Somehow humanity always gets either the people described in the second paragraph or the third....somehow we always miss the Vetinaris of the world. The discussion is as old as civilization.
"Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.
And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel, somehow, that it should not, and who want a monarch instead, thus replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep understanding of the realities of the human psyche, breathtaking diplomacy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree, a mind like a perfectly balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there by being born
A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city."
Scattered [useless?] thoughts but I need to get it out from my chest:
My deepest fear is that this will be used as an excuse for another eternal "economic crisis". Because you make more money when shit happens....
Regarding the brexit - I supported both sides. Honestly! On one hand I am [very] disappointed by the EU, on the other I think it will go worse for all of us now...but will it go worse because of some real issues or because the financial sharks will happily create a crisis?
At the very bottom I see this as vote against the whole socio-economic system; however since people do not realize that the very foundations of the system need re-evaluation they shoot down indiscriminately everything they can every time they are asked (EU constitution, anyone?)
The statements ATM from diplomats and politicians [from EU, not Brits] are INSANE! Many have said [e.g. the French diplomatic mission in my country] that this was all Putin's fault (I am not kidding!!)...I mean there is nothing more idiotic and revealing than to keep excusing your greed and incompetence with the big scary bear. The bear is not that big neither it is very scary and in fact the EU has been playing the role of a buffer in the new war between US and Russia. European leaders claim that Europe is making its own destiny yet the surveillance/police states are in full swing, secret trade negotiations, 25% unemployment among young people [what to do? - bail the banks!!], robots taking our jobs [what to do? - RAISE the pension age, increase taxes!!] and the propaganda in the media is insufferable..
Perhaps by bad luck or bad luck reinforced by wrong decisions I suffered by the system in western Europe and I still suffer [got bankrupted by the medi-care system; family screwed by job market]. So in my eyes I cannot stand the system that spills money left, right and center, going to wars nobody wants [except the money makers and their bitches the politicians], endlessly destabilizing the economy while at the same time the regular honest tax payer and decent member of society gets screwed.....again and again....and even VILIFIED [terrible white slavers sexist racist chauvinist pig]....no help from anywhere because I do not belong to any minority [LGTB or whatever] or majority [religion] group....so disappointing!
Easy now....what to do with people that cannot eat grain [like me]. Not talking about allergy - no glutamine bread is also no-no for me. However, without grain the efficiency of absorbing nutrients [at least in my case, but I have heard many similar stories] increases dramatically. My meat consumption is one or two [small, but high quality] dishes per week, two dishes per week fish and the rest is diary products and vegetables. It has become a bit of a party trick to tell people how little I eat while working demanding intellectual work, doing amateur level body building and working cardio every day [walking, cycling, running and dancing]...
Take away the meat and diary and I am dead. While at the same time having smaller footprint than a misguided vegan [I also have no kids and no car]. Veganism is dangerous BTW.
It also fails because the premise is "we don't know if there is god but I will prove you that it is better to be believer" , yet in the body of the argument it uses another assumption - that god likes to be worshiped. Do you see the flaw?
As long as the answer you seek does not disturb the demarcation lines, you know! Those philosophers and religious professionals have many strings to pull in the Vogon administration!
You had me until "it is human nature". No, the human nature is not flawed; the system is. Which system? All of them , because fundamentally all systems are based on the same fundament - ownership of all resources, locking them away and giving them only in exchange of "work" or "services".
Time after time we have seen that human nature is highly adaptable and the collective mind [the zeitgeist] is truly a function of the system. We have created a system which is a race to the bottom and then we are surprised when we find ourselves at the bottom. Strange...
In short, Daniel Quinn said it the best: "Those who refuse to participate in the system do not get fed". The whole civilization model in one sentence, everything else is window dressing. Until we reform the vary bases of the system [again to stress that those fundaments have never been changed, challenged or abandoned even when it is obvious that it will all end in tears] there is no hope.
Leave human nature alone, there is nothing wrong with it!
