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y'all are thinking of armin meiwes
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Jan 5, 2017 02:09
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i have zero tattoos so you'll have to seek your answers elsewhere god bless
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Jan 5, 2017 02:27
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i thought fry was a pretty decent host for british comedy jeopardy and it's not like people get offended at trebek for not actually being a human encyclopedia irl either despite his show being more formal aisling and vegas getting on fry's case for how derisively he laughed when one of them genuinely thought the sun revolved around the earth or some such was pretty amusing and it's a tone that can work for comedy imho, especially one that also blows an air-horn at bad answers and misconceptions - but i accept not everyone would enjoy that
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Jan 7, 2017 21:43
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fry may or may not be bit of clown irl but i'm just thinking of him as a host/presenter/VA/etc here, his facade of intellectualism as a host probably rubs some people the wrong way but at least it sorta works for a show that mostly just plays at enlightenment by focusing more on clever answers from comedians rather than doing it more seriously besides, tho sandi is pretty good as a host it's not like she isn't afraid to cut someone down like a tree if their goofy anecdotes/answers get a little too ignorant; i'm sure she's a sharp, sophisticated lady irl as well but since she'll do silly for the sake of the show we may even get to see her light a fart one day despite being a little contrary  doverhog posted:Dawkins hasn't just expressed some opinions, he's written books. River Out of Eden is the best explanation of what evolution actually is I've read anywhere. he's good enough that i know religious people who regard his scientific contributions fairly well even though he's a hotbed of controversy on just about any other topic
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Jan 8, 2017 02:57
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Pick posted:Nope, see, even with that you've already come to the conclusion that you know the correct limits of human diversity. That's a pretty good analogy for why positive-sounding ideas like achieving 'better' disease resistance through eugenics aren't really all that sound in practice. Falling onto words like good, bad, positive, negative, etc to describe genes implies a level of knowledge above our ability to assess the situation as a society and not really in a way that just reflects our current understanding of the science either. I'm speaking as someone with a relevant scientific background. You don't flip switches, you alter function (and expression) like say widening an intake pipe to produce a more powerful engine - that change does not sit in isolation especially not in something regulated like a cell where the same 'pipe' will often be slightly rejiggered and reused elsewhere despite having the same master blue print. IMUO substituting a known good for a known null is about the limit of gene manipulation for therapeutic purposes (I know even that definition could lend itself to abuse but it's not like that isn't an ethical question modern medicine isn't already struggling with anyway), so long as we don't get carried away here - for example there's nothing radically aberrant about average or below average disease resistance, supposing we could even identify and intervene in those situations, but functionally no disease resistance always warrants radical medical intervention one way or another and targets like that are much more appropriate for gene therapy despite potential consequences imuo. Pick posted:Instead of eugenics I think fixing potential problems genetically while in the womb would be a better thing to focus on. Imagine a world where you can just pop that extra chromosome out of the embryo and eliminate edgy also just produces turner syndrome
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Jan 10, 2017 06:06
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Pick posted:There are some real edge cases, like Tay-Sachs, but let's be honest, that's not the bulk of what eugenics targets.  on the whole but I wouldn't call tay-sachs or conditions like it an edge case myself, but I also wouldn't go full-eugenics on them either. I wouldn't screen the whole population to flush them out, I wouldn't legally mandate that unaffected carriers cannot procreate or can only procreate conditionally, or take further steps to pry then out of the genepool but I would treat affected persons asap with all the means available. My reasoning is that some disorders underpinned by genetics eventually already require radical medical intervention if someone just wants to survive and extremes like machine-assisted living can only take you so far before full deterioration. If there needs to be such extreme medical intervention anyway I'd rather use the one that strives for the least harm to the patient- a tricky judgement call but one I think most people would agree on here. I know people will argue around that, where to draw the line or whether minor issues also warrant intervention but medicine already deals with those issues. HGH is usually only proscribed to HGH-deficient people (other legitimate disorders too) but it has has been abused by a minority of, for example, mothers who just want taller sons or adults who just desire its affects on skin, hair, muscle and weight despite the list of side effects and risks to themselves or their child. Steroid abuse is well-documented and usually follows similar thinking. Etc, etc, etc. Ideally medicine will continue to expand