Select Page ::

Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate”

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged this week that the electric car maker is about to kick its fully autonomous self-driving vehicle ambitions up a notch.

“About to Accelerate”

Tesla appears ready to kick its vehicles’ fully autonomous capabilities up a notch.

In an email to employees this week, obtained by Inverse, CEO Elon Musk pledged that Tesla’s fully autonomous driving system was “about to accelerate significantly.”

Musk hasn’t always delivered on his ambitious public promises, but the email signals that he is positioning himself against the autonomous car hype trough — pushing for a future in which self-driving cars are a key aspect of transportation and not a glorified cruise control for luxury models.

Hype Trough

Just a few years ago, a growing number of experimental autonomous cars on public roads gave the impression that the arrival of safe and reliable self-driving vehicles was only a matter of time.

But a growing sense of the remaining engineering challenges — not to mention the March 2018 death of a pedestrian run down by a self-driving Uber vehicle — have chipped away at that confidence.

The evidence that self-driving vehicle manufacturers aren’t always upfront with the public hasn’t helped either. An excoriating October New Yorker investigation into the early years of the Google self-driving research project that eventually became Waymo found that the company had performed reckless road tests early in its work — and hadn’t always reported accidents.

Road Ahead

Musk’s promise to accelerate fully autonomous research, along with a call for more internal Tesla testers for the program, run precisely counter to that narrative. That’s not surprising: the eccentric Musk is known for imagining futures that are still years away — and using his wealth and influence to attempt to steer history toward or away from them.

Maybe the real question is political, rather than technological: Whether the relentless will of one person enough to pull an entire industry onto a different track.

More on Tesla: Elon Musk Pledges Tesla Superchargers For All of Europe Next Year

The post Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate” appeared first on Futurism.

Excerpt from:
Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate”

An App That Does Your Homework for You Is Now Worth $3 Billion

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Homework Machine

Extracurricular education is big business in China.

One futuristic example: Yuanfudao, an online tutoring platform that includes an app that uses artificial intelligence to give students answers to their homework after they snap a photo of it.

Yuanfudao claims it now has 200 million users, and that interest from parents and students has translated into major interest from investors. If it lives up the hype, it could represent a new path forward for educational technology — not just in China but for students across the globe.

Fully Invested

On Tuesday, Yuanfudao announced another $300 million in funding, bringing its valuation to more than $3 billion. Chinese social networking and gaming giant Tencent led the round, with an international squad of investment firms including Warburg Pincus and IDG Capital also joining in.

Yuanfudao told TechCrunch it plans to use these funds for AI research and development, and to improve the user experience of its homework app.

Practice Makes Perfect

While being able to snap a photo of your homework and instantly get answers to problems sounds like a lazy student’s dream come true, the homework app actually isn’t Yuanfudao’s main moneymaker — the company told TechCrunch most of its revenue comes from selling live courses.

Rather than using the app to get out of doing their homework in the first place, it’s more likely that Chinese students use the app to check that their homework answers are correct. After all, the ultimate goal of paying for Yuanfudao is to improve exam scores, so skipping out on doing the homework that prepares a student for those exams would be counterintuitive.

Chinese parents probably wouldn’t be too happy about that use of the app, either. All told, they spend an average of $17,400 every year on extracurricular tutoring for their children — and based on Yuanfudao’s latest round of funding, investors are as willing to pump money into tutoring companies as Chinese parents are.

More on Chinese education: Not Paying Attention in Class? China’s “Smart Eye” Will Snitch on You

The post An App That Does Your Homework for You Is Now Worth $3 Billion appeared first on Futurism.

More:
An App That Does Your Homework for You Is Now Worth $3 Billion

Virtual Reality Tumors Could Help Lead to New Cancer Treatments

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

A new virtual reality simulation built by Cambridge University scientists gives a high-resolution detail view into the cells of a breast cancer tumor.

Oculus Oncologists

Doctors have a new weapon in the fight against cancer: detailed maps of the cells in a tumor that can be explored and analyzed in a virtual reality simulation that its creators say provides researchers with an intuitive new way to examine complex medical data that could lead to unexpected breakthroughs.

Built by doctors at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (CRUK), the new virtual lab takes detailed scans of breast cancer tissues and turns them into detailed simulations that doctors around the world can explore, the BBC reports.

The simulation lets doctors analyze every single cell of a tumor, something they’ve never been able to do before. And because that data is stored in a simulation rather than microscope slides, doctors around the world can explore and study the cancer without having to prepare their own samples.

“Understanding how cancer cells interact with each other and with healthy tissue is critical if we are going to develop new therapies,” CRUK Chief Scientist Karen Vousden told the BBC. “Looking at tumors using this new system is so much more dynamic than the static 2D versions we are used to.”

Dive in Headfirst

The Cambridge scientists and peers from around the world who helped develop the virtual lab won two separate 20 million pound grants ($25.3 million each) to build up their project from Cancer Research UK last year.

Now they have a functional simulation built up from highly-detailed scans of a cubic millimeter-sized sample of breast cancer tissue. In that sample, each of the roughly 100,000 cells was marked to highlight its molecular and genetic characteristics.

Enhance! Enhance!

With that information, the resulting VR map highlights which cells are cancerous which have certain genetic variations, and how developed the tumor was at the time of the biopsy. All of this is information that was laborious to obtain from samples that were easily contaminated.

Moving the analysis to VR makes tumor research much more user friendly and lets doctors analyze cells in greater detail than ever before.

Not only does that let scientists literally immerse themselves in their work as they look for new cancer treatments, but it can also open the door to more collaborative diagnosis and patient care among teams that are spread around the world.

These simulations don’t guarantee that doctors will find new ways to treat or prevent breast cancer, but at least it makes the search much easier.

READ MORE: ‘Virtual tumour’ new way to see cancer [BBC]

More on virtual reality: VR TREATMENT, EVEN WITHOUT A THERAPIST, HELPS PEOPLE OVERCOME FEAR OF HEIGHTS

The post Virtual Reality Tumors Could Help Lead to New Cancer Treatments appeared first on Futurism.

More:
Virtual Reality Tumors Could Help Lead to New Cancer Treatments

New Multi-Sensory Mask Lets You Smell and Feel the Virtual World

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Talk Sense

More than three years ago, we first caught a whiff of an odor-delivering virtual reality mask. Now, the device is a step closer to hitting the market.

Last week, Brooklyn-based tech company Feelreal announced the pre-release of its Feelreal Multi-Sensory Mask. The company claims the device is the first of its kind — and even as VR struggles to gain mainstream traction, it provides a far-out vision of immersive virtual worlds that no longer end at what you can see and hear.

All the Feels

Feelreal’s Multi-Sensory Mask includes a “scent generator” that holds up to nine replaceable cartridges, each loaded with one of 255 available scents. An ultrasonic ionizing system provides the feeling of water mist on the wearer’s face, while micro-heaters, micro-coolers, and haptic motors provide the sensations of heat, wind, and vibration, respectively.

The system is compatible with five VR headsets — Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR — and it’s already capable of enhancing the experience of several existing VR games.

If gaming’s not their thing, users can also watch 360-degrees videos or custom-built VR experiences via the mask’s built-in Feelreal player, or they can use it as a standalone device to facilitate meditation or aromatherapy.

Funding Not Secured

This isn’t the first device designed to add new senses to the VR experience, of course. We’ve already seen gadgets that let you feel like you’re smelling, touching, and even tasting the virtual world.

The number of games and movies currently compatible with the Feelreal Multi-Sensory Mask is also limited, but obviously that could change if the device caught on with users.

Feelreal has yet to reveal a price for its multi-sensory mask or even when the device will be available. According to the press release, the company will be “announcing a Kickstarter [c]rowdfunding campaign to help bring Feelreal products to the next level,” so right now, it appears the future of the device — and potentially the future of VR — is in the public’s hands.

READ MORE: Feelreal Multi-Sensory VR Mask Lets You Smell the Virtual Roses [New Atlas]

More on VR: Add Another Sense to Virtual Reality

The post New Multi-Sensory Mask Lets You Smell and Feel the Virtual World appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post here:
New Multi-Sensory Mask Lets You Smell and Feel the Virtual World

Cultural Collapse Theory: The 7 Steps That Lead To A …

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

(To download the PDF edition of this article, click here. It was originally published on Roosh V.)

It was Joes first date with Mary. He asked her what she wanted in life and she replied, I want to establish my career. Thats the most important thing to me right now. Undeterred that she had no need for a man in her life, Joe entertained her with enough funny stories and cocky statements that she soon allowed him to lightly pet her forearm.

At the end of the date, he locked arms with her on the walk to the subway station, when two Middle Eastern men on scooter patrol accosted them and said they were forbidden to touch. This is Sharia zone, they said in heavily accented English, in front of a Halal butcher shop. Joe and Mary felt bad that they offended the two men, because they were trained in school to respect all religions but that of their ancestors. One of the first things they learned was that their white skin gave them extra privilege in life which must be consciously restrained at all times. Even if they happened to disagree with the two men, they could not verbally object because of anti-hate laws that would put them in jail for religious discrimination. They unlocked arms and maintained a distance of three feet from each other.

Unfortunately for Joe, Mary did not want to go out with him again, but seven years later he did receive a message from her on Facebook saying hello. She became vice president of a company, but could not find a man equal to her station since women now made 25% more than men on average. Joe had long left the country and moved to Thailand, where he married a young Thai girl and had three children. He had no plans on returning to his country, America.

If cultural collapse occurs in the way I will now describe, the above scenario will be the rule within a few decades. The Western world is being colonized in reverse, not by weapons or hard power, but through a combination of progressivism and low reproductive rates. These two factors will lead to a complete cultural collapse of many Western nations within the next 200 years. This theory will show the most likely mechanism that it will proceed in America, Canada, UK, Scandinavia, and Western Europe.

Cultural collapse is the decline, decay, or disappearance of a native populations rituals, habits, interpersonal communication, relationships, art, and language. It coincides with a relative decline of population compared to outside groups. National identity and group identification will be lost while revisionist history will be applied to demonize or find fault with the native population. Cultural collapse is not to be confused with economic or state collapse. A nation that suffers from a cultural collapse can still be economically productive and have a working government.

First I will share a brief summary of the cultural collapse progression before explaining them in more detail. Then I will discuss where I see many countries along its path.

1. Removal of religious narrative from peoples lives, replaced by a treadmill of scientific and technological progress.

2. Elimination of traditional sex roles through feminism, gender equality, political correctness, cultural Marxism, and socialism.

3. Delay or abstainment of family formation by women to pursue careerist lifestyles while men wait in confused limbo.

4. Decreasing birth rate among native population.

5. Government enactment of open immigration policies to prevent economic collapse.

6. Immigrant refusal to fully acclimate, forcing host culture to adopt external rituals and beliefs while being out-reproduced.

7. Natives becoming marginalized in their own country.

Religion has been a powerful restraint for millennia in preventing humans from pursuing their base desires and narcissistic tendencies so that they satisfy a god. Family formation is the central unit of most religions, possibly because children increase membership at zero marginal cost to the church (i.e. they dont need to be recruited).

Religion may promote scientific ignorance, but it facilitates reproduction by giving people a narrative that places family near the center of their existence.[1] [2] [3] After the Enlightenment, the rapid advance of science and its logical but nihilistic explanations into the universe have removed the religious narrative and replaced it with an empty narrative of scientific progress, knowledge, and technology, which act as a restraint and hindrance to family formation, allowing people to pursue individual goals of wealth accumulation or hedonistic pleasure seeking.[4] As of now, there has not been a single non-religious population that has been able to reproduce above the death rate.[5]

Even though many people today claim to believe in god, they may not step inside a church but once or twice a year for special holidays. Religion went from being a lifestyle, a manual for living, to something that is thought about in passing.

Once religion no longer plays a role in peoples lives, the stage is set to fracture male-female bonding. It is collectively attacked by several ideologies stemming from the beliefs of Cultural Marxist theory, which serve to accomplish one common end: destruction of the family unit so that citizens are dependent on the state. They achieve this goal through the marginalization of men and their role in society under the banner of equality.[6] With feminism pushed to the forefront of this umbrella movement, the drive for equality ends up being a power grab by women.[7] This attack is performed on a range of fronts:

The end result is that men, confused about their identify and averse to state punishment from sexual harassment, date rape, and divorce proceedings, make a rational decision to wait on the sidelines.[15] Women, still not happy with the increased power given to them, continue their assault on men by instructing them to man up into what has become an unfair dealmarriage. The elevation of women above men is allowed by corporations, which adopt girl power marketing to expand their consumer base and increase profits.[16] [17] Governments also allow it because it increases their tax revenue. Because there is money to be made with women working and becoming consumers, there is no effort by the elite to halt this development.