Isn't the problem even deeper than that? What I see from History is that fundamentally the wealth distribution remains more or less the same regardless of the socio-economic system. Sure, the absolute value grows but one might say this comes at the expense of the future generations since the idea of "progress" is eating as much as possible from the [one and only available, finite] cake while fighting the other kids. First we had chiefs and witch doctors, then we had slavers, then we had feudal lords, then we had nobility [appointed by God!] and now we have political, business, religious and other criminal classes.
Personally I had no doubts that at a certain moment we will start measuring the effect of the socio-economic system on longevity. Major contributors to increased life span as sanitation have done their job. While this was happening the negative effects were buried beneath the [much larger] positive effects. Now the trend will turn. Stress, poverty, plastic unhealthy food, industrial pollution, lies, damn lies and medical insurance systems, the list is endless....we boiled the frog slowly so now we can only register its death.
All of this instead of freeing ourselves from mundane jobs [robotics], ensuring human needs are satisfied for all [imagine the positive effects on our physical and mental health, social cohesion, higher creativity, lower crime, no wars etc.].
BS. Most of the modern generation has attention span of 30 seconds or less. That is the problem, brought to you by social networks. Real nerds of all ages can concentrate on things for years....take my Sony boycott for instance....soon to become Microsoft boycott...already boycotting TV for 15 years....
You know how you sound? Like those totally perverted, sexually frustrated, boy-raping, homosexual woman-haters called Christian priests, who claimed for hundreds of years that a:) women had no souls and b:) that a woman is a filthy bag of scum, a creature driven only by lust, a Satan's spawn whose only desire is to seduce the innocent men and veer them away from God.
Source: "The name of the rose" and before someone says that it is just a book I'd like to remind that U.E. is a top tier scholar of medieval times.
Also source: my personal conversations with religious professionals [Christian and Muslim]. They really are women-haters. Interestingly enough the modern feminist are willing to lie in bed with those MF's in order to combat all other men who they think are the women-haters. Margaret Atwood had something to say about it...
Don't forget the phage treatment - same story - cannot be patented - not interested. Result - super bugs killing thousands in the so-called "first world" while the cure is residing in the sewer system of the same bloody hospital you got the infection from....
And for the bacterial infection go phage! Oh, but you can't patent a naturally occurring cure. We can't have that - saving lives without making PROFIT....are you Marxist or something;)
Did you mean vegetarian, rather than vegan? Very different things, those two....also, in one of the cult movies about the monks [the classic one with Jet Li at the age of 17], Li smuggles roasted snake for his fellows monks in order to strengthen them for the coming challenge...even the teacher takes a bite with half-guilty/half-gleeful expression....
Seriously, I don't want to troll or anything but few years ago I asked similar question to a libertanian. What is going to happen when it all comes to an end [the fossil fuels]?
The answer was: the last barrel will cost infinite amount of money; the market will fix everything.....
How retarded you have to be to posit only one criteria for success or failure of any endeavor - the profit - is beyond me! It seems these people believe that as long as the market is fine, insignificant things like the laws of nature are not important...
IMO it is not a matter of fearing tech, but inability to conceive a future where we are not bound to slavery by the so called socioeconomic system. It boggles my mind that we would rather end the species than abandon this obviously dangerous and inhuman system.....also , what the heck "useless" means? As many pointed out already - useless to whom?
What do we do if we get the trick "install now or install later" Win 10 upgrade considering that ALL UPGRADES ARE TURNED OFF since at least 1 year. I posted this few days ago and got down-modded [WTF?!?!] like I have no other business but to lie on/.
Where is my consumer stupidity here, mister, where is my fault?
Yes, thanks to/. discussions I knew that I need to close the window and not choose any of the two "options" but it was close and I am not sure many people will pay attention to it...
Yes, it happened no matter what M$ apologists are saying [this is the first time I use M$, not going for name calling usually but FUCK OFF]. I call this hacking and if I did have the power M$ will be sued into oblivion...but of course this is an utopia....it is so funny [in a sad way] that so many people here are talking about courts like...you know...like they would work...forgetting what some guys said once "give me the control over the currency and the courts and leave the rest to the plebs".