to cover more serious diseases and syndromes despite the -potential- for such abuses. Society needs to grow too if it's to prudently regulate these newer radical forms of intervention, that's one confrontation that's a long time a-coming. Fashionable Jorts posted:We are entering an interesting future for humanity. Thanks to technology and healthcare, a lot of people are surviving previously lethal genetic traits, passing them on, and having those children survive. I'm not saying at all that humans living longer is a bad thing, just that we've managed to remove a very basic part of nature from ourselves; survival of the fittest. I don't want to nitpick too much but It's never been survival of fittest in the traditional sense, it's always been survival of those who are good at passing on their genes right now, under present conditions. Opossums are tremendously successful opportunists, resist snakebites and lyme disease well but also have a crazy short lifespan and high susceptibility to old age diseases like cancers - most don't live more than 2-4 years before falling apart. You'd think natural selection would handle such a major flaw (or have prevented such a major flaw from arising in the first place since this phenomena is an aberration in them) but natural selection actually don't give a gently caress so long as you can have kids who can also have kids under prevailing conditions. If conditions drastically change, extinction likely occurs. Natural selection just hosed you in the rear end by priming you wrong but whatever, something else will take your place. I wouldn't call natural selection basic per se. Humans have had reproductively successful inbred royals for as long as there have been organized societies, maybe longer, despite the obvious accumulation of rare disorders in the important people - that's nothing new but we'd certainly call the development of organized societies that led to that point beneficial to humanity on the whole. Modern healthcare letting off previously lethal traits like narrow-hipped women off the hook isn't really losing a basic part of nature that wasn't worth losing to begin with imho, some would argue that we still face a kind of natural selection anyway, just primed for modern living. In any case natural selection was never an optimal system for developing anything except short-sighted perpetuation. There are far more extinct species that couldn't survive the earth despite being shaped it than there are survivors looking across biological history. The rest of the post is close enough to science fiction right now that I have no [un]popular opinions about it 
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Jan 10, 2017 20:04
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let that be the last time eugenics rears its ugly head here
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Jan 11, 2017 04:48
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the first two were pretty fun, they kind of wrote themselves into a corner with the whole mummy gimmick thoMu Zeta posted:Yeah the nazi guy's face melts in the first one and the lion scene is in a flashback in last crusade. They are great movies and crystal skull sucks. i would defend the sw prequels over crystal skull
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Jan 11, 2017 17:17
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yeah I eat rear end posted:At least that is interesting on some level instead of the same tired old highschool debate class level arguments about eugenics. The main problem is the discussion gets real circular since some people don't realize the textbook definition of eugenics is much shittier than the one they're thinking of (or they don't realize the implications of having an authoritative body legislate who desirable people are on a societal level), or the inherent weirdness of actually defining what desirable to society is, or that the underlying processes that regulate the expression of a gene, and how that product then interacts with the rest of the cell, is a complex phenomena that doesn't imply mild changes to a person's genetic material to get the desired changes in most cases, or the affects of gene diversity or know much of any other relevant but technical info here. That's fine, nobody can be expected to be a 100% knowledgeable about everything at all times and we're all just having a light chat on joke forum anyway but it still invites discussion focused on what sounds good superficially. Some people like the -sound- of survival of the fittest without much background knowledge of what that actually means and then think that humanity is missing out, literally getting weaker, by not having local environmental factors dictate who lives and who dies anymore. Is it really relevant to modern society that we're not selecting for people who can stomach raw or badly prepared meals anymore? People that can handle the occasional poisoning by an animal w/o help? People whose immune systems can tank bubonic plague without any medical assistance? People that don't experience high altitude disorders? Is it bad that type 1 diabetics survive to old age now? Was it bad that Stephen Hawking didn't get cut down young and managed to have kids carrying his poo poo genes? The labor and ideas people contribute to developing society/humanity have much more impact than passing on a gene whose influence isn't even a guaranteed absolute such that society should have no vested interest in ensuring it has people of 'good' stock imho. People who are very pro-'only the strong should survive' should be the first to run the deathtrap obstacle course. Maybe as they're plummeting to their end for not being able to clear an 8 foot gap (above average ability, highly desirable) maybe they'll think "I sure wish I didn't care about an arbitrary definition of fit so much!"
