This is quite profound. Consider a sentence. Every additional word has the ability to completely change the meaning of the whole sentence. In the same way, every passing moment is an opportunity to completely change the preceding moments. Sure facts are “real” in the sense that atoms are real. Atoms might be the building blocks of “reality” but it is up to the individual how clusters of atoms are interpreted, used, etc. Facts in the same way are surely the building blocks for the universe of emotion and dynamic interaction, but when you zoom in on them, as with atoms, they vanish. Even if this woman had answered the door in a wheelchair, an interaction filled with love and forgiveness would’ve left the author with the same feeling.
The past is not true
61–70 of 362 posts
Re: The past is not true
#62This is a versatile trick, it works for cars with one victim and it works for camps with millions of victims
Re: The past is not true
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manslaughter charges only happen if the driver is drunk or flees. Otherwise it's a traffic ticket AT MOST. My friend's teenaged son, while biking, was run over by a driver who did it completely intentionally. Zero charges or tickets. From my link above >Leah Shahum from the San Francisco Bike Coalition told the New York Times last year that her organization does “not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in whi…
Ok, this article shocked me more than the post this thread is about. What has manslaughter have to do with whether you are drunk or not? Does that make the person you killed any less dead? Is this a consequence of DAs being elected officials in most of the US? So, as long as there are more drivers who could see themselves in this situation than cyclists who could get mad about this in the electorate, drivers killing…
The definition of vehicular manslaughter is unlawful or negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in a death. If the driver was not driving unlawfully, such as DUI, then it is not manslaughter. Fleeing the scene of an accident is unlawful so that also makes it meet the definition. Other reasons could include speeding or running a red light.
Re: The past is not true
#64Would there not be some police investigation and possibly prison time if you recklessly caused such a serious accident? I’m not sure how this misunderstanding could occur for so many years.
Look at it this way, officers see car accidents every day. The majority are cases where someone ran directly into the car in front of them due to inattention.
Humans make a lot of mistakes and unless there were extenuating factors (DUI, for example), they are very unlikely to become criminal. In many cases, they wouldn't even be ticketed.
Given that there was a yield sign involved, it also may be a known problematic intersection. Sadly, we have a lot of those in the US too. Yield signs in places with low traffic and poor visibility are way more common than they should be.
Re: The past is not true
#65I think the article is sending a pretty problematic overall message. The underlying story is somewhat interesting. The author went through life with a lot of unnecessary guilt and suffering because he was carrying around a false narrative, and it is true that false narratives happen. But the larger conclusion he tries to draw from it seems really problematic: >History is not true. You can change history. The actual f…
I think the point is that interpretation is all we really have. We believe that memories are these absolute things, but rigorous studies show that no human being remembers things perfectly, even when they believe they do. For many years as a kid, I knew Santa Claus was real because I had seen him come to my house. My faith was unshakable, because I had observed it with my own eyes. Years later, I found out that on Ch…
Yes, I agree that “interpretation is all we have” is the point they are trying to make. I also agree that there is an important point there. Memories are often not what we think they are.
However, in the story, the author did NOT have a memory of breaking a woman’s back. He had a memory of getting in an accident. He interpreted it as his fault. He was told that he broke her back. Not his interpretation. It was a belief about events that he wasn’t present to (what happened in the woman’s car and inside the woman’s body) not really any different than anything else we’re told but don’t witness firsthand. It sounds like it may even have been a lie the police told him to scare him.
Your story is different because you did have an actual experience and misinterpreted it’s meaning (man in red suit = real Santa Claus).
Re: The past is not true
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, this article shocked me more than the post this thread is about. What has manslaughter have to do with whether you are drunk or not? Does that make the person you killed any less dead? Is this a consequence of DAs being elected officials in most of the US? So, as long as there are more drivers who could see themselves in this situation than cyclists who could get mad about this in the electorate, drivers killing…
The definition of vehicular manslaughter is unlawful or negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in a death. If the driver was not driving unlawfully, such as DUI, then it is not manslaughter. Fleeing the scene of an accident is unlawful so that also makes it meet the definition. Other reasons could include speeding or running a red light. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vehicular_manslaughter
That still leaves us with the second part - "...or negligent". I find it a bit hard to believe that in all those cases the cyclists were at fault? Unless you consider that they were already acting recklessly because they tried to use a bicycle on a public street (I know a lot of people subscribe to this opinion, but I don't).
Re: The past is not true
#67The conclusion to this article should have been: it's important to study the past, and find out what the truth is. Memory is fallible, and people often misunderstand or lie. But by investigating -- going to more people, consulting more sources, you can get closer to knowing what really happened. Finding and preserving the truth about the past is more important than ever. Truth is under attack from all sides, with pol…
The question is what you really believe to be true. If your car hit me and you truly didn’t remember it that way then you are proving the author’s point. Maybe you do remember hitting me. There will still be innumerable questions that you couldn’t answer because they were out of your perception in the moment. What if it turns out that in hitting me you stopped me from running over an old lady. Whether or not you lear…
Right. The past is true, but your memories are flawed, and your experience is incomplete. You have to make an effort to get the facts right. To get a full understanding of any situation, a good start is to talk to anyone you can who was there when it happened.
Re: The past is not true
#68Do you know the concept of space-time, block universe, B-theory of time, etc? How physics assumes that the laws of physics don't know the notion of "now"? And how physicists usually start every calculation with "let X denote the set of events", all the past and future events? Isn't that depressing? The future is true, even if we can't know it. (Even in a finite, discrete and deterministic universe, which we can compu…
This is interesting! What do you make of retrocausal effects in "image exposure" experiments, and other psi related phenomena. I'm curious if you have ideas for a physical theory that speaks to precognition and remove viewing?
What are these image exposure experiments?
Re: The past is not true
#69Anytime some even vaguely anti-realist claim shows up in a HN headline, such as "the past is not true", a bunch of predictable and dull comments inevitably show up to perform some table thumping about reality being factual and objective, likely paired with some sanctimonious moral panic about the dangers of relativism (normally with a political slant one way or another). I think these comments are sincere and well-in…
> "the past is never finished"
Very well said.
Re: The past is not true
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The definition of vehicular manslaughter is unlawful or negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in a death. If the driver was not driving unlawfully, such as DUI, then it is not manslaughter. Fleeing the scene of an accident is unlawful so that also makes it meet the definition. Other reasons could include speeding or running a red light. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vehicular_manslaughter
That still leaves us with the second part - "...or negligent". I find it a bit hard to believe that in all those cases the cyclists were at fault? Unless you consider that they were already acting recklessly because they tried to use a bicycle on a public street (I know a lot of people subscribe to this opinion, but I don't).
You can have accidents, even deadly ones, without being negligent. Hard to swallow sometimes, but true.