At the same time men are emasculated as mere sperm donors, women are encouraged to adopt the career goals, mannerisms, and competitive lifestyles of men, inevitably causing them to delay marriage, often into an age where they can no longer find suitable husbands who have more resources than themselves. [18] [19] [20] [21] The average woman will find it exceedingly difficult to balance career and family, and since she has no concern of getting fired from her family, who she may see as a hindrance to her career goals, she will devote an increasing proportion of time into her job.

Female income, in aggregate, will soon match or exceed that of men.[22] [23] [24] A key reason that women historically got married was to be economically provided for, but this reason will no longer persist and women will feel less pressure or motivation to marry. The burgeoning spinster population will simply be a money-making opportunity for corporations to market to an increasing population of lonely women. Cat and small dog sales will rise.

Women succumb to their primal sexual and materialistic urges to live the Sex and the City lifestyle full of fine dining, casual sex, technological bliss, and general gluttony without learning traditional household skills or feminine qualities that would make them attractive wives.[25] [26] Men adapt to careerist women in a rational way by doing the following:

Careerist women who decide to marry will do so in a hurried rush around 30 because they fear growing old alone, but since they are well past their fertility peak[31], they may find it difficult to reproduce. In the event of successful reproduction at such a later age, fewer children can be born before biological infertility, limiting family size compared to the historical past.

The stage is now set for the death rate to outstrip the birth rate. This creates a demographic cliff where there is a growing population of non-working elderly relative to able-bodied younger workers. Two problems result:

No modern nation has figured out how to substantially raise birth rates among native populations. The most successful effort has been done in France, but that has still kept the birth rate among French-born women just under the replacement rate (2.08 vs 2.1).[34] The easiest and fastest way to solve this double-edged problem is to promote mass immigration of non-elderly individuals who will work, spend, and procreate at rates greater than natives.[35]

A replenishing supply of births are necessary to create taxpayers, workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in order to maintain the nations economic development.[36] While many claim that the planet is suffering from overpopulation, an economic collapse is inevitable for those countries who do not increase their population at steady rates.

An aging population without youthful refilling will cause a scarcity of labor, increasing that labors price. Corporate elites will now lobby governments for immigration reform to relieve this upward pressure on wages.[37] [38] At the same time, the modern mantra of sustained GDP growth puts pressure on politicians for dissemination of favorable economic growth data to aid in their re-elections. The simplest way to increase GDP without innovation or development of industry is to expand the population. Both corporate and political elites now have their goals in alignment where the easiest solution becomes immigration.[39] [40]

While politicians hem and haw about designing permanent immigration policies, immigrants continue to settle within the nation.[41] The national birth rate problem is essentially solved overnight, as its much easier to drain third-world nations of its starry-eyed population with enticements of living in the first-world than it is to encourage the native women to reproduce. (Lateral immigration from one first-world nation to another is so relatively insignificant that the niche term expatriation has been developed to describe it). Native women will show a stubborn resistance at any suggestion they should create families, much preferring a relatively responsibility-free lifestyle of sexual variety, casual internet dating via mobile apps, consumer excess, and comfortable high-paying jobs in air conditioned offices.[42] [43]

Immigrants will almost always come from societies that are more religious and, in the case of Islam with regard to European immigration, far more scientifically primitive and rigid in its customs.[44]

While many adult immigrants will feel gracious at the opportunity to live in a more prosperous nation, others will soon feel resentment that they are forced to work menial jobs in a country that is far more expensive than their own.[45] [46] [47] [48] [49] The majority of them remain in lower economic classes, living in poor immigrant communities where they can speak their own language, find their own homeland foods, and follow their own customs or religion.

Instead of breaking out of their foreigner communities, immigrants seek to expand it by organizing. They form local groups and civic organizations to teach natives better ways to understand and serve immigrant populations. They will be eager to publicize cases where immigrants have been insulted by insensitive natives or treated unfairly by police authorities in the case of petty crime.[50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] School curriculums may be changed to promote diversity or multiculturalism, at great expense to the native culture.[56] Concessions will be made not to offend immigrants.[57] A continual stream of outrages will be found and this will feed the power of the organizations and create a state within a state where native elites become fearful of applying laws to immigrants.[58]

This step has not yet happened in any first-world nation, so I will predict it based on logically extending known events I have already described.

Local elites will give lip service to immigrant groups for votes but will be slow to give them real state or economic power. Citizenship rules may even be tightened to prevent immigrants from being elected. The elites will be mostly insulated from the cultural crises in their isolated communities, private schools, and social clubs, where they can continue to incubate their own sub-culture without outside influence. At the same time, they will make speeches and enact polices to force native citizens to accept multiculturalism and blind immigration. Anti-hate and anti-discrimination laws will be more vigorously enforced than other more serious crimes. Police will monitor social networking to identify those who make statements against protected classes.

Cultural decline begins in earnest when the natives feel shame or guilt for who they are, their history, their way of life, and where their ancestors came from. They will let immigrant groups criticize their customs without protest, or they simply embrace immigrant customs instead with religious conversion and interethnic marriages. Nationalistic pride will be condemned as a far-right phenomenon and popular nationalistic politicians will be compared to Hitler. Natives learn the art of self-censorship, limiting the range of their speech and expressions, and soon only the elderly can speak the truths of the cultural decline while a younger multiculturalist within earshot attributes such frankness to senility or racist nostalgia.

With the already entrenched environment of political correctness (see stage 2), the local culture becomes a sort of world culture that can be declared tolerant and progressive as long as there is a lack of criticism against immigrants, multiculturalism, and their combined influence. All cultural identity will eventually be lost, and to be American or British, for example, will no longer have modern meaning from a sociological perspective. Native traditions will be eradicated and a cultural mixing will take place where citizens from one world nation will be nearly identical in behavior, thought, and consumer tastes to citizens of another. Once a collapse occurs, it cannot be reversed. The nations cultural heritage will be forever lost.

I want to now take a brief look at six different countries and see where they are along the cultural collapse progression

This is an interesting case because, up to recently, we saw very low birth rates not due to progressive ideals but from a rough transition to capitalism in the 1990s and a high male mortality from alcoholism.[59] [60] To help sustain its population, Russia is readily accepting immigrants from Central Asian regions, treating them like second-class citizens and refusing to make any accommodations away from the ethnic Russian way of life. Even police authorities turn a blind eye when local skinhead groups attack immigrants.[61] In addition, Russia has also shown no tolerance to homosexual or progressive groups,[62] stunting their negative effects upon the culture. The birth rate has risen in recent years to levels seen in Western Europe but its still not above the death rate. Russia will see a population collapse before a cultural one.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very low

Were seeing rapid movement through stages 2 and 3, where progressive ideology based on the American model is becoming adopted and a large poor population ensure progressive politicians will continue to remain in power with promises of economic redistribution.[63] [64] [65] Within 15 years we should see a sharp drop in birth rates and a relaxation of immigration laws.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Moderate

Some could argue that America is currently experiencing a cultural collapse. It always had a fragile culture because of its immigrant foundings, but immigrants of the past (including my own parents) rapidly acclimated into the host culture to create a sense of national pride around an ethic of hard work and shared democratic values. This is being eroded as a fem-centric culture rises in its place, with its focus on trends, celebrities, homosexuality, multiculturalism, and male-bashing. Natives have become pleasure seekers with little inclination to reproduction during their years of peak fertility.[66]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

While America always had high amounts of immigration, and therefore a system of integration, England is newer to the game. In the past 20 years, they have massively ramped up their immigration efforts.[67] A visit to London will confirm that the native British are slowly becoming minorities, with their iconic red telephone booths left undisturbed purely for tourist photo opportunities. Approximately 5% of the English population is now Muslim.[68] Instead of acclimatizing, they are achieving early success in creating zones with Sharia law.[69] The English elite, in response, is jailing natives under stringent anti-race laws.[70] England had a highly successful immigration story with Polish immigrants who eagerly acclimated to English culture, but have opened the doors to other peoples who dont want to integrate.[71]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

Sweden is experiencing a similar immigration situation to England, but they possess a higher amount of self-shame and white guilt. Instead of allowing immigrants who could work in the Swedish economy, they are encouraging migration of asylum seekers who have been made destitute by war. These immigrants enter Sweden and immediately receive social benefits. In effect, Sweden is welcoming the least economically productive people in the world.[72] The immigrants will produce little or no economic benefit, and may even worsen Swedens economy. Immigrants are turning some parts of Sweden, such as the Rosengard area of Malmo, into a ghetto.[73]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

From my one and half years of living in Poland, I have seen a moderate level of progressive ideological creep, careerism among women, hedonism, and idolation of Western values, particularly out of England, where a large percentage of the Polish population have emigrated for work. Younger Poles may not act much different from their Western counterparts in their party lifestyle behavior, but there nonetheless remains a tenuous maintenance of traditional sex roles. Women of fertile age are pursuing relationships over one-night stands, but careerism is causing them to stall family formation. This puts a downward pressure on birth rates, which stems from significant numbers of fertile young women emigrating to countries like the UK and USA, along with continued economic uncertainties faced from transitioning to capitalism[74]. As Europes least multicultural nation, Poland has long been hesitant to accept immigrants, but this has recently changed and they are encouraging migrants.[75] To its credit, it is seeking first-world entrepreneurs instead of low skilled laborers or asylum seekers. Its cultural fate will be an interesting development in the years to come, but the prognosis will be more negative as long as its young people are eager to leave the homeland.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Possible

Poland and Russia show the limitations of Cultural Collapse Theory in that it best applies to first-world nations with highly developed economies. They have low birth rates but not through the mechanism I described, though if they adopt a more Western ideological track like Brazil, I expect to see the same outcome that is befalling England or Sweden.

There can be many paths to cultural destruction, and those nations with the most similarities will gravitate towards the same path, just like how Eastern European nations are suffering low birth rates because of mass emigration due to being introduced into the European Union.

Maintaining native birth rates while preventing the elite from allowing immigrant labor is the most effective means at preventing cultural collapse. Since multiculturalism is an experiment with no proven efficacy, a culture can only be maintained by a relatively homogenous group who identify with each other. When that homogeneity breaks down and one citizen looks to the next and does not see a person with the same values as himself, the culture falls in dis-repair as native citizens begin to lose a shared means of communication and identity. Once the percentage of the immigrant population crosses a certain threshold (perhaps 15%), the decline will pick up in pace and cultural breakdown will be readily apparent to all observers.

Current policies to solve low birth rates through immigration is a short-term fix with dire long-term consequences. In effect, its a Trojan-horse prescription of irreversible cultural destruction. A state must prevent itself from entering the position where mass immigration is considered a solution by blocking progressive ideologies from taking hold. One way this can be done is through the promotion of a state-sponsored religion which encourages the nuclear family instead of single motherhood and homosexuality. However, introducing religion as a mainstay of citizen life in the post-enlightenment era may be impossible.

We must consider that the scientific era is an evolutionary maladaptive feature of humanity that natural selection will accordingly punish (i.e. those who are anti-religious and pro-science will simply breed less). It must also be considered that with religion in permanent decline, cultural collapse may be a certainty that eventually occurs in all developed nations. Religion, it may turn out, was evolutionary beneficial to the human race.

Another possible solution is to foster a patriarchal society where men serve as strong providers. If you encourage the development of successful men who possess indispensable skills and therefore resources that are lacked by females, there will be women below their station who want to marry and procreate with them, but if strong women are produced instead, marriage and procreation is unlikely to take place at levels above the death rate.

A gap between the sexes should always exist in the favor of men if procreation is to occur at high rates, or else youll have something similar to the situation in America where urban professional women cannot find good men to begin a family with (i.e., men who are significantly more financially successful than them). They instead remain single and barren, only used occasionally by cads for exciting casual sex.

