You'll not make me thankful for aspartame however hard you try. Some good ones there, though.
I am thankful for sucralose.
Maybe not the right thread for this, but it seems there are downsides.
Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
41–50 of 349 posts
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#42I'm thankful for existence itself. Sure, it's not always pleasant, but the mere fact that we perceive reality as we do is a fascinating rabbit hole, one that I wish I had discovered decades ago. The subjective experience of existence is one of the big unknowns left in this world, one that I don't think we'll ever truly understand. That's good though, because human curiosity is one of the wonderful, amazing things we have the capability to do (if other Earth-native, non-human sentient beings have similar curiosities, they don't have nearly the ability to explore them, that we know).
I hope everyone who reads this is having a good day today. May you all have fortune and blessing in your lives.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#43I am thankful haemoglobin can carry so much oxygen without the iron in it turning to rust. Otherwise we wouldnt be able to breathe.
Well described here,and i have no affiliation
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102010332
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#44> Due to some [reason], an overpopulation calamity hasn’t yet happened and we might coincidentally stabilize at a level that’s somewhat close to what maximizes average utility...
Given the birthrate trends in developed countries, it's more likely the population will peak and then decline as prosperity spreads. The cause isn't hard to discern - child labor laws - they turn children from potential assets into guaranteed liabilities.
A declining population will be a bad thing; our modern way of life is built on systems that depend on growth (from Wall Street to our tax structures to the various Social Security safety nets countries have in place); take that away and we will have real problems.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#45Thank you, a lovely list.
7, 23, 24 were driven by the common unusual political occurrence of fair economic opportunity. These rare times where a balance of power occurs, by special circumstances, between the former autocratic rulers and everyone else.
In Britain (7), domestic Royal monopolies were abolished etc creating an economic and legal environment where entrepreneurs would be rewarded. So people started investing their very expensive free time tinkering because it might lead to profit.
Ancient Greece (23) developed the Solonian Constitution which similarly protected the property rights of ‘citizens’ like never before, so Athens became a cultural center of tinkerers, hustlers, thought leaders, influencers etc, and the ideas are what we still have today. Because unlike with Ancient Phoenicia, the Greeks wrote on clay, not on perishable papyrus.
(24) Obviously the US Constitution managed to establish unusual property rights for its European male citizens, and again we see hustlers, thought leaders, influencers etc, because their efforts are far more likely to be rewarded. But this time we see what this political environment looks like close up and we see regular people’s bright ideas materialize in society because the law protects them.
I am thankful that we still today, I mean 11/26/2021 today, still maintain the balance of power that enables our egalitarian laws to stand, and hope that some new technology won’t kill that balance.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#46Not about to start being grateful for aspartame, sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why, what has it done to you?
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#47Realized after reading this that it's American Thanksgiving today. Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends. I'm thankful for a lovely forum where we can read and share articles like this one.
Also respectful condolences to the Native Americans in their day of mourning.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal opinion: same reason why it didn't take off in ancient Greece (steam engine was invented back then) , no shortage of cheap labor.
though Hero’s engine is a steam engine, it is practically useless as anything besides a curiosity and certainly could not have powered an industrial revolution
Yes, but I am confident if there would have been demand, they would have improved on it. It can open temple doors so I do not think it is too far away from a useful machine.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#49I’m thankful for yeast. It’s so, so convenient that we have a non-pathogenic bacteria which will eat pretty much any simple sugar, can be found on the surfaces of most fruits, and is essentially effortless to cultivate, which also does a bunch of useful things like leaven bread and make a bunch of delicious short chain fatty acids (both in bread and on their own, like in marmite) and make alcohol (although that one maybe does more harm than good)!
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#50That even though we evolved as ruthless replication machines, we’ve somehow risen out of the muck and we currently find ourselves running cultural software that’s way out of sync with what game theory would dictate, and perhaps we can seize the moment and build a civilization that can tame the brutal dynamics that created us. This. Our scientific understanding on how humans cooperate to not simply feed each other, bu…
I am grateful for the ignorant. I think we are heavily misguied yowards violence being the problem and not violence lead by greed. Greed leads to violence. We are just conditioned/tamed to believe what gets repeated 24/7 on the screen. I am grateful for the plug. I see we wont have a choice to unplug from our Utopic visionaries soon enough.