- Continuous participation (mailing list) is better than one-time opt-in (joining Facebook group) - Creating a personal social connection to people within a movement (friending prominent activists in a movement on Twitter) is better than creating a connection between the slacktivist and the brand of the movement itself (Project RED)–this is kind of derived from the first rule, since having a social connection to someone who really cares ensures future news about the topic. - An activity where people must engage creatively (finding facts and tweeting them or even responding to a tweet) is better than one where people can participate passively. - Seb Paquet

It is only a small group of those social activists who ever think to blame the economic system itself for all the drowning people. Maybe it’s because they spend all their time trying to rescue the drowners that they don’t have time to think about changing a system that is so clearly harmful to so many. I’m not questioning that saving people from drowning is a noble goal, but keeping them out of the river in the first place would be even nobler. - Seb Paquet

"Not only will I be able to perform tasks faster than before, but my new device will also inform those around me that I am a successful individual who is up on the latest trends," said Rebecca Hodge - Seb Paquet

Cosma Shalizi: "The story, or part of the story, of how the outlandish and unprecedented ideology of a network of radical, subversive scribblers became what we all at least pay lip-service to." - Seb Paquet

As Russians openly strive to become elitny, America’s dominant oligarchs and feeble intellectuals live in a state of grotesque denial about their elitism. Billionaires act like hicks and get away with it. Liberal intellectuals try to suckup by learning sports metaphors. The smoke and mirrors works well for the billionaires but not for the nearly-extinct Left. So why are Americans still in the elitist closet? - Seb Paquet

How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves - Seb Paquet

classic - Seb Paquet

Turn capitalism on when things are good; turn socialism on when it goes bad - Seb Paquet

When Pinochet's military overthrew the Chilean government 30 years ago, they discovered a revolutionary communication system, a 'socialist internet' connecting the whole country. Its creator? An eccentric scientist from Surrey. Andy Beckett on the forgotten story of Stafford Beer. (See also: http://vimeo.com/8000921 ) - Seb Paquet

Strategy: Invest in seed companies that will grow and provide empowering tools to poor people - Seb Paquet

Participants in the study were asked to write reflections and answer questions about their recent purchases. Participants indicated that experiential purchases represented money better spent and greater happiness for both themselves and others. The results also indicate that experiences produce more happiness regardless of the amount spent or the income of the consumer. Experiences also lead to longer-term satisfaction. "Purchased experiences provide memory capital," Howell said. "We don't tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object. "People still believe that more money will make them happy, even though 35 years of research has suggested the opposite," Howell said. "Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences." - Seb Paquet

despite the apparent tidal wave of new consumer goods and what appeared to be a healthy appetite for their consumption among the well-to-do, industrialists were worried. They feared that the frugal habits maintained by most American families would be difficult to break. Perhaps even more threatening was the fact that the industrial capacity for turning out goods seemed to be increasing at a pace greater than people’s sense that they needed them. - Seb Paquet

Biocide is occurring at an alarming rate. Experts say that at least half of the world’s current species will be completely gone by the end of the century. Wild plant-life is also disappearing. Most biologists say that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction. Numerous scientific studies confirm that this phenomenon is real and happening right now. Should anyone really care? Will it impact individuals on a personal level? Scientists say, “Yes!” Critics argue that species disappear and new ones emerge all the time. That’s true, if you’re speaking in terms of millennia. Scientists acknowledge that species disappear at an estimated rate of one species per million per year, with new species replacing the lost ones at around the same rate. Recently humans have accelerated the extinction rate to where several entire species are annihilated every single day. - Seb Paquet

Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases. The study primarily focused on how this relationship affects children and adolescents. Lan Nguyen Chaplin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Deborah Roedder John (University of Minnesota) found that even a simple gesture to raise self-esteem dramatically decreased materialism, which provides a way to cope with insecurity. - Seb Paquet

“Discontentment is historically a positive virtue that has driven the human imagination. The problem with the consumer society is not that it makes us too ambitious but that it confines ambition to the sphere of consumption.” - Seb Paquet

I’ve had a difficult time during this Thanksgiving weekend to get my mind around the tragic trampling of Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour. Did people keep shopping? Did the Valley Stream store make any sales before the police closed it down? Who put up the sign outside the store saying “Blitz Line Starts Here”? [...] This is not an example of the wisdom of crowds. - Seb Paquet

In September of 2007, the city of Windsor, which borders the United States, officially asked for financial assistance from Ottawa to deal with American refugees flooding into Canada. This is proving to be the tip of the iceberg, and only the first wave of economic refugees that have been created in the United States. - Seb Paquet

"What are good places in the world other than Sicily? (I presently live near Montreal.)" - Seb Paquet

"What are good places in the world other than Sicily? (I presently live near Montreal.)" - Seb Paquet

It takes thirty-five calories of fossil fuel to make a calorie of beef this way; sixty-eight to make one calorie of pork. - Seb Paquet

OMG!!! Paydirt! - Seb Paquet