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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#411

Post by perilunar »

marcosdumay wrote: post #44
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

> Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? Well, aluminum was supposed to be luxurious and everything... But I think before that they'd pick a piece of plastic packaging and be without words to explain their marvel.

How would you explain plastic to someone who hadn't even seen it? I would say it is like candle wax (which it is), but it melts at a higher temperature and is much stronger when solid.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#412

Post by galdosdi »

dudinax wrote: post #352
galdosdi wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they've been to an Aldi, which is massively exploding in popularity everywhere in the US right now since they're a perfect fit for the current economic environment. Aldi has carts you put quarters in, and Mr Carlson tried to play up seeing the same thing in Russia like it was some kind of brilliant Russian innovation. It was truly bizarre. So weird how far that guy has fallen, much like the also once-respectab…

He was completely pathetic twenty years ago, just respectably so.

Carlson or Giuliani? :-)

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#413

Post by w0de0 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #402

For real existential-crisis-inducing marvels, you have to go with evolution. Once Darwin worked out natural selection, and it was combined with Mendel's genes, a whole host of primal questions were suddenly answered: Who created us? Why are we here? What is our purpose? If you were to give Franklin a copy of "The Selfish Gene", I'm curious if he would believe it. Would he reject it and become (remain?) a creationist?…

In fairness to the explicitly agnostic, I don’t think evolution or genetics are teleologies of humankind, or of consciousness, or even of simple life. These primal questions remain unanswered, if not unanswerable. Granted, a whole host of prior answers were revealed to be nonsense. (I’m sure Franklin would be unsurprised at this; an enlightenment polymath can hardly have credited the common man’s creationism - Jefferson, by way of comparison, was a rational deist.)

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#414

Post by ZeroGravitas »

galdosdi wrote: post #328
dotnet00 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that was very weird, but was also probably more convincing to his target audience of people who've never lived in even another town let alone another country.

Unless they've been to an Aldi, which is massively exploding in popularity everywhere in the US right now since they're a perfect fit for the current economic environment. Aldi has carts you put quarters in, and Mr Carlson tried to play up seeing the same thing in Russia like it was some kind of brilliant Russian innovation. It was truly bizarre. So weird how far that guy has fallen, much like the also once-respectab…

And since he grew up with great wealth, and is on record about understanding that the role of these figures on Fox is propaganda, there's really no excuse:

"Why Tucker Carlson Pretends to Hate Elites"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#415

Post by nobody9999 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #138
petesergeant wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would blow the minds I think there are two aspects to this. I think anyone who's ever been to a food market in the history of time would conceptually understand it's possible to have a bigger market, and perhaps even a faster horse or mechanical bird to bring the items there. Commerce bringing you items from the other side of the world is millennia old. So I think it would be more of a case of "how did u mad lads a…

Yeah that's what I was thinking of when paying at the supermarket. Try explaining contactless payments to someone from 18th century.

>Yeah that's what I was thinking of when paying at the supermarket. Try explaining contactless payments to someone from 18th century.

I don't think folks, at least not the well-off, would have a hard time understanding any of the varied payment methods we use today, since they'd been doing conceptually similar stuff[0] for centuries by the mid-eighteenth century.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_letter_of_credit

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#416

Post by tradertef »

ijidak wrote: post #359
dotnet00 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It brings to mind the story of how when Boris Yeltsin was visiting the US, he took an impromptu detour to a random American supermarket to try to catch them off guard, only to be blown away that Americans really did have supermarkets everywhere practically overflowing with food. The story goes that the experience played a big role in shaping his vision for Russia when he went on to become its first freely elected lea…

A friend of mine in college around 2002 was from Russia and had lived under communism. He told me his grandma cried the first time she entered an American grocery store. It was interesting to hear.

There is a guy from Cuba in Youtube. They record his experience in the US and he was very emotional when he visited Costco.. so much medicine, so much meat..

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#417

Post by GMoromisato »

w0de0 wrote: post #413
GMoromisato wrote: post #402

For real existential-crisis-inducing marvels, you have to go with evolution. Once Darwin worked out natural selection, and it was combined with Mendel's genes, a whole host of primal questions were suddenly answered: Who created us? Why are we here? What is our purpose? If you were to give Franklin a copy of "The Selfish Gene", I'm curious if he would believe it. Would he reject it and become (remain?) a creationist?…

In fairness to the explicitly agnostic, I don’t think evolution or genetics are teleologies of humankind, or of consciousness, or even of simple life. These primal questions remain unanswered, if not unanswerable. Granted, a whole host of prior answers were revealed to be nonsense. (I’m sure Franklin would be unsurprised at this; an enlightenment polymath can hardly have credited the common man’s creationism - Jeffer…

This is an excellent point. And you're probably right that Franklin and maybe Jefferson might have understood and accepted evolution--Darwin's world of the 1860s was not that different from Franklin's era.

