Getting funding is one thing.
Do you think the government regulates what is being put forth in scientific journals? What reports of people’s inventions getting stolen or confiscated by military entities?
In this day and age, yes, I would say government and corporate entities regulate everything.
Joker doesn’t have it entirely right. It isn’t the “government”, but rather the “governance” which extends far, far outside the laws in order to shape them. Business and financial corporational control is only one branch.
Think about it. During a major war, such as WW2, the military has extreme authority and need for extreme secrecy. Many military, usually weapon oriented secrets get generated as secrets because there is an enemy (the only need for governance). And these secrets are usually complex and technical. Thus there are “think tank” groups formed under serious demand of secrecy. And also there is extreme competition for superior weaponry of any and every nature, not merely military (think Eureka, the TV series). And a part of the secrecy issue demands that multiple think-tanks are formed invisible to each other yet still carefully connected so that the advancements of one can bleed over to the others, a diversified, invisible mind (the “Invisible Man”). In addition another part of the secrecy is the “cover story” in order to divert attention and maintain the secrets: “It must be those space aliens”.
So that is the basic, understandable situation, fully recognized as a completely genuine need and strategy during serous war times (and when is war not serious). What is interesting is what come afterward.
The fundamental concern is that you, the invisible man, knows far more, and thus can do far more, than anyone else. Absolute control is the only aim for such organizations, else "someone else will take it" - “us or them” - “for your protection, of course”. And knowing more (“information is power”) requires that not only do you know a great deal, but that they, everyone else, knows a great deal less. That is the understandable, and completely genuine priority. So now you are not merely an invisible man, but a great invisible beast with genuine intent of world domination, “else someone else will take it”.
Then from behind one way mirrors where you can see them but they cannot see you, you urgently strive to advance your knowledge of anything potentially useful while doing what can be done to prevent anyone else from being able to do the same. You must maintain superiority - “the first priority of governance” (not really, but that is what they actually preach and believe). And seeing that sometimes “they” begin to approach discovering one of your secrets, it is necessary to “intervene”, slow them down (because killing them directly caused too much visibility). Slowing the competition involves distracting through diversions of attention, monetary support, and ailments/diseases. And of course maintaining the invisibility requires that ever popular scapegoat for blame when it is obvious that strangely bad things are happening to good people. And that scapegoat, “false flag”, requires a good deal of obfuscation, plausible deniability, chaos, otherwise unnecessary changing of everything in every direction, preventing any serious focus upon you.
And how is that done, you ask? Pretty easily, especially when you have the authority granted by war.
Not everyone knows what is going on, so in order to create the cloud of obfuscating chaos, simply inspire mostly the young and still naive into destructive misbehaviors aimed in any and every direction. That creates diversion, a common and critical military tactic for subversion. The more chaos that gets created, the weaker anyone else becomes, as long as you don’t get touched by the chaos yourself. And because you are critical to the nation, even more authority is granted to you so that you can remain untouched, unseen, and might be able to “help remedy this problem of aliens/terrorists creating chaos in our nation” (the scapegoat).
As as the years go on, you advance year by year exponentially, just as any new reach endeavor would. And you, primarily through distraction, but sometime by “hand on”, ensure that everyone else advances relatively slowly and in some ways, actually retards. All the while, you can still everything they happen to develop so as to include their inventions too into your exponential increasing, making it even more exponential. And when the time is right for furthering your goal of ultimate power, you release a few hints to outside friends toward a publicly new invention.
You then stand back and watch “the world” invent a new technology (that such happens to shift even more power to control others into your hands; micro-miniature cameras and microphones, internet computers, superglue, iPhones, video games, reality TV, google glasses, RFIDs, intelligent automobiles, viruses, retroviruses, organ and race targeting diseases, ultralight materials,… while still maintain secrets the vastly more significant developments involving how to control others; hypnosis techniques, information control, disease delivery methods, obfuscation methods (“invisibility” technologies), nuclear manipulation, social engineering, political strategies,… All the while, you are gaining even more advancements from what comes of them making their advancements - doubling your exponential trend even more. You couldn’t stop your growth if you wanted to.
And of course if anyone accuses you, there are those ever popular return accusations; “paranoid”, “delusional”, “crackpot”… as well as the newer ones; “terrorist”, “extremist”, "antisocial(ist),… keeping them weak while building your strength.
One can’t target what one can’t see - justified social invisibility: “He who reigns in darkness, rules the world” - he who manipulates and yields subtle light where it ought not be - “Lucifer”.
If it all heads toward the singularity I assume they will find a way to ‘eat’ everything.
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See: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=185562&p=2601800#p2601800 .
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Yeah, I think they would at least try to use any available matter and energy, so mantle and core, other planets, the sun.
Science is a tool, and tools aren’t “evil”. Tools accomplish certain ends. You could argue that the ends of science are evil, but not that science itself is evil.
The ends if science are quantification as you mentioned; converting qualities into quantities, and creating digitized copies of “essences”. Science should be defined simply as the collective body of work that centers around the scientific method, which can loosely be described as critical-objective empiricism of repeatable hypothesis positing and testing; disconfirming or failing to disconfirm. If a claim is not falfisble, like “God exists” or “God does not exist” then such a claim is non-scientific in nature, either practically or theoretically-logically.
Science has an “agenda” which is the continued converting of qualified substances into quantifies ones. Quantities allow for deconstruction and re-arrangement as well as equality from across their spectrum, being able to create new larger systems in which things participate as pieces or parts. This isn’t either good or bad, but it will have both good and bad consequences.
Fact is, most things can be quantified, either through falsification-copying or through more philosophically proper deconstruction (breaking down essences into their respective parts). Philosophical deconstruction yields rationalizing (ratio-making) descriptions of inner contents and functions, de-mythologizing qualities or essences that were formerly assumes to be irreducible. Pure quality is indeed irreducible, but quality is only one aspect of things, and not a given reality, as evidenced by the fact that science can quantify things so easily and effectively.
Not all de-mythologizing is bad, not all quantification of qualities is bad. Knowledge is understanding more of reality, expanding and aligning one’s ideas and self more and more to what actually is the case in existence. Incidentally this will also end up creating more meaning in the end, but requires some creative destructions along the way.
After all, we don’t want a return to dancing outside to the fertility gods trying to get them to make rain for our crops. That kind of shit is what you get pre-science. We’re better than that, as a species.
Science is the exploration of domination.
The beginning of the process of de-construction does abhore the idea of brutal sacrifices, as those in Inca civilizations, where the Hero was rewarded by the honor of having his chest cavity ripped open, screaming in agony, why?; his still living heart eaten by the kings and the prophets.
Are the Gods mad at themselves for being constrained to create with such severe prices to pay?
They ask the created if they want everlasting life, and they in chorus reply in the affirmative, causing the creation, the constructed memory, to exist on s transcendent immortal level, for the sake of the imminent desire, only to have it deconstructed, as the illusion of simulation can not alley the gross, misunderstood fears , which have arisen in concert with it?
The hand of the Gods is tied, they are privy to desire, the transcendence wins over the gross scientific objectivity, inherent in which a fear of pure objective, nihilistic terror of existence.
This is why, ultimately, tools remain tools, and unless the limitless tools be constructed, they will at last be unable to overcome the limitations imposed upon them by the tasks ahead. If limitation it’s self be undone, then they will become as Gods, and they will again be constrained to create, reacting to the forces of evolutionary pleasure.
This will not be scary this time around, because after innumerable repetitions, the mechanism will be fully comprehended. Ahem- and felt, by a few in perhaps trillions of rebirths, compressed into one micro-second.
Otherwise, it would be impossible.