One issue that I purposefully ignored is the effect of technology and consumerism on lowering birth rates. How much influence does video games, internet, and smartphones contribute to a birth decline? How much of an effect does Western-style consumerism have in delaying marriage? I suspect they have more of an amplification effect than being an outright cause. If a country is proceeding through the cultural collapse model, technology will simply hurry the collapse, but giving internet access to a traditionally religious group of people may not cause them to flip overnight. Research will have to be done in these areas to say for sure.

The first iteration of any theory is sure to create as many questions as answers, but I hope that by proposing this model, it becomes more clear why some cultures seem so quick to degrade while others display a sort of immunity. Some countries may be too far down the wrong path to be saved, but I hope the information presented gives concerned readers ideas on protecting their own culture by allowing them to connect how progressive ideologies that may seem innocent or benign on the surface can eventually lead to an outright collapse of their nations culture.

If you like this article and are concerned about the future of the Western world, check out Roosh's book Free Speech Isn't Free. It gives an inside look to how the globalist establishment is attempting to marginalize masculine men with a leftist agenda that promotes censorship, feminism, and sterility. It also shares key knowledge and tools that you can use to defend yourself against social justice attacks. Click here to learn more about the book. Your support will help maintain our operation.

View original post here:

Cultural Collapse Theory: The 7 Steps That Lead To A ...

Race is the elephant in the room when it comes to …

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

In 1967, with the Civil Rights movement still in full swing and Jim Crow still looming in the rearview mirror, median household income was 43% higher for white, non-Hispanic households than for black households. But things changed dramatically over the next half century, as legal segregation faded into history. By 2011, median white household income was 72% higher than median black household income, according to a Census report from that year [PDF].

To say that economic inequality is still a heavily racialized phenomenon, even a generation after the end of the Civil Rights era, would be an understatement. Yet both major parties continue to discuss inequality in largely color-blind terms, only hinting at the role played by race.

The trend is even more startling when one looks at median household wealth instead of yearly income. In 1984, the white-to-black wealth ratio was 12-to-1, according to Pew Research Center. By 1995, the chasm had narrowed until median white income had only a 5-to-1 advantage over black income. But over the next 14 years the wealth gap began to grow once again, until it had skyrocketed up to 19-to-1 in 2009.

Yet even a recent 204-page analysis of the federal War on Poverty, spearheaded by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gives only passing mentions to racial disparity. In the first section of the report, which purports to explain the causes of modern poverty, Ryan and his co-authors bring up race only twice: Once to identify the breakdown of the familiy as a key cause of poverty within the black community, citing Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and again to applaud the narrowing of the achievement gap between white and black schoolchildren. Weeks later, during a radio appearance, Ryan said poverty is in part to blame on the fact that inner cities have a culture of men not working.

President Obama went a step forward in Decembers major address on inequality, when he noted that the painful legacy of discrimination means that African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans are far more likely to suffer from a lack of opportunityhigher unemployment, higher poverty rates. Yet that amounted to a footnote in a speech that also included the line, The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race.

I think it doesnt make for good politics, said Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson of the racial wealth gap. Its messy and requires us to be deep and think about much bigger and more long-term solutions than Washingtons oftentimes willing to deal with.

Yet in a serious discussion about American inequality, the subject of race is essentially unavoidable. Thats because most of the pipelines to a higher economic classsuch as employment and homeownershipare oftentimes not equally accessible to black folks, said Robinson.

Disparities in homeownership are a major driver of the racial wealth gap, according to a recent study from Brandeis University. According to the authors of the report, redlining [a form of discrimination in banking or insurance practices], discriminatory mortgage-lending practices, lack of access to credit, and lower incomes have blocked the homeownership path for African-Americans while creating and reinforcing communities segregated by race.

Many of the black families that have successfully battled their way to homeownership over the past few decades saw their nest eggs get pulverized by the 2008 financial collapse. The Brandeis researchers found that half the collective wealth of African-American families was stripped away during the Great Recession, in large part due to the collapse of the housing market and the subsequent explosion in the nationwide foreclosure rate.

Similarly, employment discrimination has done its part to ensure that black unemployment remains twice as high as white unemploymenta ratio that has stayed largely consistent since the mid-1950s. National Bureau of Economy Research fellows have found that resumes are significantly less likely to get a positive response from potential employers if the applicants have names that are more common in the black community. And an arrest for even a non-violent drug offense can haunt a job applicant for the rest of his life; combined with the fact that black people are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, despite using the drug at roughly the same rate, criminal background checks have helped to fuel racial inequity in job hiring.

Yet both parties have stressed personal responsibility to an outsized degree, said William Darity Jr., the director of Duke Universitys Consortium on Social Equity.

The underlying narrative that many people share is that whatever inequities still exist, theyre due to the misbehavior or disfunctional behavior of black folks themselves, said Darity. So theres no reason to pay attention to racial disparities because one doesnt believe theyre still significant, or theres no need for public policy action by the government because its just a question of black folks changing their own behaviors.

Darity portrayed this as a bipartisan problem and criticized President Obama for [playing] into that behavior by emphasizing personal responsibility in the My Brothers Keeper initiative to help young men of color. The conservative notion of a culture of povertyis another example of the fallacy, he said.

I think a lot of people are really attracted to stories about personal uplift or social mobility, but these are very exceptional cases, he said. Thats not the norm. Most people who are born into deprived circumstances do not really have the capacity or support to come out of those deprived circumstances.

Instead, he argued that the only way to break self-perpetuating inequality was through wealth transfers.

Peoples behaviors are largely shaped by the resources they possess, and if their resources alterned, than they might change their behaviors, he said.

Here is the original post:

Race is the elephant in the room when it comes to ...

Ron Paul: Troops Out of Syria and Afghanistan? Thats a Good …

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

We all had a big shock this week when, seemingly out of the blue, President Trump announced that he was removing US troops from Syria and would draw down half of the remaining US troops in Afghanistan. The president told us the troops were in Syria to fight ISIS and with ISIS nearly gone the Syrians and their allies could finish the job.

All of a sudden the Trump haters who for two years had been telling us that the president was dangerous because he might get us in a war, were telling us that the president is dangerous because he was getting us out of a war! These are the same people who have been complaining about the presidents historic efforts to help move toward peace with North Korea.

There was more than a little hypocrisy among the never Trump resistance over the presidents announcement. Many of the talking heads and politicians who attacked George W. Bushs wars, then were silent for President Obamas wars, are now attacking President Trump for actually taking steps to end some wars. It just goes to show that for many who make their living from politics and the military-industrial complex, there are seldom any real principles involved.

Among the neoconservatives, Sen. Lindsey Grahams reaction was pretty typical. Though it seems Sen. Graham is never bothered when presidents violate the Constitution to take the US into another war without authorization, he cannot tolerate it when a president follows the Constitution and removes US troops from wars they have no business being involved in. Sen. Graham is now threatening to hold Congressional hearings in attempt to reverse the Presidents decision to remove troops from Syria.

Neoconservatives are among the strongest proponents of the idea that as a unitary executive, the president should not be encumbered by things like the Constitution when it comes to war-making. Now all of a sudden when a president uses his actual Constitutional authority to remove troops from a war zone the neocons demand Congressional meddling to weaken the president. They get it wrong on both fronts! The president does have Constitutional authority to move US troops and to remove US troops; Congress has the power and the obligation to declare war and the power of the purse to end wars.

Most of the Washington establishment especially the resistance liberals and the neocons are complaining that by removing US troops from these two war zones President Trump has gone too far. I would disagree with them. I call President Trumps announcement a good start. Americans are tired of being the worlds policemen. The United States does not lose influence by declining to get involved in disputes oceans away. We lose influence by spending more on the military than most of the rest of the world combined and meddling where we are not wanted. We will lose a whole lot more influence when their crazy spending makes us bankrupt. Is that what they want?

We should pay attention to Washingtons wild reaction to Trumps announcement. The vested interests do not want us to have any kind of peace dividend because they have become so rich on the war dividend. Meanwhile the middle class is getting poorer and were all less safe. Lets hope President Trump continues these moves to restore sanity in our foreign policy. That would really make America great again!

This article originally appeared on ronpaulinstitute.org

Ron Paul: Troops Out of Syria and Afghanistan? Thats a Good ...

US needs to withdraw all troops from Mideast: Ron Paul

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Former US presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul has backed President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, adding that the United States needs to "have a clean cut" with military involvement in the Middle East.

In an interview with CNN, Dr. Paul, a libertarian and the father of Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, called Trumps announcement "fantastic."

"I don't see it as a political event as much as he had good defense. He campaigned on it. He said it was a bad war. He wanted to get out," Paul said. "I think he's doing great. I think it's fantastic that he's doing it."

Last week, Trump declared victory against Daesh terrorists in Syria and announced to pull out American troops from the country, saying that US troops cannot stay in Syria "forever.

Several senators on both sides of the aisle have accused Trump of making a hasty decision, with one administration official saying "the President's decision-by-tweet will recklessly put American and allied lives in danger around the world."

But Congressman Paul said the president did the right thing.

"I like people who stand out on principle in spite of their personal biases, and I think this is good. I'm so happy that he's going to maybe move it on to Afghanistan," Paul said.

Paul said the United States should decide if it is an empire or a republic.

"This is the whole point: Should we start our debate and our plans from the assumption that we have the moral obligation to run an empire -- that we are the great nation, we spread American exceptionalism and therefore we have this moral obligation -- or should we believe in a republic and we have no business there, which is designed by the Constitution?" Paul said.

Dr. Paul called Trumps announcement of withdrawing troops from Syria a step in the right direction.

"This is a teeny, teeny step away from the militant empire that we operate, and it's so impractical, but it's a step in the right direction," he said.

Dr. Pauls son, Senator Rand Paul, also defended Trump's decision to withdraw the American troops in Syria and asked him to end the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan as well.

Ron Paul: Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria …

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Former presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul supports President Donald Trumps widely criticized decision to pull more than 2,000 US troops from Syria, calling his announcement fantastic.

I dont see it as a political event as much as he had good defense. He campaigned on it. He said it was a bad war. He wanted to get out, Paul said Saturday on CNNs Smerconish. I think hes doing great. I think its fantastic that hes doing it.

Trumps decision drew outcry from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with one administration official saying the Presidents decision-by-tweet will recklessly put American and allied lives in danger around the world.

And a day after his announcement, Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned, writing that Trump should have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with his own. A day after that the US envoy to the coalition to fight ISIS resigned as well, also in part beacuse of the Syria decision.

But Paul said Trump did the right thing.

I like people who stand out on principle in spite of their personal biases, and I think this is good. Im so happy that hes going to maybe move it on to Afghanistan, Paul said.

When asked if the planned US withdrawal of troops from the country will leave the Kurds who fought ISIS alongside American forces vulnerable, Paul said the US needs to determine if it is an empire or a republic.

This is the whole point: Should we start our debate and our plans from the assumption that we have the moral obligation to run an empire that we are the great nation, we spread American exceptionalism and therefore we have this moral obligation or should we believe in a republic and we have no business there, which is designed by the Constitution? Paul said.

Paul, a libertarian and the father of Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said the US needs to have a clean cut with military involvement in the Middle East.

This is a teeny, teeny step away from the militant empire that we operate, and its so impractical, but its a step in the right direction, Paul said.

Paul said the decision had more to do with a call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan than domestic politics, but that the Presidents execution and timing couldve been much better.

Diplomatically, he does a poor job even when hes doing the right thing, he said.

Continue reading here:

Ron Paul: Trump's decision to withdraw US troops from Syria ...

Ron Paul: US is barreling towards a 50% or more stock market drop

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Ron Paul believes the bond trading pits are giving investors a dire message about the state of the nation's economy.

According to the former Republican congressman from Texas, the recent jump in Treasury bond yields suggest the U.S. is barreling toward a potential recession and market meltdown at a faster and faster pace.

And, he sees no way to prevent it.

"We're getting awfully close. I'd be surprised if you don't have everybody agreeing with what I'm saying next year some time," he said Thursday on CNBC's "Futures Now."

His remarks came as the benchmark 10-Year Treasury yield, which moves inversely to its price, rallied to seven year highs, intensifying fears over rising inflation. It may be beneficial for personal savings accounts, but it could deliver irrevocable damage to those in adjustable mortgages, or for auto buyers looking to finance a new vehicle.

