You may know that Soviet Union has free education: every school, college and University was free

But now, in modern Russia, Universities are rifed out and closed, the rest are going to be paid and very expensive

The astronomy is excluded from school program!

The country without education has no future...

We still have that in Finland.

The country without education has no future...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwOU_2lXFFc&feature=g-vrec
Just saw this. Sad. Very, very sad.

These sort of teachings - taught at home by parents and in churches - are the number one threat to the future of education in the United States today. I know of far too many children who are raised with these kinds of fundamental religious beliefs and so reject everything that they're taught about the world without even considering it, and then grow up to try to change the education system and make it like something from the dark ages. It really worries me, sometimes even scares me, to look at the future of my country and its people, because I don't see a way out of this awful mess.

People are so quick to tell you what they believe, but they can never give you an acceptable answer as to why the believe it. No one even understands why they think what they do, and they don't even care. That is the biggest problem that society has.

People are so quick to tell you what they believe, but they can never give you an acceptable answer as to why the believe it. No one even understands why they think what they do, and they don't even care. That is the biggest problem that society has.

But seriously. If USA is going to degrade into something from 1400bc, many countries are going to follow. Probably not most of the European countries though, but you can never be sure.

People are so quick to tell you what they believe, but they can never give you an acceptable answer as to why the believe it. No one even understands why they think what they do, and they don't even care. That is the biggest problem that society has.

Doesn't it bother people that they can't justify their beliefs?

I don't think we will regress to older standards of living and intelligence. The push of technology can't be stopped, even with education failing there will always be educated individuals and companies.

Not at all because they do justify their belief with false suppositions. An example would be saying something along the lines of "this doesn't happen just by chance, life is too complex" and so on.

I think its more to what Douglas Adams once said

There have been times in history, when massive amounts of knowledge and technology have been lost. The dark ages for example.

This kind of regression would be very unlikely in our current state, with internet and such, but it's still possible.

It sure would bother me.

Douglas Adams must be the most awesome person ever

My advice: Abandon ship! Get out while you still can.

Doesn't it bother people that they can't justify their beliefs?

Probably not most of the European countries though, but you can never be sure.

I'd disagree. There have been times in history, when massive amounts of knowledge and technology have been lost. The dark ages for example.

there are just enough educated people to keep the tech push going. By that I mean we will have artificial intelligence before any sort of major educational collapse happens, by that time the control of nations and society can be given to machines.

The state of a society can change greatly with the generations. And I disagree about the AI. I don't think it will be as soon as you think before we encounter singularity

I'm pretty sure we've already beat this horse to death though

As for singularity, you don't need a technological singularity to have artificial intelligence or to hand control of nations and society to machines.

I can't see an AI capable enough to overcome the challenges society faces existing before singularity, because if something like that existed then we would be in a singularity state by default since it would be capable of more than we can fathom and there's no guarantee about what it would do.

However you are correct about one thing. Once the intelligence is equal to our own or greater, there is no knowing what it will do. The bad news is that day is coming in less than 2 decades, government institutions are already preparing for it and in some cases developing it. DARPA has plans for intelligent self running machines by 2025 and are currently developing the bodies and mechanics for them in preparation of when computing power hits the point when it can be put in these devices.

As far as I'm concerned the only hope for society as a whole is through technology.

I am biased towards not wanting it to occur.

which means that any technology possessing certain capabilities would automatically fall into the category of post-singularity tech.

Which any AI capable of preventing the collapse of human society would have to be capable of.