So there’s that arrow that connects the 60s counterculture to distrust of authority. I’m reminded of something David Brin said about distrust of authority. Every generation thinks it invented it.
Anyway, I think the 60s counterculture had more to do with rejection of authority than distrust of authority. They totally trusted Eugene McCarthy, didn’t they?
This is a false analogy. You can be a believer in God when you’re five years old and haven’t read any relevant arguments due to childhood indoctrination that happens in every home. You might even believe in income redistribution when you’re five years old if your parents tell you that it’s the right thing to do. I’m pretty sure nobody teaches their children about UFAI that way. You’d have to know the arguments for or against UFAI to even know what that means.
“Nothing exists in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it.”—Dana Scully, The X-Files
“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
I think this is relevant: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S37/75/69M50/
David Icke thinks Barack Obama and many other prominent politicians are reptiles and that there’s a reptilian conspiracy going on. He has written many books about this, and seems to take all of that pretty seriously. Should I be reading his books, instead of something that is more likely to be true?
Didn’t think about that. But this actually makes a lot of sense. This is the only way you can believe in those things. You completely ignore reason and take it all on faith.
I don’t know what actual Christians believe, but how could this be when god cursed that the snake would have to crawl on its belly for the rest of its days (“on your belly you shall go”), and yet later in the New Testament Satan walks with Jesus on earth to tempt him to idolatry with the offer of the kingdoms?
Besides, if it’s Satan, why punish snakes instead?
I haven’t talked about this with an actual Christian, but it seems to me that an erudite Christian won’t hold this view that the snake was Satan, especially when you can get rid of the contradiction by saying the snake was not Satan.
I’m not American, so I could be wrong about this. But at first glance it seems to me that Republicans have to run two vastly different campaigns, one in the primaries and the other in the general election, while Democrats could run pretty much the same campaign in the primaries as well as the general election. It seems to me that people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz would have to get called flip-flops if they were to run for presidency in 2016 while Hillary Clinton would be able to run just one campaign.
Am I wrong, or is the Democratic party just larger than the Republican party and therefore more mainstream?
It’s probably true for academic film theory. I mean how hard could it really be?
I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, “If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don’t, you won’t be able to understand your own explanation.” That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Roger Ebert
Completely agree. For example, if you’re feeling suicidal, please don’t kill yourself at least until you have moved to another country.
Well, curing cancer might be more important than finding a cure for common cold, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should be trying to cure cancer instead of trying to get rid of common cold, unless of course you have some inner quality that makes you uniquely capable of curing cancer. There are other considerations.
Reducing existential risks is important. But suppose it is not as important as ending world poverty. There’s also lot of uncertainty. It may be that no matter how hard we try, something will come out of the blue and kill us all (three hours from now). Still, if you are the only one who is doing something about existential risks, and is capable of reducing it a tiny bit, your work is very valuable.
The thing is, outside few communities like this one, no one really cares about existential risks (even global warming is a political phenomenon for most people, rather than a scientific one. Other existential risks make blue-collar oil drillers go to space and blow up asteroids).
If this happens, then some of the robots will start to look and behave exactly like humans. Robot prostitutes would look like human supermodels. This’ll cause more unemployment.
From Abhijit V. Benerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics,
Researchers gave students $5 to fill out a short survey. They then showed them a flyer and asked them to make a donation to Save the Children, one of the world’s leading charities. There were two different flyers. Some (randomly selected) students were shown this:Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children; In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted in a 42% drop in maize production from 2000. As a result, an estimated 3 million Zambians face hunger; Four million Angolans—one third of the population—have been forced to flee their homes; More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance.
Other students were shown a flyer featuring a picture of a young girl and these words:Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa, is desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia’s family and other members of the community to help feed her, provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education. The first flyer raised an average of $1.16 from each student. The second flyer, in which the plight of millions became the plight of one, raised $2.83. The students, it seems, were willing to take some responsibility for helping Rokia, but when faced with the scale of the global problem, they felt discouraged.
Some other students, also chosen at random, were shown the same two flyers after being told that people are more likely to donate money to an identifiable victim than when presented with general information. Those shown the first flyer, for Zambia, Angola, and Mali, gave more or less what that flyer had raised without the warning—$1.26. Those shown the second flyer, for Rokia, after this warning gave only $1.36, less than half of what their colleagues had committed without it. Encouraging students to think again prompted them to be less generous to Rokia, but not more generous to everyone else in Mali.
Oftentimes, when I’m not in a good mood, I simply decide to be in a good mood, and soon I am in a good mood. It’s surprisingly effective. You just have to consciously tell yourself that you decide to be in a good mood and try to be in a good mood. Of course this doesn’t work all the time. I’m generally a happy person, so it’s perhaps easier for me.
I’m not really sure that I care about duplicates that much.
Didn’t you feel sad when Yoona-939 was terminated, or wish all happiness for Sonmi-451?
“Take a step back. Look at the bigger picture. That’s how you devour a whale. One bite at a time.”
-Congressman Frank Underwood in the TV series House of Cards
How is observing this pattern in someone else’s brain any different, as a way of knowing, from observing your own brain doing the same thing? When “pure thought” tells you that 1 + 1 = 2, “independently of any experience or observation”, you are, in effect, observing your own brain as evidence.
No no no. The difference between a priori and a posteriori is where the justification lies. You may be counting your fingers when you count 1 + 1. It may be that you won’t be able to figure out the answer if someone cut off your fingers. In fact, it may be you won’t be able to understand what 1 means if you didn’t have your fingers. But the justification for 1 + 1 being 2 is not in your fingers.
So it may be that you are able to observe how your brain operates when you’re counting 1 + 1. But even if your brain operated in a different way, 1 + 1 is still 2. If B is taller than A, and C is taller than B, C is taller than A. It may be that you’re not able to understand this without three pencils. But C being taller than A is a priori knowledge.
Jim Crowe laws were there up until 1965, two decades after the war. If there really was such an over-sensitization, this wouldn’t be the case. Clearly, they weren’t sensitized enough. You’d have a hard time linking this to WWII.
What are the examples you can give of such excessive tolerances and aversion to distinguish groups of people based on factual differences without resorting to generalizing, and instead judging each individual separately? In my opinion, it’s very hard to be over tolerant. It’s clear as day that George Zimmerman wouldn’t have shot that kid dead if he was white. Even if it is true that black men have a predisposition to violence, that doesn’t mean the kid deserved the bias against him.
I think it is this thought that drives the anti-discrimination political movement. It’s the idea that people are more than members of their races. More than the WWII, it’s just how the rise of individuality in the Western world would go forward. This also explains why Russia is still rampantly discriminating against all sorts of people, be it women, or gays, or minorities. They were involved in the WWII too, but clearly it hasn’t caused any over-sensitization.
Other than that, there’s the more obvious fact that among the people who are against Affirmative Action, Immigration, Disparate Impact Doctrine etc. are people like Pat Buchanan, who clearly doesn’t have the best interests of protected groups in his heart. So you can’t blame people for trying to be excessively tolerant so that they can counter the people who are excessively intolerant.