"It can be pretty well validated by looking at monetary history that when you inflate the currency, distort interest rates and live beyond your means and spend too much, there has to be an adjustment," he said. "We have the biggest bubble in the history of mankind."

Paul is a vocal libertarian known for an ardent grassroots fan base that propelled him to multiple presidential runs, as well as his grim warnings about the economy. Yet he has been warning investors for years that an epic drop of 50 percent or more will eventually hit the stock market. He predicted the February correction, but not in size and scope.

By spring, the correction was over, and the S&P 500 and Dow were hitting all-time highs again by August and September, respectively. The Dow registered its latest all-time high of 26,951.81 last Wednesday.

Paul acknowledges his prior calls for a downturn haven't come to fruition. Yet, he points out it's just a matter of time, based on the looseness of U.S. monetary policy since the 2008 financial crisis.

"I know it's going to happen," Paul said. "It will come, and the bubble is bigger than ever before."

View post:

Ron Paul: US is barreling towards a 50% or more stock market drop

Ron Paul | American politician | Britannica.com

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Ron Paul, byname of Ronald Ernest Paul, (born August 20, 1935, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American politician, who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives (197677, 197985, 19972013) and who unsuccessfully ran as the 1988 Libertarian presidential candidate. He later sought the Republican nomination for president in 2008 and 2012.

Paul grew up on his familys dairy farm just outside Pittsburgh. He earned a bachelors degree in biology from Gettysburg College in 1957 and a medical degree from Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, in 1961. He later served as a flight surgeon for the U.S. Air Force (196365) and the Air National Guard (196568). In 1968 Paul moved to Brazoria county, Texas, where he established a successful practice in obstetrics and gynecology.

Paul was inspired to enter politics in 1971 when Pres. Richard M. Nixon abolished the Bretton Woods exchange system. Paul believed that the abandonment of the last vestiges of the gold standard would lead to financial ruin for the United States. Though he was unsuccessful in his initial run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974, his opponent resigned before completing his term, and Paul won a special election to complete it. He lost the seat in the subsequent general election, only to regain it two years later. He chose not to seek reelection in 1984 and instead campaignedunsuccessfullyfor the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. He broke from the Republican Party to run as a Libertarian in the 1988 presidential election, ultimately winning more than 430,000 votes. He returned to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in 1997, though his votes were often at variance with the majority of his party; for example, in the early 2000s he voted against authorizing the Iraq War and the USA Patriot Act.

Pauls presidential campaign platform remained libertarian in spirit. It focused on free-market economics, a radical reduction in the size of government, increased privacy protections for individuals, and a reduction of U.S. participation in international organizations. Having claimed only a handful of delegates, he ended his bid for the White House in June 2008 and launched Campaign for Liberty, a political action committee. In April 2011 Paul, who was popular within the Tea Party movement, formed an exploratory committee to assess the viability of a third presidential run. The following month he formally announced his candidacy. In July 2011, in order to focus on his presidential campaign, Paul announced that he would not seek a 13th term in Congress. Although supported by a devoted and energized base, Paul was selective in the states where he actively campaigned. A second-place showing in New Hampshire was among his best performances in January 2012. He garnered a number of other second-place finishes before announcing in May that he would not campaign in the remaining states. Paul did not endorse the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and said on the night of the general election that he believed the only winner would be the status quo. He retired from the House in January 2013, at the age of 77.

Pauls views are outlined in Freedom Under Siege (1987), A Foreign Policy of Freedom (2007), and The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008).

See the original post:

Ron Paul | American politician | Britannica.com

Ron Paul: Troops Out Of Syria And Afghanistan? That’s A Good …

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Ron has a break-down of the good, the bad, and the ugly in response to President Trumps seemingly out-of-the-blue announcement from last week

by Ron Paul of Ron Paul Institute

Go here to read the rest:

Ron Paul: Troops Out Of Syria And Afghanistan? That's A Good ...

Bitcoin Technical Analysis – FXStreet

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

Note: All information on this page is subject to change. The use of this website constitutes acceptance of our user agreement. Please read our privacy policy and legal disclaimer.

Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well as for you. Before deciding to trade foreign exchange you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience and risk appetite. The possibility exists that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your initial investment and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose. You should be aware of all the risks associated with foreign exchange trading and seek advice from an independent financial advisor if you have any doubts.

Opinions expressed at FXStreet are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of FXStreet or its management. FXStreet has not verified the accuracy or basis-in-fact of any claim or statement made by any independent author: errors and Omissions may occur.Any opinions, news, research, analyses, prices or other information contained on this website, by FXStreet, its employees, partners or contributors, is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. FXStreet will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information.

See the rest here:

Bitcoin Technical Analysis - FXStreet

Air Seychelles – Check out our great Global fares to multiple …

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

From * - Select -Abu Dhabi (AUH), UAEAhmedabad (AMD), IndiaAl Ain (AAN), UAEAmman (AMM), JordanAmsterdam (AMS), NetherlandsAthens (ATH), GreeceBahrain (BAH), BahrainBangalore (BLR), IndiaBangkok (BKK), ThailandBelgrade (BEG), SerbiaBerlin (TXL), GermanyBologna (BLQ), ItalyBordeaux (BOD), FranceBrisbane (BNE), AustraliaBrussels (BRU), BelgiumCairo (CAI), EgyptCape Town (CPT), South AfricaCasablanca (CMN), MoroccoChennai (MAA), IndiaChicago IL (ORD), United StatesColombo (CMB), Sri LankaCopenhagen (CPH), DenmarkDallas TX (DFW), United StatesDammam (DMM), Saudi ArabiaDubai (XNB), UAEDublin (DUB), IrelandDurban (DUR), South AfricaDsseldorf (DUS), GermanyEast London (ELS), South AfricaEdinburgh (EDI), United KingdomEntebbe (EBB), UgandaFlorence (FLR), ItalyFrankfurt (FRA), GermanyGeneva (GVA), SwitzerlandGenoa (GOA), ItalyHo Chi Minh City (SGN), VietnamHong Kong China (HKG), ChinaHyderabad (HYD), IndiaIstanbul (IST), TurkeyJaipur (JAI), IndiaJeddah (JED), Saudi ArabiaJohannesburg (JNB), South AfricaKochi (COK), IndiaKolkata (CCU), IndiaKuwait (KWI), KuwaitLondon (LHR), United KingdomLos Angeles CA (LAX), United StatesLyon (LYS), FranceMadrid (MAD), SpainMahe, Seychelles (SEZ), SeychellesManchester (MAN), United KingdomMarseille (MRS), FranceMauritius (MRU), MauritiusMelbourne (MEL), AustraliaMilan (MXP), ItalyMontpellier (MPL), FranceMoscow (DME), RussiaMumbai (BOM), IndiaMunich (MUC), GermanyMuscat (MCT), OmanNagoya (NGO), JapanNarita (NRT), JapanNew Delhi (DEL), IndiaNew York (JFK), United StatesNice (NCE), FrancePalermo (PMO), ItalyParis (CDG), FrancePerth (PER), AustraliaPort Elizabeth (PLZ), South AfricaPraslin (PRI), SeychellesRabat (RBA), MoroccoRiyadh (RUH), Saudi ArabiaRome (FCO), ItalySan Francisco CA (SFO), United StatesSao Paulo (GRU), BrazilSeoul (ICN), South KoreaSingapore (SIN), SingaporeStockholm (ARN), SwedenSydney (SYD), AustraliaThiruvananthapuram (TRV), IndiaToulouse (TLS), FranceTurin (TRN), ItalyVenice (VCE), ItalyVienna (VIE), AustriaWashington DC (IAD), United StatesZurich (ZRH), Switzerland

Are all the passengers residents?

Promo code

See original here:

Air Seychelles - Check out our great Global fares to multiple ...

National Softball Association – Wikipedia

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Danzig

The National Softball Association (NSA) is a sporting governing body. The NSA gives softball teams the opportunity to play in qualifying tournaments for State, National - Regional and World Series Tournament play. Also in certain NSA qualifying tournaments, teams are able to win a berth into the NSA Super-World Series. The NSA Super-World [1] series features teams from all over the country. Some municipal park district leagues and corporate leagues follow NSA guidelines to some extent, especially in what bats are not allowed in play, however most competitive leagues require bats with ASA 2004 Certification.

Hugh Cantrell is the Founder, CEO and President of the NSA. It all started, in 1982 around his kitchen table in Lexington, Kentucky, he announced his plans for The National Softball Association to his son Eddie Ray, Don Moore, Ernie Browning, eventual board members Jim Miles and Bernie Livers.[1] Cantrell was a former player, coach, sponsor and tournament organizer for over 25 years. He stated that he saw that there was a need for an organization where it would put the teams and players first and do it better than the rest.

In the autumn of 1982, the plans were set in motion for Hugh and his fledgling National Softball Association to get off the ground as incorporation papers were filed in Lexington.[1] The official conference took place in November of the same year and it discussed the framework and groundwork for the construction in the spring of 1983.

In January 1983, Hugh appointed the first six Board of Directors that would serve as the decision making body of the NSA.[1] Hugh was the seventh board member and he handled the everyday business and his six board members acted as the Rules Committee. Six original board members are still with the NSA in some capacity as of November 2002.[1] This means a lot about what kind of people that Hugh selected. In 1983, the NSA sanctioned 638 teams in three states. In 2002, the NSA does or has done business in all 50 states, Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico, Mexico, The Bahamas, Russia and Holland.[1]

In 1985, The Presidential Award of Excellence was awarded to Hugh Cantrell, which is the NSAs highest honor.[1] In 1992, Hugh Cantrell, fittingly became the first person inducted into the NSA Hall of Fame.[1]

In its most recent activity in the Chattanooga Times Free Press[2], its states that the National Softball Association is bringing its girls fast-pitch Class B World Series for the Eastern half of North America to Chattanooga next summer. It also states that this event will not only feature lots of attendees, but their average stay is five nights, and with girls events you have parents, siblings and grandparents attending in many cases.

The NSA Hall of Fame was established in 1992.[3]

1.About NSA. PlayNSA. PHP-Nuke. 2009. Web. 12 Oct. 2009.2.National Softball Association. Just Bats.com PlayNSA. 2009. Web.12 Oct. 2009.3.NSA Hall of Fame. PlayNSA. PHP-Nuke. 2009. Web. 12 Oct. 2009.4. Smiddie, Kelley. Eastern World Series Will Run July 2531. Chattanooga Times Free Press. 18 Oct. 2009.Web. 25 Oct. 2009.

Read the rest here:

National Softball Association - Wikipedia

The Abolition of Work, by Bob Black – Abolish Work

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Danzig

(This article has been reprinted with permission from the author)

No one should ever work.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost all the evil youd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work.In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

That doesnt mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, aludicrevolution. By play I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than childs play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isnt passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us [will] want [to] act. Oblomovism and Stakhanovism are two sides of same debased coin.

The ludic life is totally incompatible with existing reality. So much the worse for reality, the gravity hole that sucks the vitality from the little in life that still distinguishes it from mere survival.Curiouslymaybe notall the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else.

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination.I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marxs wayward son-in-law Paul LafargueI support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealistsexcept that Im not kiddingI favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution.I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate workand not only because they plan to make other people do theirsthey are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. Theyll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists dont care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power.Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.

You may be wondering if Im joking or serious. Im jokingandserious. To be ludic is not to be ludicrous. Play doesnt have to be frivolous, although frivolity isnt triviality: very often we ought to take frivolity seriously. Id like life to be a game but a game with high stakes. I want to playplay for keeps.

The alternative to work isnt just idleness.To be ludic is not to be quaaludic. As much as I treasure the pleasure of torpor, its never more rewarding than when it punctuates other pleasures and pastimes. Nor am I promoting the managed time-disciplined safety-valve called leisure; far from it. Leisure is non-work for the sake of work. Leisure is the time spent recovering from work, and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work many people return from vacations so beat that they look forward to returning to work so they can rest up. The main difference between work and leisure is that at work at least you get paid for your alienation and enervation.

I am not playing definitional games with anybody. When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimun definition of work isforced labor, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential.Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the stick by other means.) But not all creation is work. Work is never done for its own sake, its done on account of some product or output that the worker (or, more often, somebody else) gets out of it. This is what work necessarily is.To define it is to despise it. But work is usually even worse than its definition decrees. The dynamic of domination intrinsic to work tends over time toward elaboration. In advanced work-riddled societies, including all industrial societies whether capitalist or communist, work invariably acquires other attributes which accentuate its obnoxiousness.

