What You Can't Say (2004) • Hacker News Board

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#141

Post by ameister14 » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:21 PM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #100

skylan_q wrote: post #7

This is a great article. If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have. This is lost on most people. You'll just hear "of course it was wrong!" and this poi…

> But if it was obvious that it was wrong, why did masses of people agree to this? They wouldn't have done it if they also saw it as wrong. Because we, as a species, learn . Yes, value systems might change. But it seems, at least to me, that they rarely (not never, but rarely) revert back to older norms. We probably are "wrong" about things we believe right now, too. Some of the beliefs will be considered wrong in th…

Value systems revert to older norms all the time. In the 20's, people were liberated-then in the 40's and 50's, conservative. 60's-70's? liberated and alternately naive and cynical. 80's-early 90's? conservative.

This happens all the time. People go in cycles, not in a line.

Sure, Hegel, you can argue that the cycles have an overall slope, but that doesn't always bare out.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#142

Post by jules » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #8

robobro wrote: post #4

Do you think you'll raise your children to believe in Santa, HN?

I didn't; I've always showed my child the non-sense others believe without cause. Now 20, she has a solid grasp on reality and a firm bullshit detector.

Letting your kid believe in Santa for a while is far more powerful learning experience than showing it that others believe in this nonsense: not only can't others' beliefs be trusted, your own beliefs can't be either.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#143

Post by waterlesscloud » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #129

> "most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics" This is simply an embarrassingly stupid and ignorant comment. The rest of it is fine if stating the obvious/sophomoric. I'd have like to have seen him take the interesting nuggets on fashion being political in nature and run with it (alread…

I'd be surprised if PhDs in either of those fields genuinely disagreed with that.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#144

Post by paulbaumgart » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:30 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #136

ggreer wrote: post #68

Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty a…

Dude, you're not trying hard enough. :) Most unspeakable thoughts today deal with isms and phobias: sexism, racism, agism, Islamophobia, homophobia. There are others of course. For example, I am not a climate-change denier, but if I was I certainly wouldn't say so on HN! I'm gay so I'll pick on my own group: HIV is ridiculously high amongst urban gay men. To me, it's obvious why this is the case. Evolutionarily, men…

As I understand it, HIV transmission rates also vary a lot based on what body parts are being used, and asymmetrically so.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#145

Post by drzaiusapelord » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:30 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #68

Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty a…

Oh come on. These are all fairly popular opinions amongst a lot of people.

I believe deterrence is important thus the prison status quo is fine. Try saying that at a party full of educated people. Everything thinks we can just teach people moralism and how to be good. In reality, you can't treat some/most and things like sociopathy are real.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#146

Post by mikeash » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:33 PM UTC

joshuacc wrote: post #133

mikeash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussing God is a completely practical taboo, though. Most people, perhaps all people, don't arrive at their opinion on religion through rational thought. I make this claim due to the obvious fact that there are a lot of contradictory religious beliefs out there, and if most people used rational thought then you'd expect most people to have similar beliefs. They don't, thus most people aren't rational about it. Sin…

> if most people used rational thought then you'd expect most people to have similar beliefs Well, possibly. But then again, what if all those people happen to have very different sets of evidence on which to make their decisions?

That would explain the disparity in the past, but I don't think it's an adequate explanation any longer.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#147

Post by sdegutis » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #68

Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty a…

1. It's true they don't focus enough on rehabilitation and too much on punishment, and that sucks.

2. Eating meat is very natural. Even animals do it.

3. Nope. So completely and utterly wrong.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#148

Post by existencebox » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #68

Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty a…

I'm split on #2.

I love meat. I will not stop eating meat. Not only because I trust my personal "instincts" as tuned by millions of years of evolution to inform me to some degree what I need to consume to be effective far more than any conscious decision I might make, (e.g. that I think we're rather "young" in our understanding of how nutrition impacts the body), but because when confronted by that "animals have feelings and we are being cruel", my response is "yes, but that is nature."

Two qualifiers. Do I think we could be better? (more humane raising and slaughter) Abso-fucking-lutely. Do I think as technology grows, that we should move to more humane options? I would be more appalled if we didn't.

But will I ever "regret" choosing to eat meat, or fault those who do? Not a chance. I'm sure many people will disagree with the following, and I'd hope to hear a response rather than just get downvoted to oblivion, but so long as it is sustainable (which is a BIG qualifier that links heavily with my above statements about technological progress), we are at the top of the food chain, period. I am a predator, and I take pleasure in continuing to be one, to certain degrees.

Given that my justification is simply "this is a system that has worked for far longer than humanity has existed" mixed with "but I like it (so long as it does not become destructive to the point of disrupting said system that has existed successfully for so long)" I admit I feel that this is a weak argument. But I've both never found a really compelling counter, nor have I found any particular "holes" in mine. (Aside from the obvious "but it's not sustainable", to which I'd hand wave a bit and blame that more on an unfortunate side effect of market forces than on the choice to eat meat itself, which is also a bit of a reduction problem since the latter powers the former, and turtles all the way down, but I'd mostly respond with that I'd rather look for solutions than knee jerk responses, and personal consumption at this point is NOT going to impact "how things are", perhaps ignoring the wisdom of the whole "be the change you wish to see" etc... (but then, the change I want to see is simply better implementation, not vilification/removal of the "problem", so maybe not?)

Wow, this rambled. Sorry about that. This is just an issue that I have convoluted feelings on, as someone who tries to be conscious about both maintainable systems and loving to consume animals.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#149

Post by selimthegrim » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

LaaT wrote: post #104

afterburner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Kemal Ataturk, an early 20th century figure that a lot more genocidal than Hitler. He also ended the 1.5 millenia long war of muslims against the west and the east, and frankly without him we would not have a modern time." Bit grandiose.

And he didn't even get his facts right. His atrocities were minor at best. Much of the killing had happened long before his time.

True enough. But then why does the modern Turkish state continue to deny what happened to the Ottoman Armenians? You think they'd have a field day showing how much the Empire sucked.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#150

Post by ufmace » Fri, Mar 21, 2014, 9:39 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #82

hobs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this thought this morning, though of a slightly different tone. The radio talking head mentioned that they were going to interview an anti-civilizationist, someone who apparently thinks that developed society is unsustainable and will be the end of us all. Apparently he advocates for a return to pre-civilization? I immediately thought, "We need to be able to leap forward, not backward. If this involves some sac…

2000 yeas ago, the Earth population was ~200 Millions. (This is only an estimation, so don't take the number too seriously.) And 2000 years ago, we had ~10,000 years of agriculture and ~5,000 years of diverse grades of civilization. So, to go to a pre-civilization population level we need at least 6,900,000,000 volunteers.

I've been pointing this out in various places on threads regarding energy conservation, AGW, and similar things for a while. Remarkably few people seem to have any awareness of the idea that we had better maintain the infrastructure that allows us to feed a population ~30x bigger than it was ~1k years ago, or things are going to get mighty ugly.