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I think we have this all backwards in a sense. When the internet was new and governments were not involved, hackers claimed sovereignty in the anarchistic unive

by Produce 15y ago

I think we have this all backwards in a sense. When the internet was new and governments were not involved, hackers claimed sovereignty in the anarchistic universe called cyberspace. Now that controls are being forced upon it, we are up in arms. Well what about the physical world? There are just as many arbitrary rules which only exist to protect the interests of the few at the expense of the many already in place. We should be up in arms about governments, or anybody who thinks that they have a right to decide anything but what they do with their own lives, for that matter, not just freedom on the internet. Take patents, for example. Are we really so deluded that we think that if medical patents didn't exist then not one person would have the drive to cure diseases? Do we really think that compassion does not exist and that profit is the only reason for doing something for another person?

bad_user 15y ago
Do we really think that compassion does not exist and that profit is the only reason for doing something for another person? That's a straw man. The purpose of patents is to encourage companies to publish their research. The purpose of patents is also to discourage pharmaceutical companies to produce yet another variation on acetaminophen and instead spend money on doing research with huge sunken costs. That this doesn't happen in real life is yet another story, but to appeal to human emotion, as you did in your comment, is shortsighted and wrong too. The reason for that is that -- yes, most humanitarian efforts have egotistical value, profit being the strongest motive for companies to advance the state of the art. Surely, other than companies, state-sponsored institutions, like the army, have been known to produce valuable research, but most such research was in the context of a war.
- Produce 15y ago
  >The purpose of patents is to encourage companies to publish their research. I would agree with you if it wasn't for this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent: >certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods, treatment of the human body, and mental acts And the fact that we have a culture built on the idea that it's every man for himself. What's short sighted isn't an appeal to emotion but the social structures we currently have. Cooperation is a simple and effective way to combat these issues and an appeal to emotion is the mechanism to encourage it. Now, before you mention it, I understand that there are physical limitations which are hindering this change in paradigm, in particular, Dunbar's number - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number From what I have researched, my current working model is that this has to do with the amount of serotonin in people's brains, hence drugs which raise serotonin levels such as MDMA or stimulate serotonin receptors, such as psychedelics, result in feelings of being connected to humanity and trigger a marked increase in compassion. Meditation also has these effects which suggests that it increases serotonin production. Perhaps when we start to modify our own DNA we can permanently increase the amount of this neurotransmitter for everyone and raise Dunbar's number to something more workable (in the sense of triggering said paradigm shift). Until then, it's up to individuals to do this work. The bottom line is that the way we are doing things is backwards and can be improved by orders of magnitude, so I firmly believe that patents of all types are a transient effect which will disappear as humanity evolves socially.

by Produce 15y ago

bad_user 15y ago

Do we really think that compassion does not exist and that profit is the only reason for doing something for another person? That's a straw man. The purpose of patents is to encourage companies to publish their research. The purpose of patents is also to discourage pharmaceutical companies to produce yet another variation on acetaminophen and instead spend money on doing research with huge sunken costs. That this doesn't happen in real life is yet another story, but to appeal to human emotion, as you did in your comment, is shortsighted and wrong too. The reason for that is that -- yes, most humanitarian efforts have egotistical value, profit being the strongest motive for companies to advance the state of the art. Surely, other than companies, state-sponsored institutions, like the army, have been known to produce valuable research, but most such research was in the context of a war.

Produce 15y ago
>The purpose of patents is to encourage companies to publish their research. I would agree with you if it wasn't for this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent: >certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods, treatment of the human body, and mental acts And the fact that we have a culture built on the idea that it's every man for himself. What's short sighted isn't an appeal to emotion but the social structures we currently have. Cooperation is a simple and effective way to combat these issues and an appeal to emotion is the mechanism to encourage it. Now, before you mention it, I understand that there are physical limitations which are hindering this change in paradigm, in particular, Dunbar's number - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number From what I have researched, my current working model is that this has to do with the amount of serotonin in people's brains, hence drugs which raise serotonin levels such as MDMA or stimulate serotonin receptors, such as psychedelics, result in feelings of being connected to humanity and trigger a marked increase in compassion. Meditation also has these effects which suggests that it increases serotonin production. Perhaps when we start to modify our own DNA we can permanently increase the amount of this neurotransmitter for everyone and raise Dunbar's number to something more workable (in the sense of triggering said paradigm shift). Until then, it's up to individuals to do this work. The bottom line is that the way we are doing things is backwards and can be improved by orders of magnitude, so I firmly believe that patents of all types are a transient effect which will disappear as humanity evolves socially.