Maybe not sexy but certainly recognized by the whole world. I just read the story of Edward Jenner [1749-1823] - the father of vaccination, in the excellent "Book of the dead" from the QI guys. When the world started using his approach and saw the results this humble, great human, who disliked the fame and never tried to capitalize on it, who kept on working quietly to the rest of his days was hailed, respected and adored perhaps more than any other human in history [apart from religious figures, I guess].
British MP said that every foreigner - commoner, diplomat or dignitary he meets first asks him how is Jenner doing...Jefferson was ecstatic and highly complimentary...Jenner was presented to and awarded honors by the most powerful rulers in the world from US to Russia and more or less everyone else...even Napoleon released two captured Brits because Edward wrote him a letter [one of the captives was a relative of him]; Napoleon exclaimed "Ah, Jenner, I can refuse him nothing"
The day that we should always remember is 14th May 1796 [hey, today is the 220 anniversary, that's great!!!] - on this day he took discharge from the hand of a milkmaid who had cowpox and used it to immunize 8 year old boy who acquired then complete immunity to smallpox. No-one knows what happened to the milkmaid [Sarah Nelmes] but the hide of her cow Blossom is still in St George hospital...
Partially disagree....most political speeches from 100 years ago if uttered by today's politicians would mean complete destruction of their careers...someone here pointed to the father of Trump as a shining example of civility , eh?
Have you read any "adventure" books where you were a kid [about the Wild West, hunters in Africa and so on..]? Books from authors at the end of the 19th century....racism and Christian supremacy is dripping from every word and no one bats an eyelid because that was the prevailing belief at that time...
Hell, one of my most favorite books of all time [a true world classic] is the Master and Margarita....Bulgakov, living in Stalinist Russia mentions black people in the book only once - as serving drinks and food during the Spring ball of Satan. He also calls them niggers. I know that he actually was not racist - he was a great humanist but as mentioned earlier no one questioned this attitude....after all if those savages were worth something then how come we have cannons but they don't...ah, we can kill them because we are Christians and good people so that gives us a prosperous society [much better than theirs!!!] that is able to manufacture and support a grand army with cannons to go and "civilize" those wackos [this sentiment is always there plain and obvious regardless of the nationality of the writer [Spaniard, Italian, Dutch, German, Briton or American - all the colonial powers]. In other words people equated economical prosperity with rightfulness - if you are rich than you are doing it right.
I used to love those books; recently I wanted for the fun of it to re-read some of them and was literally sick within few pages...sick because I realized it was the norm and the whole fucking white race believed that shit...
Good old times....I don't know....did you watch "true grit"? Did it make you an impression how polite and non-vulgar was the verbal disclosure in the movie? The directors claim that that is how people talked and behaved. Yet, would you like to live in this period? Politely murdering people left right and center [crime rate in a small town at the time was as bad as today's "hellholes" - the likes of Bogota, Rio, etc.].
What else --- ah, I know -- morality in the family. Oh man, those modern people have no fidelity, no sense of morality it is one giant fuck fest.....oh, it was sooooo better in the older days in the little village....actually NO. There was more infidelity and more insect in those days. Today's modern urban male is more faithful com-pared to his grand father in the little quint village...I was lucky that my grandmother told me how hypocrite this is...whenever some old lady in the village tried lecturing me about morality granny would say afterwards "Who, she with the multiple lovers, the one that destroyed this family and that and slept with half the village...don't listen to her"
On the other hand I agree that today's politics is full of hysteria and shit throwing and very little reason. But that is US specific issue and I hope it would stay that way...
Last remark - do you know which world politician talks reason most of the time? Putin. No kidding. I am in total disagreement with most of what he is doing but that guy when he speaks to the Russians, he makes sense, he speaks rather moderately and sensibly. Go figure....
I am not upgrading simply because of Windows. I can probably never install my fully legitimate [no OEM] version of Win7 on a new platform. Well no, I can of course but I don't want the hassle. Hell, just a few days ago I got the hacking thing from MS - with Win update disabled ONE YEAR ago it downloaded Win 10 after start up and gave me the "trick box" - "restart now or restart later" [both options install win10]...fortunately, thanks to/. I was aware of the scam and clicked the X closing button top right.
I will never again use Windows - simply waiting on the system to die on me and moving to Linux [if there is an option to run my beloved very old windows games like Alpha Centauri that I am done] . Then I might buy some new HD [SSD for instance]....
