thinking maybe (at least partly) i like pot for very similar reasons as those for why i like sci-fi: the cool ideas. also, entertaining these ideas takes my mind off... off what? the daunting problems of life? how much of it is escapism? is there a certain level of escapism that's healthy? it'd probably vary from individual to individual.
even those times when i dont have cool ideas come into my head while high, there's often at least that time of feeling... relief? all of a sudden problems are at an arm's length, affording some breathing room.
what would have to change in my life for me to be happy without the distractions of pot/alcohol/sci-fi (or other cool stories/ideas)? what would a life like that be like? to just be happily engaged with the world, not seeking escape from it? to be active in the world, and derive enough satisfaction from these action as to keep us coming back for more?
perhaps these "escapes" could alternatively be looked at as attempts at bringing that kind of world about for ourselves - a world of enjoyment from whatever happens to tickle our fancies: drugs, partying, sex, certain kind of movies/books/stories/ideas, in short: gratifying experiences of one sort or another.
so maybe people who have successful businesses get a kick out of what they do, which means they happily devote more of their time to their businesses.
maybe we end up doing what we like enough, and we like things more the better we are at these things. maybe humanity is a lot more unconsciously self-organized than we'd like to think: maybe we DO end up performing functions that we are best suited for in the circumstances we find ourselves. you can only be yourself, and for one person that means being a mechanic and a softball coach, while for another it could be being an accountant, then as they mature and develop - a business owner. some might be suited and have the opportunity to be able to change their circumstance, while others not.
a society could be engineered, by finding out, or at least estimating, the full potential of its members, and then putting them in circumstances which would allow (or push) these individuals to achieve that full potential. i guess there would have to be some overriding aims of such a society, which would decide what best use to make of every individual available in the society. for example, if 50% of a society was found to be best and happiest at being movie critics, such a society would not last very long, unless they were able to export these movie critics in exchange for some good farmers for example.
i think society design will be done best by artificial intelligence. and it will be done at our own behest. probably not all of us, but some humans'.

watching the movie "Prometheus" and loving it :) am about half way thru it, and a few interesting possibilities have occurred to me, and i'm curious to see whether any of them come to pass in this movie.
- i'm wondering whether these worms are seeding these planets with its favourite foods, or material for troops, or something. and then once in a while a "harvest" reports its readiness and is then, um, harvested, as it were, or perhaps a mining operation starts up, the ore being humanoid cattle. in this case - us. i wonder if it is worms. what with some contributing company during the intro credits being named "Dune"...
the tunnels look to me like they're made by worms.
and then agendas. the crazy hick geologist - just in it for the money. then charlize therone 's character. and then David! and the boss of the company (Weyland?)! and the dissimilarity of characters of the married scientist couple.
and charlize therone's character probably IS an android, too! and she probably doesnt even know it! :o
how bladerunner! :) (or androids dreaming of electric sheep-ish :D)

some things in this story just seem too implausible. like the utter carelesness, nay - stupidity! - of the whole crew taking off their helmets. or the fact that they would just go galavanting around this planet, without dispatching some drones to explore the place a bit first. but i suppose there wouldnt be as much drama then. but what good is drama when its set-up is so not believable?
i suppose it could have been like charllize therone's character said - the old guy needed some real believers. perhaps that was true of all the choices for all the crew members - perhaps the make-up of the whole crew  was engineered according to their character profiles. the cheapest candidates that fit the profiles were chosen. the ever present economical pressure. it just seems like charlize therone's character (what the hell IS her name?!) is like layer 1 of the company boss' presence to care for his vested interests, and david is layer 2. wonder if there is a layer 3...
is there then going to be a creation destroying its creator? as in the old company owner destroying the alien race that created us? or does that just get us to level 2c of a massive tree of tests designed to let species like ours chart out all the possible ways of being of beings resultant from planetary life packet profile 238H-53/67c?

