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How the Internet Makes the Improbable Into the New Normal
Hugh Pickens writes "A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark. Now Kevin Kelly writes that in former times these unlikely events would be private, known only as rumors, stories a friend of a friend told, easily doubted and not really believed but today they are on YouTube, seen by millions. 'Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we'll see or hear about today,' writes Kelly. 'As long as we are online — which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.' But when the improbable dominates the archive to the point that it seems as if the library contains only the impossible, then the 'black swans' don't feel as improbable. 'To the uninformed, the increased prevalence of improbable events will make it easier to believe in impossible things,' concludes Kelly. 'A steady diet of coincidences makes it easy to believe they are more than just coincidences.'"
... as the first post? ;-)
Does this hail the rebirth of religion? Or perhaps the renaissance of sci-fi in 5-10 years?
silly example, kinda brings into question the premise of the article
Sent from my ENIAC
It is interesting that the age of enlightenment was about rational certainities, it is printed in black and white after all, but the information age allows an older style of open view of the world, which can only be a good thing in my humble opinion. However, there are always people doing stupid things and equally stupid people (like me) like to laugh at them.
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Or it will train people to stop believing that those coincidences are meaningful. You know, like every rare occurrence that we already know that is actually common and unrelated.
The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Arduinopentamillenuova-5007 Sub-Microcontroller to a Markov chain generator driven by a strong RNG (say, a nice lava lamp and a photodetector) were of course well understood - and such generators were often used to acquire a first round of venture funding by photoshopping all the pixels in the hostess's undergarments simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance to the theory of Rule 34.
Many respectable developers said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because Web 2.0 was a debasement of technology, but mostly because they didn't get hired by those sorts of startups.
Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered while trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to propagate a meme across the bandwidth-draining distances between the farthest minds, and at the end of the day they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.
Then, one day, an intern who had been left to sweep up after a particularly unsuccessful startup found himself reasoning in this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must have finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to virtualize one is to work out how exactly improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh round of really hot funding... and turn it on!
He did this and was rather startled when he managed to create the long-sought-after golden Infinite Improbability generator. He was even more startled when just after he was awarded the Y Combinator 2013 Prize for Extreme Agility, he was lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable developers who had realized that one thing they couldn't stand was a smart-ass.
Therefore, I will gain the power of flight.
I'm not going to argue that humans aren't good at rational analysis of probabilities - there's reams of data to show that our instincts which kept our ancestors safe in the wild actively work against us when it comes to rational, long term decisions. It also shows us that the associations we make are usually shallow and immediate. The knowledge of one improbable thing only impresses upon us that that same improbable thing is not as improbable as we once thought.
So the knowledge that someone won the lottery may make it more likely for an individual to decide to buy a ticket, but they won't consider super-powers any more likely than they did before.
First, hear Tim Minchin on the subject of improbable events and how many things there are in the universe. This phenomenon may show people that wondrous occurrences are common, and they may then stop attributing those occurrences to supernatural causes.
The Internet makes stupid people more stupid..
What were the odds?
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
But with modern CG and video-editing, you can't just trust any video on the internet.
For example, see the recent Eagle Baby Attack video.
And now use it for reference and research.
This may be one of the times where we underestimate the ability of the masses to cope with selective information. After all, America's Funniest Home Videos has been on the air for over twenty years and people have adjusted to not having grooms collapse at every wedding and nutsacks being pummeled by every wiffle ball hit.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
We could always just switch over to exclusively showing videos of normal boring everyday stuff.
Along those lines, news would cover the same junk that always happens. Today at 4, traffic goes past the elementary school and cats spend most of their time sleeping. For our late edition at 11, old people playing bingo and tomorrows weather report.
Then again, who wants to waste the time watching that, or even uploading it.
Whenever I hear of things like this, especially on the internet, I always remember:
1) believe none of what you hear
2) believe half of what you see
And since that saying was coined many years ago, it may need to be adjusted to meet today's world. Many things can appear real, but be false. In this way, the truth is even more hidden, because "...yeah yeah, it's real, I saw it on youtube". I've posted false stuff on youtube before, you can too. Of course, I'm anonymous though. Maybe if it's real people.... please.
