Popcorn Sutton

I've been there, Alan. It doesn't sound like you're depressed though.

My friend brought up a valid point yesterday. He said that there is a chance that someone will copy the bulk of my work and publish it as their own. I've decided that if any member of this forum is serious about helping me with editing and reviewing my book before it is published, they have to contact me privately about it so I can determine whether their intentions are good and it won't be stolen. Sorry guys.

There is no good reason to blame it on god, this is a science forum.

No, but it's easy to speculate that godlike creatures may know how to alter the weather and cause something like that to happen.

agreed. It's always nice to hear you chime in Moontanman.

I'm not suggesting that mans word is the word of god though, just that god may have been the cause of our universe, but our universe would probably have the same laws of physics that the universe from which we spawned has. I also believe that god is probably a creature, and that godlike creatures may have visited us in the past, but that's purely philosophical and it has no basis in science. It's not even useful to talk about these things.

You won't convince me that the bible is true or that any other ancient text is true at all. I know, as a linguist, that language becomes more and more distorted over time. I do believe that these godlike creatures may exist in our universe however. The evidence is not overwhelming in my opinion, but given enough time, it's easy to see that it's not only possible, it's plausible.

Ok . I don't want to overwhelm you guys with all 8 pages that I have written so far, so I'll let you guys look it over section by section (and I will mention all contributors in the foreward because I truly do appreciate everything you guys have to say). Here's part one- This part could be the decision maker on the whole idea of Scientocracy. But, the reason I'm posting it is because it is up for debate. Like Imatfaal said earlier, it is a humpty dumpty issue. The next section is going to be about ethical considerations.

I've started writing a book about this. I've got about 6 pages so far (single-spaced). Would you guys be nice enough to review it and possibly contribute?

So, let's consider adding this bit to the Wikipedia page. In a democracy, we would need scientocrats in order to get the system started (if we didn't want to do it through a revolution). I think that what you described here is very well written, but I don't see how it could lead to an authoritarian rule, unless you consider the policy scientists, and the whole synergistic system of "scientocrats", as the authoritarian power. But even then, it wouldn't lead to a Lysenkoism, and the reason for that is that we have evidence to support an alternative. It's like how the train has evolved. Engineers take into account all the previous accidents as evidence, and use that data to support alternatives. I think that we are a little more mature in these days, and that if we did notice even the slightest symptom of an authoritarian rule, we'd silence it before it became a problem. In conclusion, hopefully we can sit back, do our armchair science, watch the idea take off, and if we get lucky, we'll see some country, state, province, university, or city implement it. Then, once it has happened, we can watch to see whether the system is self-perpetuating or self-destructing. Then and only then will we have the evidence to guide us. In the meantime, we can at least be vocal about it. We can show our students that the topic is worth discussion, gather their opinions, and see what the bulk of the evidence suggests. I don't believe that this method is going to give much clarity on the subject, and I think we all know how distorted ones views can be when they develop a bias, but it would be interesting to see what people have to say about it.

Davidivad, I'm afraid that you came to the same conclusion as many linguists before me, that language is captured by mathematical rules. If you try to generalize that assumption, it's very obvious that that's not the case. Just by looking at what I wrote up to this point, try to translate it into calculus and algebra, you really can't. Language relies heavily on pattern recognition, which I define as the ability to determine the statistical impracticality of randomness. A calculator does not require memory, because it has access to your memory. This is just not the case with language users. If no one had any memory of language, and everyone relied on external memory and internal rules, then language is impossible. To make a long story short, the assumption you're making requires a lot of stipulations that are extremely hard to comprehend, such as movement, deletion, nullification, empty categories, and islands. These stipulations have no basis in reality, and the justification for them is that it's metaphysical. I don't buy it.

After rereading the first section on both a sortition and a meritocracy, I've decided that scientocracy does not conform to either, but it does have similarities. I posted that without reading the prior comment. When I was reading about the sortition the other day, I skimmed past the first section and read the latter parts, which seemed to conform to what I consider to be a scientocracy. Again, I have to ask, what is a scientocracy? What do you consider to be a scientocracy, Imatfaal? Would you call yourself a scientocrat?

Let's not get off topic John. It's a clever argument, but it has no basis in productive scientific inquiry. The argument itself discredits God.

I think that the Wikipedia page should be edited at least to include references to meritocracy and sortition, but before I make the edit I want you guys to at least come to a conclusion that it's ok for me, or for you guys to do that. Long story short, I think my idea of a scientocracy is summed up very well as a sortition. I could not have done a better job explaining it myself than how it is explained in the Wikipedia. The name is MUCH less contentious as well. That page is truly a work of art.

