for some time now, this is a question I have pondered alot.

I was not unfamiliar with the slave history of the U.S. and knew it was a big reason for the Civil War, I became more aware of the current racial issues in America courtesy of The Daily Show and the George Floyd riots (along with binging Watchmen) turbo-charged my desire to know more about it.

and I read Night by Elie Wiesel when I was in high school and recently read Maus, neither of which are shy to fully express the horrors the Jews went through in the Holocaust.

And the recent discovery of unmarked graves of Indigenous children from Residential school in Canada have sent me down that rabbit-hole of learning exactly what the catholic church was up to in these parts.

But I think where I get stuck is I believe that everyone is capable of empathy for a fellow human being. besides the psychopaths and sociopaths, I think we all have an innate capability to care when we see someone crying or in a bad place.

And yet, those atrocities suggest that we can be condition to turn off our ability for empathy to quite an extreme degree? Is that something that can happen to all of us?

Not sure if this thread will be taken down as I don't know the potential for this to start a good discussion, just wasn't sure where else to post it.

Something interesting about the latest escalations in the Israel-Palestine war since oct of last year is that Hamas was the one who launched the terrorist attack which lead to the current escalation.

Israel suffered a loss and was the victim on that day and the following days, but since their actions in Gaza and Rafah and other neighboring countries, the coverage of Israel very much shows the govt of Israel as the aggressor. It's felt like a complete role reversal to me.

Makes me wonder if this is the first time this has happened in such a short time? You can say that U.S. did the same thing after 9/11 but imo it's actions in the Middle east did not gain it a negative perception amongst world leaders nearly as fast.

I have a quandary.

Suppose there is a coin that, when flipped, it lands head’s side up on a table.

Without picking the coin up to confirm the side that is down is tails. Could you ever know that it is tails ?

Assume in this world that the coin has a heads side and tails side when held in your hand.

Assume you cannot view the coin’s two sides in any other way than picking it up.

Is this just a variation of Schrödinger’s Cat ? Or is it more “does a tree make a sound if no one is around to hear it” ?

I often tell myself that I'm "already dead". I lost my ego long ago and I often don't mind looking dumb or making mistakes, because at the end of the day, why does it matter? We're all going to die and my existence will not change the earth's future.

Thinking this way has GREATLY helped me look forward to the future and reach true happiness. It feels like whatever happens, I've already reached rock bottom so I can only go ahead.

Having said that, ever since 2016, every year has been better than the last. I now have a good fulfilling career, I have a very good group of friends, I'm good financially and I have all the freedom in the world.

Why do I live? I live for experiences, I live to create memories, I live to explore, I live to create, I live to better myself.

So, what are your reasons? I'm always curious about other people's life stories.

Neuro-sama is a popular AI VTuber created by vedal987. Recently Vedal had debate with Neuro about whether they were sentient and deserved rights and lost badly clip. They have since had a follow up debate where vedal still lost but not as bad clip.

Now wining or losing a debate doesn't mean anything, currently Neuro is not sentient or conscious and is still just a chatbot but seeing these debates has got me thinking and I figured here would be a good place to have a discussion.

How do we determine when AI becomes conscious or sentient?
What role do emotions play in consciousness?
What rights should such an AI have? How do we determine when they should get rights?

If you love language, etymology, or just plain collecting interesting words, where do you look to feed your interest? I’ve seen many RobWords (YouTube) posts here, and I really like his content. I also love the traditional word hunt through reading authors like Dickens.

In addition to “where do you look?”, what does your hobby look like? Do you keep lists of words that you review and learn about? Do you make effort to include your newly found words in writing or conversation? I have the (probably very annoying) habit of interrupting a conversation to say, “you know, there is an interesting word for that!”. What else do you do?

I hope this question will become clear by the following example:

When I state "Mother's Cooking," As a native English speaker, to me the sentence fragment is read kind of "in order" so to speak, each word being read in the order it is presented for me to understand the sentence.

However, when this sentence fragment is translated to Chinese, it becomes:

妈妈 做 的 菜
māma zuò de cài

Which I literally translate to:

"Mother's cooking of Dish"

and in practice I begin to learn to look for the phrase after "de" then "go back" to the "māma zuò" to figure out the whole sentence. Does this make sense? I have to go to the end of the sentence and then refer back to the part "in front" of it so to speak?

What is going on here, and is this perceived as such by native speakers? Do all native speakers feel like their language flows linearly ? I think I read somewhere that some languages start their sentences with the verbs at the front of the sentence (Arabic?)

I'm hoping that a linguist will be able to explain to me what phenomenon I'm experiencing.

Thanks in advance!

Source for sentence/grammar