Yup, it shows that western propaganda is just as pervasive and effective as propaganda from China & Russia

Indeed, but to be fair

> they are the victim/being attacked from outside

and they have been that targeted victim by the USA and Israel since the 1950s when the USA staged their first coup, installed their pet dictator, and then protected him for 20 years.

which was the whole reason that Iran eventually ended up with a theocracy, since that dictator tortured and murdered all other opposition to his rule, which only left the church with any leaders still alive when the revolution came and the US-puppet was thrown out.

Hence leading to the current clusterfuck

to an extent they are.

They tend to have a common interest in increasing their own wealth and power. How they choose to do those things certainly varies massively between them, however the common factors are that they have zero interest in helping the rest of the population, and will willingly kneecap public initiatives if they can't profit off it.

It doesn't need any kind of conspiracy, it just requires people with influence and greed who are manipulating society in their own interests, at the expense of everyone else

agreed, however they are also the ones who own the media and platforms that enable others to push similar agenda.

and, in a number of nations, they own the politicians who are also pushing similar agenda

Problem 2: being able to discuss them honestly without being drowned out and silenced by propaganda and misinformation from the rich and powerful, who are far more interested in amassing more wealth and power than actually addressing any issues.

Something that won't be composed until around 2095

Humanity will still (probably) survive after a super-volcano eruption, but current technology and civilization is much less likely to. And once those are gone, they can never be rebuilt, because all of the necessary resources (minerals etc) needed to rebuild have already been used up, and those remaining are impossible to access without already possessing those technologies.

Having self-sustaining colonies off-planet means that technology and civilization can still survive, and be reintroduced afterwards. Getting them to the point of being self-sustaining, and having their own space-based manufacturing isn't a trivial task, but is very achievable within a century or so.

No, I believe in science, technology, and humanity's rate of development.

Apparently you believe that we've reached our peak technology and will never improve.

I believe that the term for that is "Luddite"

> disregarding unlikely extinction events

"unlikely" ?

Most of the world's super-volcanos are overdue for an eruption, those are guaranteed to happen, the only question is whether the next one is next year, or in 1000 years.

The same applies to dinosaur killers. We've been hit by multiples of those over the millennia, we're almost guaranteed to be hit by another. That one is more on the range of millions of years statistically, but could still be tomorrow (but probably won't be).

Any colony that is built off world is going to need to slowly become self-sufficient, growing their own food, mining and manufacturing. and Yes, that takes time.

and Yes, there will be a period where they are totally dependent on Earth, which is likely to last decades, but is certainly unlikely to last centuries.

Technology changes at a massive rate, and the minerals and resources available in space far outstrip anything available on Earth. Getting access to them is going to be hard, but far from impossible.

Well

• Owen Moran (singer/songwriter/bass) died earlier this year, so that one is going to be hard.

• Peter Digsy Deary is available on Instagram and on Facebook

You can certainly dig a hole in the ground and hunker in there for years, even grow food and recycle everything.

However you can never collect more resources than what you take down your hole, and all of the technology you use to hide down there will wear out.

an underground bunker is just a guarantee of a slow death for the inhabitants, it certainly provides zero future for them

Colonizing anywhere off Earth is a step to ensuring the long-term survivability of humanity. There are several things that can destroy human civilization that we can't stop. Probably won't kill humanity as a whole, but could send the survivors back to the stone age and they'd never recover

e.g. a "dinosaur-killer" asteroid. the eruption of any of the world's dozen or so Super-volcanos (several of which are over-due), etc

Taking humanity into space gives us a second chance, where right now, all our eggs are in 1 basket. and that basket is extremely fragile

other planets (and free-floating colonies) can be made habitable (with time and significant cost and work), and the technology gained in doing that can help with repairing the damage we've one to our own planet.

Experimenting with the biosphere and climate of Earth is guaranteed to have short and long term consequences, and its better for the planet's population if those experiments and technology development were done somewhere else where there is zero chance of killing most of humanity

Please note that different nations have made different rulings on copyright as applied to AI.

In the US & Europe, for example, AI generated works are not copyrightable.

Other nations, however, allow it but assign the copyright to the AI's programmer.

However, all of this has been undergoing significant review over the last few years as AI have become more capable and more accessible.

the discussion was about UBI, something that doesn't already exist very widely, so the discussion was clearly about the future and "might be".

and you still haven't provided an alternative to UBI, which is what I asked about before you got so aggro.

And Yes, I know that much/most of the western world take care of their citizens better than the USA, but that was never part of the discussion.

FFS - nothing there was a "bad faith aggro troll", other than your defensiveness.

I was merely stating that Europe will be forced to go the UBI route as well as AI & automation becomes more capable and moves into more and more jobs.

Certainly European nations are much more likely to start using some form of UBI well before the USA does, and their social welfare system is likely to transition in the direction increasingly over the next couple of decades.

you planning on running overseas to get a benefit in Europe instead ?

The majority of legal work involves clerks doing paperwork and research to locate precedents etc which is all automatable (and is going online rapidly), things that require an actual lawyer and a face to face meeting, or a court room, is the minority.

The same applies to accounting. So much of that is very well defined and the rules very well known, more and more of the clerical side of accounting (which is a huge percentage of the job) is going online and automated. There is certainly a moderate amount which is much more complex and requires human intervention, but its still a minority of the work.

There are already many people using online accounting and legal services. And while there is probably a human in there somewhere, largely its using automated systems.

There are a bunch of white collar jobs that are very repetitive and based on well defined rules that are easy to be automated. Law clerks, accounting, are 2 of the easiest.

do you have an alternative ?

> democratic US government

a Failed democracy perhaps.

US politicians are brought and sold by billionaires and corporate executives even before they get elected, and those "donors" are expecting a return on their investment, otherwise those donations dry up and they don't get re-elected.

You can vote for anyone you like, just remember that their allegiance is to their corporate backers, and not to the electorate.

almost any nation using some form of Proportional Representatio has a much more effective and democratic system than the US, 2-party, corporately owned, first past the post system.

and the Govt don't control the media, instead corporations own both the politicians and the propaganda that gets pushed through their media outlets. US corporate media has just as much propaganda and misinformation as anything out of China, Russia etc, and provides just as much tracking and surveillance as either of those nations.

anyone getting their information from Fox News is always misinformed anyway

Space elevators are largely a matter of engineering nowadays.

Yes, the materials aren't there yet, but they are getting closer every year.

Climbers are largely solved, basic design is largely solved, materials for the cable is the sole remaining barrier. And thats a not insignificant barrier atm, but its getting closer every year

as always, its the ones who hide down in the backseat who are just waiting to cause mischief