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Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by pjc50 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @08:46AM (#25406503)
> he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of

Correct. After signing up with the left-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War, and getting betrayed by the Stalinists, he was one of the left-wing British writers who could see what Stalinism was and wrote about it. The whole "memory hole" business is a reference to the removal of Trotsky from photographs, for example.

This has nothing to do with anti-maskism and COVID denialism.

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Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by pjc50 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:34AM (#25406800)
What?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by gameswithgo on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:39AM (#25406832)
Honestly i say this not to be mean but to try and help, it sounds like you are not mentally well. There are many real threats to the well being of the masses enacted by various powerful people and groups but masks and vaccines are not one. they are just the best way we know how to deal with a virus that is killing thousands of people a day.
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Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by dennis_jeeves on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:57PM (#25413379)
feralimal, I cannot upvote you more than once, pity.

Lol, someone once commented that I was mentally unwell, when I suggested that most people around us are nuts.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by feralimal on Monday December 14, 2020 @04:29AM (#25415038)
Thank you! I've been getting some flak on my 1984 comments!

On mental health, I still like the old quote: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

Cheers!

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by dennis_jeeves on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:18AM (#25418483)
That is actually a great quote. I actually have that quote ( along with some of mine) listed on a webpage:

https://realminority.wordpress.com/quotes/

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by feralimal on Sunday December 13, 2020 @08:57AM (#25406568)
If Big Brother hadn't told you about Covid, would you even know?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by wittyreference on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:40AM (#25406841)
I'm a physician in a hospital that has literally entire floor units - plural - occupied by nothing but dyspnea, a respiratory step-down unit that has become an expansion of the ICU, residents pulled off of every non-internal medicine training program to supplement the internal medicine teams, fellows pulled out of their training programs to supplement the hospitalists, and an ICU so packed that it looks like a bathroom at football stadium.

Eh, I probably would've noticed something's up.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by stordoff on Sunday December 13, 2020 @11:15AM (#25407557)
After spending ten days in an ICU (with happy hypoxia[1]), and seeing it hospitalise a member of my family for about a month, leave one almost bedridden for days and with a metallic taste in the mouth for weeks, and two others with cough/fatigue/completely no sense of taste, I'd've probably suspected something was up. Could I rule known diseases? Maybe not, but it'd have to have hit us usually hard and with an unusual set of symptoms.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-...

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by Enginerrrd on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:29AM (#25406759)
I mean, my wife is a nurse in an ICU that has had to triple capacity in the last 6 weeks and still has less than 15% capacity remaining, so, yeah, I'd imagine I'd have some inkling.
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by kardianos on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:25AM (#25407155)
So, like 2018? https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/

SARS2-COVID-19 is a novel virus. True. Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by Enginerrrd on Monday December 14, 2020 @09:46AM (#25418115)
>Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.

With all due respect, this statement tells me with near-certainty that you've never worked a patient-facing role in healthcare. The fact that you feel free to espouse your opinion on the subject directly related to patient-facing care should be a red flag to you.

I have worked in healthcare as a paramedic. My wife is a nurse. My mother is a nurse. My brother-in-law is an MD. The public-health policy makers usually have worked in patient-facing healthcare. My local public health director was one of the best and brightest physicians I've EVER met. He cut his teeth working on eradicating smallpox in his youth, and has remarkable depth in his knowledge of epidemiology. ...All of us agree that this definitely IS different than the status quo. It is NOT different from historical precedent though, and there are many people that are quite alert to these things. These same people would notice unusual clusters of patients suggesting a terrorist attack, chemical exposure, water contamination, etc. Just because it requires knowledge you do not have doesn't mean that experts wouldn't have identified this. Which, funny enough, is exactly what DID happen.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by ukj on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:23AM (#25406722)
If Big Brother hadn't published 1984 would you even know how they really operate?

(this comment is a tribute to https://xkcd.com/966/ )

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by feralimal on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:31AM (#25406773)
I'm not clear what your position is, but what does it say about one, in one can only see the tyranny in a book but not be able to see it in real life?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by ukj on Sunday December 13, 2020 @11:59AM (#25407962)
I am able to see both Orwell’s tyranny AND Huxley’s tyranny.

If I frame all dysfunctional human interactions through the lens of “tyranny” then I see “tyranny” everywhere.

That is how all confirmation biases works. That is why they are all uninteresting.

Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun...

The world today is less tyrannical (as per Orwell’s concept) than it was when he was alive. Only when you ignore all moral progress do you get to paint contemporary society with Orwell’s brush.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by mistermann on Sunday December 13, 2020 @12:45PM (#25408376)
Might there be some confirmation bias at work here?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by ukj on Sunday December 13, 2020 @01:18PM (#25408695)
Might you be responding to half of my post?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by mistermann on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:24PM (#25409869)
Of course ("some")!

The question stands.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by ukj on Monday December 14, 2020 @02:43AM (#25414504)
It stands indeed.

It stands a few lines below the answer.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by mistermann on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @02:47AM (#25440080)
The answer being...?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by ukj on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @05:40AM (#25441067)
>Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun...

Meaning... Looking for evidence AGAINST the very thing you've convinced yourself of.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by mistermann on Sunday December 20, 2020 @11:03AM (#25487153)
It seems we agree after all.

My mind was attracted to this particular idea: "That is why they are all uninteresting."

I happen to believe that confirmation biases (and their various relatives) are infinitely interesting, and also that there is infinite value in understanding them and their systemic consequences. The irony(?) of the situation is that finding even one individual who shares this belief is exceptionally rare, and I have been through an extremely broad spectrum of communities. This also seems rather interesting as well.

Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by pjc50 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:11AM (#25407054)
That it's not there or at least looks radically different?
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by 082349872349872 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @11:10AM (#25407517)
Well, the part about Airstrip One having always been part of Oceania is due to hit at the end of the year... (although I guess we still don't know exactly how, yet)
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by inglor_cz on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:26AM (#25407168)
If anything, Big Brother in countries like Iran tried to downplay the information.
Re:George Orwell’s 1984 through a neuroscience lens by _jal on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:14AM (#25407076)
Denialism conspiracy bullshit has no place here.

If you're actually so sheltered that you cannot see it, you should give thanks. If not, I have nothing but contempt.

Either way, take your black propaganda somewhere else.