With Video Editing and Rendering software being ubiquitous , now we have to ask, "Is it real, or is it CGI?". There are plenty of examples on YouTube that look real, but are 100% fake. So the paradigm has shifted from "Is the rumor real" to "Is the video real".
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The book "The Science of Fear' calls this the example rule. The rule that somehow because something just happened, that it is now likely to happen again. People are wired such that they usually act this way(gut), only your head can override your gut when you know you are following this rule.
I didn't read the article, but the bloopers keyword in the subject reminds me: in the last one or two centuries we had National Geographic, Ripley's Believe it or Not, and the Guiness Book of World Records. Our analogue forebears would know viscerally that there were women with discs in their lips the size of coffee can lids; they might have believed thirty percent of the Ripley's books; and they would have photographic proof that the heaviest twins went riding on motorscooters and the tallest man could look down on a "no parking" sign.
Their they're doing there hair.
you just described porn
half the crazy shite you see in porn movies is edited from different takes with lots of breaks
A burglar gets stuck in a chimney
A truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away
A wild antelope knocks a man off his bike
A candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire
Someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark
That's what this kind of information encourages, but only among those who do not understand statistics. However, magical thinking has already been around for so long (just think of all the world's religions) that I doubt YouTube can make things any worse.
I've been meaning to write a blog on the "Media Magnification of Unlikely Events" for some time now but never really got around to it. Looks like someone beat me to it. Oh well.
... in a study that applied this concept to things like lottery winnings (would people buy lottery tickets as much if they didn't know anybody who won?) fear-based behaviors (would people be avoiding running in parks so much if they very rarely heard of related crimes?) dishonesty/narcissism (would people try so much to 'get ahead' by dishonest means if they didn't think that 'everybody does it' which is validated by watching the national news?) etc. etc. etc.
It seems that we spent many, many, many hundreds of years being routinely exposed only to a very small set of other people (the ones living in our village) which gave us a push towards conformity with our limited surroundings and its values and calibrated our 'probability meter' with that amount of 'throws of the dice' in mind. Nowadays no matter what you want to think/believe it is trivial to find many people sharing your point of view and/or finding events that validate your belief/magical thinking.
As I was saying before, if you had never ever met anybody in your life who won a lottery, you would be a lot more likely to look at lottery tickets as a very frivolous use of money, while nowadays where every few weeks you see in the news (with a special interest story, that makes you think you "know" these people) somebody wins a significant amount of money somewhere it's a lot easier to 'magical think' that lottery tickets are instead a lot more worth it (in statistical terms) than they really are.
Just like a lot of people I know that will not run alone in a park because somebody somewhere was victim of a crime and so they are afraid of doing so (without obviously realizing how low the probability that something like that would happen to them, much lower than the probability of them being run over by a car when they run along a road instead).
I don't think that we are equipped to extrapolate probabilities from the small to the large: when it comes to 50 people we are fairly capable of distinguishing normal occurrences, low probability occurrences and once-in-a-blue-moon occurrences, but when it comes to several hundred millions we really can't cope and cannot relate how something that happens to 10 people on a nation-wide level (say, win a lottery jackpot of 100+ millions) is way, way, way unlikely that will happen to us or to somebody we know personally. This is definitely affecting most people's behaviors, in some cases positively (say, rare disease sufferers can find somebody else somewhere that has their same symptoms and can get care, instead of being dismissed) but in many cases not overly so unfortunately.
-- the cake is a lie
Columbine shooting was 15 years ago. But I don't suppose you heard of them, they barely made the news.
Want to try again?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That someone will be knocked off their bike by an antelope -somewhere in the world- is not improbable.
If the sample size is reduced or specific by reference to the actual case at hand, such as dreaming of being knocked off your bike by an antelope, and then a week later, it actually happening, it becomes extraordinarily improbable.
Most people are not confused by this, even if it serves skepticism to insist they are. Few are unclear on the distinction in probability between "someone will win the lottery" and "you will win the lottery".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This is especially true when the improbable are human achievements. It shows us exactly what the human body is capable of even when constrained by physics. If anything, this wealth of data allows us to be more critical and logical to discern what exactly is going on.
The human brain is an awesome knowledge digester, if you feed it truth, it's not going to produce untruths. For example, athletes viewing recordings of themselves or of competition. There is a tendency in olympic sports to standardize on certain technique aspects that have been proven to work for others. There is a higher congruency of movement in athletes today than there was in the early filmings of the olympics, and higher inter-disciplinary congruence as well as we discover the simple physical truth. Humans are subject to the laws of physics, as such there are optimal paths for the human body to be all it can be.