Really, I have stopped shelling almost any money to the SW/content industry. No going to cinema, no cable subscription, no buying of anything new be it HW or SW.
I do not agree at all with the industry models so they can forget about me as a customer...
Yhea, it's a funny thing, the body...so complex. My own experience confirms those recent findings. After a change of diet I found out that I simply need less food overall [the decreased burn rate] but it did not feel like being underpowered; quite the contrary, I could do way more than before [walking, running, stairs, cycling, etc.]
But now, if I indulge even a little bit the weight gain is very fast indeed....recently put 8 kilos just from 2 weeks poor diet...mindfulness is crucial, indeed.
Also, the gut flora thing is a smoking gun as well...I'll never forget the crazy craving for sugar when I had it [the flora] severely imbalanced and how it had NOTHING to do with willpower or greed...once the bugs were in balance the craving disappeared like magic.
If we postulate that life and sentient life forms require certain level of complexity of structure and interactions of the "carrier", then you have limited set of possibilities of materials and interactions that can give rise to those complex structures. Carbon [plus a handful of light elements - e.g. H, N, O] under certain conditions is the champion of champions when it comes to complex structures [we are familiar with all naturally occurring elements and their relative abundances in this universe and what structures they can give rise to under all possible conditions]. You can also play a bit with the other 2 members of 4a - Si and Ge, but carbon is king. There is a lot more to that of course, like suitable solvents [water] and so on...
Also, if we assume there are enough life forms out there for good statistics then there is some sort of normal curve. So, us, being one point of it we are more likely to be "normal" and thus represent the "normality".
Slashdot Mirror
More like Onan -nymous in this case
Somehow humanity always gets either the people described in the second paragraph or the third....somehow we always miss the Vetinaris of the world.
The discussion is as old as civilization.
"Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.
And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel, somehow, that it should not, and who want a monarch instead, thus replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep understanding of the realities of the human psyche, breathtaking diplomacy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree, a mind like a perfectly balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there by being born
A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city."
Sir Terry Pratchett, "Unseen academicals"
But did young people vote? I think most of them stayed home, at least much more than the other age groups...big mistake!
Bravo Sir!
I have similar feelings but my own post was way to scattered and incoherent compared to yours! Excellent!
Scattered [useless?] thoughts but I need to get it out from my chest:
My deepest fear is that this will be used as an excuse for another eternal "economic crisis". Because you make more money when shit happens....
Regarding the brexit - I supported both sides. Honestly! On one hand I am [very] disappointed by the EU, on the other I think it will go worse for all of us now...but will it go worse because of some real issues or because the financial sharks will happily create a crisis?
At the very bottom I see this as vote against the whole socio-economic system; however since people do not realize that the very foundations of the system need re-evaluation they shoot down indiscriminately everything they can every time they are asked (EU constitution, anyone?)
The statements ATM from diplomats and politicians [from EU, not Brits] are INSANE! Many have said [e.g. the French diplomatic mission in my country] that this was all Putin's fault (I am not kidding!!)...I mean there is nothing more idiotic and revealing than to keep excusing your greed and incompetence with the big scary bear. The bear is not that big neither it is very scary and in fact the EU has been playing the role of a buffer in the new war between US and Russia. European leaders claim that Europe is making its own destiny yet the surveillance/police states are in full swing, secret trade negotiations, 25% unemployment among young people [what to do? - bail the banks!!], robots taking our jobs [what to do? - RAISE the pension age, increase taxes!!] and the propaganda in the media is insufferable..
Perhaps by bad luck or bad luck reinforced by wrong decisions I suffered by the system in western Europe and I still suffer [got bankrupted by the medi-care system; family screwed by job market]. So in my eyes I cannot stand the system that spills money left, right and center, going to wars nobody wants [except the money makers and their bitches the politicians], endlessly destabilizing the economy while at the same time the regular honest tax payer and decent member of society gets screwed.....again and again....and even VILIFIED [terrible white slavers sexist racist chauvinist pig]....no help from anywhere because I do not belong to any minority [LGTB or whatever] or majority [religion] group....so disappointing!
