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Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

dynomight.net

11–20 of 349 posts

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#11

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

Personal opinion: same reason why it didn't take off in ancient Greece (steam engine was invented back then) , no shortage of cheap labor.

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#12
post #9

"it’s surely better than the light of consciousness vanishing entirely when the sun eats the Earth in 7.5 billion years, no?" The Earth will lose its oxygen in about 1 billion years and undergo runaway warming in about 1.4 billion years. By the time the Earth is eaten by the Sun (if it is; mass loss by the Sun might prevent this), the Earth will have been sterilized for longer than it has currently existed.

This is assuming that humanity or our successor won't do any stellar engineering or starlifting, or moving the Earth for that matter.

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#13
>That even though the turn humans made from hunter-gatherer bands into agriculture pretty clearly made life worse, it eventually led to the industrial revolution

Which also made life worse to begin with. Without the enclosure movement depriving peasants of their land and pushing them to work in the factories in horrendous conditions for pitiful pay it likely wouldnt have happened.

Though I'm pretty thankful for the workers' movement that followed that led to innovations like the weekend and criminalization of child labor.

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#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. (Being grateful to anyone not causally connected to what one is grateful about seems most weird.)

Does that not mean that every grateful person acknowledges God's existence, at least implicitly?

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#16
post #8

You'll not make me thankful for aspartame however hard you try. Some good ones there, though.

I am thankful for sucralose.

Same. I have a sucralose energy drink every day after lunch. I generally don’t add sugar and buy low-sugar products. The joy this drink gives me sometimes feels like a drug trip.

Shameless plug: https://www.alaninu.com/products/energy-drinks-12pk-cosmic-s...

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#17
post #9

"it’s surely better than the light of consciousness vanishing entirely when the sun eats the Earth in 7.5 billion years, no?" The Earth will lose its oxygen in about 1 billion years and undergo runaway warming in about 1.4 billion years. By the time the Earth is eaten by the Sun (if it is; mass loss by the Sun might prevent this), the Earth will have been sterilized for longer than it has currently existed.

Also, thankful that (despite the timescale for O(1) changes to O2 in the atmosphere being ~10 million years) not once since the Precambrian did O2 levels fall low enough to wipe out vertebrate life.

Although I'm not sure it's really correct to be thankful for effects of observer selection bias.

Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

#19
post #11

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

Personal opinion: same reason why it didn't take off in ancient Greece (steam engine was invented back then) , no shortage of cheap labor.

though Hero’s engine is a steam engine, it is practically useless as anything besides a curiosity and certainly could not have powered an industrial revolution
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