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Jan 11, 2017 20:21
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Japan, however, is far, far below it. I read somewhat recently that something like 45% of adults in Japan are virgins. what
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Jan 11, 2017 23:52
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the article blaming anime and empowered women seems a little uh peculiar
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Jan 12, 2017 00:57
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hard counter posted:The main problem is the discussion gets real circular aw you know what, i change my mind there should be at least one place on the forums where people can openly discuss things they care about regardless of subject matter and i also do occasionally get on people's cases for not getting into honest debates with one another with the goal of actually convincing people about difficult topics even if it's a legit hard thing to do sometimes, ~*reaching hearts and minds*~ and all that; please continue having your eugenics chat (and bring it up whenever you want) if you desire but someone else can try to persuade jastiger now  
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Jan 12, 2017 03:31
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huh apparently even western millennials are having fewer sex partners than previously (the least since 1920) though one might argue that the difference between 11 partners (skanky boomers) and 8 (prudish millennials) isn't exactly night and day - but there is a sizable percentage of totally sexless millennials, not quite 45%, that's still statistically significant the articles i scanned blamed the post-crash economy and online dating which emphasizes a quick glance at a person's looks rather than the substance of their character, apparently that's boxing out the less traditionally attractive
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Jan 12, 2017 18:43
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Millennials having fewer partners is sort of an odd statistic to stand on its own, it needs more data for proper interpretation imho and I didn't see any corroborating analysis attached. It's anecdotal I know but a lot of my friends have married or are otherwise in committed, long-term relationships with their 3rd or 4th partner; most of them used some kind of online thing to find each other. It would be unfair to say that getting hitched after having fewer partners implies some kind of lessening of their sex lives compared to boomers. Could be that online dating is actually working for some people in finding that weird someone they get along with really well that much quicker. It's worked for the people I know personally. I'd like to see a tighter, more controlled study here. More sexless millennials is probably a better indicator that some people getting pressured out of dating because of current circumstances, probably escaping elsewhere. Whatever those circumstances are must be turned up to 11 in Japan.  Pick posted:This is also bad for the more conventionally attractive because it reinforces that they don't have to improve any other aspect of themselves because they can always get a new partner easily just by checking their OKC inbox True, as an otherwise desirable person you could probably go many years before realizing that you are the real common factor of all those sour relationships.
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Jan 12, 2017 20:11
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i should have been clearer but i wrote that using the indefinite you, sorry for the confusion!!
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Jan 12, 2017 20:27
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Pick posted:I like your posting by the way yours is good too  and i hope these aren't unpopular opinionsToxicSlurpee posted:Online dating isn't much different from dating services, newspaper personals, and whatever except by scale. People that act like online dating is some new scary thing full of monsters seem to forget that newspapers have had personal ads for like...ever. Online dating isn't a totally new thing but its accessibility is unprecedented imho. People as young as 16 can make a profile, thumb through someone's pics, screen someone through chat, then arrange to meet a person well outside their normal circle if they're within driving distance. Anecdotal yeah but it's how my friend's brother met his partner, they're obnoxiously good for one another and they've been together for 10 years now. Being able to date from a bigger pool earlier should help people find each other earlier, especially people looking for something weird. I think it's fair to say situations like that are more common than before and could be suppressing numbers, at least without other data to tell us what's really going on. You wouldn't have had many young people buying ads in newspapers or feeling comfortable enough to meet total strangers before, there used to be some stigma behind that (and early online dating too), but modern online dating is fairly mainstream and really simple - that changes things enough that 11 partners could go to 8. AIDs def had its affects on free love but one stat I didn't mention was that GenX had similar numbers as boomers. The oldest Xers would've been around 11-15 in '81 and they might've had the biggest aids scare. vvvv: neat, good info hard counter has a new favorite as of 01:32 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 01:06
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JnnyThndrs posted:That's my era, I was 14 in '81 and was right there in the middle of it since I lived very near SF. My recollection of the scary AIDS panic was that: I figured it was around there, I don't remember too much aids panic in the early-mid 90s myself except for the odd hazy memory of radio hosts calling for the destruction of all gays on mainstream stations. I feel like I was too young to remember the worst of it so I assumed Gen X as teens and twenty-somethings in the early 90s would've had it instead, that's right when they're acquiring pre-marriage life experience. By the time I was a teen it was reported that things weren't so bad so long as you always use protection, full loving stop. JnnyThndrs posted:I'd like to see the distribution curve of the sexhavers in 1970, 1990 and currently, my half-assed guess would be that most people have the same rough number of partners as always, but now a larger percentage of younger folk are nearly sexless, bringing down the average.  Until I read up on it I had assumed millennials were the most promiscuous since the casual 'hook-up culture' of their relationships has been a subject of discussion. Turns out we're just the most accepting of what consenting adults do to one another - I would still feel more comfortable if the study actually focused on questions like how much you have sex and the like rather than with how many people because technically a lot of the people I know are bringing down the average despite being in loving relationships. Def needs more nuance. Still, it's sad that a larger percentage of millennials are celibate, probably not by choice, compared to others.