Easy now....what to do with people that cannot eat grain [like me]. Not talking about allergy - no glutamine bread is also no-no for me. However, without grain the efficiency of absorbing nutrients [at least in my case, but I have heard many similar stories] increases dramatically. My meat consumption is one or two [small, but high quality] dishes per week, two dishes per week fish and the rest is diary products and vegetables. It has become a bit of a party trick to tell people how little I eat while working demanding intellectual work, doing amateur level body building and working cardio every day [walking, cycling, running and dancing]...
Take away the meat and diary and I am dead. While at the same time having smaller footprint than a misguided vegan [I also have no kids and no car]. Veganism is dangerous BTW.
It also fails because the premise is "we don't know if there is god but I will prove you that it is better to be believer" , yet in the body of the argument it uses another assumption - that god likes to be worshiped. Do you see the flaw?
As long as the answer you seek does not disturb the demarcation lines, you know! Those philosophers and religious professionals have many strings to pull in the Vogon administration!
You had me until "it is human nature". No, the human nature is not flawed; the system is. Which system? All of them , because fundamentally all systems are based on the same fundament - ownership of all resources, locking them away and giving them only in exchange of "work" or "services".
Time after time we have seen that human nature is highly adaptable and the collective mind [the zeitgeist] is truly a function of the system. We have created a system which is a race to the bottom and then we are surprised when we find ourselves at the bottom. Strange...
In short, Daniel Quinn said it the best: "Those who refuse to participate in the system do not get fed". The whole civilization model in one sentence, everything else is window dressing. Until we reform the vary bases of the system [again to stress that those fundaments have never been changed, challenged or abandoned even when it is obvious that it will all end in tears] there is no hope.
Leave human nature alone, there is nothing wrong with it!
You mean the textbook that assumes that 1. Recourses are infinite and 2. The efficiency of extraction and utilization of recourses is ever increasing.
That book, eh! No need - I know a Ponzi scheme when I see one.
Isn't the problem even deeper than that? What I see from History is that fundamentally the wealth distribution remains more or less the same regardless of the socio-economic system. Sure, the absolute value grows but one might say this comes at the expense of the future generations since the idea of "progress" is eating as much as possible from the [one and only available, finite] cake while fighting the other kids. First we had chiefs and witch doctors, then we had slavers, then we had feudal lords, then we had nobility [appointed by God!] and now we have political, business, religious and other criminal classes.
Personally I had no doubts that at a certain moment we will start measuring the effect of the socio-economic system on longevity. Major contributors to increased life span as sanitation have done their job. While this was happening the negative effects were buried beneath the [much larger] positive effects. Now the trend will turn. Stress, poverty, plastic unhealthy food, industrial pollution, lies, damn lies and medical insurance systems, the list is endless....we boiled the frog slowly so now we can only register its death.
All of this instead of freeing ourselves from mundane jobs [robotics], ensuring human needs are satisfied for all [imagine the positive effects on our physical and mental health, social cohesion, higher creativity, lower crime, no wars etc.].
I am officially depressed!
BS. Most of the modern generation has attention span of 30 seconds or less. That is the problem, brought to you by social networks. Real nerds of all ages can concentrate on things for years....take my Sony boycott for instance....soon to become Microsoft boycott...already boycotting TV for 15 years....
Just a gateway!?!?!? Are you for real?
You know how you sound? Like those totally perverted, sexually frustrated, boy-raping, homosexual woman-haters called Christian priests, who claimed for hundreds of years that a:) women had no souls and b:) that a woman is a filthy bag of scum, a creature driven only by lust, a Satan's spawn whose only desire is to seduce the innocent men and veer them away from God.
Source: "The name of the rose" and before someone says that it is just a book I'd like to remind that U.E. is a top tier scholar of medieval times.
Also source: my personal conversations with religious professionals [Christian and Muslim]. They really are women-haters. Interestingly enough the modern feminist are willing to lie in bed with those MF's in order to combat all other men who they think are the women-haters. Margaret Atwood had something to say about it...
Don't forget the phage treatment - same story - cannot be patented - not interested. Result - super bugs killing thousands in the so-called "first world" while the cure is residing in the sewer system of the same bloody hospital you got the infection from....