Of course, there's always people too stupid to recognize they do not have the necessary knowledge and control to execute a movement and there's thousands of compilations of these failures. That's a good thing though, just more data to feed into the path optimizer.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
a Guy Opening his Ass To Show Everyone
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
you just described porn
half the crazy shite you see in porn movies is edited from different takes with lots of breaks
Guess I better do some further "research" to confirm or deny this...
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A similar comment was made when British newspapers started publishing minor news items telegraphed from far away places in the 19th century. There's a classic quote on this which I can't find at the moment. Must be a slow day at the meme factory.
You're saying that 60% of drives ending in car wrecks and drunken debauchery in Russia is the "New Normal?"
Okay then. Off to the liquor store at 50kph over!
Let me guess. You failed history.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Simple, common-knowledge answers to all of these scenarios:
A burglar gets stuck in a chimney
- Photoshopped.
a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away
-- easy. He was driving with a cat strapped to his head. Strapped to that cat was a slice of buttered bread.
a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike
- even wild animals know that cyclists are douche bags.
a candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire
- b*tch chose "My Heart Will Go On" for "their" wedding song. Should have chosen "Back in Black" like the groom wanted. All of this could have been avoided.
someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark.
Imagine what's next. Real-time, 24x7 monitoring of the entire solar system, as well as the interior of our bodies, including our minds. We'll need custom programs to keep out the vast majority of information beyond our ability or desire to process, but we'll have a much better awareness of our precise situation, which will improve our evolutionary survivability. I wonder if any tech companies are looking this far ahead.
“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
Terry Pratchett, Mort
So the internet has made Pratchett's rule a reality. Now all I want it to do is give us giant turtles and ambulatory luggage.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Hmm, well then perhaps the humans shouldnt be looking at the data and the machines should be determining what is of need to be reviewed by us. If you try to shove too much data through the human mind it wont comprehend it all, just like it drops alot of the data you saw heard felt from yesterday, perhaps we need machines to drop the out liers and anecdotes from the data before we see it..
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Hogwash! It doesn't matter how many improbable things appear online. It won't actually change the probability of something that is improbable happening. If the likelihood of being thrown through the windshield and landing on your feet and running away is 1 in 1,000,000,000, then it is still the same probability regardless of how many people saw a clip of it on you-tube.
So, unless the original post is positing that somehow observing the improbable event by millions of people on you-tube is going to cause a quantum change (which would be an interesting discussion), the probability remains unchanged.
Not only is there the improbable out there, there are also outright slanders. Particularly against Israel and the US. All sorts of conspiracy junk that blames them for the world's ills and based on falsehoods that are trivially easy to disprove with facts. However, idiots lap it up. Just wait for the flames in reply to this post - and watch how people with froth at the mouth based on cherished falsehoods rather than quoting actual *facts*. It is incredible just how backward the world has become, that people will hate blindly without ever checking any facts whatsoever (accepting false *facts* from propagandists instead). Cue the rants ...
Facts or references, please.
We need more of these videos! And whales.
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Yep, from what I have seen so far the internet is where religion comes to die. Religions and cults works best when the brainwashing targets are young and don't have any alternative sources of information. Most of the kids at "Jesus camp" will grow up just like their parents, a handful will "read too much" and abandon their childhood beliefs.
Thing is when you run a "Jesus camp" there will be video of your brainwashing methods all over the internet. What was previously difficult information to obtain is now difficult to conceal and the camp receives a lot of unwanted attention from "non-believers", strangers will try to un-wash the brains of these kids for no other reason than they feel it is the "right thing" to do.
Over the last 50yrs there has been a significant move away from organized religion, over the last 10yrs the pace has accelerated, I believe (but cannot prove) the shift is due to mass communications, first the TV and now the internet. I don't expect people to change the way they sort fact from fiction or stop imprinting their children with their world view, but I do expect more and more people will start putting ancient scripture in the fiction section.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is essentially the same phenomenon that TV news has been performing, and which has convinced many people that there is an epidemic of child abductions and other violent crime in our society. (And there is not.) The improbable events of 7 billions lives are being condensed into our individual (vicarious) experience – but with the average person being unable to instinctively grasp that vast context – and we're losing our sense of perspective. Little wonder that people are locking themselves and their children inside gated, armed enclaves.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
42
What would you specifically like to know?