Usuallyand this is even more true in communist than capitalist countries, where the state is almost the only employer and everyone is an employeework is employment,i.e., wage-labor, which means selling yourself on the installment plan. Thus 95% of Americans who work, work for somebody (or something) else. In the USSR or Cuba or Yugoslavia or Nicaragua or any other alternative model which might be adduced, the corresponding figure approaches 100%. Only the embattled Third World peasant bastionsMexico, India, Brazil, Turkeytemporarily shelter significant concentrations of agriculturists who perpetuate the traditional arrangement of most laborers in the last several millennia, the payment of taxes (ransom) to the state or rent to parasitic landlords in return for being otherwise left alone. Even this raw deal is beginning to look good. Allindustrial (and office) workers are employees and under the sort of surveillance which ensures servility.

But modern work has worse implications. People dont just work, they have jobs. One person does one productive task all the time on an or-else basis. Even if the task has a quantum of intrinsic interest (as increasingly many jobs dont) the monotony of its obligatory exclusivity drains its ludic potential. A job that might engage the energies of some people, for a reasonably limited time, for the fun of it, is just a burden on those who have to do it for forty hours a week with no say in how it should be done, for the profit of owners who contribute nothing to the project, and with no opportunity for sharing tasks or spreading the work among those who actually have to do it. This is the real world of work: a world of bureaucratic blundering, of sexual harassment and discrimination, of bonehead bosses exploiting and scapegoating their subordinates whoby any rational-technical criteria should be calling the shots. But capitalism in the real world subordinates the rational maximization of productivity and profit to the exigencies of organizational control.

The degradation which most workers experience on the job is the sum of assorted indignities which can be denominated as discipline. Foucault has complexified this phenomenon but it is simple enough. Discipline consists of the totality of totalitarian controls at the workplacesurveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching-in and -out, etc.Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible. It was beyond the capacities of such demonic tators of yore as Nero and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. For all their bad intentions they just didnt have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do. Discipline is the distinctively diabolical modern mode of control, it is an innovative intrusion which must be interdicted at the earliest opportunity.

Such is work. Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary.What might otherwise be play is work if its forced. This is axiomatic. Bernie de Koven has defined play as the suspension of consequences. This is unacceptable if it implies that play is inconsequential. The point is not that play is without consequences. Playing and giving are closely related, they are the behavioral and transactional facets of the same impulse, the play-instinct. They share an aristocratic disdain for results. The player gets something out of playing; thats why he plays. But the core reward is the experience of the activity itself (whatever it is). Some otherwise attentive students of play, like Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens) define it as game-playing or following rules. I respect Huizingas erudition but emphatically reject his constraints. There are many good games (chess, baseball, Monopoly, bridge) which are rule-govemed but there is much more to play than game-playing. Conversation, sex, dancing, travelthese practices arent rule-governed but they are surely play if anything is. And rules can beplayed withat least as readily as anything else.

Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who arent free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to the higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.

And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites.There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace.You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each others control techniques.A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors; he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called insubordination, just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents and teachers who work?

The demeaning system of domination Ive described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans.For certain purposes its not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism orbetter stillindustrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy.Anybody who says these people are free is lying or stupid.You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances are youll end up boring, stupid and monotonous.Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to hierarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the families they start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than one, and into politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain the vitality from people at work, theyll likely submit to hierarchy and expertise in everything. Theyre used to it.

We are so close to the world of work that we cant see what it does to us.We have to rely on outside observers from other times or other cultures to appreciate the extremity and the pathology of our present position. There was a time in our own past when the work ethic would have been incomprehensible, and perhaps Weber was on to something when he tied its appearance to a religion, Calvinism, which if it emerged today instead of four centuries ago would immediately and appropriately be labelled a cult. Be that as it may, we have only to draw upon the wisdom of antiquity to put work in perspective. The ancients saw work for what it is, and their view prevailed, the Calvinist cranks notwithstanding, until overthrown by industrialismbut not before receiving the endorsement of its prophets.

Lets pretend for a moment that work doesnt turn people into stultified submissives.Lets pretend, in defiance of any plausible psychology and the ideology of its boosters, that it has no effect on the formation of character. And lets pretend that work isnt as boring and tiring and humiliating as we all know it really is. Even then, work wouldstillmake a mockery of all humanistic and democratic aspirations, just because it usurps so much of our time.Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship. He was right.Because of work, no matter what we do we keep looking at our watches. The only thing free about so-called free time is that it doesnt cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work.Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor as a factor of production not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair.Coal and steel dont do that. Lathes and typewriters dont do that. But workers do. No wonder Edward G. Robinson in one of his gangster movies exclaimed, Work is for saps!

Both Plato and Xenophon attribute to Socrates and obviously share with him an awareness of the destructive effects of work on the worker as a citizen and as a human being. Herodotus identified contempt for work as an attribute of the classical Greeks at the zenith of their culture. To take only one Roman example,Cicero said that whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.His candor is now rare, but contemporary primitive societies which we are wont to look down upon have provided spokesmen who have enlightened Westem anthropologists. The Kapauku of West Irian, according to Posposil, have a conception of balance in life and accordingly work only every other day, the day of rest designed to regain the lost power and health. Our ancestors, even as late as the eighteenth century when they were far along the path to our present predicament, at least were aware of what we have forgotten, the underside of industrialization. Their religious devotion to St. Mondaythus establishing ade factofive-day week 150-200 years before its legal consecrationwas the despair of the earliest Factory owners. They took a long time in submitting to the tyranny of the bell, predecessor of the time clock. In fact it was necessary for a generation or two to replace adult males with women accustomed to obedience and children who could be molded to fit industrial needs. Even the exploited peasants of theancien regimewrested substantial time back from their landlords work. According to Lafargue; a fourth of the French peasants calendar was devoted to Sundays and holidays, and Chayanovs figures from villages in Czarist Russiahardly a progressive societylikewise show a fourth or fifth of peasants days devoted to repose. Controlling for productivity, we are obviously far behind these backward societies. The exploitedmuzhikswould wonder why any of us are working at all. So should we.

To grasp the full enormity of our deterioration, however, consider the earliest condition of humanity, without government or property, when we wandered as hunter-gatherers.Hobbes surmised that life was then nasty, brutish and short. Others assume that life was a desperate unremitting struggle for subsistence, a war raged against a harsh Nature with death and disaster awaiting the unlucky or anyone who was unequal to the challenge of the struggle for existence. Actually, that was all a projection of fears for the collapse of govemment authority over communities unaccustomed to doing without it, like the England of Hobbes during the Civil War. Hobbes compatriots had already encountered alternative forms of society which illustrated other ways of lifein North America, particularlybut already these were too remote from their experience to be understandable. (The lower orders, closer to the condition of the Indians, understood it better and often found it attractive.Throughout the seventeenth century, English settlers defected to Indian tribes or, captured in war, refused to return. But the Indians no more defected to white settlements than West Germans climb the Berlin Wall from the west.) The survival of the fittest versionthe Thomas Huxley versionof Darwinism was a better account of economic conditions in Victorian England than it was of natural selection, as the anarchist Kropotkin showed in his bookMutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. (Kropotkin was a scientistgeographerwhod had ample involuntary opportunity for fieldwork whilst exiled in Siberia: he knew what he was talking about. Like most social and political theory, the story Hobbes and his successors told was really unacknowledged autobiography.

The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, surveying the data on contemporary hunter-gatherers, exploded the Hobbesian myth in an article entitled The Original Affluent Society. They work a lot less than we do, and their work is hard to distinguish from what we regard as play. Sahlins concluded that hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intemmittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society. They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they were working at all. Their labor, as it appears to us, was skilled labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities; unskilled labor on any large scale, as Sahlins says, is impossible except under industrialism. Thus it satisfied Friedrich Schillers definition of play, the only occasion on which man realizes his complete humanity by giving full play to both sides of his twofold nature, thinking and feeling. As he put it: The animalworkswhen deprivation is the mainspring of its activity, and itplayswhen the fullness of its strength is this mainspring, when superabundant life is its own stimulus to activity. (A modern versiondubiously developmental is Abraham Maslows counterposition of deficiency and growth motivation.) Play and freedom are, as regards production, coextensive. Even Marx, who belongs (for all his good intentions) in the productivist pantheon, observed that the realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity and external utility is required. He never could quite bring himself to identify this happy circumstance as what it is,the abolition of work its rather anomalous, after all, to be pro-worker and anti-work but we can.

The aspiration to go backwards or forwards to a life without work is evident in every serious social or cultural history of pre-industrial Europe, among them M. Dorothy GeorgesEngland in Transitionand Peter BurkesPopular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Also pertinent is Daniel Bells essay Work and Its Discontents, the first text, I believe, to refer to the revolt against work in so many words and, had it been understood, an important correction to the complacency ordinarily associated with the volume in which it was collected,The End of Ideology. Neither critics nor celebrants have noticed that Bells end-of-ideology thesis signalled not the end of social unrest but the beginning of a new, uncharted phase unconstrained and uninformed by ideology. It was Seymour Lipset (inPolitical Man), not Bell, who announced at the same time that the fundamental problems of the Industrial Revolution have been solved, only a few years before the post- or metaindustrial discontents of college students drove Lipset from UC Berkeley to the relative (and temporary) tranquillity of Harvard.

As Bell notes, Adam Smith inThe Wealth of Nations, for all his enthusiasm for the market and the division of labor, was more alert to (and more honest about) the seamy side of work than Ayn Rand or the Chicago economists or any of Smiths modem epigones. As Smith observed: The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding . . . He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. Here, in a few blunt words, is my critique of work. Bell, writing in 1956, the Golden Age of Eisenhower imbecility and American self-satisfaction, identified the unorganized, unorganizable malaise of the 1970s and since, the one no political tendency is able to hamess, the one identified in HEWs reportWork in America, the one which cannot be exploited and so is ignored.That problem is the revolt against work.It does not figure in any text by any laissez-faire economistMilton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Richard Posnerbecause, in their terms, as they used to say onStar Trek, it does not compute.

If these objections, informed by the love of liberty, fail to persuade humanists of a utilitarian or even paternalist tum, there are others which they cannot disregard.Work is hazardous to your health, to borrow a book title. In fact, work is mass murder or genocide. Directly or indirectly, work will kill most of the people who read these words.Between 14,000 and 25,000 workers are killed annually in this country on the job. Over two million are disabled. Twenty to twenty-five million are injured every year. And these figures are based on a very conservative estimation of what constitutes a work-related injury. Thus they dont count the half million cases of occupational disease every year. I looked at one medical textbook on occuptional diseases which was 1,200 pages long. Even this barely scratches the surface. The available statistics count the obvious cases like the 100,000 miners who have black lung disease, of whom 4,000 die every year, a much higher fatality rate than for AIDS, for instance, which gets so much media attention. This reflects the unvoiced assumption that AIDS afflicts perverts who could control their depravity whereas coalmining is a sacrosanct activity beyond question.What the statistics dont show is that tens of millions of people have their lifespans shortened by workwhich is all that homicide means, after all.Consider the doctors who work themselves to death in their 50s. Consider all the other workaholics.

Even if you arent killed or crippled while actually working, you very well might be while going to work, coming from work, looking for work, or trying to forget about work.The vast majority of victims of the automobile are either doing one of these work-obligatory activities or else fall afoul of those who do them. To this augmented body-count must be added the victims of auto-industrial pollution and work-induced alcoholism and drug addiction. Both cancer and heart disease are modern afflictions normally traceable, directly or indirectly, to work.

Work, then, institutionalizes homicide as a way of life.People think the Cambodians were crazy for exterminating themselves, but are we any different? The Pol Pot regime at least had a vision, however blurred, of an egalitarian society.We kill people in the sixfigure range (at least) in order to sell Big Macs and Cadillacs to the survivors.Our forty or fifty thousand annual highway fatalities are victims, not martyrs. They died for nothing or rather, they died for work. But work is nothing to die for.

Bad news for liberals: regulatory tinkering is useless in this life-and-death context. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration was designed to police the core part of the problem, workplace safety.

