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Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

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Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#161

Post by mistermann »

watwut wrote: post #152
mistermann wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is more accurately something like: > In the course of several centuries over a vast territory comprising almost all inhabited mediterranean countries some 10-15 people excelled in their fields and many of them happened to live in the main city (and cultural capital) of the area. Your restatement excluded what I think is the most interesting part: >> and that it might be possible to intentionally recreate such condi…

What about saying that such conditions exists right now in contemporary world. We have great amount of thinkers and scientists and technologists and populists and cult leaders. All of them producing and moving world forward. It is crowded competition, actually.

I wonder if it would be possible for these people and others to produce in a more collaborative manner, perhaps with a shared roadmap, strategy, etc. To me, it seems at least plausible, what's your take?

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#162

Post by hardlianotion »

ravi-delia wrote: post #142
bluishgreen wrote: post #126

"That other animals have more cone cells than humans, e.g. birds with four and shrimp with up to 16, and so probably see colors we can’t even conceive of which, yeah, that limitation of our minds is frustrating, but it also hints that there are huge unseen dark continents of qualia lurking out there which someday we might find a way to visit." This is based on a misunderstanding regarding the rise of qualia. It is pr…

It's still true that if we had cones outside our current color range we'd have new qualia, even if animals don't.

Would we? It seems possible that some other sensation could be overloaded as well - ie seeing red where others see only blackness...

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#163

Post by cyberpunk »

sombremesa wrote: post #55
elil17 wrote: post #49

I’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 m…

Alcohol definitely does more good, just consider the uses it has aside from being ingested.

Also, consider how many flights went smoothly because of alcohol.. I mean, outing myself as British here but (every flight) without a stuff gin or three, that woman in-front of me would have had a stern talking to I can tell you! :}

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#164

Post by cyberpunk »

adrian_mrd wrote: post #150
elil17 wrote: post #49

I’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 m…

Thankful for marmite :)

Damn right. Vegemite isn't even shiny...

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#166

Post by 323 »

mistermann wrote: post #118
dclowd9901 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it really would set power lines alight, there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do aside from going off the grid and having a small warehouse full of electrical wiring. Emergency and catastrophe planning has to happen at the national level. I would like to see more leaders (especially these days) come into office with ideas about how to recover from catastrophic events quickly.

> Emergency and catastrophe planning has to happen at the national level. I would like to see more leaders (especially these days) come into office with ideas about how to recover from catastrophic events quickly. Me too. I'm hoping we'll get lucky and a relatively small-scale catastrophic event will occur, demonstrating to us how ill prepared we are both materially and socially/culturally/cognitively/etc, and that l…

> I'm hoping we'll get lucky and a relatively small-scale catastrophic event will occur ... and that lesson will provide the incentive for us to launch a serious project to get our act cleaned up.

The current pandemic makes me pessimistic regarding this. There is basically no wake up and preparations for a 10%+ mortality virus. And that without discussing where the virus came from...

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#167

Post by alexanderdmitri »

Thankfulness as an end is not necessarily valuable or positive. I think the associated feeling does little to the make the world a better place, I put it in the same category as remorse.

Just as remorse should lead to rectifying action, thankfulness should lead to reciprocal action to provide objective value.

What's interesting is the impetus between internal perception and outward action both share is a sense of indebtedness. Thankfulness becomes a passive accumulation of debt in this lens, whereas remorse casts our hero in a more active role.

I think also actions spawned from thankfulness will be more comedic [dynamic] in nature and whereas those from remorse will tend toward the tragic [static]. The efficacy of either approach will reflect the constraints of the systems they are acting within and how well conceived the individual's solution is.

Not sure where I'm going with this. Spitballing, not preaching ...

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#168

Post by 323 »

dheera wrote: post #93
dclowd9901 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it really would set power lines alight, there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do aside from going off the grid and having a small warehouse full of electrical wiring. Emergency and catastrophe planning has to happen at the national level. I would like to see more leaders (especially these days) come into office with ideas about how to recover from catastrophic events quickly.

By what mechanism do they set power lines on fire in a way that it wouldn't set the lines in my house on fire? Is it the power lines themselves or is it just vicious currents being induced in the lines that cause devices plugged on the other end of the power lines to go up in smoke? If the grid just shut off power for 24 hours until the CME passed would that solve the problem? I can easily go 24 hours without power,…

My understanding is that the flare will induce currents in the sub-station transformers, and this is the big problem. Not sure if disconnecting them helps to prevent damage.

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#169

Post by cyberpunk »

blackbear_ wrote: post #2

I actually wondered why the industrial revolution didn't happen in China, great to see one possible explanation menioned in the article [1]. Does anybody know other theories about this? [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2017/03/book3.htm

I'd recommend guns germs and steel by Diamond if you're interested in such thoughts. He doesn't cover china, but the book is basically about this topic. Nice easy read, recommended if you've got time to kill over the holidays.

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#170

Post by shrimp_emoji »

mistermann wrote: post #115
jll29 wrote: post #14

I like this more unusual list of things to be grateful for, as it complements well what one is usually reminded to be grateful for. I'd like a more fundamental point there, though: Gratefulness seems to be primarily a ternary operator: " is grateful to for ." (like "a ? b : c" in C). That second SOMEONE is the one that the being grateful is directed at, as they are responsible for things being the way they are. (Bein…

> That second SOMEONE is the one that the being grateful is directed at, as they are responsible for things being the way they are. (Being grateful to anyone not causally connected to what one is grateful about seems most weird.) How does one go about (accurately) decomposing causality in a system this complex and poorly understood though?

And a system founded on a complete misunderstanding of the ternary operator
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