It's a contentious tautology. Richard Dawkins says that he would never want to live in a universe with a god. I can only assume that that means that creatures can become godly, and that could be a scary situation to live with one. I actually find it very plausible that this universe was created by a god, but I also find it plausible that that creature would've just let it go and doesn't necessarily play a role in what happens. Given enough time, it's easy to see that this could've happened. But to assume that god is everything, and that everything that's been written is the work of god... it's not necessarily false.

This is a logical argument as to why the bible is the word of god. (I don't necessarily believe in it because it assumes creationism) 1. God is everything. 2. People are a part of everything. ------------------------------------------- 3. What people say is Gods word.

In a scientocracy, the role of a politician is to reduce the significance of significant issues, not to enforce their beliefs. It's like evolutionary biologists carrying out their work even though they are fundamentalists. And we wouldn't have to deal with politicians who were elected because no one else cared to vote, in a scientocracy, no one would even have to vote, especially if we just used their data to select the politicians out of the crowd.

What do you mean? If someone says that we need to "legalize gay marriage" then that's data.

It depends on how significant the representative is with regards to spatiotemporal proximity.

Scientocracy- Basing public policy on evidence. It's like using Bayes. Gather a bunch of evidence from what people say, that's the evidence/data. Match what the candidates say to the data (pattern matching). Predict what candidate is best suited for the position based on the evidence. I'm saying that if someone is illiterate, use speech recognition (pattern detection). If someone is deaf, use sign recognition (also pattern detection). Turn it into text so the algorithm can analyze it and put on a list. It has to do with a scientocracy because statisticians are scientists, and if we listened to what they had to say and stopped doing this whole "wait for the vote" things, policy would change at the right time and it would speed up the growth of the economy.

Believe it or not, I think I've heard dogs using language on several occasions. My criteria for making a dog able to learn language is that they're best suited to learn it with a sibling of the same age. When they use language, they most likely whisper. I've heard dogs whispering amongst themselves when they didn't realize that I was there. Another time, I asked a dog if it can speak English, and it whispered "yes." Call me crazy, but I believe it.

The criteria would be that if someone wants to be considered as a candidate, their entire language sample would have to be segmented so as to have every sequence contained within the sample put on a list. For everyone who doesn't want to be considered for candidacy, just match the maximal sequences to sequences on the candidates list. The candidate who scores the most common sequences advances. A language sample is just whatever someone cares to say about whatever. Whether they write it down, say it out loud, use sign, we can use pattern detection to gather the data. Some details may need to be fleshed like, like if the system is hierarchical, if it's exactly the same as democracy but with a different type of election, or whether it's more similar to other types (I'm leaning towards a sortition as the most similar). Also, whether the monetary system will have to be the same, or whether we should divide the system into those who live for money (which is honorable because we would need those people) and those who live to advance understanding, make better policy, eliminate stipulations, speak publicly, but don't see the need to be payed for what they do, as long as they can live to do what they love. Also, I don't even know what "too clever by half" means...

I can do the algorithm, or at least help someone do it. You need a lot of storage though, especially for something on this scale.

No, but we can use what they say to determine significance.

I do like the post above because he understands the gist of the idea, and yes we might have a moon station by 2020. I didn't address part of swansont's post earlier, The system would inherently be democratic, right? It requires the participation of the people in order to determine significance. While I was reading the wikipedia article on Sortition (my brain started to hurt so I couldn't read the entire thing), it seemed very hopeful to me that a system like that would exist. I have to ask, here at SFN, is there a sortition going on? I searched meritocracy on Google as well, and I started reading about someones idea to implement it. I got excited about it because I thought that it was describing everything I wanted in a society as well, but when I saw them say that behance.net was the way to get involved, and then looked at the website, I realized that it was just another attempt at making a LinkedIN or Facebook, which was unfortunate to see. Also, the slogan of Meritocracy is something along these lines- "You win because you deserve it." In my experience, the word "deserve" can have a negative connotation. If people are being put into positions of power, and other people know that it is on the premise of "deserving it", wouldn't you think that it might cause an uprising of some sort? It's like, "oh they get to flaunt their intellect in front of us because they deserve it. I'm smart too, but I don't deserve it?" Anyway, if there is a Sortition that I can get involved in, I would gladly take that option. I would also get involved in a Meritocracy, but it seems too contemporary to have enough ground to stand on at this point. The way things are right now, for me at least, is very miserable. Generation Y I'd gladly work for free if my living expenses were paid for and I could live a life investigating the universe and spreading the word of science.