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The brain was not designed for this much bad news

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Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#121

Post by lukan »

retired wrote: post #106
tirant wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cargo bike is electric, the threshold for healthy enough lowers significantly. My weekly shopping for a family of four is done on one like that, which I can park like 50cm away from the shop door and 50cm away from my home front door. That’s even more convenient than any car.

I hope you understand that you are in a very privileged position to be able to afford that lifestyle. Not everyone can do that.

Are you claiming owning a cargo bike is a bigger privilege than owning a car? Problem with cargo bikes are, if you are living in a flat where you cannot "park" them, you mean this?

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#122

Post by svrtknst »

retired wrote: post #104
seba_dos1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can be done too. I live in a rather big city, so I don't own a car, as I can perfectly go by using public transport.

Only if you limit your work and social life to that particular city. Not something most people want to do.

You can use public transportation, bikes, car pooling, taxis and rentals for your rare-use needs, and its usually cheaper than owning and operating a vehicle.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#123

Post by foxglacier »

watwut wrote: post #78
pjc50 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slight problem here is that the war was started by Netenyahu, whom US voters are unable to remove. But yes, I doubt Harris would have gone for the decapitation strike that destabilized everything.

War was started by Trump, Hegseth and Netenyahu. Hegseth specifically wants wars for emotional reasons - it makes him feel good. America has a lot of Iran hawks, especially in goverment/military circles. They got their way.

See what I mean? America keeps starting wars in the middle east. Go back further in time and it was Obama, then Bush, then a little bit of Clinton, then the other Bush. It doesn't matter who or what party they're in, they mostly end up doing it anyway. No reason to think Harris would be anything different, especially considering her statements of promising military support to Israel.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#125

Post by altmanaltman »

makeitdouble wrote: post #88

> Long before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened. We're having too much of these look back to hunter-gatherer state of affairs to explain modern phenomenons. It feels like they didn't rea…

No, human knowledge has definitely grown over time and the modern human in the modern society has access to a lot more information. But in terms of evolution, our brains are still pretty much what they used to be back then. That timeline isn't long enough to actually evolve our brain and how it processes things.

A lot of biases are present in our mind precisely due to how biology evolved the systems over millions of years. Humans have been around for only 300k-ish years.

However, you do need to study and research about how the brain works if you want to make these point and a lot of writers just misrepresent/misunderstand things because they don't do their research enough.

I think someone like Daniel Kahneman can be a good read if you are interested.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#126

Post by danaris »

paganel wrote: post #115
spking wrote: post #3

Neil Postman called this the “Peekaboo World”. “What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering…

> ? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployme A proletarian revolution would be a good start, not sure what this ideologue writer was on about. History is far from having ended, change can still happen through the union of individual wills.

But how do you start a proletarian revolution?

It's all well and good to say "this collective action would change the bad status quo", but even if you're 100% correct, unless you can point to ways to work toward said collective action, it's still pretty useless. You're not actually helping to change the bad status quo.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#127

Post by altmanaltman »

standeven wrote: post #6
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #4

I only read local news. It’s pretty nice I don’t feel stressed at all. Turns out random shit far away has no significant effect on my life. And even if it did it’s not like I can do anything about it

The closing of Hormuz caused fuel prices to go up around the globe. Voting differently in the US could have prevented it. So yeah, random shit far away can have significant effects, and sometimes you can do things about it. That said, focusing on local news does sounds like a great approach, but international news still needs some attention.

I don't think most Americans even knew what the strait of hormouz was, expecting them to vote differently based on that last November is wild. Trump constantly ran as the "no more wars" president and people fell for it. At that point, the blame is just for believing in that he was not lying. But strait of hormouz was a non topic for almost the entire world before the war.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#128

Post by layer8 »

pjc50 wrote: post #69
weregiraffe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. Your contribution is statistically insignificant. It was purely a symbolic gesture.

Everyone's contribution is insignificant, and yet it all adds up. This is rather like saying the average player in a football match scores 0 goals, therefore 0 goals were scored.

No, it’s like saying how many goals you personally score is insignificant for how many goals are scored in total in football matches worldwide.

It’s like Down’s paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting). Being a paradox doesn’t make it untrue.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#129

Post by MisterKent »

Things are worse than ever. And these types of opinions are just Ostrich strategies. This worked fine 20 years ago, and would be a wildly inappropriate and irresponsible way to live today.

Yes, a lot of the news is sensationalized and blown out of proportion.

But also YES, things are absolutely trending in the wrong direction and you should both be aware of that and be loudly screaming about it. Going to protests, boycotting companies run by these CEOs leading us into oligarchy, and letting people know your stance.

The idea that "I can't do anything about it, so I'll just bury my head in the sand" is the rhetoric that the people benefitting from rigging the system want you to have. It makes it easier for them to screw you over.

No, your brain was neven designed for this much bad news. It also wasn't designed for the Internet, tv, smartphones, processed food, soda, painting, sleeping in a bed, to infinity. It's a garbage argument that falls apart at first glance.

Edit to add: I highly recommend meditation and days off from technology. But the answer is not what many people in this thread are proposing. Steve Bannon's "flood the zone" strategy is winning.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#130

Post by saulapremium »

foxglacier wrote: post #123
watwut wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War was started by Trump, Hegseth and Netenyahu. Hegseth specifically wants wars for emotional reasons - it makes him feel good. America has a lot of Iran hawks, especially in goverment/military circles. They got their way.

See what I mean? America keeps starting wars in the middle east. Go back further in time and it was Obama, then Bush, then a little bit of Clinton, then the other Bush. It doesn't matter who or what party they're in, they mostly end up doing it anyway. No reason to think Harris would be anything different, especially considering her statements of promising military support to Israel.

It sounds like you are trying to both-sides away the fact that Trump (or "Trump 2", if you insist) is an outlier here. US support for Israel has been pretty invariant over the years but nobody went along with Bibi's wet dream until now.
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