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Jan 13, 2017 05:06
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i'm real sorry your creative position with tna didn't work out, mister corgan
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Jan 16, 2017 02:08
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most would be dead anyway because the whole thing has its origins with batshit crazy carny folk, like half of them from 20 years ago were just rednecks who wandered into (and out of) fame on a never-ending bender my roommate in college loved some wwe, he thought it was a hammy soap opera in a format palatable to the average nascar fan, i feel like that youtube short film wrestling isn't wrestling proved him right
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Jan 16, 2017 04:48
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That reminds me of an opinion that's got to be real unpopular maybe, after watching wrestling isn't wrestling I went through the creator's youtube channel; Landis is primarily a writer who works in Hollywood and has done a lot of short films, tv shows, movies and comic books and has seen the film industry from the perspectives of writer, director and producer and on his channel he sometimes does short opinion pieces on Hollywood, specifically the way and why of how it does its business. It sometimes comes off as a histrionic defense of Hollywood's shittier practices but IMUO it's really more of an overview of the pressures producers currently face as seen by an insider. The pressures are just things filming costs going up, gross ticket sales going down, modern metrics/analytics now dictating creative decisions, what all that means for the future, etc. Red Letter Media sometimes does similar pieces albeit usually from the outside. Other content creators also do it but I actually enjoy watching Landis' take on it even if his style of vloging is pretty intense, abrasive and prone to foot-in-mouth disease. All that just reminds me that I shouldn't take his word as gospel but it is food for thought. Aesop Poprock posted:That short film is really bad for multiple reasons and I only noticed that after watching it a couple times i bet, just in consideration of the number of liberties he would have had to have taken with the material to wring out a cohesive, slow-burn, 20 years-in-the-making odyssey of storytelling and characterization from the WWE still, i have to admit i had fun looking at something in a completely new way quote:Wrestling is also bad for multiple compounding reasons but I still watch it and know way too much about it. Like probably more than any other random trivia subject it's not really my thing anymore but i can watch it just fine if i'm with someone really knowledgeable and enthusiastic about it hard counter has a new favorite as of 08:59 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 16, 2017 07:53
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yeah I eat rear end posted:I also never really understood the "it's like a soap opera" defense. You're in your mid 30s, liking soap operas isn't really something most people would brag about. people aren't bragging, you fall into a soap opera spiral when you begrudgingly watch a few episodes for whatever reason but then continue watching because you're invested in seeing the resolution/outcome of a feud, with like 30 going on at once there's an okay chance one may capture your attention especially since most 'actors' ham it up for effect and the storylines aren't subtle i'm not really a wrestling nerd but in the late 90s - early 00 the company had a substantial amount of talent and a kind of weird charisma that made you want to follow the going ons of, say, a giant beefy goth in either his title aspirations or in his formation of a weird doomsday cult, those factors helped make it the most mainstream it's ever been nowadays from what i can gather fans are more interested in following careers like the rise and fall of Bryan Daniels (??), an extremely normal looking person who came from the minors and went all the way to riling up whole stadiums as champion despite never being the kind of athlete the company traditionally backs (then retiring from injury) or more current threads like seeing if Nakamura, a very talent man from japan, will do well in a market that has never responded well to imported talent - there's also a developmental division now to cater to this kind of interest
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Jan 16, 2017 18:43
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Aesop Poprock posted:People used to be invested in the characters and the storyline outcome. It's also why I can't get too mad at Landis' liberal interpretation of HHH's career in his short film because at the heart of it he does convey why fans stick around. His use of models to depict wrestlers may have come off as douchey, he sorta is too tbh, but he is a professional film-maker and in his AMA he mentions that he knew he was going to stretch the facts and using women to represent men (his terms: contrasting iconography) was a deliberate choice to divorce his film from reality iirc.
