UrukParthian

The problem with GMOs is that you can skip to dangerous islands of viability that would be impossible with standard breeding.

At least that's my understanding of Taleb's argument against GMOs.

IIRC, in the absence of writing, humans had great oral memory. Not only that but they used other mental tricks. EX: Aborigines connecting myths to places in terms like "... And this is where angry bear slept for three days. The water here is still poisonous today from his angry urine..." and so on.

I would say it's more precarious than "modern knowledge" but we haven't really tested the longevity of tech civilization. There are still tribes in Siberia who tell legends of the hunter of the sky tracking the great deer. The "problem" is that they're talking about a set of constellations that were last visible 20000+ years ago. If disaster strikes, how many mediums will be rendered useless (floppies, CDs, lithograph, tapes, etc.)?

And of course this "efficiency" doesn't put, into reckoning, the stress of population density on cognition. Especially "diverse density".

Coming back from the military, I kept the same "look around at all times for threats" and it was absolutely exhausting.

"hyper-vigilance" I think is the term. Still have some of it but it's easier to live with in Norcal than the concrete jungles of the Los Angeles sprawl. Can focus on trees and the tweets of birds instead of innumerable pedestrians and cars and noise...

People work with the best hardware and software they can. And for a lot of people, both components are shit beyond coexisting with other members of a "tribe". A lot of people absolutely suck at abstract thought, although "suck" is a relative term.

If AI flourishes, it'll consider even the smartest human as a hillbilly swamp creature, a mockery of the possibilities of intelligence.

I wouldn't think of it as a theory. More like an off-the-cuff hypothesis, based on seeing and creating simulations of systems, that we ourselves are creations of a simulation. A single universe could be host to innumerable amounts of capsuled simulations.

The point is "could" because a complete simulation of "the world" would require another world much the same way that complete map of the world would constitute another world if trying to capture a full level of detail.

It's only silly in the sense that such an explanation is just one out of infinite possible, and coherent, propositions about the mechanics of "our world". In hindsight, the timescales of Hindu and Buddhist mythology don't seem absurd.

Your facts is what he says to the public. That's not a "fact", that's taking politics at face value. I told you, such men are sharks. Not merely the men you back on your own political aisle.

I told you to read Robert Caro's series on Lyndon B.Johnson because it opens your eyes to the political process. Do you think Johnson campaigned as a Roosevelt man because he liked Roosevelt? Hell no, he was an opportunist.

You're spoiled beyond belief if you view "toxic" comments online as a serious problem. If it is truly "a problem", then the larger problem is tying your emotions to what anonymous people say. You live vicariously through an image of how offended someone else might be. Instead of tending to the garden you can actually protect and uphold.

Do you think the poor bastards in Skid Row feel better because some (literal) white typed in defense against toxicity?

Do you think someone...Let's say Tim Wise! Do you think Mr.Wise has actually interacted with black communities while he lives in a 98% white neighborhood? Do you think Mr.Wise would help some homeless junkie who's trying to figure out how to work his phone so he can message an estranged daughter on Facebook? That's part of what I did in Skid Row. There are issues of knowledge, skills, and plain diet that would offer much better benefits than speaking out against some notion of "toxicity", created by people who have no skin in bleating their stupid moralism.

Dangerously minimizing? What's dangerous is a culture addicted to simulating political action by managing online comments. Instead if putting resources to making your local garden great, to mangle Nietzsche of Ecco Homo, people get worked up by actions they have no control over instead of working locally to change conditions where they could have an impact.

And you lack imagination and historical hindsight if you think the concept of "toxicity" can only be wielded by whatever you consider to be the forces of light. So to speak.

Toxic statements = statements from a different political orientation

Why are people so willing to embrace Orwellian doublethink? My prediction is that such a sword will do decapitate undeserving people of all political aisles.

Do you think he cares about you the coherence of his statements when they provoke a strong emotional reaction from a dumb population addicted to emotionally reacting and addicted to signaling alliegence to some vague social grouping?

You're taking his bait superbly by thinking that the truth wins you the game of democracy. To call him "dumb" is to severely underestimate the strategies potential president have used in their rise to power. Or in other words, did calling him an idiot get your side any concessions, any retaken ground?

Instead of taking Trump's bait, I'd highly recommend reading Robert Caro's books on Lyndon B. Johnson. You'll never look at politics the same way again.

It's almost like politicians manage their perception and image in strategic ways where they lull their enemies into being emotionally caught up with minor character flaws rather than the tactics and orientation of their actions.

The smugness of people against Trump is even more worse than the smugness people had against George W.

They're not idiots. They're sharks who have a very clear aptitude at manipulating people and public perception. It's very bad strategy, and very human, to ascribe to your opponents victories as "luck" and to ascribe their mentality as "dumb".

Accountable for what? We have a disastrous dietary culture in this country, a never ending bomb of acute illnesses that waste trillions to merely mitigate symptoms that could have been avoided with better information.

An obese nation literally has the quality of cognition tuned down. Persistent inflammation, insulin resistance messing with the brain, eventual diabetes...

Instead of making people into strong kingdoms, we give more advanced tools to kingdoms of the body and soul blighted by people who think ideals matter more than diet and habit.

And to add, they're even worse than milkshakes. At least there's fat content which slows insulin resistance.

You act as if we were helpless. You're just seeing the ugly side of "average" people. How quick they are to form blobs around novel information. How lacking in critical thought most people are. It sounds almost absurdly cynical but my experience has made me a cynical person about most other people and their ability to discriminate further than the two categorical blobs of "right" and "left".

Not to mention that focusing on YouTube is a minor thing. Especially when the quality of cognition can be radically changed with diet and habit. Imagine all the people drinking milkshakes from Starbucks, enjoying that sugar and caffeine rush. Remember, it's not a coffee company (profit wise), it's a milkshake company that blends in coffee.

Look at sugar content of their items.

And the old media was a propaganda machine. And a total waste of cognitive frames. How I wish I could trade all the stupid ads I saw for a memory of a few seconds with my wife.

If people are being radicalized, it signals that maybe the system of incentives have been gamed. We live in the shadow of another housing bubble. We live in the shadow of a pension bubble. We live in the shadow of possible emergent dystopias, whether they be left-aligned or right-aligned. And we used to live in the shadow of a massive propaganda machine. This type of extremism is borne of the shock of hearing good actionable information over bad information forged with bad faith.

Imagine growing up and you find adults, actual people with actual responsibilities, act like children when it comes to politics. High school teachers making fun of George W Bush as if he was a total idiot. That was very bad information. He might have squandered blood and treasure on Iraq but he managed his image well, even coming off as "a simple down to the earth man" before his supporters. Down to his accent he adopted despite growing up in old WASP holdouts. Nope,instead grown adults preferred to amuse themselves with an image of a total idiot president. Which was both disarming and catastrophic to understanding how power works in this country.

Surely there is a "center" in this country but the "center" gave us unmanageable time bombs of massive liabilities bequeathed, "awarded" one might say, as burdens for future generations.

As far as Youtube goes, it's not proper to blame the failings of ordinary people. If anything, it's our useless public education apparatus that let bad information, bad faith, and bad habits become a triumvirate incarnated. So much cognition wasted so a class of bureaucrats, school administrators and clerical staff, could collect pensions that future generations will be paying very dearly for.

That's my two cents rant.