Even beforeReaganand the Supreme Court stifled it, OSHA was a farce. At previous and (by current standards) generous Carter-era funding levels, a workplace could expect a random visit from an OSHA inspector once every 46 years.

State control of the economy is no solution. Work is, if anything, more dangerous in the state-socialist countries than it is here. Thousands of Russian workers were killed or injured building the Moscow subway.Stories reverberate about covered-up Soviet nuclear disasters which makes Times Beach and Three Mile Island look like elementary-school air-raid drills.On the other hand, deregulation, currently fashionable, wont help and will probably hurt. From a health and safety standpoint, among others, work was its worst in the days when the economy most closely approximated laissez-faire. Historians like Eugene Genovese have argued persuasively thatas antebellum slavery apologists insistedfactory wage-workers in the Northern American states and in Europe were worse off than Southern plantation slaves. No rearrangement of relations among bureaucrats and businessmen seems to make much difference at the point of production. Serious enforcement of even the rather vague standards enforceable in theory by OSHA would probably bring the economy to a standstill. The enforcers apparently appreciate this, since they dont even try to crack down on most malefactors.

What Ive said so far ought not to be controversial.Many workers are fed up with work.There are high and rising rates of absenteeism, turnover, employee theft and sabotage, wildcat strikes, and overall goldbricking on the job. There may be some movement toward a conscious and not just visceral rejection of work. And yet the prevalent feeling, universal among bosses and their agents and also widespread among workers themselves is that work itself is inevitable and necessary.

I disagree.It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of activities.To abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done. At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand and I think this the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departurewe have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that shouldnt make themlessenticing to do.Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other.

I dont suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isnt worth trying to save.Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages.Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five per cent of the work then being donepresumably the figure, if accurate, is lower nowwould satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly,most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrockers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkeys and underlings also. Thus the economyimplodes.

Forty per cent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted. Entire industries, insurance and banking and real estate for instance, consist of nothing but useless paper-shuffling. It is no accident that the tertiary sector, the service sector, is growing while the secondary sector (industry stagnates and the primary sector (agriculture) nearly disappears.Because work is unnecessary except to those whose power it secures, workers are shifted from relatively useful to relatively useless occupations as a measure to assure public order.Anything is better than nothing. Thats why you cant go home just because you finish early. They want yourtime, enough of it to make you theirs, even if they have no use for most of it. Otherwise why hasnt the average work week gone down by more than a few minutes in the last fifty years?

Next we can take a meat-cleaver to production work itself. No more war production, nuclear power, junk food, feminine hygiene deodorantand above all, no more auto industry to speak of. An occasional Stanley Steamer or Model T might be all right, but the autoeroticism on which such pestholes as Detroit and Los Angeles depend is out of the question. Already, without even trying, weve virtually solved the energy crisis, the environmental crisis and assorted other insoluble social problems.

Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most tedious tasks around. I refer tohousewivesdoing housework and childrearing.By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor.The nuclear family as we know it is an inevitable adaptation to the division of labor imposed by modern wage-work. Like it or not, as things have been for the last century or two it is economically rational for the man to bring home the bacon, for the woman to do the shitwork to provide him with a haven in a heartless world,and for the children to be marched off to youth concentration campscalled schools, primarily to keep them out of Moms hair but still under control, but incidentally to acquire the habits of obedience and punctuality so necessary for workers. If you would be rid of patriarchy, get rid of the nuclear family whose unpaid shadow work, as Ivan Illich says, makes possible the work-system that makesitnecessary. Bound up with this no-nukes strategy is the abolition of childhood and the closing of the schools. There are more full-time students than full-time workers in this country.We need children as teachers, not students.They have a lot to contribute to the ludic revolution because theyre better at playing than grown-ups are. Adults and children are not identical but they will become equal through interdependence. Only play can bridge the generation gap.

I havent as yet even mentioned the possibility of cutting way down on the little work that remains by automating and cybernizing it. All the scientists and engineers and technicians freed from bothering with war research and planned obsolescence should have a good time devising means to eliminate fatigue and tedium and danger from activities like mining. Undoubtedly theyll find other projects to amuse themselves with. Perhaps theyll set up world-wide all-inclusive multi-media communications systems or found space colonies. Perhaps. I myself am no gadget freak. I wouldnt care to live in a pushbutton paradise. I dont want robot slaves to do everything; I want to do things myself. There is, I think, a place for laborsaving technology, but a modest place. The historical and pre-historical record is not encouraging.When productive technology went from hunting-gathering to agriculture and on to industry, work increased while skills and self-determination diminished.The further evolution of industrialism has accentuated what Harry Braverman called the degradation of work. Intelligent observers have always been aware of this. John Stuart Mill wrote that all the labor-saving inventions ever devised havent saved a moments labor. Karl Marx wrote that it would be possible to write a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class. The enthusiastic technophilesSaint-Simon, Comte, Lenin, B.F. Skinnerhave always been unabashed authoritarians also; which is to say, technocrats. We should be more than skeptical about the promises of the computer mystics.Theywork like dogs; chances are, if they have their way, so will the rest of us. But if they have any particularized contributions more readily subordinated to human purposes than the run of high tech, lets give them a hearing.

What I really want to see is work turned into play.A first step is to discard the notions of a job and an occupation. Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their airconditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens?Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There wont be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them.

The secret of turning work into play, as Charles Fourier demonstrated, is to arrange useful activities to take advantage of whatever it is that various people at various times in fact enjoy doing. To make it possible for some people to do the things they could enjoy it will be enough just to eradicate the irrationalities and distortions which afflict these activities when they are reduced to work. I, for instance, would enjoy doing some (not too much) teaching, but I dont want coerced students and I dont care to suck up to pathetic pedants for tenure.

Second, there are some things that people like to do from time to time, but not for too long, and certainly not all the time. You might enjoy baby-sitting for a few hours in order to share the company of kids, but not as much as their parents do. The parents meanwhile profoundly appreciate the time to themselves that you free up for them, although theyd get fretful if parted from their progeny for too long. These differences among individuals are what make a life of free play possible. The same principle applies to many other areas of activity, especially the primal ones. Thus many people enjoy cooking when they can practice it seriously at their leisure, but not when theyre just fueling up human bodies for work.

Third,other things being equal,some things that are unsatisfying if done by yourself or in unpleasant surroundings or at the orders of an overlord are enjoyable, at least for awhile, if these circumstances are changed. This is probably true, to some extent, of all work. People deploy their otherwise wasted ingenuity to make a game of the least inviting drudge-jobs as best they can. Activities that appeal to some people dont always appeal to all others, but everyone at least potentially has a variety of interests and an interest in variety. As the saying goes, anything once. Fourier was the master at speculating how aberrant and perverse penchants could be put to use in post-civilized society, what he called Harmony.He thought the Emperor Nero would have turned out all right if as a child he could have indulged his taste for bloodshed by working in a slaughterhouse.Small children who notoriously relish wallowing in filth could be organized in Little Hordes to clean toilets and empty the garbage, with medals awarded to the outstanding. I am not arguing for these precise examples but for the underlying principle, which I think makes perfect sense as one dimension of an overall revolutionary transformation. Bear in mind that we dont have to take todays work just as we find it and match it up with the proper people, some of whom would have to be perverse indeed. If technology has a role in all this it is less to automate work out of existence than to open up new realms for re/creation. To some extent we may want to return to handicrafts, which William Morris considered a probable and desirable upshot of communist revolution. Art would be taken back from the snobs and collectors, abolished as a specialized department catering to an elite audience, and its qualities of beauty and creation restored to integral life from which they were stolen by work.Its a sobering thought that the Grecian urns we write odes about and showcase in museums were used in their own time to store olive oil. I doubt our everyday artifacts will fare as well in the future, if there is one.The point is that theres no such thing as progress in the world of work; if anything its just the opposite. We shouldnt hesitate to pilfer the past for what it has to offer, the ancients lose nothing yet we are enriched.

The reinvention of daily life means marching off the edge of our maps.There is, it is true, more suggestive speculation than most people suspect. Besides Fourier and Morrisand even a hint, here and there, in Marxthere are the writings of Kropotkin, the syndicalists Pataud and Pouget, anarcho-communists old (Berkman) and new (Bookchin). The Goodman brothersCommunitasis exemplary for illustrating what forms follow from given functions (purposes), and there is something to be gleaned from the often hazy heralds of alternative/appropriate/intermediate/convivial technology, like Schumacher and especially Illich, once you disconnect their fog machines. The situationistsas represented by VaneigemsRevolution of Everyday Lifeand in theSituationist International Anthologyare so ruthlessly lucid as to be exhilarating, even if they never did quite square the endorsement of the rule of the workers councils with the abolition of work. Better their incongruity, though, than any extant version of leftism, whose devotees look to be the last champions of work, for if there were no work there would be no workers, and without workers, who would the left have to organize?

So the abolitionists would be largely on their own.No one can say what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen.The tiresome debaters problem of freedom vs. necessity, with its theological overtones, resolves itself practically once the production of use-values is co-extensive with the consumption of delightful play activity. Life will become a game, or rather many games, but notas it is nowa zero/sum game.An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play.The participants potentiate each others pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins.The more you give, the more you get.In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and desperate, more playful.

If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps.

No one should ever work.

Workers of the world. . .relax!

See the rest here:

The Abolition of Work, by Bob Black - Abolish Work

Spirituality – reddit

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Danzig

Im not sure if this is the right sub to be posting this in, but some advice would be appreciated for my little conundrum:

So, this year I had a pretty significant awakening which propelled me to a path of great healing- to keep this short, I got to the bottom of my problems which stemmed from early psychological trauma, which then led me to realise who I truly am at my core. I then learned that all my insecurities and behaviours related to them were perpetuated by a feedback loop - this realisation was so incredibly freeing and for the first time, Ive felt truly at peace with myself.

But heres the problem: All this year, Ive been sharing a house with some wonderful people - were all musicians and have studied at uni together. I love them all to bits and have a great deal of respect for them, but for as long as weve been living together, Ive felt misunderstood, because Ive been enduring the process of my own personal transformation.

I know these people have always been secure in themselves, so they could sense when my behaviour and interactions reflected my own insecurities/convoluted beliefs. But, being highly sensitive and empathic by nature, I could also sense when they were perplexed by my behaviour and interactions, which hurt, and led to more socially awkward behaviour on my end - this is a good example of the feedback loop I was talking about.

Although Ive grown more aware of this feedback loop that occurs, it still cuts me deep whenever I feel their judgment and I also feel like their misunderstanding undermines my personal progress. But the thing is, they have no reason why they should be more understanding, so of course I dont blame them at all.

Weve grown fairly close over the past year, but I dont feel like I can talk to them about this because I believe that they just wouldnt understand- this whole situation is causing me great discomfort and Im not sure what to do.

TLDR; Ive been undergoing a personal transformation and believe I have found peace within, but still feel massively misunderstood by my friends/housemates. This is causing me great discomfort and hurt, but I am unsure of what to do because I dont believe they will understand what Im going through if I try to explain it to them.

Read the original here:

Spirituality - reddit

Transhumanism – reddit

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Danzig

This is the premise of many dystopian plots. Gattaca is probably the most well known movie that presents this theme. The popular consensus is that such a technology would have disasterous effects: a vast lower class would be oppressed by an upper echelon of greed. Wealth inequality would rise dramatically. A form of discrimination more apalling than anything we know about would supersede racism and society would become elitist and authoritarian.

Or maybe not?

Let's forget for a moment that the potential of germline engineering to reduce suffering in humans and non-humans extends beyond intelligence boosts. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the technology does eventually get used to increase the intelligence of a special rich class. What then?

In fact, a technology that increases general intelligence has already been invented. The Flynn Effect refers to the well documented rise in average intelligence in the world during the 20th century, and continuing into the 21st century for some nations. This rise in intellligence was too short for it to be the result of natural selection. Instead, it is generally attributed to better nutrition science and medicine, among other technological advances. Just like in Gattaca, this technology was first introduced to the rich, which allowed them to get ahead of the rest. Only now are the benefits of this widespread phenomenon being shared relatively equally, but even now it is still highly dependent on one's level of income and accident of birth.

