541–550 of 582 posts
I just finished up Pluribus S01; to me this could have been a take on AI. The AI could have been The Joined; a population of beings who want only to make the remaining humans happy, by giving humans what they want, but they (The Joined) also acknowledge that in the long run their approach will result in an almost an Extinction-Level , mass starvation, etc.
Shocking that the show predates AI.
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This to me is one of the most apparent failures of modern taboo infecting people's ability to communicate, or even reason. Eugenics is not ethical, for a variety of very good reasons; that does not mean that it's unscientific. We know that intelligence is heritable; we have observed epigenetic group trends like the Flynn effect to the point where they plateau... The biggest unknown in my opinion is how stable the gai…
Eugenics is a taboo because there is a tempting trap to over simplify and make assertions that are not actually supported by the data. We know that IQ is hereditary to an unknown degree. We have some evidence that IQ relates to intelligence. We don’t know really know which genetic variables are responsible. Even simple features like height are thought to have ~12k variables. We don’t even really have a good definitio…
So people hear the word, and react to the word at some toddler level "it's yucky!", and stop reasoning altogether.
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Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. Those actions involve contested subjects like economical aspects (both national and global), fairness among population demographics, historical fairness (such as indigenous populations), border politics and wars, as well as what met…
> Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. It would be great if what you said is true, and people were just arguing about what to do about it. It's not, though. "It's a hoax" is both the start, and the end point for a large portion of the population, the media, and the pol…
In absolute terms, the portion of the worlds population that deny that the climate is changing is a single digit percentage, and that include the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_climate_chan...). The portion is a bit larger if you include people who think that the climate is changing but that is mostly caused by natural causes, but it is still a small minority compared to the wast majority that see climate change as either caused exclusively by human activity or as a mix between human activity and natural causes.
The "It's all a hoax" is a popular talking point but their followers are fewer in real life. It much more commonly to find that people with opposing view who actually agreeing that climate change is real, but that they disagree on policy. As an example, creating environmental policy based on per capita create a complete different policy compared to absolute emissions. The later is no more climate change denial than the first, and yet the later generally get labeled as denial.
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It breaks my heart when I hear people outraged about Onion stories, not because that they fall for them, but because they know they have a hard time telling truth from fiction.
I think people don't like Onion stories because they're not funny, they're just pretentious and political. For instance, their famous 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens article they post all over their page whenever there is some high profile gun related crime. It's all over their page and no doubt they get a bump in traffic from smug people who feel it's clever. It's just so exha…
Ok, who made you arbiter of what people can do? Have you missed entirely the point of repeating this little bit of dark humor is to perhaps SPUR THE PEOPLE TO ACTION THAT NEED TO TAKE ACTION?
You're right, it isn't a joke. Its very serious. Children are being killed at school. Kids are anxious about going to school because they don't want to be shot. How is that OK? And how is the thing you're taking issue with the repeated headline in a rag that is pure satire? Its like taking issue with the people who point out the Catholic church has a problem with pedophilia. Maybe direct your ire at the people taking no actions on gun control, eh?
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> Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. It would be great if what you said is true, and people were just arguing about what to do about it. It's not, though. "It's a hoax" is both the start, and the end point for a large portion of the population, the media, and the pol…
How would you know if its a large portion of the population if media and politicians label people deniers just because they have a difference in opinion about what actions should be done? In absolute terms, the portion of the worlds population that deny that the climate is changing is a single digit percentage, and that include the US ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_climate_chan... ). The portion is…
I don't need to trust what the media tells me about them, I can just listen to what those people and the politicians elect actually say, and what they say is flippin' 'Climate change is a chinese hoax' lunacy.
There's no need to sanewash them, or make excuses for them. It's not a matter of 'disagreement of what to do', it's that they are either really fucking stupid, or are disingenuously courting people who are really fucking stupid.
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Many US citizens didn't get that Starship Troopers was a black comedy. There are serious video reviews taking it seriously as an action movie where the characters are true US heroes. I have a feeling these people are the same as the ones you're talking about.
As a fan of Heinlein's book, the movie flattened the exploration of the political themes from the book and turned it into said black comedy. It would be like turning Animal House or Lord of the Flies into a black comedy.
Animal Farm, probably ?
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The whole D&D vs Christianity vs Tolkien mess of the 90s grew on this inability to tolerate fiction that proofs anyone could invent your life ordering fiction.
That is... so very nearly a sentence.
>The whole D&D vs Christianity vs Tolkien mess of the 90s grew on this inability to tolerate fiction that proves that anyone could invent your life-ordering fiction.
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Not a guarantee of course, but I think if you can't steelman your opponents, have never gone into something with some hypothesis or bias and ultimately proved it wrong/insufficiently supported and accepted that, or wouldn't be willing to specify what evidence would be sufficient for you to change your mind (however unlikely you believe that to be), you're more likely to be Homer.
> Not a guarantee of course, but I think if you can't steelman your opponents There's no point in steelmanning opponents who would not do the same to you. There isn't enough time in the universe to argue against all of them and all of their gaslighting and logical fallacies. I think willing to admit one is wrong and maybe thinking for an extra second before opening their mouth to give another opinion would get people…
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Then you need to watch comedies made decades ago.
> Then you need to watch comedies made decades ago. Yes. It was nice when corporate taxes were high, xenophobia was seen as something bad, and movies could focus on smaller problems satire. I hope that we go back to the socialist era of the USA with unionization, safety nets and welfare for the working class instead of for billionaires. Movies could just be silly again.
But also I don't think movies aren't silly because they deal with all the "big problems". After all they didn't have a problem making silly movies in eras with far worse problems, social and economic. And they could make hella fun movies on heavy topics just fine (Blazing Saddles and racism for example, or MASH and the Vietnam war - even if nominally about Korea).
Modern comedies aren't silly or fun, not because times are troubled, but because they're written as shallow moralizing lectures. Any "caring" is performative. They're also walking on eggshells, and are too polite to have any edge. And then there's the derivative reboots and remakes, which many of them are.