RE: Are Steemit-like Point Scoring Apps Going to Take Over The World? Get Points for EVERYTHING IN LIFE?!
You raise some great points in your post and this Carrots program sounds like quite the curious fact.
I think the government offering benefits to the people that are staying healthy is a move that absolutely makes sense even if it is hard to implement or even if it is unlikely to be implemented properly. But surely a health gamification app is nothing more than a curious gimmick as if it offered any real value and rewards, it could be easily abused as it has no way to check that you are not lying to it.
As far as Steemit's anarcho-capitalism goes, I think it's a great experiment an it's certainly a platform that has a lot of potential. But viewing it as anarchy or even anarchic is not really accurate at least in my opinion. There is nothing anarchic about the way hardforks are introduced and they obviously influence the steem economy in major ways, so they can be viewed as a form of centralized control. Additionally, I think it's fair to view all the voting curves, decays and equations driving the platform as government regulation especially keeping in mind that they are getting tinkered and introduced and removed at every hardfork. That's a classic example of a government using regulation as a leaver to influence and control the supposedly free market.
Aloha! Thanks for your comments. The important point here is one that surfaces through study of the psychology of mind control that has been exposed over the last 50 years or so. The issue is that people are being programmed via stimulus / response to behave a certain way, without understanding the necessary details as to why they are doing it and what all of that is based on. It is a sad situation that some people's best chance of being healthy is as a side effect of getting points!
The reality is that this is not their best chance of getting healthy, but as long as they are hooked in the delusional 'reality' created via tv, advertising, pr and bogus/junk science presented as fact - they will be too distracted and disconnected from the truth to know what they need to do. Using cellphone apps is not what we need to be doing and indeed, cellphones are clearly causal in some cancer and DNA damage - so the entire idea is flawed in numerous ways.
I agree about Steemit and I actually think that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron since a fundamental principle of capitalism is that some will have more and competition will be present. Since anarchy refers to an absence of rulers, capitalism cannot ever really be anarchy as the 'having more' aspect in relation to scarcity for others, implies a form of hierarchic control through 'wealth' rather than 'rules' per se.
You should keep in mind that a lot of the psychological studies and data currently available should be taken with a decent bit of salt as a far too many studies in the field have been shown to not be repeatable and so on. As far as my limited knowledge goes, not all claims to mind control possibilities hold up and many of the things that are claimed to be a fact turn out to be cultural, generational and so on. For example, most subversive marketing strategies of the past are not working that well anymore.
That's why I wouldn't say that a relatively simple and transparent gamification app can be viewed as a way to program people via a stimulus. My guess would be that they don't even expect the app to really work, but it's more of a fun way to divert more attention to the issue and start conversations. If there are people out there that can be programmed in that mundane way, they don't deserve free will anyway :P
I personally wouldn't say that's clear at all. Being in close proximity to a cell tower, could be, your smartphone - not that much as RF waves don't have enough energy to tear up DNA as you suggested. If your claim was true, one indicator that you would expect with the proliferation of smartphones which are basically in every pocket in the developed world would be brain tumors incidence to be skyrocketing and to be higher in the more developed parts of the world where cell phone proliferation is higher. The data I'm aware of seems to show that this is not the case, so this means that the your assertion here might actually be wrong. Keep in mind that the fact that RF waves in larger quantities could actually heat tissue up doesn't change the fact that their energy is still not as high as x-rays and gamma rays that are the type of radiation that can really tear DNA up and actually cause cancer.
Of course, it is not impossible that cell phones and smartphones in particular have some other way in which they are causing cancer, but it doesn't seem like it's the case based on the data that we currently have. But tearing DNA molecules apart is most probably not the way they do so even if they do which remains unlikely. You can check this out if you think the American Cancer Society can be a reliable source on the matter.
This does sound like steemit to an extent actually ;)
There are multiple studies that draw a direct connection between cell phone use and incidence of cancer and DNA damage. There are many issues involved, including amount of exposure and that the issue is difficult to track and may take years to manifest. I agree that the cases of related illness should be statistically trackable with increased usage of cellphones, but it may be that this takes a few more years before the data becomes obvious. Here's a presentation on this topic:
Also bare in mind that it is a legal requirement for cellphone manufacturers to state in the handbook for cellphones that they are a health risk and you must not use them within 10-20 inches of your body! E.g. you should use a hands free kit. However, this requirement has been 'met' by pasting this warning in handbooks in the tiniest possible font - so almost no-one sees it.
As far as mind control goes - I have studied this myself for over a decade and don't rely on scientific studies for my information in that field - I only mentioned them since they do make certain important things clear in a basic way that are relevant here.
"This does sound like steemit to an extent actually ;)"
yes, the entire top-down culture of crapitalism has been directly transposed into steemit - but that's to be expected to some extent since steemit only really exists due to it being invested into by those who held funds already from outside of steemit.