If you ask anyone educated in the matter whether it would be better to go back to the time before nutrition science was invented, they would probably look at you funny before promptly saying, "No." Why is that? One could imagine coming up with all sorts of rationalizations that might have looked really good ex ante for resisting nutrition science. If we consider the wealth inequality objection, we might even get a somewhat good case! That is, until you look at the evidence; from Our World In Data:

The available long-run evidence shows that in the past, only a small elite enjoyed living conditions that would not be described as 'extreme poverty' today. But with the onset of industrialization and rising productivity, the share of people living in extreme poverty started to decrease.

Now, to be fair, wealth inequality has been on the rise for the last 50 years. But so has the average living condition. Almost every metric that measures human quality of life has been on the rise. Wealth inequality only measures relative quality of life.

And I don't want to come off as overly pro-technology. Despite the subreddit, I don't believe in separating the world into two forces: nature as evil, and technology as good. It happens that nature is generally bad, and it happens that technology is generally good, but I don't want to be dogmatic. I just see people performing the exact opposite inference, and I find it absurd.

Would genetic engineering really be that bad? Or is this just another instance of the pro-nature, pro-status quo bias? I haven't completely made up my mind, but I'm pretty skeptical of the most alarming claims.

More here:

Transhumanism - reddit

JOHN MCAFEE: I’ll decrypt the San Bernardino phone free of …

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Danzig

Antivirus software founder John McAfee in Miami Beach, Florida.AP/Alan DiazCybersecurity expert John McAfee is running for president in the US as a member of the Libertarian Party. This is an op-ed article he wrote and gave us permission to run.

Using an obscure law, written in 1789 the All Writs Act the US government has ordered Apple to place a back door into its iOS software so the FBI can decrypt information on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

It has finally come to this. After years of arguments by virtually every industry specialist that back doors will be a bigger boon to hackers and to our nation's enemies than publishing our nuclear codes and giving the keys to all of our military weapons to the Russians and the Chinese, our government has chosen, once again, not to listen to the minds that have created the glue that holds this world together.

This is a black day and the beginning of the end of the US as a world power. The government has ordered a disarmament of our already ancient cybersecurity and cyberdefense systems, and it is asking us to take a walk into that near horizon where cyberwar is unquestionably waiting, with nothing more than harsh words as a weapon and the hope that our enemies will take pity at our unarmed condition and treat us fairly.

Any student of world history will tell you that this is a dream. Would Hitler have stopped invading Poland if the Polish people had sweetly asked him not to do so? Those who think yes should stand strongly by Hillary Clinton's side, whose cybersecurity platform includes negotiating with the Chinese so they will no longer launch cyberattacks against us.

The FBI, in a laughable and bizarre twist of logic, said the back door would be used only once and only in the San Bernardino case.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, replied:

The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that's simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers including tens of millions of American citizens from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.

No matter how you slice this pie, if the government succeeds in getting this back door, it will eventually get a back door into all encryption, and our world, as we know it, is over. In spite of the FBI's claim that it would protect the back door, we all know that's impossible. There are bad apples everywhere, and there only needs to be in the US government. Then a few million dollars, some beautiful women (or men), and a yacht trip to the Caribbean might be all it takes for our enemies to have full access to our secrets.

Cook said:

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

The fundamental question is this: Why can't the FBI crack the encryption on its own? It has the full resources of the best the US government can provide.

With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75% are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact.

And why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year. But you bet your ass that the Chinese and Russians are hiring similar people with similar demands and have been for many years. It's why we are decades behind in the cyber race.

Participants in the 28th Chaos Communication Congress computer-hacker conference in 2011 in Berlin. Adam Berry/Getty Images

Cyberscience is not just something you can learn. It is an innate talent. The Juilliard School of Music cannot create a Mozart. A Mozart or a Bach, much like our modern hacking community, is genetically created. A room full of Stanford computer science graduates cannot compete with a true hacker without even a high-school education.

So here is my offer to the FBI. I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team. We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks. If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.

If you doubt my credentials, Google "cybersecurity legend" and see whose name is the only name that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million.

View post:

JOHN MCAFEE: I'll decrypt the San Bernardino phone free of ...

computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list – Computer …

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Danzig

Latest Date Engine Site Latest Version Author Alternate Download Protocol Comment 2018/12/27 Arminius 2018-12-23 Volker Annuss 2018-12-23(Linux) 2018-12-23(Win) XB, UCI FRC; mp(32 threads max); Linux, Win 2018/12/27 Axolotl 1.3 Louis James Mackenzie-Smith - UCI Java source; cross-platform jar file 2018/12/27 ChessbrainVB 3.72 TCEC Roger Zuehlsdorf - XB mp(64 threads max); supports Sygygy ebtbs; Win; LarsenVB derivative 2018/12/27 Embla 2.0.5 Folkert van Heusden source XB, UCI mp (INT_MAX threads); supports Polyglot opening books & Syzygy ebtbs; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/12/27 FrankWalter 2.2.6 Laurens Winkelhagen SJCE* Kirill Kryukov JA builds XB Java source; cross-platform; SJCE* indicates engine is one of many contained in the package; successor to JanWillem engine 2018/12/27 Minic 0.28 Vivien Clauzon unofficial releases UCI C++ source; mp; Linux, Win 2018/12/27 Sting SF 11.5 Marek Kwiatkowski 11.5 old Kirill Kryukov JA builds old JA Linux builds Julien Marcel old Mac builds UCI C++ source; mp(512 threads max); Linux, Mac(JM), Win; requires extra dlls (not included); Stockfish 2.1.1 derivative 2018/12/20 Andscacs 0.95 Daniel Jos Queralt downloads UCI mp(no limit on threads); multi-PV; Syzygy ebtb support; Win 2018/12/20 Cheese 2.0 Patrice Duhamel JA Linux builds XB, UCI multiPV; mp (64 threads max); limit strength; FRC; Linux, Mac, Android, Win 2018/12/20 Komodo 12.3 Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman & Mark Lefler Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds BeeKay(Win64) UCI commercial, older versions are free; mp (128 threads); FRC; multiPV; supports Polyglot opening books; supports Syzygy egtbs; own GUI (Tarrasch Chess GUI); normal + MCTS versions; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/12/20 LCZero 0.19.1.1 Gary Linscott et al - UCI C++ source; mp(64 cores max); multiPV; supports Syzygy egtbs; Stockfish derivative; requires expensive GPU for best performance 2018/12/20 Nemeton 1.8 Stan Arts download Guenther Simon RWBC 1.41, 1.4 XB Pascal source; mp (4 threads max) Win 2018/12/20 ProDeo 2.9c Ed Schrder Ed Schrder XB, UCI mp (2 threads max); Win 2018/12/20 Rofchade 2.0 Ronald Friederich - UCI C++ source; mp; Mac, Win 2018/12/20 RubiChess 1.2.1 Andreas Matthies - UCI C++ source; supports Syzygy tablebases; Mac, Win 2018/12/20 SugaR RC1 2.0 Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, many others, & Marco Zerbinati Source + download alt site UCI C++ source; mp (128 threads max); multiPV; FRC; Win; supports Syzygy egtbs; Stockfish derivative 2018/12/20 Wasp 3.50 Fix2 John Stanback Frank's Chess Page UCI mp(64 threads max); supports Syzygy egtbs; Win; successor to Zarkov 2018/12/14 Arasan CC3-1 Jon Dart builds old JA builds old JA Linux builds very old JM Mac builds XB, UCI C++ source; own GUI, mp(64 threads max); multiPV; limit strength; uses Syzyzgy egtbs; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/12/14 Chess4j 3.5 James Swafford source old Kirill Kryukov JA builds XB Java and Groovy source; cross-platform jvm jar file 2018/12/14 Counter 3.1 Vadim Chizhov SDChess UCI Go source; mp(8+ threads max); Linux, Win 2018/12/14 PyChess 0.99.4 Thomas Dybdahl Ahle, Bajusz Tams & Justin Blanchard downloads source XB Python source; variant play; Linux, Mac, Win; requires Python interpreter with '-u' option invoked (to disable i/o buffering) 2018/12/14 Ronja 0.8.0 Johan Dykstrm Norbert Raimund Leisner XB Java source; cross-platform 2018/12/14 tomitank Chess 2.1* Tams Kuzmics - UCI JavaScript source; *silent update 2018/12/14 Vajolet2 2.6.2 Marco Belli SDChess old downloads blog old homepage old source UCI C++ source; mp(128 threads max); multiPV; supports Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/12/14 Winter 0.3 Jonathan Rosenthal - UCI C++ source; mp(64+ threads max); supports Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/12/07 Chess22k 1.12 Sander Maassen vd Brink SJCE UCI Java source; mp; cross-platform jar file 2018/12/07 Googleplex Starthinker 1.4 Jost Triller - UCI C++ source; skill levels; Linux, Mac, Win; successor to Squared Chess 2018/12/07 GreKo 2018.12 Vladimir Medvedev older GreKo files Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac builds(old) SDChess Norbert Raimund Leisner XB, UCI C++ source; multiPV: limit strength; Linux, Mac, Win; Igel is a close derivative of GreKo 2018/12/07 Rodent III 0.276 Pablo Vazquez + Pawel Koziol downloads source latest build SDChess(Linux) Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Denis Mendoza old Sourceforge code dev code Julien Marcel Mac old build UCI C source; mp(48 threads max); MuliPV; supports Polyglot opening book; limit strength; Linux, Mac, Win; originally based on Sungorus code; supports personalities 2018/12/07 Stockfish 10 Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, et al Roman Korba builds latest Mac builds by Michael Byrne latest source official source Kirill Kryukov old JA builds old JA Linux builds Julien Marcel old Mac builds SDChess UCI C++ source; mp(512 threads max); multiPV; FRC; Linux, Mac, Win; supports Syzygy egtbs; successor to the Glaurung engine 2018/11/29 Dirty 21NOV2018 'Cucumber' Pradu Kannan, Andres Valverde & Fonzy Bluemers Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds old homepage (slow) XB mp; Linux, Win 2018/11/29 Kingfisher 1.1.1 Eric Yip - UCI C++ source; Win 2018/11/23 Pirarucu 2.7.4 Raoni Campos - UCI Kotlin source; mp; cross-platform jar file 2018/11/23 RuyDos 1.1.9 lvaro Begu & Jos Manuel Morn SDChess alt site UCI C++ source; support for Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Win 2018/11/23 Schooner 2.0.34 Dennis Sceviour code XB, UCI* mp(128 threads max); own book & supports Polyglot books; * UCI support is limited; Win 2018/11/15 Jumbo 0.6.66 Sven Schle - XB mp(no max core limit); supports Polyglot opening books & Gaviota egtbs; Win; requires external dlls (not included with package); successor to Surprise, KnockOut & Femto and Femto 0.9 2018/11/15 Marvin 3.2.0 Martin Danielsson 1.30 XB, UCI C source; mp(64 threads max); supports Polyglot opening books & Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/11/15 OliThink 5.3.3 / 4.12j JA Oliver Brausch 5.3.3 TP(Win64) Norbert Raimund Leisner SJCE* Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac builds Norbert Raimund Leisner(old) XB C source & Java source; cross-platform; own GUI (Java version only); SJCE* indicates engine is one of many contained in the package; C source to fast OliPerft also 2018/11/15 Zevra 2.1.1.r216 Oleg Smirnov old source SDChess Norbert Raimund Leisner UCI C++ source; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/11/08 AdaChess 3.1 Alessandro Iavicoli G-Sei XB Ada source; Linux, Win 2018/11/08 Asymptote 0.3.0 Maximilian Lupke - UCI Rust source; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/11/08 Demolito 2018.10.29 Lucas Braesch 2018.10.29 TP rev252 UCI C++ source; mp(64 threads max); Win 2018/11/08 Dumb 1.2 Richard Delorme 1.2 DD(Mac) UCI D source; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/11/08 Mainsworthy 52 Mark Ainsworth zipped source .141 XB C++ source; Linux, Win; buggy; own GUI (GUI for native use only, no play vs other XB/UCI engines) 2018/11/08 Monik 2.2.7 Sylvain Lacombe 2.2.7 TP old JA builds old JA Linux builds 2.11 Julien Marcel Mac builds XB C++ source (French comments); Linux, Mac, Win 2018/11/08 Monolith 1.02 Jonas Mayr - UCI C++ source; mp; MultiPV; FRC; supports PolyGlot opening books and Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Windows 2018/11/01 BagaturChess 1.5f Krasimir Topchiyski Sourceforge downloads SJCE* Kirill Kryukov JA builds UCI Java source; cross-platform; mp(64 threads max); supports Gaviota ebtbs; SJCE* indicates engine is one of many contained in the package 2018/11/01 Donna 4.1 Michael Dvorkin source UCI Go source; Linux, Mac, Win; support for Polyglot opening books 2018/11/01 Zeta 0.99k Srdja Matovic Tony Mokonen Norbert Raimund Leisner XB C++ source; Win; experimental engine that uses a GPU for calculations 2018/10/25 Weini 0.0.24 Vivien Clauzon - XB*, UCI* C++ source; mp{20 threads max}; * - XB, UCI protocols are partially implemented; Linux, Win 2018/10/25 Zeta Dva 0306 Srdja Matovic Tony Mokonen Norbert Raimund Leisner Kirill Kryukov JA builds Julien Marcel XB C source; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/10/18 Tucano 7.06 TCEC Alcides Schulz JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac very old build XB C source; mp(8+ threads max); Linux, Mac, Win; successor to Sedicla engine; also Enxadrista 1.0*,*an educational engine written in C# w/ Portuguese comments 2018/10/11 Scorpio 2.8.9 MCTS Daniel Shawul source + downloads SDChess Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac builds XB C++ source; mp(32 threads max); Linux, Mac, Win; own endgame bitbases 2018/10/11 Tom Thumb 0.2 Tom Kalmijn Norbert Raimund Leisner UCI Scala source; cross-platform jar file 2018/10/04 Apollo 1.2.1 Stuart Nevans Locke - UCI C++ source; Win 2018/10/04 Ares GB Charles Roberson - XB, UCI Win; XB support is minimal 2018/10/04 CT800 1.32 Rasmus Althoff - UCI C source; Linux, Win; NG-Play derivative 2018/10/04 Invictus r228 Edsel Apostol - UCI C++ source; mp; Win; other engines: Twisted Logic, Hannibal 2018/09/27 Ceibo 0.4.1 Federico Rojo - UCI Win 2018/09/27 Gdel 4.4.5 Juan Manuel Vzquez JA Linux builds XB, UCI Linux, Win 2018/09/27 Wowl Chess 1.3.8 Eric Yip - UCI C++ source; Linux, Win 2018/09/27 Xiphos 0.4 Milos Tatarevic unofficial build SDChess UCI C source; mp(64 cores max); Linux, Mac, Win 2018/09/14 Chenglite 1.1* Maksim Korzh 1.1TM (Win) SDChess UCI C source; Linux, Mac, Win; *official version has been reverted back to 1.0 2018/09/14 Ethereal 11.00 Andrew Grant SDChess UCI C source; mp; uses Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Mac, Win; successor to Chengine, which name was already taken 2018/09/14 Prophet 3 2018.08.11 James Swafford source Kirill Kryukov JA builds XB C++ source; Linux{JA only}, Win; successor to Galahad 2018/09/06 EnkoChess 29.08.18 Evgeniy Silchenko SDChess UCI own GUI; Win 2018/09/06 Safrad 2.2.40.360 David Safranek - UCI Win 2018/08/23 Dorky 4.8 Matt McKnight 4.8 XB Win; mp(8+ threads max); supports Nalimov egtbs 2018/08/23 Galjoen 0.39.2 Werner Taelemans SDChess *XB, UCI C++ source; FRC; MultiPV; own GUI; limit strength; uses Polyglot books; *XB - older version only Linux, Win 2018/08/10 Belofte 0.9.3 Yves De Billoz 0.9.3 TP (XB) Tony Mokonen Norbert Raimund Leisner Julien Marcel Mac builds XB, UCI C source; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/08/10 Uralochka 1.1d Ivan Maklyakov 1.1d SDChess Norbert Raimund Leisner UCI Win 2018/08/03 The Baron 3.43 Richard Pijl alternate homepage Ed Schrder Wayback Machine XB, UCI mp(12 threads max); multiPV; supports Syzygy egtbs; learning; FRC; Linux, Win 2018/08/03 K2 0.91 Sergey Meus SDChess Julien Marcel Mac builds XB, UCI C++ source; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/08/03 Nemorino 5.00 Christian Gnther - XB, UCI mp(128 threads max); multiPV; supports FRC; supports Syzygy egtbs; Win64 2018/08/03 Pedone 1.8 Fabio Gobbato 1.8 G-Sei UCI mp(128 threads max); multiPV; limit strength; FRC; Linux, Win; supports Syzygy egtbs & Polyglot opening books; also a didactic engine named PedoneBase 2018/07/19 Chenard 2018.03.05 Don Cross Kirill Kryukov JA builds Julien Marcel Mac very old build XB C++ source is public domain; uses custom egtbs; Linux, Mac, Win; own GUI 2018/07/19 Coiled 0.6 Oscar Gavira 0.6 UCI Linux, Win 2018/07/19 Hedgehog 1.9 Eugene Kotlov 1.9 SDChess UCI Win 2018/07/19 Laser 1.6 Jeffrey An & Michael An SDChess UCI C++ source; mp(128 threads max); supports Syzygy ebtbs; Linux, Mac, Win 2018/07/19 LittleWing 0.5.0 Vincent Ollivier downloads Tony Mokonen XB Rust source; mp; Win 2018/07/19 Sabrina 3.1.27 Stefano Gemma G-Sei XB tournament mode; Linux, Mac, Win; formerly named Satana 2018/07/19 Topple 0.2.1 Vincent Tang - UCI C++ source; Linux, Win 2018/07/12 Booot 6.3.1 Alex Morozov 6.3.1 SDChess Norbert Raimund Leisner UCI Pascal source (Russian language comments); mp(64 threads max); Win 2018/07/12 Xadreco 5.85.180710.005728 Ruben Carlo Benante Hermann Krause older versions Norbert Raimund Leisner Julien Marcel Mac builds JA Linux builds XB C source (Portugese language comments) mp; Linux, Mac; old version supports UCI 2018/06/28 Orion 0.5 David Carteau - UCI Win64 2018/06/21 Betsab II 1.84 fixed Juan Benitez, Dieter Steinwender, & Chrilly Donninger 1.84 fixed Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac builds XB, UCI C source w/ Spanish comments & var names; Linux, Mac, Win; this is a MiniMAX derivative 2018/06/14 Drosophila 1.5.1 Gustaf Ullberg - XB Linux, Win; successor to Pawned engine 2018/06/14 Dimitri 4.00 Luigino Viscione 1.36, 1.0, 0.73 Norbert Raimund Leisner XB Win; requires VB6 runtime 2018/06/14 Swordfight 2018.02.28 ukasz Kouchowski - XB Clojure source; cross-platform jar file 2018/06/07 HoiChess 0.22.0 Holger Ruckdeschel latest downloads SDChess Jim Ablett JA Linux builds XB C++ source; mp(8+ threads max); Linux, Win; variant play 2018/06/07 Robocide 0.4 Daniel White Tony Mokonen UCI C source; FRC; Win 2018/05/31 Deuterium 2018.1.35.514 Ferdinand Mosca 2018.1.35.514 2018.1.35.514 UCI old versions were XB-only; Win; MultiPV; supports Polyglot books 2018/05/31 Fire 7.1 Norman Schmidt Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac very old build UCI mp(64 threads max); multiPV; Linux, Mac, Win; Syzygy egtbs; original engine name was Firebird, renamed to Fire due to a trademark naming conflict 2018/05/24 Sayuri 2018.05.23 Ishibashi Hironori SDChess old MB build (Mac) UCI C++ source (Japanese comments); mp (up to 64 threads); Linux, Mac, Win 2018/05/24 Wchess 1.06 David Kittinger 1.06 Norbert Raimund Leisner UCI Win 2018/05/18 DanaSah 7.30 Pedro Castro 7.30 Kirill Kryukov JA builds JA Linux builds Julien Marcel Mac builds GitHub DanasahZ 0.4 XB, UCI C source (Spanish language comments); Limit strength; Linux, Mac, Win; FRC; supports Gaviota egtbs + Scorpio bitbases and ProDeo opening book 2018/05/04 Jonesy 1.0 Miguel Izquierdo - XB Win 2018/05/04 Popochin 4.1 Miguel Izquierdo 3.2 XB Win 2018/04/19 Lozza 1.18 Colin Jenkins 1.18 source UCI JavaScript source; Win, requires Node.js to run stand-alone (not dependent on a browser) 2018/04/05 Detroid 0.9.0 Victor Csomor - UCI Java source; mp(8+ threads max); supports Polyglot opening books & Gaviota egtbs; cross-platform jar file; own GUI; built-in static evaluation parameter tuning optimization 2018/04/05 Dorpsgek Eve's Temptation Matthew Brades SDChess Tony Mokonen XB C source; Linux, Win 2018/04/05 Isa 2.0.64 Daniel Anulliero 2.0.64 XB Linux, Win 2018/03/30 Napoleon 1.8.0 Marco Pampaloni 1.8.0 TP Julien Marcel Mac builds Italian page alt downloads UCI C++ source; mp(8 threads max); Linux, Mac, Win 2018/03/30 Teki 2.0 Manik Charan - UCI C++ source; FRC; mp; supports Syzygy EGTBs; Linux, Win; designed for weak play vs humans 2018/03/22 Abbess 2018.02.07 Robert Pope - XB C++ source; Win 2018/03/22 Amoeba 2.8 Richard Delorme - UCI D source; multiPV, Linux, Mac, Win 2018/03/22 Devel 2.0000 Per Skjerpe - UCI multiPV; Win 2018/03/22 Shikamaru 0 Sarv Shakti Singh - UCI Java source; mp; FRC; cross-platform jar file 2018/03/17 Feeks 2018.01.31 LM Folkert van Heusden 2018.01.31 LM UCI Python source; yet another engine from this author 2018/03/17 PyTuroChamp 2017.12.26 LM Martin C Doege 2017.12.26 LM XB, UCI Python3 source; cross-platform and Win; buggy; not a serious engine 2018/03/01 Skiull 0.4* Tony Soares - UCI Linux, Win; *version 0.4 has a serious bug and latest version is reverted back to 0.3 2018/03/01 Trappist rev36 Antar Azri rev36 UCI C source; Linux, Win 2018/02/15 Supra 26.0 Pedro Mouro Correia - UCI C++ source; Win 2018/02/10 Delocto 0.6.rev 7 Moritz Terink 0.6.rev 7 SDChess UCI C++ source; Linux, Win 2018/02/10 RapChess 18-02-01 Thibor Raven - UCI Javascript source 2018/02/01 Butter 1.0 Akhil Velagapudi - UCI C++ source; Win 2018/02/01 Karballo 1.8.rev45 Alberto Alonso Ruibal 1.8.rev45 Carballo SJCE* SourceForge Kirill Kryukov JA builds UCI Kotlin source; cross-platform; own GUI; supports Polyglot books; successor to Carballo engine; there is also a JavaScript version available; SJCE* indicates engine is one of many contained in the package 2018/02/01 SmarThink 1.98 Sergei Markoff SDChess blog (Russian) XB, UCI multiPV; supports Syzygy egtbs; Linux, Win; formerly commercial 2018/01/26 Atlas 3.91 Andrs Manzanares Campillo - UCI multiPV; Linux, Win 2018/01/26 ChessV 2.1 Gregory Strong old site Norbert Raimund Leisner XB* C# source; own GUI; multiPV; variant play; Linux, Mac, Win; requires .NET or Mono framework; *requires own GUI to play against other XB engines 2018/01/26 Clever Girl rev 160 Seth Kasmann rev 160 UCI Win 2018/01/26 Shield 2.1 Luigi Ripamonti G-Sei UCI Win64 2018/01/17 Hactar 0.9.0 Jost Triller - UCI Rust source; Linux, Win 2018/01/17 Shallow Blue 1.1.0 Rhys Rustad-Elliott - UCI C++ source; Win 2018/01/17 Snowy 0.2 Jason Creighton - UCI C++ source 2018/01/17 Soberango 0.12.0 Luis Babboni - XB Win 2018/01/17 Waxman 2017 Ivan Bacigal - XB Win

Read the original post:

computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list - Computer ...

Select Page ::