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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#141

Post by lolinder »

shusaku wrote: post #123
xyst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You should consider the commenting guidelines > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. And adhere to that culture before complaining about others

> And adhere to that culture before complaining about others

Indeed! One might even say "you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#142

Post by lolinder »

therein wrote: post #97
xyst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I was born to a mostly non-religious Muslim family in a 99% Muslim country so I am not simply defaulting to my own creed here.

Ignore the trolls and the downvoters, I appreciated the quote!

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#143

Post by lukas099 »

lm28469 wrote: post #66
fire_lake wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A systematic study of birds would find that many do indeed starve to death.

Is the goal of humanity to replicate infinitely and love as long as possible regardless of anything else ? Because that's what cancers do and it never end well for the host

I don't think anyone said or implied that

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#144

Post by lukas099 »

rvnx wrote: post #58
xyst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, probably no Bible bots (though there are plenty of bots here, whose end goal is to collect karma to sell upvotes). However, as Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Trends and themes often resurface on Reddit, where discussions can cyclically return to religious topics or quotes.

Who pays for upvotes? Advertisers?

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#145

Post by Chris2048 »

leobg wrote: post #79
wayoverthecloud wrote: post #25

When you get caught up on the hustle of modern society and lose yourself in modern technology, it's so easy to forget that you are a part of a larger whole and there is more life on Earth besides human. For some reason knowing that other animals exist just for the sake of existing and even sleep off when life gets harder gives a new perspective. I feel that we humans use too much knowledge and complicate problems eve…

Had a very similar thought this morning. With the amount of technology today, we should be the happiest, wealthiest generation alive. My grandmother, born in the 1920s, still experienced hunger as a child, fled from the Russians through the ruins of bombed out cities, and, up until not too long ago, had to make a fire in order to have warm water for the bathtub. But I’ve never heard the word “depression” from her eve…

> It costs about 5 to 10 times as much.

Is that true, the mass produced bread is more expensive?

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#146

Post by Chris2048 »

js6i wrote: post #104
wruza wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is a good analogy, since laws and government don’t tell you how the world works, it’s either observable without explanation or left unexplained. In religion there’s no whole story, it all made up. It may contain some real life parts, but it could do so without religious parts. Real life stories doesn’t make it more credible in sentences containing “god”. In fact, the quote of this subthread is wron…

I think the disconnect is that you seem to consider religious texts as a dry statements of fact. That doesn't make any sense, they're clearly not that. Would you say the same about great works of fiction, or old fairy tales that for some reason keep grabbing our attention and we repeat them for generations? That they're just falsehoods because duh, frogs obviously can't talk? Or can they have some deeper meaning? Sta…

> Would you say the same about great works of fiction, or old fairy tales

Do you thing religious followers, such as Matthew, see god/heaven/etc as being merely a metaphor?

> That they're just falsehoods because duh

per previous poster: "laws and government don’t tell you how the world works"

works of fiction doesn't purport to either. They might have morals, or subtexts, as much of the contents of the Bible does - but some things in there are meant to be at least partially literal, such as the existence of a divine being that created the world.

What's the greater message behind "God takes care of lesser creatures" when there's no proof of such a thing? That things will generally turn out alright if you don't plan ahead (demonstratably bad advice)..

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#148

Post by leobg »

kasey_junk wrote: post #134
leobg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a very similar thought this morning. With the amount of technology today, we should be the happiest, wealthiest generation alive. My grandmother, born in the 1920s, still experienced hunger as a child, fled from the Russians through the ruins of bombed out cities, and, up until not too long ago, had to make a fire in order to have warm water for the bathtub. But I’ve never heard the word “depression” from her eve…

At least as measured by suicide rates in the US your grandmothers likely generation new quite well what depression was even if the word didn’t matter. Between the 1920s and the end of WW2 the suicide rate per 100000 was lowest at 15 but reached almost 22. The pandemic rate which caused (rightly) lots of angst and introspection was 14.3. We should investigate what is causing increased levels of depression currently bu…

Point taken. Can’t get more textbook survivorship bias. :)

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#149

Post by Scarblac »

hawski wrote: post #71
Scarblac wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument doesn't quite work imo because farmers are actively working against the normal ecosystem - we don't want the normal plants to grow there, we want our desired crops. With enough production for us to feed the world and to give farmers a living wage. I still think it's doable (but not if we also want to feed many times our mass in lifestock), but it's not easy.

Farmers also want to have a large swaths of a monoculture plant, because it is easy then to mechanize. That goes, as you say, against the normal ecosystem. Permaculture gardens look much different, but you can't easily mechanize that.

Yes, and the more manual labor it needs, the more time intensive it is, the harder it is for someone to make a living.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#150

Post by leobg »

soco wrote: post #84
leobg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a very similar thought this morning. With the amount of technology today, we should be the happiest, wealthiest generation alive. My grandmother, born in the 1920s, still experienced hunger as a child, fled from the Russians through the ruins of bombed out cities, and, up until not too long ago, had to make a fire in order to have warm water for the bathtub. But I’ve never heard the word “depression” from her eve…

Maybe it's not about the things we have, but about the hope we have. You run away, you change, you survive things because you have hope in a better future. You even work to make a better future for your kids. You have hope. What hope have those people today?

You mean like kids looking forward to growing up. But once you’re grown up, or even old, there just isn’t anything to look forward to anymore?
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