Please make a (false) statement so I can rebut it with reality. All you've done so far is a feeble ad-hominem suggesting I know nothing of history. In fact I know a very great deal about the situation. So, please try your hand, I'm guessing your mental model of the world is vastly out of whack with reality (which was the point of my original post, so many people love to embrace the slander and never ever check the facts for themselves). "The Improbable (and outrageously slanderous) is the New Normal" indeed.
"A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark
Links or it did not happen
The Guinness books really have gone downhill. Now they're big "coffee table" books, and IIRC, have way less overall information than the packed paperbacks. I'm not even sure if they still have the "heaviest twins went riding on motorscooters" pictures anymore, but those you mention (and the "coffin the size of a piano case") are the ones we mention from the long ago Guinness Books of Records.
I second that. We see all kinds of improbable things but yet nothing of space aliens, bigfoot, etc. All that's new these days is better CGI along with crappier TV shows.
Actually we see "aliens" all the time (who else cooks your food, does landscaping, and mops the floors).
I do have a audio recording of Bigfoot, NORAD Western Area Defense Sector callword, someone recorded off 271.0 and posted an mp3 on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baymilcom. "Bigfoot" was giving squaks and vectors to a KC-135.
mfwright@batnet.com
I accept your apology.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Facts or references, please.
Wow man. Don't you pay attention to anything coming out of oh...the middle east these days? Or Pakistan, or islamist parts of Africa or Asia? It's all the zionists fault or the jews, or the americans.
Om, nomnomnom...
Ah, I see you are insufferably arrogant as well as wrong. It's always ok to be wrong, but it is a character flaw to be arrogant (I've been there, mostly kicked the habit, now recognize the flaw in others). Arrogance does not equal intelligence, so please don't confuse them.
You ought be apologizing to me since it is you who accused me of not understanding history yet I understand the facts very very well (and I'd wager a lot better than you). However, let's ignore the slight and get on with the topic at hand.
Again, do you have a single statement to back up your suggestion that Israel and the US are not routinely slandered by falsehoods on a daily basis? You see, you are exactly the kind of person I was talking about. Misguided, but perhaps not hopelessly so. If you'd like to debate these slanders then it'd be my pleasure to correct your worldview to one that is fact-based. You can then draw your own conclusions based on facts, and you would probably stop your implicit support for the cartel of oppressive, censorial, anti-democratic, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, violent, terrorist-exporting nations (as in, the OIC) and instead support open and free democratic states that promote freedom of religion, the right to change religion, free speech, women's rights, homosexual rights, animal rights, equality of races etc etc.
Again, I offer to debate and correct any misunderstandings you may have. All that has to happen is you stop being smug and open your mind to fact-based analysis to your specific criticism of the US and Israel.
ps. I like your signature quote. FWIW, I have a PhD in Physics (specifically, Astrophysics), so I offer an analytic and fact-based approach to counter the common slanders against Israel, US and other liberal/free nations.
It's even worse, even the US is kinda subdued these days and the Secretary of State has just concluded UN HRC resolution 16/18 where she agree she would suppress the First Amendment rights of her own citizens. This is both shocking and shameful. Without Free Speech we are borked, and the US government policy is actually suppressing eg. Hillary's shameful statements, or the US military being prohibited from associating Islamism and terrorism; see any of Major Stephen Coughlin's analyses on YouTube for more info:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhZe7eZK4dw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsArto3UVT0
The US currently believes that by atoning for its past mistakes it can encourage moderates in the Islamic World and isolate the extremists. Unfortunately this strategy appears to be failing (witness the pro-Islamist ambassador in Benghazi getting killed by factions he was assisting; or the US embassy in Cairo getting overrun by a population that loathes them). The 'mea culpa' strategy would work with many nations, but unfortunately nothing will work for any member of the OIC (which you mention) except for complete submission to Sharia (which their stated aim is to take global).
As I said, there is an awful lot of slanders and mistruths about. It is not just the improbably but the outright false that is the "New Normal".
