Just because we don’t have the ability now doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Yeah... no. It's about as likely as humanity "colonizing" space - it's not going to happen.
Consciousness isn’t fully understood,
True... and conflating consciousness with the trappings of digital technology is doing the exact opposite of getting us closer to any understanding of it.
The prospective AI punishment would be to have your consciousness ‘moved’ to an artificial environment and tortured for ever.
No, it wouldn't, because that's never going to happen. Consciousness isn't software - it doesn't matter how much people want to buy into such fantasies.
That only counts for OC gas (pepper spray) - most anti-dissent chemical weaponry doesn't contain capsaicin. Milk won't do shit for CS gas, for instance. For CS gas, water is the only thing that works.
Considering how many different types of this shit there actually is and the fact that they can mix them up pretty easily regardless of what the law actually says makes a one-size-fits-all solution pretty difficult.
edit: did I just say a one-size-fits-all solution to this is difficult? Silly me.
I have to admit that GIMP has me beat - I've taught myself plenty of progs (usually in a panic because I told the interviewer I could use it and therefore had to learn it real fast - that's how I learned Illustrator, CorelDRAW and QuarkXpress), but I just can't seem to get the hang of GIMP.
In the same way that the 13th amendment does the exact opposite of abolishing slavery, I suppose.
There is no contradiction here for people who believe themselves entitled to protection from the law as opposed to being repressed by it... it is the unspoken contract that white supremacism implies.
Her Majesty's Penitentiary inmate Devon Fitzpatrick says early one morning in mid-May Her Majesty's Penitentiary inmate Devon Fitzpatrick woke up and felt something moving in Her Majesty's Penitentiary's crotch of Her Majesty's Penitentiary's pants. When he reached in, he discovered Her Majesty's Penitentiary's rat had given birth there.
FTFT.
If they want to make it clear how thoroughly Her Majesty's (or whatever mutant inbred blue-blooded critter they've got on the throne now) ownership of this person is, I say they shouldn't be allowed to stop half-way.
And rushed it so bad they didn’t have fundamental tech that was applicable to a wider economy
I hate to break it to you, Clyde - but the central technologies developed by the space race was "applicable to a wider economy" on both sides of the Cold War. The USSR had weather and communications satellites, too - unless you want to argue that those served no economic purpose to the USSR, perhaps?. Perhaps you are a bit too dazzled by all the anciliary stuff that dominates your consumerist fantasies? I'm sure you believe NASA's handheld vacuum cleaners made capitalism better for all the people that didn't get to live the middle-class WASP dream thanks to the New Deal... but it really didn't.
Handing off publicly-funded research and development to be used as a means of private profiteering for the capitalist class at the expense of everyone else (including you) is simply the way the US has always done technology - pretending that the USSR not doing the same is somehow a "flaw" is peak neoliberalism.
Their space program was callous towards both human and animal life.
I guess it's a good thing that NASA wasn't very forthcoming with their animal experimentation, eh? I wonder if the outcry would have been the same?
Yeah... sounds like Tuesday to me.
Khrushchev also ordered Leonid Brezhnev to head an investigation commission and go to the site.[11] Among other things, the commission found that many more people were present on the launch pad than should have been—most were supposed to be safely offsite in bunkers.
When Brezhnev arrived at the firing range on 25 October 1960, he said: "Comrades! We do not intend to put anyone on trial; we are going to investigate the causes and take actions to recover from the disaster and continue operations"
Afterwards, when Nikita Khrushchev asked Yangel, "But why have you remained alive?", Yangel answered in a trembling voice, "Walked away for a smoke. It's all my fault". Yangel later suffered a heart attack and was off work for months.
After all... we can't pretend thay the "Jewish-Bolshevist horde" would actually value human life now, can we? What would Reagan say?
Nah, I like my version better.
Yeah, you do, because you're an edgy liberal self-applying the term "socialist" without understanding what it means because you desperately want to distance yourself from your capitalist and fascist brethren while still buying into the same beliefs they hold on to.
It's not just that... thanks to the USSR we have technologies that wouldn't have even existed if it was left up to the capitalists. Such as synthetic diamonds and... you know - anything and everything to do with space.
Sure, when you can force the workforce to do a thing,
Yeah... turns out that homelessness is a great motivator.
But they’ll probably do it slower than if they chose to do it.
Soooo... just like wage slaves, eh?
food production, basic manufacturing
After 1947 there was no great problems with food production in the USSR. Still... you're not really wrong. The capitalist mode of production does offer a feedback system for consumer goods - even though it's a pretty terrible one that only works as long as the capitalists have to compete for a well-paid populace's buying power.
See, this is why you don't get your politics from a dictionary.
a: government by the people especially : rule of the majority
If a was true, where is your universal healthcare?
I could ask a book's worth of, "If a was true, (insert blatantly obvious contradiction here)" questions that this worse-than-useless dictionary description doesn't provide answers to.
And that's just a... it just gets worse from there on in.
Let's rather try this - why do you think labor unions have been historically necessary? After all... if it wasn't for labor unions, you wouldn't even have the week-end - or anything resembling safety regulations. Labour unions are a democratic force (in theory - and sometimes in practice) acting on an anti-democratic power structure (ie, a for-profit, privately owned corporation - in this instance)
If you lived in a democratic society, such a force wouldn't be necessary, no?
But if you call any of what you described democratic, I will say that your bar for what qualifies as democratic or not is so low you'd need a bathyscape to see it.
Fair enough.