51–60 of 82 posts
I stopped reading the other article quite quickly but read this one completely. I feel the writing style was night and day, the other article felt antagonistic and full of personal politics while this one had that sense of wonder at science and knowledge.
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Let people enjoy things. If you don't like the Kardashians, fine. I don't either. But clearly some folks do and are willing to help propel them to fame (or notoriety). I know your comment is being glib, but it's emblematic of HN crowds saying, "I don't like this thing, therefore this thing is funny/bad." It costs you nothing to post your comment and just let people like the things they like.
Let people criticize things. I doubt you'd apply your comment toward your favorite political pet causes. Why are the Kardashians the one thing in our society that is not allowed to be criticized? This whole "let people enjoy things" is cynical, usually coming from the types of people who don't let anyone enjoy anything unless it is degenerate and mind-rotting.
1. Be society's mirror
2. Be society's punching bag
The Kardashians obviously fill both of these jobs. I don't think it's fair to say they're above reproach – in fact, I hear tons of criticism of them any time their names are brought up around me. They're hardly taboo to criticize.
All of that said, I still think you're 100% right that we shouldn't stop people from hating on them. If we take these two "jobs" away from these sorts of celebrities, then at that point they become actually pointless. As much as I'd like to live in a world without them, at least for now the Kardashians and others are serving their purpose – provoking conversation about what we value as a society.
For some folks, lionizing the Kardashians is a way of saying what they think "perfection" (physically/financially/socially/some or all of the above) looks like in America right now. Others want to look at them and see everything that is wrong with us. For as much as I agree with the idea that criticism of celebrities is fundamental to their role in society, I think it's important to not lose sight of the fact that celebrity has a real social function.
Aren't they symbiotic if they're doing this rather than parasites?
1. McKay, D. M. (2009). The therapeutic helminth?. Trends in parasitology, 25(3), 109-114, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2008.11.008
2. Zaccone, P., Fehervari, Z., Phillips, J. M., Dunne, D. W., & Cooke, A. (2006). Parasitic worms and inflammatory diseases. Parasite immunology, 28(10), 515-523, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3024.2006.00879.x
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Viruses are a little different, though. Retroviruses aside, viruses spread as much and as fast as possible; any mutation that makes them spread more slowly is crowded out, evolution style. So long as it can spread between hosts well enough, a deadly virus is a very successful virus – up until it's driven its host species to local extinction.
The deadliness of a virus doesn't assist its spread. The deadliness doesn't make it more or less successful, everything else being equal, but usually dead hosts are hosts that don't continue to spread the virus, so things aren't equal. In most cases deadliness in viruses is selected out precisely in order to increase their spread.
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Let people criticize things. I doubt you'd apply your comment toward your favorite political pet causes. Why are the Kardashians the one thing in our society that is not allowed to be criticized? This whole "let people enjoy things" is cynical, usually coming from the types of people who don't let anyone enjoy anything unless it is degenerate and mind-rotting.
I have pretty devoutly hated celebrity my entire life, but in recent years I've come to realize that the real "job" of these kinds of "celebrity for celebrity's sake" types is pretty simple: 1. Be society's mirror 2. Be society's punching bag The Kardashians obviously fill both of these jobs. I don't think it's fair to say they're above reproach – in fact, I hear tons of criticism of them any time their names are bro…
And this is how you get Goa'uld...
>"The tapeworm-laden ants didn’t just outlive their siblings, the team found. They were coddled while they did it. They spent their days lounging in their nest, performing none of the tasks expected of workers. They were groomed, fed, and carried by their siblings, often receiving more attention than even the queen—unheard of in a typical ant society—and gave absolutely nothing in return." I wonder if there is a huma…
It sounds more to me like these ants were treated the way we treat disabled humans.
https://theconversation.com/these-ants-have-evolved-a-comple...
"There seems to be a threshold for rescue. Wounded ants on the battlefield are triaged carefully by their comrades. Ones with one or two legs missing are often rescued, but the severely injured are seldom retrieved. The ants do not seem to be counting legs directly, instead badly damaged ants may not be able to adopt the correct position for battlefield rescue. And even if they can get back home, severely injured ants are removed from the nest, cast out to their doom."
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The deadliness of a virus doesn't assist its spread. The deadliness doesn't make it more or less successful, everything else being equal, but usually dead hosts are hosts that don't continue to spread the virus, so things aren't equal. In most cases deadliness in viruses is selected out precisely in order to increase their spread.
Deadliness of the virus is just a side effect of its fast spread - the major part of the spread is replication which damages the host. The virus is an optimization problem - replicate and spread as fast as you can as long as the associated host damage and deaths result in the spread decrease smaller than the gain from the replication intensity increase causing that damage and deaths.
Plot twist. What if wealthy humans are infected with these?