the thinker

i dont think i've ever really been a big believer in the subconscious and especially in the extent of its importance.
but a few days ago i was trying to figure out this problem, and i spent a lot of time on it and still never figured it out. but since then i've had a few thoughts about somehow using the changing states of outputs on this hardware to feed them into NAND logic gates to get a certain  outcome. and a few times i remembered how an ex-employer of mine designed this timer circuit. it wasnt until after i finally "had the idea" (from god knows where) about how to solve my problem using the NAND gate, that i realized that my buddy's circuit had also been a NAND gate.
its like my subconscious was trying to contact me, to hand me "my" new idea.
for a while now i've found it "peculiar" if nothing else the way we all of a sudden find fully-formed "ideas".

the matrix is forever struggling to make energy collection from "human farms" as efficient as possible.
in a relatively recent trend, as a means to increase the human energy yields, factors have been introduced to force higher neural activity in humans by increasing their workloads. this has led to increases in "multitasking", which was predicted. what was NOT predicted was that multitasking would translate into only minimal increases in productivity and yield, and in many cases actually proves to be a hinderance.
ironically enough, the deffinitive statement on this about the nature of "multitasking" comes from one of the human livestock:"multitasking means speanding 15% of your time on this, 10% on that, 15% on something else, and then the remaining 60% on something else, all of these"tasks" have not "moved" very much because you cant do 50% here, 50% here, and 50% there because that would make 150%

modeling ourselves

think for every process/function a model can be built. striving for perfect predictability, the refining processes would help us understand the process itself.

we should try to intentionally better ourselves, and in order to be successful at self-improvement, and to even be able to make meaningful decisions as to what ways/directions we would like to improve ourselves, we should get to know and understand ourselves better by building models of our societies, personalities, psyches, stereotypes/archetypes, organizations, races, ppl who like the same kinds of music, etc.

we should teach our kids in school about people's personalities and psyches, what makes different ppl tick. giving our kids an understanding of how they and their peers function, then giving them tools in the form of teaching them techniques/ways of handling their own selves as well as how to deal with others, they would be able to deal with all the shit that life throws at us

politics

everybody has things they agree with and disagree with. it would be good for everybody to be able to live in a world of their choosing, and not have to put up with living under a system and in conditions elected by an apparent or supposed majority.
one way something like that might be achieved would be the formation of many different mini-states, each with its own different rules, and then people could move to the one with the rules they agreed most with. maybe like city-states? and if they stopped liking it, they could just move out to one more to their liking. of course there would be problems with locations - some real estate would be more desirable than others. you'd have to set-up these states on unclaimed turf. also, as these states would grow and change, there would always be those individuals that would at some point become disenchanted with the change, and feel ripped off if they had to move after having put a lot of effort into building/developing the state. guess thats where politics and lobbying comes back into play.
also - which country would give up real estate to allow a new country to get established?
is there any unclaimed but habitable real estate left in the world? a community of like-minded enough ppl from all over the world could give it a good shot and have a chance of succeeding in such a place. you wanna be a communist? move to elbonia! wanna be a fascist? move to "das neues vaterland"! wanna be a rastafarian? move to zion! a vegetarian? soy bean republic is the place for you!
these mini states would develop economies, trade relations, maybe even arrangements with a neighbour state to the effect of: "we'll pay you this much per year in exchange for using ur healthcare, education, defense, and sewage systems".

what about some kind of "direct support" system, where you would only have access to utilities you'd pay taxes for: you can drive on roads if you pay the road tax or even just pay as you go! wait - thats capitalism - you only use what u pay for.

we're all connected :)

if we are the universe's way to learn about itself - then we, each of us is only here and as each of us is, thanks to everything that was before us. in an evolutionary sense, if it wasnt for the big bang and the evolution of every single thing, we wouldn't be here to "do our part". each sentient being is the uiverse's probe into the realm of sentience. at least as WE know it. it all expands as well as it can, and it will all fail if it cant cope with any one of the things thrown at it. any meme. any virus. any predator. any meteorite. how much can our planet's product survive? maybe life in the "doughnut" of the galaxy is the safest spot. in the galaxy. not when it comes to colisions with other galaxies. well, actually that too, probably.