One of the favorite subjects of horror sci-fi — right up there with aliens, deadly asteroids and the machines taking over — has always been the deadly pandemic.

One of the things I'm surprised at, is how close so many of those old sci-fi books and movies were. No, there are no zombies (...yet), no enraged psycho-killer chimps ... but on so many of the basics — how it spreads, the incredibly widespread piles of misinformation, all the ancillary political BS, right along with the courageous healthcare workers and medical researchers out there on the front lines, battling for a cure before it's too late ...

and etc.

How about a discussion thread to compare and contrast what the sci-fi got right, and wrong?

ETA: Alternatively, if we've already had this conversation and I just missed it, somebody please point me in the right direction, and then never mind about this thread?

Hey gang!

So it has been a minute! I alluded to my plan to venture off into the woods in prior posts but didn't go into too much detail. Any who, I'm back but not on my own accord.

The reason I ask this question is because it just happened to me. I've struggled with depression and anxiety for going on 15 years, I've talked to a lot of people about it, gotten help, and received a lot of support over the years. I have never had it blow back in my face like it just did. Super long story kind of short:

• I want to offer some context here, that not more than a week prior, my organization had a "getting vulnerable" meeting whereby we were asked (but not required) to share some information about ourselves with our crews. Crews worked and lived together in remote back country settings for months at a time, to be honest it went pretty well. I did not open up too much at the time as I had just met everybody, but eventually I got more comfortable.
• I told the wrong person at my work, my direct supervisor (I was in no danger at any point during my employment, this information was given in a contextual fashion. Because we work so closely together for weeks at a time and also live together, these types of things tend to come out.)
• They told the wrong people (management).
• I was talked to for 5 hours in a closed door meeting with the top brass of the organization (read: interrogated and asked to give a comprehensive psychological background, even though I had already given them a topical briefing during the hiring process.)
• I was pulled out of the field for liability reasons (I openly objected to this, saying that said field was best for my mental health.)
• I was placed on an "in-town" crew that I did not want to join (I openly objected to this as well.)
• I tried to exist on the new crew, but found it immediately and chronically untenable. My new coworkers were OK people, but the stark contrast in personalities between my old and new crew was jarring. Given our line and nature of work, this is super important and there's no way top brass didn't know about this. I voiced this and once again requested to be placed back in the back country at a base camp, I was ignored.
• My mental health began to catch up to me. I did not like my position in life or at work, having to live in the city which is something I came out here to entirely avoid was crushing any and all morale I tried to work up.
• The writing was on the wall. I didn't like it there anymore, and my employer didn't seem to care (despite their claims) about where I was within the organization.
• I voluntarily resigned due to mental health reasons rather than just walk out. The urge to entirely burn this bridge and emphatically explain to them why what they did was so improper was incredibly strong, but I decided not to. This organization is a big name in our field and the field isn't all that big, they stated that I'd be welcome back, I'd sooner clean a peanut butter covered shag carpet with my tongue.

The general mood and sentiment during all of my conversations with staff members could be described as tense. The way in which I was treated during all of those meetings was as though I was a conglomeration of suicidal, homicidal and a direct threat to anybody near me. I could literally see their brains doing very careful dance numbers as they walked over what they thought were eggshells, when at no point was that the case in my view. Their actions, disguised as being motivated by empathy, came straight out of the Harvard Business School of Cover Your Ass. At one point they mentioned they had a psychologist on retainer that they were consulting. I have seen so many damn therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, shrinks and every other name in the book over 15 years. I have never met one that would ever make any absolute statements or suggest any concrete actions before even meeting a patient. Their inability to even empathize with what I had been going through was apparent. At no point did they seem to consider the human in the room, it was always "we appreciate what you bring", "you are a good resource to have", and the worst of all "we hear you, but..." Holy fuck the lingering but was bad. "I'm not racist, but...", dude sit the fuck down.

So that happened within a week or so. There's quite a few more details but I don't want to make the entire point of this post to rant (even though that's what it has turned into.) I am now jobless, homeless as housing was through my work, in an entirely new city to me and floating on savings. It's not too bad to be honest. This is not my first homeless (hobo, vagabond, rubber tramp) experience/adventure, I'm not financially comfortable (I'm on borrowed time) but I'm not broke and honestly I'm in a good place mentally. I've been camping in the woods and I've got everything I need to survive. I'm even super involved in a local activist group, if that's any testament to how comfortable I've become in my current position.

So, does this sound familiar to anybody here? Have you been discriminated against in this fashion? How'd you react? Cope? Where did you go from there? I'd like to hear from others to simply know I'm not alone in this bullshit. I've been in support groups for mental health, and other reasons, but I've never realized the need for this subset of people to seek support. It's been 10 days now and I'm honestly still in shock.

