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It’s an age of marvels

blog.plover.com

11–20 of 425 posts

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#11
post #2

I believe GPS also uses multiple wavelengths to allow estimation of signal delay from passage through the ionosphere. The way Martian meteorites are identified is from isotopes of inert gases (neon, argon, for example). Mars has a particular pattern of these that's been measured by landers there. Meteorites from the moon are identified by oxygen isotopes, which are on the same line on the oxygen isotope plot as Earth…

The gps thing is even more amazing that what he said in the article because it turns out that the receiver doesn’t need an accurate clock of its own for it to work

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#12
post #3

[flagged]

You probably would've been 10x as racist as Franklin had you grown up in his era.

Who WASN'T racist back then? Except it wasn't called being racist, it was just the norm for everyone back then, it was the societal default.

You can meet some old people today who still have very wrong views about minorities and immigrants, let alone people who lived in the 1700's.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably would've been 10x as racist as Franklin had you grown up in his era.

Who WASN'T racist back then? Except it wasn't called being racist, it was just the norm for everyone back then, it was the societal default. You can meet some old people today who still have very wrong views about minorities and immigrants, let alone people who lived in the 1700's.

If you ask certain people, everybody is still racist right now.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#14
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That and possibly genetics that would have given a scientific veneer to his extremely racist views. How?

People will read scientific information in ways to support their prejudices. Franklin would not be different. We like to idolize these historical figures but if this guy was alive nowadays he'd probably be rage posting in alt-right forums only accessible on the dark-web.

>> rage posting in alt-right forums only accessible on the dark-web.

Nah. True rage posters don't have the attention span for Tor. They want the instant feedback of X. And for all the talk of echo chambers, they want to get people angry. So they want their material to be discoverable by outsiders. So, again, X.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#15
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will read scientific information in ways to support their prejudices. Franklin would not be different. We like to idolize these historical figures but if this guy was alive nowadays he'd probably be rage posting in alt-right forums only accessible on the dark-web.

I kind of think the opposite, that people will basically end up at whatever social status they would be regardless of system so he would just have modern day elite views (instead of mainstream modern day elite views of his time). Just like people today who think they would have resisted the nazis in 1930s Germany but hold all mainstream opinions in the modern day

> that people will basically end up at whatever social status they would be regardless of system

So what determines that intrinsic and inevitable social status?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will read scientific information in ways to support their prejudices. Franklin would not be different. We like to idolize these historical figures but if this guy was alive nowadays he'd probably be rage posting in alt-right forums only accessible on the dark-web.

>> rage posting in alt-right forums only accessible on the dark-web. Nah. True rage posters don't have the attention span for Tor. They want the instant feedback of X. And for all the talk of echo chambers, they want to get people angry. So they want their material to be discoverable by outsiders. So, again, X.

Probably twitter or truth social or whatever.

He strikes me as a good candidate for Q adjacent stuff also.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who WASN'T racist back then? Except it wasn't called being racist, it was just the norm for everyone back then, it was the societal default. You can meet some old people today who still have very wrong views about minorities and immigrants, let alone people who lived in the 1700's.

If you ask certain people, everybody is still racist right now.

Well, racism and discrimination still exists among genpop today, even if on paper it's outlawed.

These kind of biases are impossible to remove just with laws.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#18

I am just glad to see I am not the only one making up imaginary scenario where I bring people from the past to have them marvel at our world.

I do this with music, and measure how good a song is by what fraction f of the words I would need to change for me to send it n years back in time to be understood by an older audience.

I have a small community (n=1 or 4?) where I write this up:

https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably would've been 10x as racist as Franklin had you grown up in his era.

Who WASN'T racist back then? Except it wasn't called being racist, it was just the norm for everyone back then, it was the societal default. You can meet some old people today who still have very wrong views about minorities and immigrants, let alone people who lived in the 1700's.

That's my point, if you're going to be remotely fair when judging people from a radically different society you have to "grade them on a curve" so to speak. Otherwise, according to the prevailing modern social mores, not a single decent person existed prior to the 1960s or so

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who WASN'T racist back then? Except it wasn't called being racist, it was just the norm for everyone back then, it was the societal default. You can meet some old people today who still have very wrong views about minorities and immigrants, let alone people who lived in the 1700's.

That's my point, if you're going to be remotely fair when judging people from a radically different society you have to "grade them on a curve" so to speak. Otherwise, according to the prevailing modern social mores, not a single decent person existed prior to the 1960s or so

Yeah, there's something fundamentally wrong about judging people from the distant past using the laws and views of today.
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