But even today, I think many people do not understand the philosophical implications of evolution. Daniel Dennet wrote a whole book on this: "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (which, perhaps you're familiar with). I think Franklin would have been shocked at evolution's explanatory power. It's hard to talk about things like emotions (anger, lust, jealousy), ethics (justice, retaliation), medicine, or even sexuality without invoking genetics and evolutionary theory.

I agree with you that evolution does not (and cannot) disprove the existence of God (or gods) or even that we were created 6,000 years ago (maybe God created the world to look as if it's ancient).

But I think Franklin would see that evolution has shrunk the numinous realm down to a very small box, and I think that would have shocked him.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#418

Post by w0de0 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #417
w0de0 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness to the explicitly agnostic, I don’t think evolution or genetics are teleologies of humankind, or of consciousness, or even of simple life. These primal questions remain unanswered, if not unanswerable. Granted, a whole host of prior answers were revealed to be nonsense. (I’m sure Franklin would be unsurprised at this; an enlightenment polymath can hardly have credited the common man’s creationism - Jeffer…

This is an excellent point. And you're probably right that Franklin and maybe Jefferson might have understood and accepted evolution--Darwin's world of the 1860s was not that different from Franklin's era. But even today, I think many people do not understand the philosophical implications of evolution. Daniel Dennet wrote a whole book on this: "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (which, perhaps you're familiar with). I think…

Your response made me reconsider two of my claims. Evolution _can_ provide a teleology of both humankind and of consciousness. The latter may be understood as a genetic trait which provides extraordinary survival fitness, and so existence, to the former. We and our traits arise from, and have been fashioned to function within, the system of evolution. The traits, and us, want for no more purpose than this - just as the output of any function wants for no more purpose than the input parameters.

Life, though - that system and its output, holistically - still lacks self-evident purpose. (Which is not to say that it must have one.) Why was this function written? Is it merely the output of a higher-order function? (Involving cosmic turtles?)

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#419

Post by filoleg »

jhbadger wrote: post #258
filoleg wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are valid. “Pokazukha” is more of a modern term (modern as in, i dont think it even hit the 80 year old mark) and is a bit more generic (refers to “showing off” or “for show” in general). “Potemkin supermarket” is a reference to “potemkin village”[0], which has been around as a term since late 18th century, and it is a bit more specific (refers to a construction that provides a false facade to a situation, with…

Also in English, "Potemkin X" is the standard phrase, even when referring to post-Tsarist times (and sometimes even to refer to non-Russian cases like Potemkin villages in North Korea to fool visiting Japanese of Korean descent as to quality of life in NK). I have never seen "Pokazukha" used in English at all.

Fully agreed.

Both are valid terms in russian language. But “potemkin x” is in the same league as “schadenfreude” in terms of usage in foreign languages, while “pokazukha” doesn’t really have any spread or presence in languages outside of russian language at all.

Only ever saw it in english in this thread and, a couple of times, in r/NCD threads (because they just love using random foreign words of the day there, like “pokazukha” or “smekalka”; to their defense, they are almost always used correctly lol).

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#420

Post by selimthegrim »

filoleg wrote: post #419
jhbadger wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in English, "Potemkin X" is the standard phrase, even when referring to post-Tsarist times (and sometimes even to refer to non-Russian cases like Potemkin villages in North Korea to fool visiting Japanese of Korean descent as to quality of life in NK). I have never seen "Pokazukha" used in English at all.

Fully agreed. Both are valid terms in russian language. But “potemkin x” is in the same league as “schadenfreude” in terms of usage in foreign languages, while “pokazukha” doesn’t really have any spread or presence in languages outside of russian language at all. Only ever saw it in english in this thread and, a couple of times, in r/NCD threads (because they just love using random foreign words of the day there, lik…

I work with a lot of Russian speakers, my point is I would probably get my point across on average to them better with that word than Potemkin X. Your point about schadenfreude is good though.
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