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Jan 16, 2017 19:27
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Jastiger posted:Nearly every major change in history has been due to a threat of violence. Union strikes, riots, boycotts, actual war. All violence. It doesnt mean i want to be violent im just recognizing that a silent sit in doesnt do poo poo. Threatening to burn down the building would. To be fair the real issue with modern popular movements like Occupy Wall Street or whatever else you're thinking of (anti-Trump stuff maybe?) is that these weren't calculated, deliberate moves, they were/are shoddy simulacrums constructed through the mindless aping of comparable situations from recent history without any hint of strategy, adaptation or long term planning beyond protests = profit. Defining union strikes and other ultimately peaceful actions as literal violence imho misses the point of even using those methods instead in the first place. You can think of an effective protest working a bit like a healthcare worker who's dealing with a potentially violent patient. You clearly define to the agitated person what they are doing wrong, what behavioral modifications they need to commit to fix the situation, what the consequences will be if they don't change and how you will co-operate if they do change. There's also the extra wrinkles of understanding your exact relationship with one another and also establishing the rhetoric of your cause so more people can be swayed to your side. There's other things too like understanding your legal standing but let's run with the coles notes version for now. Union strikes worked back in the day because employees, through the way their relationship was laid out with their employers, could pressure the owners by withdrawing their labor to directly affect consequences in exchange for settlement. There's clearly defined goals (say higher wages, better conditions, etc) and consequences for not meeting them, there's the fat that this pressure can work through the exact relationship between the two parties and there's rhetoric that can bring more strikers to your cause (and rhetoric that the owners can also understand and respond to). In a more exact historical anecdote the threat of a popular protest, also joined with possible work strikes, by all-black workers was enough to sway Roosevelt to sign the Fair Employment Act in the 40s to end racial discrimination in the war industry through the FEPC because the America just couldn't handle a reduction in war production from the loss of black workers (and their the general support) especially during a world war. Again people were using the leverage of an exact relationship to ask for change with the help of compelling rhetoric to generate mass support. In a similar situation but from a different angle, organizing flash mobs of black people in officially segregated areas to provoke a police (and therefore official) responses elegantly achieved a number of these factors despite dealing with a more abstract opponent in the form of institutionalized racism. Provoking a police response forces an official body to act as the face of racism, making it bear the responsibilities of directly enforcing it, it brings to light an exact relation, a people and its representatives, and the exact source of friction, the Jim Crow laws. There are consequences in the form of ongoing and very embarrassing civil disobedience, or possible elective support of an alternate representative who would abolish those laws, or the general economic disruption of flash mobs hindering activities, etc. There's also good rhetoric here arguing for change, in this case either on the grounds of a promised constitutional equality or on the grounds of a universal equality between man as defined by the Bible. In another historical anecdote and on a much bigger scale Ghandi could essentially evict the British peacefully through an understanding of the exact relationship between India and the British Empire, in short a local population versus a distant colonizer, and realizing how the ongoing co-operation of India was actually necessary to maintain that status quo in light of a weakening British mandate for continued presence. Just peacefully not doing what they tell you to anymore was nearly enough for liberation Now let's look at something like occupy wall street, something that had a tremendous amount of support and a surprising longevity in some areas. What's the issue and what's the strategy? 1. Peaceful protests in front of important financial districts 2. Popularize rising economic disparity 3. ?????? 4. ?????? 5. ?????? 6. Have CEOs and the like feel so bad for your poo poo movement that they pay for takeout to your dwindling tent-towns 7. ?????? like hahahaha how did you come up with this, how hard did squint at your history book
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Jan 23, 2017 05:06
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btw y'all should be wary of electoral college chat and the like that's what got the last thread gassed since that stuff belongs in dnd/cspam technically
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Jan 23, 2017 05:13
