Sometimes it just needs to be said, for how strange and awesome it is.

The logical endpoint for Virtual Reality is a direct-to-nervous system interface. The reason for this is that it would be far cheaper and less energy intensive than something like Star Trek’s holodeck, and more convincing than gloves and goggles could ever be.

Most people would choose to spend as much time as possible in VR worlds, because they could live a lifestyle simply unobtainable in the real world. Even billionaires cannot have a new palace every day. Boring commutes would be all but eliminated. Long-distance relationships would be easy. A wealth of incredible new experiences would be available to all VR users.

Everyday life in a time with advanced VR (probably many decades from now, at minimum) would be defined by the experience of moving between worlds. I imagine these are some worlds people will want to move between.

Real World: People will primarily do things that must be done physically, an ever shrinking set. For example, people with manual labor jobs will work in this world. I expect a world that has technology advanced enough for this level of virtual reality would probably have eliminated virtually all manual labor,  and automated most production. Most people will only use this world for physical exercise, eating, bathing, procreation, etc.

The Real World will likely changed significantly by ubiquitous VR.

Work Worlds: People who commonly do office work/creative work will want to be able to coordinate and communicate in real time with their coworkers. Face to face communication is still the best, most fulfilling way to do this. And for some projects where coordination is necessary, face to face  communication is essential.  However, VR would eliminate the need to commute, a good way to save time and energy. VR would also allow for eliminating office noise and other distractions and interruptions  during times when solitary work is best. Another benefit of using VR for a work world, is that ideal, highly customizable work spaces could be created cheaply and on-demand: a huge benefit for small organizations. Imagine brand new startups being able to have their own Googleplex.

Home Worlds: The Home World would be like a person’s home. With VR a person could design a mansion, palace, castle, volcano lair, etc. This would be the place a person goes to rest, relax, enjoy leisure activities like swimming, horseback riding, reading, cuddling with loved ones, etc.

Since this is virtual reality, a person might also have several “nonplayer characters”, to act as servants, pets, or sex partners.

On the other hand, Obama deliberately campaigned as the personal savior and redeemer of this country. He cultivated the notion that the power of the government, embodied in the person of the president, could solve any problem. Well they can’t solve this problem. To his credit, Obama has so far recognized that BP is better equipped to handle this problem than the U.S. government. He should have recognized that his glorification of government power would backfire, but he didn’t. He is reaping his own foul harvest.

After the western powers and Russia teamed up, and (barely) managed to defeat the German Empire, Germany was forced to accept humiliating terms that forced Germany to accept an unnaturally subordinate status in Europe. From an Evolutionary Psychology perspective, this made another war inevitable.

So  why risk the lives of 30,000 Americans by placing them within the reach of a deranged, murderous movie-buff?

I have always considered this to be bizarre. Libertarians don’t think markets are perfect. Rather, they think that while markets fail sometimes, they have the benefit of forcing people to play positive sum games. Libertarians are cynically saying that people cannot be trusted to play negative-sum games, as they will use these to the point of impoverishing everyone.

Governments (and criminals) play negative and zero sum games.  Progressives, socialists, and other left-wingers naively believe that human beings can be trusted to play negative sum games (from a position of asymmetrical power, no less), and still produce positive total utility. I see this perspective as naive and unjustifiably optimistic.

As people continue to move out of the market for insurance, the insurers will either collapse or be propped up by the government at great expense. The relatively low fines for breaking the mandate will not be enough to pay for even a small part of the massive government outlays. Either they will come up with a system for rationing care (which will be hugely unpopular), or they will raise fines drastically, (which will also be hugely unpopular). In the end, they may simply pay the insurers’ bills, leading to severe deficits or severe tax hikes.

Ultimately, the government may try to simply nationalize the insurers, but the Republicans are likely to be in a position to prevent the Democrats from doing this, and they have every incentive to block this nationalization. They can simply (and justly) blame the Democrats for the catastrophe they created by passing Obamacare, and reap the political rewards for having said “I TOLD YOU SO!”

During the Apollo days, NASA’s purpose was clear: send a man to the moon before the goddamn commies get there and turn the place into another freaking North Korea.

NASA kind of doddered along during the Space Shuttle days. Constructing the International Space Station (which is worthless) gave them some busy work to do. In the meantime, they sent robotic probes and took pictures of the stars, which was actually kind of interesting.

But the Space Shuttle days are coming to an end, and Bush 43 proposed sending men back to the Moon, and then flying to Mars. This would be expensive, but the expense would be spread out over decades, and it would give the bored engineers at NASA something to do. (The fact that it would create a lot of lucrative jobs and contracts in Florida and Texas was apparently incidental.) Also it would be really cool and would make China look like shit by comparison. Or something.

It doesn’t really seem clear if NASA will get the funding for a return to the Moon or a Mars-shot. And the fact is, it really shouldn’t. Going to a distant planet is pointless when it takes tens of thousands of barrels of increasingly precious fossil fuels to get there.

If NASA wants a future, they need to make the case for large research budgets for advanced propulsion systems like VASIMR. Combining these advanced, highly efficient, and just really cool electrical engines with a nuclear power source could make human spaceflight meaningful and exciting again. But don’t expect this system to come from the bloated and incompetent national space welfare system. This innovation can only come from the private sector space industry. Unfortunately, they are crippled by government regulations and red tape.

