Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of people (in the US, at least) spend half a day a week being taught to believe in magic. From birth. Usually on Sunday.
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Hey criticizing this is heresy on hn!
Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
231–240 of 325 posts
Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. That is partially true. There is no incentive, for example, for slaves to make any improvements. I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves. That meant the few people in power were not enough to think of much new stuff. You could say free markets were the greatest invention…
> That is partially true. There is no incentive, for example, for slaves to make any improvements. I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves. That meant the few people in power were not enough to think of much new stuff. You can't think of any technology developed by slaves because they wouldn't get credit for it. I am sure all sorts of useful things have been invented by slaves, but if you yourself are pr…
> You can't think of any technology developed by slaves because they wouldn't get credit for it.
Can you think of any in the US Confederacy? Any at all? The cotton gin comes to mind, but that was invented by Eli Whitney in the north.
Can you imagine this?
slave: "Boss, how about if we do it this way, we can be more productive?"
boss: "shut up and do what I told you to."
Slaves had every incentive to do as little as possible, not improve production.
Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#233The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. A not yet explained phenomenon or even something as far fetched as "aliens" would have been a more comforting answer than "essentially we can all start losing our mind at once, and it takes very little to trigger it".
I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the degree to which humans are animals.
It took me around 20 years to kind of key into that, but then it took almost another 20 for it to properly click.
I find it pretty hard to get on the same wavelength as most people about it. A lot of us feel distinctly human as opposed to, I don’t know, like a smooth ape that is neurotic enough to develop space travel.
I’m half joking. I’ve found the revelation made me love animals a lot more than I had. It brings a sense of unity to my life. Dogs really are family, birds are not nearly as different from us as they seem, and even creatures like fish or squid share remarkable traits with us. These fundamental aspects of being animals.
I really enjoy it. I think it’s a great thing to contemplate and embrace.
Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the degree to which humans are animals.
Although there is one part of my brain which tells me I and other people are rational beings, my own behavior tells me otherwise. Why else would I eat a candy when I rationally know I don’t need it? For people interested, I can highly recommend Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal. It tells many interesting stories about social interactions between apes that look surprisingly human. By the way, did you know that apes pick…
Watching animals have familiar interactions and experiences is kind of amazing. I know we can’t know their experiences without empirical evidence, but as you mentioned, apes do a great job of providing some of that evidence. We are way more alike than I would have assumed before I was exposed to this stuff.
I believe this extends to all kinds of species besides apes (especially mammals, but others as well), and there’s certainly compelling evidence of sentience in places we wouldn’t have thought to find it, but there’s still plenty of research to be done before we can draw conclusions.
Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider that you are uninformed about the UAP phenomenon.
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What can I say. You refuse to engage with evidence in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405429 that the phenomenon might in fact be real, so you fall into the quite predictable conclusion that all of it is hysteria.
Be better.
Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#236Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#237Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#238Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can buy satellite pictures of almost anywhere on earth with pretty good definition and so I deduce that the US government with almost 100 StarShield satellites plus who knows how many ones with huge cameras probably can almost livestream any place on earth GTA top view style. So shouldn't be hard to see what it is and where it came from unless cloud cover is bad.
It'd take a lot more than 100 for that.
The 100 would only be for the streaming in the example.
Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. History makes it abundantly clear that it is a regular occurrence for large groups of people to collectively believe things for which there is little evidence, and furthermore, to take extreme actions based on such beliefs. This applies to you too, reader. Many would read the above and fully agree…
> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank i…
> Why does it always have to be an accident?
Because that's a surprisingly common way for things to be discovered.
Saccharine? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet.
Aspartame? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet.
I think this is true of basically every major artificial sweetener except invert sugar.