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IMUO the weirdest thing about this whole chat (and electoral college reform discussion elsewhere) is how the default democratic position -isn't- we should broaden our rhetoric to appeal to poor rural voters who are obviously swayed by economic overtures, recalling that President Obama basically did so 8 years ago and secured 2 terms and at least one landslide victory and that Trump only barely eked out a win with a similar strategy instead of the much crazier the system now needs radical alteration because we're giving -slightly- too much elective power to otherwise marginalized areas It may not be fashionable in the current political climate to regard a cohort that's largely, but not -exclusively-, white as marginalized but there's still the very real situation of economic/social disparity that needs addressing and ultimately I thought speaking up for the little guy was the dem's bread and butter; you can easily have a multi-faceted platform that reaches anyone it can. Create a beautiful liberal utopia if you desire, just make sure to address other issues as well.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:34
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Ramagamma posted:Younger me would fight you about this back in the day but the older I've gotten the more I've realised I prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate. the darkest chocolates are the only good chocolates imuo, save for certain whites
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Jan 23, 2017 22:28
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Collateral Damage posted:Religious belief is a mental illness. That does seem a bit like going too far. Most people who really think about questions like what are the origins of the universe are usually also stuck with the why and how. For the most part the universe follows a deterministic cause--> effect scheme even if at the quantum level the effect is just favoring a certain probability distribution over another, from that situation you're stuck with the question of how a 'deterministic' universe can be the cause for itself. How can something arise from apparently nothing if we accept the big bang model as being the best explanation with our current understanding? Without going into particulars you're stuck assuming the universe has this apparently fantastic one time property of being able to ignore cause and effect to produce its own creation, a creation that came with a set of apparently arbitrary laws and constants that could've been varied. Alternately you can assume that there is a separate something that doesn't have those limitations that was responsible for creating a universe that does. There's no good way of separating a better explanation from those two using strictly logical methods. Agnostics live somewhere around here and sometimes say there's no way of knowing whether is or isn't a creator, or they say there must logically be a creator but that entity is completely unknowable. Atheists assume strictly no creator whatsoever while theists take it for granted. Assumptions everywhere. Of the theists most ultimately believe the Creator really just wants them to not be assholes to each other, while that situation is obviously prone to manipulation by people who think they can define rear end in a top hat to their advantage that situation's pretty ... reasonable? I can't fault someone who thinks it's their cosmic destiny to be kind to others. If you were going down this path you'd probably look for a religion that has the best take on morality but there's many other ways of getting here. Atheists and Agnostics are also left with the question of what to do with themselves in the time they have and sometimes that doesn't fly so hot either. Some would argue that life should be spent for the betterment of humanity because it's your only legacy while others would say since there's only one life to live in the whole of eternity, just live it for yourself subjectively and gently caress everyone else. Again that situation is prone to manipulation by people who think they can define things to their advantage. Some people fall into any of these beliefs because of the culture they were born into or their life experiences but you can also arrive here from a place of genuine curiosity. Either way sadbrains are not required.
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Jan 24, 2017 20:34
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Aramek posted:I just don't really consciously think about stuff that can't be measured/modeled. I dunno if that's incompatible with Faith or whatever. yeah that's totally fine if it works for you but some people just take the fact that they exist as the universe poking them with a stick and asking well why
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Jan 24, 2017 20:59
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Jastiger posted:Faith in jesus is a virus. Just replace Jesus with Zeus or Thor or Sargeras and it sounds crazy eh like nobody even tries to toe the line by saying Zeus or Sargeras were great moral teachers worthy of study regardless of not actually being divine as some people do with Jesus/Buddha/whatever tho, I doubt anyone'll give Thor even that much outside credibility e: i guess ultimately i don't begrudge people for being religious even if i met a neo-pagan/wiccan or something even though i might have issues with how they choose to express it in everyday life if they're going to be an rear end about it hard counter has a new favorite as of 22:41 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 22:32
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I like 2 and 3. I was on some powerful drugs when I played 2 tho so I don't know how much of its impact was deserved.