And for the bacterial infection go phage! Oh, but you can't patent a naturally occurring cure. We can't have that - saving lives without making PROFIT....are you Marxist or something ;)
Did you mean vegetarian, rather than vegan? Very different things, those two....also, in one of the cult movies about the monks [the classic one with Jet Li at the age of 17], Li smuggles roasted snake for his fellows monks in order to strengthen them for the coming challenge...even the teacher takes a bite with half-guilty/half-gleeful expression....
Well, the role models have somewhat changed....I personally blame Marvel and R.D. Junior [wink:)] - now every rich guy thinks he is Tony Stark.
How did it go - "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" Yhea, right....
Seriously, I don't want to troll or anything but few years ago I asked similar question to a libertanian. What is going to happen when it all comes to an end [the fossil fuels]?
The answer was: the last barrel will cost infinite amount of money; the market will fix everything.....
How retarded you have to be to posit only one criteria for success or failure of any endeavor - the profit - is beyond me! It seems these people believe that as long as the market is fine, insignificant things like the laws of nature are not important...
IMO it is not a matter of fearing tech, but inability to conceive a future where we are not bound to slavery by the so called socioeconomic system. It boggles my mind that we would rather end the species than abandon this obviously dangerous and inhuman system.....also , what the heck "useless" means? As many pointed out already - useless to whom?
What do we do if we get the trick "install now or install later" Win 10 upgrade considering that ALL UPGRADES ARE TURNED OFF since at least 1 year. I posted this few days ago and got down-modded [WTF?!?!] like I have no other business but to lie on /.
Where is my consumer stupidity here, mister, where is my fault?
Yes, thanks to /. discussions I knew that I need to close the window and not choose any of the two "options" but it was close and I am not sure many people will pay attention to it...
Yes, it happened no matter what M$ apologists are saying [this is the first time I use M$, not going for name calling usually but FUCK OFF]. I call this hacking and if I did have the power M$ will be sued into oblivion...but of course this is an utopia....it is so funny [in a sad way] that so many people here are talking about courts like...you know...like they would work...forgetting what some guys said once "give me the control over the currency and the courts and leave the rest to the plebs".
Maybe not sexy but certainly recognized by the whole world. I just read the story of Edward Jenner [1749-1823] - the father of vaccination, in the excellent "Book of the dead" from the QI guys. When the world started using his approach and saw the results this humble, great human, who disliked the fame and never tried to capitalize on it, who kept on working quietly to the rest of his days was hailed, respected and adored perhaps more than any other human in history [apart from religious figures, I guess].
British MP said that every foreigner - commoner, diplomat or dignitary he meets first asks him how is Jenner doing...Jefferson was ecstatic and highly complimentary...Jenner was presented to and awarded honors by the most powerful rulers in the world from US to Russia and more or less everyone else...even Napoleon released two captured Brits because Edward wrote him a letter [one of the captives was a relative of him]; Napoleon exclaimed "Ah, Jenner, I can refuse him nothing"
The day that we should always remember is 14th May 1796 [hey, today is the 220 anniversary, that's great!!!] - on this day he took discharge from the hand of a milkmaid who had cowpox and used it to immunize 8 year old boy who acquired then complete immunity to smallpox. No-one knows what happened to the milkmaid [Sarah Nelmes] but the hide of her cow Blossom is still in St George hospital...
Edward Jenner - what a man!
Partially disagree....most political speeches from 100 years ago if uttered by today's politicians would mean complete destruction of their careers...someone here pointed to the father of Trump as a shining example of civility , eh?
Have you read any "adventure" books where you were a kid [about the Wild West, hunters in Africa and so on..]? Books from authors at the end of the 19th century....racism and Christian supremacy is dripping from every word and no one bats an eyelid because that was the prevailing belief at that time...