American Liberalism: American Liberalism emphasizes individual liberty and well-being. Essentially, American Liberals believe in natural rights and want to protect them. They believe in free speech, free press, free assembly, etc. They also support free enterprise and markets, generally speaking. American Liberals support these things not just because it is a good policy or because they are necessary to the proper functioning of democracy, but because people have real rights to these things.

American Liberals want to mitigate badness while maintaining strong levels of autonomy in human action. Regulations and taxes should be instituted at the efficient level, whatever that is. Taxes should not be punitive, or for the purpose of large scale income redistribution. Rather taxes should pay for infrastructure, education, and to provide charitable welfare services for the poor.

Conservatism: Conservatism does not couch its rhetoric in universalizing ideas, like the other main schools of thought. Rather, Conservatism is parochial and loves tradition. Conservatism makes the important observation that entropy is a real force in human life. Sometimes in history, a society reaches a zenith, a peak of goodness, truth, beauty and order.
But because of “social entropy” the center cannot hold, and these peaks cannot last. Conservatives, therefore, want to protect the valuable traditions of  their society from collapse–for the benefit of everyone. This explains why the “right” in various countries have such different social and economic policy prescriptions. Right-wing groups in Europe often endorse mercantilist interventionism and guild-like worker groups, whereas US conservatives endorse the free-market ideology of the idealized US past.

Progressivism: Progressivism is fundamentally the ideology that wants to move society forward. Progressives identify various social, cultural, economic, and political problems and they just want to solve them. The problem is that the masses are mostly not progressive, and neither are the main institutions.

Therefore a relatively small group of enlightened people have to push society forward by whatever means are available. This means taking positions in academia, government, think tanks, NGOs, lobbying groups, and education.

The problems they have identified include income inequality, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and consumerism. These problems can be solved, and however much power the government has to absorb to do it, it will be worth it.

Historically, ahead of the curve people have always pushed society forward in ways that seemed counterintuitive to non-progressives, so we should trust them. While they are a fairly small clique of people who want a broad range of powers, we should trust them because unlike private actors, they obviously have society’s best interests at heart.

A male teacher arrives one minute before class starts. He’ll usually spend the first five minutes of class on idle smalltalk/banter. Women on the other hand, tend to get there 15 minutes early, set up the projector, hook up their laptops, review their notes, and then wait in uncomfortable silence for 5 minutes for class to start. Class begins right on time or even a couple minutes early to end the unbearable discomfort of staring out at a bunch of blank-faced adolescents.

Eventually, male professors reluctantly pull out a page of scribbled notes and start a dialogue with the students about the subject matter. Women launch into extensive PowerPoint’s, which are painstakingly made aesthetically pleasing, with animated text that swoops in, graphs and charts, and clip art pictures.

Male teachers will add visual aids when necessary, but if they can get away with it, they’ll just draw a rough sketch on the blackboard.

When you ask a female teacher an off-the-cuff, tangentially related question, she’ll often apologetically admit that she doesn’t know, but promise to look into it for you. Male professors think about it for a second, then hazard a guess. Usually, he’ll then tell you to look it up and tell the class.

Male teachers give a rough outline of the course, with lists of recommended reading. Often, they veer from the syllabus if the class seems interested in a particular topic. Female instructors make a highly detailed syllabus and try their best to stick to it.

For tests, women tend to issue study guides with the majority of the test information on them, while men lean toward pop quizzes with short answers. Women give more assignments and give more detailed notes on the returned graded assignments. Male issued tests are usually shorter (which makes them faster to grade), and encourage creativity and novel responses (which makes them more fun to grade). Women’s tests are often more rigid, and focus on specific data points over overarching themes or reasoning on the given subject.

Students often hang back to talk with male teachers, but male teachers won’t hold them back forcibly. Female teachers sometimes hold the class over as they desperately spew out information needed to keep the class up with the syllabus.

Female instructors are often much more generous with their time and will give students phone numbers and email addresses, and encourage them to contact with any questions. Male teachers will give an email (for emergencies only) and tell them not to expect an immediate response.

The main theme is that female teachers are more conscientious and, in a way, more egalitarian. They seem to believe that the teacher’s job is to articulate course requirements as clearly as possible, and make sure that anyone who makes a strong effort to memorize the course information passes and gets a good grade.

The goal for male teachers seems to be to get through the material as painlessly as possible. They tend to create an informal, conversational atmosphere, and often use anecdotes or banter to diffuse tension and encourage students to engage with the teacher and subject matter. They often test for abstract reasoning about issues instead of info-retention.

(The simplified explanatory model is that women signal conscientiousness, niceness, and fairness, whereas men signal charisma, creativity, and intellectual brilliance.)

I tend to thrive under and enjoy learning more under masculine teaching styles. But I don’t think male style is actually objectively better. I think the optimal teaching style would combine the male tendency toward utilizing tension diffusing banter and camaraderie building with female focus and conscientiousness. Male teachers aren’t generous enough with their time, but females waste their time working on pretty but useless powerpoints features. Female teachers also over-emphasize the information transfer function of education over the critical thinking/abstract reasoning training that is equally important.