Here's another example of how the UN is corrupted - and is now used to specifically slander Israel and the US (note: I'm not a citizen of either, I'm just aware that the libels against these two would easily be used against other weaker freedom-loving nations, like my own New Zealand).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Mupoo1At8
The UN Human Rights Council is now stuffed with OIC members, and human rights rulings are now voted on by countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan etc. If you know anything about these countries you will be very concerned about your liberties:
So, the point of my original post was that we get people who aren't fact-based and think "black is white" and vice versa. As you so rightly point out, it really is a "wow" (as in, wtf) moment when you hear these guys not only come up with totally ignorant and counter-factual statements, but then defend them aggressively (trying to shut any speakers of reason down). Anyone who loves freedom has to keep speaking out before that freedom disappears (as I mentioned UN HRC resolution 16/18 is a huge danger to free speech *worldwide*; and the madness is that the US is aiding and abetting this travesty against its own citizens!).
Unlike other animals we have some specialized biological equipment to handle very low probability events, but then we are special. If you're a nematode worm you're pretty much restricted to "Death learning" aka genetic learning where the species learns by individuals being ejected from the gene pool. Over time the species comes up with a time-integrated behaviour function that produces optimum responses to what the environment is chucking at you. So you tend to eat the right foods, mate with the right guys and avoid the nasty guys. The behaviour function is strongly weighted to the probable events, for obvious reasons. Rare events can kill you, but not as often as probable events.
The next big step up the evolutionary ladder is "Suck It and See Learning" where the individual modifies behaviour based on its past experience: that stung me, this tasted good, etc. The individual no longer has to die to learn something. Progress. An extension of this mode is learning not just by personal trial and error but also by watching other members of your species, usually mom and or dad. A baby bird learns how and where to catch worms not just by endlessly scratching around in random patches of dirt until it jags a worm, but by doing the rounds with its parents. It can also learn signs of danger so it doesn't need to be eaten by a cat to find out why cats are interested in birds.
Humans add another even more sophisticated layer on this, which might be called Narrative Learning. This is basically creating and swapping stories. It might also be called knowledge, but isn't knowledge just stories that happen to be true, or true enough to be useful. This is what allows us to handle very low probability events, things that might occur once a year, once in a lifetime (water flowing underground) or even once in several generations. If you happen to be living out on the plains of Africa half a million years ago this kind of stuff would give you a wild advantage over all the monkey-see-monkey-do types around you. How to choose a good spear, how to predict the seasons, when to shift camp, what plants can kill you, etc. Science is the ultimate form of narrative learning; stories are picked not because they sound right/are interesting/are sexy/worked once, but by relentlessly grinding them up against reality.
And this capacity for narrative learning is, of course, why we find the improbable events on You Tube - or the Bible - so very compelling: we have evolved to love and collect the improbable, just because it just might save us one day. I know that next time I crash a truck, I'm going through the window, and landing on my feet. It works.
A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. -- George Santayana
Facts or references, please.
Wow man. Don't you pay attention to anything coming out of oh...the middle east these days? Or Pakistan, or islamist parts of Africa or Asia? It's all the zionists fault or the jews, or the americans.
You miss the point. The OP was complaining about people accepting things on the internet without checking facts. All I asked was for the data or reference to support that statement. But then, from the sound of your post, you don't sound like an avid fact checker, either.
I understand, and even agree with with the sentiment you were originally posting. I was just pointing out that your post lacked citations, which technically made it no more valid than the posts you were complaining about.
Cool. The subject is too vast to post the hundreds of citations that would be required to cover all aspects. Your criticism is fair enough, but I hope you understand why I couldn't provide exhaustive citations - there is just too much and the problem is "where to start?". That's why I offer to address each question in detail.
You miss the point. The OP was complaining about people accepting things on the internet without checking facts.
Apparently you missed this thing in debating called "common knowledge" it also applies to law. That certain facts are known without data or reference required to back them up. Things such as: 0C is the freezing point of water, the sky is blue. Human blood is red(unless you're red-green colour blind). That there are serious problems in the previously mentioned countries with them placing blame on any other third party. Those parties in no order are: America, the Zionists, and the Jews.
Om, nomnomnom...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive
Hold on, you're saying that porn movies aren't entirely realistic I'm shocked.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Do you? What Pakistan/African/Asian TV news channels do you watch and newspapers do you read? Oh, you meant 'anything coming out of CNN/NBC/Fox' .