Hell, one of my most favorite books of all time [a true world classic] is the Master and Margarita....Bulgakov, living in Stalinist Russia mentions black people in the book only once - as serving drinks and food during the Spring ball of Satan. He also calls them niggers. I know that he actually was not racist - he was a great humanist but as mentioned earlier no one questioned this attitude....after all if those savages were worth something then how come we have cannons but they don't...ah, we can kill them because we are Christians and good people so that gives us a prosperous society [much better than theirs!!!] that is able to manufacture and support a grand army with cannons to go and "civilize" those wackos [this sentiment is always there plain and obvious regardless of the nationality of the writer [Spaniard, Italian, Dutch, German, Briton or American - all the colonial powers]. In other words people equated economical prosperity with rightfulness - if you are rich than you are doing it right.
I used to love those books; recently I wanted for the fun of it to re-read some of them and was literally sick within few pages...sick because I realized it was the norm and the whole fucking white race believed that shit...
Good old times....I don't know....did you watch "true grit"? Did it make you an impression how polite and non-vulgar was the verbal disclosure in the movie? The directors claim that that is how people talked and behaved. Yet, would you like to live in this period? Politely murdering people left right and center [crime rate in a small town at the time was as bad as today's "hellholes" - the likes of Bogota, Rio, etc.].
What else --- ah, I know -- morality in the family. Oh man, those modern people have no fidelity, no sense of morality it is one giant fuck fest.....oh, it was sooooo better in the older days in the little village....actually NO. There was more infidelity and more insect in those days. Today's modern urban male is more faithful com-pared to his grand father in the little quint village...I was lucky that my grandmother told me how hypocrite this is...whenever some old lady in the village tried lecturing me about morality granny would say afterwards "Who, she with the multiple lovers, the one that destroyed this family and that and slept with half the village...don't listen to her"
On the other hand I agree that today's politics is full of hysteria and shit throwing and very little reason. But that is US specific issue and I hope it would stay that way...
Last remark - do you know which world politician talks reason most of the time? Putin. No kidding. I am in total disagreement with most of what he is doing but that guy when he speaks to the Russians, he makes sense, he speaks rather moderately and sensibly. Go figure....
I am not upgrading simply because of Windows. I can probably never install my fully legitimate [no OEM] version of Win7 on a new platform. Well no, I can of course but I don't want the hassle. Hell, just a few days ago I got the hacking thing from MS - with Win update disabled ONE YEAR ago it downloaded Win 10 after start up and gave me the "trick box" - "restart now or restart later" [both options install win10]...fortunately, thanks to /. I was aware of the scam and clicked the X closing button top right.
I will never again use Windows - simply waiting on the system to die on me and moving to Linux [if there is an option to run my beloved very old windows games like Alpha Centauri that I am done] . Then I might buy some new HD [SSD for instance]....
Really, I have stopped shelling almost any money to the SW/content industry. No going to cinema, no cable subscription, no buying of anything new be it HW or SW.
I do not agree at all with the industry models so they can forget about me as a customer...
Yhea, it's a funny thing, the body...so complex. My own experience confirms those recent findings. After a change of diet I found out that I simply need less food overall [the decreased burn rate] but it did not feel like being underpowered; quite the contrary, I could do way more than before [walking, running, stairs, cycling, etc.]
But now, if I indulge even a little bit the weight gain is very fast indeed....recently put 8 kilos just from 2 weeks poor diet...mindfulness is crucial, indeed.
Also, the gut flora thing is a smoking gun as well...I'll never forget the crazy craving for sugar when I had it [the flora] severely imbalanced and how it had NOTHING to do with willpower or greed...once the bugs were in balance the craving disappeared like magic.
If we postulate that life and sentient life forms require certain level of complexity of structure and interactions of the "carrier", then you have limited set of possibilities of materials and interactions that can give rise to those complex structures. Carbon [plus a handful of light elements - e.g. H, N, O] under certain conditions is the champion of champions when it comes to complex structures [we are familiar with all naturally occurring elements and their relative abundances in this universe and what structures they can give rise to under all possible conditions]. You can also play a bit with the other 2 members of 4a - Si and Ge, but carbon is king. There is a lot more to that of course, like suitable solvents [water] and so on...
Also, if we assume there are enough life forms out there for good statistics then there is some sort of normal curve. So, us, being one point of it we are more likely to be "normal" and thus represent the "normality".
So looking for ourselves is not devoid of reason.