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Jacque Fresco has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#51

Post by bionsuba »

btg_1987 wrote: post #46
bionsuba wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the misfortune of listening to Fresco on a podcast, and he came right out and stated that 1. Humans don't have a capacity for reason 2. If reason existed it couldn't lead to any truth 3. That people only find scientific discoveries via chance So I wouldn't expect him to be dissuaded by a rational argument. He also believes in the blank slate theory, so not exactly up to date in the science world.

1) Overall, yes. 2) Citation needed. 3) Correct, they react to stimuli. I agree with you on the blank slate theory and that Fresco was not up to date on this. Genetics has an impact on skull formation, brain tissue, etc.

>Overall, yes

So the creatures who invented the conceptual framework of reason and logic have no way to use reason and logic. Got it.

>Citation needed

Here's one example of his opinions on reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcYZpY9JI0

>Correct, they react to stimuli.

If humans didn't have a capacity for reason, then observing stimuli wouldn't mean anything and we wouldn't be able to transform observation to concepts. His example was people accidentally making a camera obscura by having a hole in the wall. Without reason, you

1. Wouldn't be able to conclude that it was even the hole in the wall causing the effect

2. Would be equally likely to attribute the image to the act of a divine power

And his failings on blank slate theory are not on the genetics side of things, but on human behavior. Much like the conception of the new socialist man, his thinking relies on behaviorism.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#52

Post by rbanffy »

afsina wrote: post #13
wavefunction wrote: post #4

>>Robert Murphy, an associate scholar at the Mises Institute, which promotes the teaching of Austrian economics, wrote in 2010 that idealists like Mr. Fresco were “wrong to blame our current dysfunctional world on capitalism or money per se.” Instead, Mr. Murphy wrote, if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.” I read this sort of claim by the 'serious and sober' and real…

I think this is the relevant piece: https://mises.org/library/venus-needs-some-austrians I think Murphy is quite right.

Let's send them to Venus then.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#53

Post by cholantesh »

rbanffy wrote: post #50
boona wrote: post #39

You mean someone who understands the complexities of the markets and the financial system wasn't convinced by Marxism with robots? I can't imagine why.

Maybe he meant someone who is deeply indoctrinated into a set of core assumptions cannot be convinced those assumptions can be changed.

Why not consider the possibility that Fresco's core assumptions and arguments are flawed? Both can be true.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#54

Post by erik14th »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #3

I remember when I watched the Zeitgeist documentaries and had my first contact with this 'resource based" society. Weeks later I had dinner with a friend who was a director in a Spanish consulting firm specialized in the banking sector. I tried to impress him with what I had seen in the documentary. In the end, it was like having an atheist trying to convince the pope about his convictions.

As much as I like Fresco's vision, it sounds to me like saying: "hey, you know all that code we wrote for Society 1.0 in the last couple thousand years? let's throw all that out and write Society 2.0 from scratch" and he acknowledge that when he says the actual system would have to collapse for his ideas to take place. His spec is beautiful but without backwards compat and no smooth transition route, I can't see it happening.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#55

Post by BuckRogers »

xenu101 wrote: post #14
staticelf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes that there will be people remembering the venus project or even have the resources to fight for it at the correct time. Also, it assumes that humanity will survive the climate changes that are due. I think we have taught ourselves that we rather suffer and keep things as they are rather than actually improving them in a radical way like in trying out new economic models.

He believed himself that the chances are slim. We may well be headed for the next dark ages. I doubt we're going extinct though, unless we're literally turning this planet into Venus (put somewhat intended).

The Venus Project has inspired me to extend on their ideas in certain ways, but commit myself to the idea in general. If I ever have vast sums of money like Bill Gates, I'll use it to start something small-scale where people can live outside of current nation-states and demonstrate to the world how life can be if they choose.

I think it's just a matter of this, demonstration. It won't attract everyone, there's a lot of very confused people in a lot of nations who think their way of life can't be topped (especially the US).

The likelihood of 1 person like me who agrees with Fresco's vision netting billions of dollars to begin is higher than a bunch of people on their iPhones suddenly agreeing to the idea in an awakening. It can happen, without a nuclear holocaust "awakening" too. Just need the Elon Musk of the Venus Project to start small.

Jacque did a lot of hard work to get the idea out there.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#56

Post by wavefunction »

dragonwriter wrote: post #5
wavefunction wrote: post #4

>>Robert Murphy, an associate scholar at the Mises Institute, which promotes the teaching of Austrian economics, wrote in 2010 that idealists like Mr. Fresco were “wrong to blame our current dysfunctional world on capitalism or money per se.” Instead, Mr. Murphy wrote, if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.” I read this sort of claim by the 'serious and sober' and real…

Austrian Economics is an ideology; if one is dividing the world into "serious and sober" and "idealists", Austrian-school adherents are emphatically the latter rather than the form.

I'm commenting more that one idealistic notion is presented as academic and a settled fact while the other is presented as, well, idealist.

I suppose the notion of 'all humans respecting property rights' sounds just as fantastical to me as the utopias promised by other philosophies.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#57

Post by BuckRogers »

xkarga00 wrote: post #47
JackFr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just "on average", people are materially better off today than at any other period in history, at all levels . The poorest people today are better off than the poorest people at any previous era.

That's the problem, we are only _materially_ better. It is sad we still cannot figure that out.

Yup you nailed it. In many ways like work-life balance, times are worse than the middle ages.

Also material betterment doesn't scale, we can't focus on material betterment for all because until we figure out fusion and get our own Dyson Sphere going, we have finite resources.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#58

Post by cryodesign »

boona wrote: post #40

I think society values good intention way too much. This man fought his entire life for what amounts to Marxism with robots. His intentions may have been good, his heart in the right place, but his ideas were bad, and if implemented, they would be disastrous. If we judge him by his intentions, he was a good man. If we judge him by what he wished upon the world, he was a horrible human being. Though we should keep goo…

Can you explain how his ideas would be disastrous?

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#59

Post by lawless123 »

JackFr wrote: post #19
xenu101 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are interested, they're just not interested in working towards it or giving up things for it. Fresco paints a gloomy picture of the now and the future, but the facts are that "on average", humans are living better lives than they ever have. This progress has not yet stopped. Hence, Fresco predicts we need to wait for the next "bust".

It's not just "on average", people are materially better off today than at any other period in history, at all levels . The poorest people today are better off than the poorest people at any previous era.

The poorest today and the poorest in this era are often slaves and often starving.

That hasn't changed. If you're referring to the poorest in your particular nation state, consider they're probably not the poorest in the world, which we're all using in some way.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#60

Post by ue_ »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #20

RIP Fresco. I really like him and his work. But I never understood why he was convinced about the Resource Based Economy. Shouldn't a RBE have the exact same problems as any Central Planned economy? Wasn't this refuted in 1920 by Mises? https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Economic%20Calculation...

The ECP proposed by Mises isn't very strong, Paul Cockshott tries to deal with it in his work (attempting to show that it's not even a problem for central planning), and it largely ignores things like market socialism or decentralised planning.

I wish this were more well known, because the ECP is touted as some eternal show stopper for Socialism, when it's really not. It's based on a few false premises.

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