I don't disagree, but there is plenty of conspiracy junk blaming Muslims, communists, black people, gays, women, Catholics, liberals, the EU, aliens, Cthulhu, fluoride and ginger-haired people too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The attitudes of various Middle East countries cannot be taken as simple common knowledge in the same way that the sky is blue.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I generally don't like to argue with morons, as it is way too easy to make them look stupid, but I'm willing to make an exception this morning. I quoted a single line and responsed. That line was "it is incredible how backward the world has become". Decades ago they thought leeching was valid medicinally, and burned women at the stake claiming they were witches. Less than two hundred years ago the vast majority of human beings on the planet had an imaginary friend. (While that number is still way too high, it is coming down not going up.) Your assertion that the world has "become backwards" is phenomenally absurd, and I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine exactly how much of a moron you actually are.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
and it was accepted widely as fact 100 years ago in most of the world.
so slander has actually gone down. some of it is more visible for more miles though, but ability to call people to lynch someone because he's evil(jew, black whatever counted as evil) has gone down - you can only do it in some 3rd world countries still.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's not an ad hominem. That would be if Zero_Kelvin had said something disparaging about you that wasn't related to the argument, and said that you were wrong because of it. This is a case of you making a claim, and Zero_Kelvin describing your failings on the basis of the argument. My impression of a person claiming that the world has become backward is that he or she isn't familiar with history, since I have some idea what society was like back then, and it hasn't become backward, it started that way and is slowly, unevenly, and not monotonically pulling itself out.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I have a hard time believing that most people buy lottery tickets for entertainment or as a form of charitable giving. This forces me to conclude that they're awfully bad at calculating their odds of actually winning.
Of course the actual probability doesn't change. But people's perception of it does.
but ability to call people to lynch someone because he's evil(jew, black whatever counted as evil) has gone down - you can only do it in some 3rd world countries still.
Like the 57 members of the OIC? Yes, many countries have become more tolerant. Doesn't mean we can't stop now - we have to make the others tolerant too, especially as the OIC ideology seeks to re-establish intolerance in the West.
You really are a closed-minded wanker aren't you? I will provide references showing that although your view is true for the last century, over the last two decades there has been a massive regression in many areas. I will provide citations
There are been great progress in the West. This is probably where you are making your statements about, yeah? However, you are completely *ignorant* (or chose to ignore) several facts: 1) anti-Semitism is increasing in the West (correlated strongly with massive immigration from OIC countries), 2) honor-crime and rape are increasing in countries where formerly it was never heard of (eg. Scandinavia, and again strongly and geographically correlated with OIC immigration), 3) the amount of terrorism has increased massively in the last decade, most of it is Muslim-on-Muslim (so if one is not paying attention, like you, then it is easy to miss: ), 4) the United Nations is OIC dominated and they are actively working to inhibit Free Speech across the globe, eg. see UN HRC Resolution 16/18 (where Hilliary Clinton very stupidly agreed to punish US First Amendment Free Speech rights against her own citizens in her own country - completely craven, shameful and anti-Constitutional).
In the last two decades Human Rights have been going backward for the 1.3 billion people in OIC countries (that's a lot of people). Example analyses: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/the_lamps_are_going_out_all_over_the_islamic_world.html
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/study-finds-worsening-conditions-for-democracy-and-human-rights-in-central-asia.aspx?pageID=438&n=study-finds-worsening-conditions-for-democracy-and-human-rights-in-central-asia-2002-08-20
Sudan going backwards: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3130234.stm
Consider the cases of the following countries: Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Chechnya/Dagestan. Have human rights and tolerance gone forward in these countries with the dismantling of secular, socialist or moderate regimes and replaced with increasingly Islamist or repressive ones? Even in Britain, Canada and the US there is regression with an increasing rate of 'dishonor killings' that were unheard of a few years back (and the killing of any number innocent girls by their families for trying to life a liberal Western lifestyle is completely unacceptable, yes? or are you a fascist too?). There are now also places (eg. in France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden) were non-Muslims and even the police fear to go. Even Russia has experienced significant regressing with respect to human and civil rights. And as I mentioned, "useful idiot" Hilliary Clinton has just made the US agreed to UN Resolution 16/18 to suppress the Free Speech rights that US citizens have had for several centuries. These regressions are significant.