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Jan 25, 2017 02:43
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Ramagamma posted:That sounds like a hell of a time. the video game bloody talks to you 
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Jan 25, 2017 07:35
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Aramek posted:I got called a statist once, in anger, and I didn't know what it meant. So I looked it up and it seems pretty, uh, normal? statists are pretty near to totalitarians in intensity and the dictionary definition doesn't convey that very well - statists with an authoritarian lean go for fascism while socialists statists desire USSR levels of economic & social subordination to the one party such that stalinism is a valid end if you're noticing the term's kinda redundant remember that Ayn Rand popularized it so she could lump the welfare system through mental gymnastics with theocracies/absolute monarchies/other dictatorships so the punch-line is def still good
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Jan 25, 2017 17:56
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no see it's different when she does it, she was forced by the government to pay into it so now she's just getting her cash back it's just money savvy and def not proof that welfare functions as claimed
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Jan 26, 2017 02:39
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doverhog posted:We shouldn't be forced to work at all. Jobs should be hobbies that you choose to take a bit more seriously. while i am sympathetic for the yearning for star trek times and effectively infinite energy isn't this opinion a little juvenile, like even to fantasize about? just to feed your rear end, and everyone else's, a ton of people need to work very strenuous jobs at number of different levels; whether it's certifying that your foods meet health and safety requirements, handling nutrient fortification and preservation, handling some side of the involved logistics, or just outright working the raw earth there's a vast amount of labor involved in just making sure you don't starve or suffer food-related illnesses - the number of people laboring to meet your other requirements for shelter, healthcare, tools, electricity, entertainment, etc only gets more and more staggering the longer you consider how many human-made products you consume daily and the situation sours even more when you remember that many of these resources come from finite sources; ultimately you are involved in irreparable change, if not outright damage, to the entirety of the earth in the name of fairness, whether social or universal, it shouldn't be stretching things to ask that you make some significant contribution back into the world in the form of an honest ~8 hours doing a job you picked even if the idea of being nonstop forced to fight for your share doesn't jive with terminal definitions of altruism
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Jan 29, 2017 00:39
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Ramagamma posted:I took 2 weeks off at the end of last year and it was kinda glorious, I slept in till 5pm some days, I played a bunch of video-games I had been putting off (Hitman, The Witness, Dirt Rally), marathoned a bunch of TV shows that I hadn't got round to watching (Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Star Trek: TNG, Lost) spent time working out, learning how to cook chinese food and generally had a loving great time. as a vacation lots of new free time is an undeniably awesome change of pace especially if you use for something exotic that excites you but even in star trek times when there's no raw need to do anything anymore i think people would still want to be productive and contribute in some way - i can't imagine turning like 65 and realizing i've squandered my one spark of a life in vain, ultimately self-absorbed activities even if I could peddle it off as a life of enlightenment and self-improvement rather than chasing a dragon on some holodeck for purely vapid reasons sassassin posted:Most jobs in the world are pointless bullshit that only serve to make real, important work that other people do more annoying and expensive. i think the worst side of the intensely optimistic 'you can be whatever you want to be with hard work' mantra we fill kids' heads with is the implication that the only things you should want to be are things like astronauts, neurosurgeons, CEOs, etc, where the day to day life is filled with important activities - it makes it seem like someone has immeasurably failed if they ended up in shipping, retail, unskilled labor or any other rapidly interchangeable position and imuo it promotes unnecessary condescension like the reason there are always openings in those positions is because people need those jobs done in incredible quantities - if we lost half the neurosurgeons in the world a relatively small fraction of the population would be hosed, whereas if we lost half the people involved in something like shipping the whole planet would feel the belt constrict intolerably as all production became glacial, there's no reason to turn your nose at any kind of usefulness even if some positions seem more like rockstars than others steinrokkan posted:It is a societal problem that the immediate assumption of people is "we would just be lazy and depressed if we didn't have jobs". We have been so thoroughly worn down and de-socialized / atomized / dehumanized by the wage system and private ownership of production that we can't even imagine a fulfilling existence of living according to our preferences even when offered a blank check in the form of a hypothetical scenario. It's the ultimate Stockholm Syndrome. i think modern society has just excessively abstracted the original 'you help me, i help you' co-operation of pre-industrial societies via the wage system so that we're totally disconnected from the idea that others are working their asses off to make sure our basic requirements are met, i can't imagine just being handed all my meals, my shelter, my healthcare, etc without wanting to put something back - if someone were building my house i would want to give in return something commensurate in a hunter-gatherer society there's no way you could look anyone else in the eye if you were the piece of poo poo loaf who selfishly consumed the works of others while doing nothing of note or even making an attempt at contribution if you were able-bodied hard counter has a new favorite as of 22:49 on Jan 29, 2017 |
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Jan 29, 2017 22:46
