Re:We Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction
by yesenadam on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @03:11AM
(#16418631)
Gee..I got maybe 1/3 through. Half of that was breathless warnings of how revolutionary what was to come was, how I needed to be ready etc etc.. Then every sentence was a reference to some book or other, mostly dragged in with no good reason, except that the cloth of this writing is woven from other peoples' thoughts, as you're reminded once or twice every sentence, with exactly who that is and where they said it—so very tiresome. Too much reading, no thinking. And mainly some 1980 book on fossil fuels? I was once deeply into the critical theory guys, and many of the others mentioned, and this seems like someone from that place trying to peer far out to a position..that's virtually mainstream these days, but he's so covered in books it's hard for him to see anything. And he thinks it's all so sophisticated and advanced because every sentence refers to another book. Nuh-uh.
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Re:We Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction
by alexey_denisov on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @07:21AM
(#16419786)
Well, I have Ph.D. in Physics, and what he says makes a lot of sense to me. And I did experiements and know that managing reality is much harder than thinking about it.
Re:We Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction
by yesenadam on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @03:02PM
(#16423647)
Yes, I'm not saying it didn't make sense—it made a lot of sense, common sense even—just dressed up painfully in erudition. Every commonplace thought (every sentence) was dragged in as a quote from a different writer. Edit out all the name-dropping and not much would be left.[0] When I was 15 I would have been fooled, impressed, but the Emperor's nakedness is now painfully obvious to me.
'A mountain had gone into labour and was groaning terribly. Such rumours excited great expectations all over the country. In the end, however, the mountain gave birth to a mouse.'
[0] I haven't seen anything nearly so bad in critical theory-type philosophy, but in, say, post-modern writing and the art world, it's not uncommon. That's why the Sokal hoax worked.
Re:We Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction
by alexey_denisov on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @04:48AM
(#16428220)
I agree that this thought could be presented better. On the other hand it is the first time that I see an important long-term idea came to the top of Hacker News. (Not staying long though.)