It is not all doom and gloom. The World just might be sorted out eventually (although there is also a good chance it won't be), but to say it is all forward progress is delusional and contrary to the facts if you look outside the Western/Free World. For a substantial chunk of the World's population there may have been material growth has been noticeable regression in human and civil rights.
So get out of your cozy neighborhood and start looking at the entire globe. For the last decade or so there has been significant regression for a large chunk of the World's population. It is indeed "it is incredible how backward the world has become". Oh yeah, if you are going to be a moron through ignorance, at least try not to be such a jerk about it. k?
Ah, you missed the other posts where he called me "moron".
and it hasn't become backward, it started that way and is slowly, unevenly, and not monotonically pulling itself out.
The West is mostly progressing, with some significant social regressions in France etc. The OIC is totally going backward at the moment (1.3 to 1.6 billion people, depending on your estimate). The US has made material progress but their centuries old First Amendment rights have just been scuppered with UN Resolution 16/18. The fact that the US even contemplated agreeing to that resolution shows how morally-invert their governing class' thinking has become.
The World is at a significant crossroads at the moment, will the Enlightenment win? or will the petro-dollar fueled expansion of the totalitarian ideology of Islam win? At the moment the US is so hidebound in political correctness and appeasement (thinking a 'mea culpa' would make things better, but it has made it strategically worse) that hundreds of millions of citizens in the Middle East and North Africa have recently come under increasingly totalitarian Islamist regimes. Egypt and Libya are cases in point. Turkey is under an Islamist regime that is actively working to deconstruct the secular Kemalist state (when it isn't too busy threatening to ethnically cleans the remaining Armenians, if you even mention the historical genocide; and then there is the oppression against Kurdish culture). Indonesia currently has a wave of violence against its Christians. Iraq has nearly finished ethnically cleansing its Christian Assyrians. Albanians in Kosovo are hard at work clearing out the Serbs (who are the victims this time around: http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/2013/01/serbs-say-kosovo-police-tortured-them-while-in-detention/). The number of terrorist attacks around the World is accelerating (20237 deadly attacks since 9/11, see http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks):
since I have some idea what society was like back then, and it hasn't become backward, it started that way and is slowly, unevenly, and not monotonically pulling itself out.
Yes, history (which I do know well) shows non-monotonic progress. However, over the last decade there has been progress in the West/Free World and undeniable regression elsewhere. Even the freedoms in the West is under threat due to the corruption of the UN by the OIC and now UN HRC and General Assembly resolutions get passed that are anti-thetical to the founding ideals of the UN. Despite your clever turn-of-phrase there is no absolutely no guarantee that the passage of time will always bring progress, and at the moment there is a significant risk that the Islamists will win in the long term. This is especially likely given the posture of the US (where their military are expressly prohibited from associating Islam with terrorism, just in case anyone gets offended. wtf? ! See any of the videos by Major Stephen Coughlin, eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhZe7eZK4dw)
Neither you nor I can predict the future. My guess is that we are at a local inflection point. If the West continues on its current trajectory then the totalitarian ideology of Islam will achieve what the similarly totalitarian National Socialism and Soviet Communism could not - domination and assimilation of the Free World. If the West wakes up and 'grows a pair' (unlikely given the craven self-serving and 'afraid to offend' nature of our current leaders) and we defeat that totalitarian ideology (Islam) then we will have non-monotonic progress again - and I will be very happy to be proven wrong. It is delusional (and, in fact, self-defeating) to assume that the period of regression we are seeing must only be temporary - it could well get
I already accepted your apology. There was no reason to spend so much time composing a second one, which I am far too busy to read.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Lol. Self-important much? I see that all the time. Instead of reading and analysing a counter point of view where you could learn anything you simply choose to disregard any contrary facts. Possibly this is because you are afraid of being provided facts that would counter your misconceptions. This is totally unscientific and no scientist would do as you do - your sig is fraudulent :(
I tend not to enter into discussions with people who are so stupid that they think it is even possible for my .sig to be fraudulent.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Cool. Stay ignorant. Don't follow the Scientific Method.
The World is going backwards. When these slanders now reach millions, and additional millions in the 'Free' World suck it up and regurgitate it (where is their reason and critical faculties?):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuPsuI2lJyA