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steinrokkan posted:Yes. At the same time having an income independent on conventional employment doesn't mean you would have to be a drag on your community. Historically an immense amount of communal work was done without any form of formal employment, and arguably today the sphere of publicly benefitial activities that need not be performed under a contract is much broader than at any point in history. The problem is that there are no communities in today's society, so a common reaction is "if I don't have a job, I must sit in my apartment, watching TV", implicitly because I'm just a guy existing on my own, outside society. i do agree that it is dehumanizing/isolating and definitely not without its flaws what i mean when i said the situation was abstracted was that things still technically work as they did in close communities except instead of directly giving your bud a six pack for helping you set up your sound system you perform a job for which you're paid generic cash which you can then pay to your plumber for his services instead of telling him you can help him move next weekend or whatever; the shadows of the old ways are still in the present system except with a larger, impersonal community but with more convenience - you can just keep on being a useful programmer (or whatever else you love/enjoy/tolerate doing) without having to barter a direct exchange of some kind but at least for the foreseeable future you would definitely be a drag on your 'community' imho because you still need things from other people and giving nothing in return is lousy if you're otherwise able-bodied, especially in the context of our current world where people still die from unmet needs - that malnourished third world kid would gladly do 8 hours of retail to pay for himself if that were an option the B. Fuller quote is a nice aspiration tho, maybe someday? v  v
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Jan 30, 2017 01:13
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in before someone says das kapitalsassassin posted:That's the issue, though. More labour doesn't solve the problem of malnourishment in the third world. if you're directing that at the idea of your own 40/50/80 hour labors being unable to solve someone else's problems that's def true (unless you're into charities) but it's also true that the absence of your labor would create more problems because you still need things but aren't giving anything back now if you directed that at the analogy: the third world having money from labor would to buy food would at least induce a change in how produce is distributed, as of this moment it's widely reported that world production could exactly meet everyone's nutritional needs but that isn't how things are distributed, goods and produce follow money, even money from charities & developmental organizations ultimately if something like world hunger is going to be solved, it'll be because we argue that people should work to feed others rather than arguing that people shouldn't have to work at all; that might be a semantic difference to some but it's a difference to me vvvv e: to be honest i've never had a totally pointless job even at the entry level but if those really do exist somewhere than yeah i see what you mean in that case hard counter has a new favorite as of 02:01 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 01:49
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i think we may now be arguing in a loop friend current wage/employment systems aren't without flaw and could use tightening at a number of levels (political, educational, etc) but we still need an exchange of goods, services, labor to keep the system moving because ultimately things comes down to the fact we're all of a single mutual need to consume resources nonstop until we die but we can all help each other sustain that when we work together, if we argue that some jobs are literally pointless then those just ought to be replaced with something better than whatever tribute to employment culture they're currently tied to e: sassassin posted:There simply aren't enough useful jobs that need doing to produce the things we want to consume. More labour doesn't endlessly produce more resources, there are limits. isn't the upside of more efficient production the fact we now have more free people to do innovative stuff that can contribute to society by expanding it? those breakthroughs in technology, education, organization, politics, etc gotta come from someplace hard counter has a new favorite as of 03:04 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 02:25
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Tiggum posted:Sure, but someone who's lazy and doesn't want to work is going to be a drag on their community regardless. You can force someone to get a job, but you can't actually make them do it, much less do it well. The people who are just collecting the dole for years or scamming disability or whatever aren't going to be good workers, they're going to do as little as possible and get in the way and make life harder for anyone who has to work with them. If someone would rather live on less than the minimum wage and watch TV all day than work, I say let them. It's really no loss. if someone could prove to a designated committee/other authoritative body that they suffer from a clinical case of psychological laziness or whatever i would be alright with that person being classed as disabled/unable to work but that's not going to be the case for the vast majority of people - most lazy people just need to grow a spine about taking on a degree of responsibility for their well-being instead of living a juvenile dream where they're still a 5 year old whose mommy and daddy will do absolutely everything for them while they play xbox, where they don't have to put in minimal effort to take care of themselves; if it takes someone undergoing the incredible odyssey of growing up to get there that's fine, that's a journey nearly all other people have undertaken anyway i would much rather live in world where the genuinely disabled are afforded a better, actually comfortable standard of living through the combined efforts of others than a world where that net's broadened to include the able-but-lazy under the same system that provides a sub-par standard of living for the involuntarily disabled
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Jan 30, 2017 07:50
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before we live in the pseudo-star trek times of optional labor i think there are a number of issues that still require the collective effort of the able-bodied - if we can't adequately take care of the involuntarily disabled with current means what chance do have of both elevating their care and taking on the lazy with existing resources? there are steeper issues as well of people dying of totally unmet needs globally where even modest contributions can make a world of difference locally, someone could make an argument for more ambitious contributions from everyone considering the involved stakes and inequalities either way, whatever breakthroughs in organization, government, taxation, technology, international relations, etc that would put those things behind us will be a multi-lateral approach that'll require the work of essentially everyone, whether it's the humble contribution of someone's tax dollars, someone actually making the necessary changes to governance or someone producing the physical innovations to get there; dudes checking out of work just because they don't wanna just represents another person to cover with someone's else labor
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Jan 30, 2017 09:49
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