Feel free to get as vulnerable as you want, I won't tell your fucking inept boss.

Tildes has had a couple of threads about podcast recommendations in the past, but most of them are over 18 months old now, and podcasts are always evolving, and we have new members who may not have participated in those threads before—I certainly only picked up podcasts in the last few months.

So. Three questions!

• What podcasts are you listening to?
• What podcasts have you dropped, or picked up, in that time?
• If you had to recommend a couple of podcasts to others, which shows would you pick? Why do you recommend them? Got a favourite episode?

My brother and I have been going at it on if a YouTube channel puts out a video, based around a conversation with either a static image or a simple eye catch behind it, can it be considered a podcast? I'm of the opinion that a podcast is a podcast because it's an audio file, in an aggregator, that can be downloaded to a portable device with minimal fuss. He's of the opinion that the content makes a podcast, and if all podcast aggregators suddenly go under, any audio files with album art uploaded to YouTube would be considered indistinguishable from podcasts, so podcasts can live exclusively in the YouTube space and still be considered a podcast.

Does anyone else have a take on this? Can I use Tildes to definitively prove my brother wrong?

This is a scenario question similar to the "You are stranded on a deserted island, what do you bring?" question. The following guidelines I offer stem from my planning and experiences, I begin my 4 months shortly.

• There is no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no cell phone service nor internet service.
• US Postal Service is available.
• It is about 45 minutes away from the nearest town and is located on United States Forest Service owned land.
• You will be sharing the cabin with several other like-minded people that you've never met before in a roommate dynamic.
• The accommodations are free through the program.
• This program runs a 9 days on, 5 days off work schedule. For the 9 days on, you will be camping along trails you are maintaining and not be at the cabin.
• Basic food storage (coolers), a solar shower, washboards and tables will be provided.

What do you bring? For functionality? To maintain comfort and/or sanity? Entertainment purposes? Keep in mind the point of this experience is to remove yourself from the grid, expose yourself to the rawness of nature and the elements. While it's tempting to say you'd bring a $10k solar/battery array, download all the things, and just host 5 day binge watching sessions with the bears, that's not the purpose. ;)

Tl;dr human birth rates are falling universally and globally and at some point in this century will mean a decrease of the world's population. The effects of this will/has been felt in stuff like pensions/retirement and so far, noone has proposed any solutions other than increased immigration and denying women abortions. So what should we do to solve this? Should we even find solutions given that stuff like pollution and climate change is man-made?

Many people have plenty to do just figuring out how to protect themselves and take care of their families. Others are busier than ever with essential jobs. But at least some of us are stuck at home and could probably be doing more to support the common effort, something besides avoiding infection and watching it happen.

There are many to choose from, but what charities do you think are most deserving of support, and why? What are good ways to volunteer?

Edit: LessWrong has a section of their link database devoted to work and donations

At work there's a project that was originally pitched as an automated system we would build for a new client, and now the conversation has shifted towards automating away some data entry tasks for an existing client. If the project is successful I would guess that some or all of the people doing the data entry tasks would be out of a job. And if it's a resounding success I would guess that the powers that be would be eager to apply it in other areas and potentially put more people out of jobs.

This project is in the very early stages of gathering requirements and whatnot so it's not really clear what exactly we're building or what my role in building it would be. But it involves a technology that's new to us (natural language processing) and often times I end up playing some role in a project that involves learning something new, even if it's just in some small way.

So yeah, I know automation replacing low-skill work is nothing new and if these jobs can be automated away, they will be sooner or later, but this is the first time I've been confronted with the idea of using my skills to put people I don't know out of a job and it sticks in my craw. Normally I love automation and interacting with new (to me) tech even if it's nothing groundbreaking and I'm just doing the plumbing to connect system A to interface B, but in the past it's always been in the name of freeing up people from tedious tasks so that they can do more interesting and more important work, rather than "freeing" them of their paycheck. So I'm finding myself adding this to the small but compelling pile of frustrations I have with this job and weighing it against the also-small but also-compelling pile of things I love about it.

Anyway, if you've ever been in a position where you were asked to automate away someone else's job, how did that go? What did you do?

If you haven't, what do you think you would do?

The mission

You have been tasked with the mission to kill Hitler. The mission is mandatory and you cannot decline it. You have access to a state of the art time machine: a simple Casio wristwatch in which you enter the time, date and location where you wanna travel to. It can travel to any point in past Earth's history, and it is programmed to automatically and safely return you to the present time as soon as the mission is completed.

You have access to all weapons available to humankind in the present day, but you can only take what you can carry.

You also have access to technology that will make you look ethnically German complete with Nazi uniforms, and a perfectly functioning universal translator.

How this thread will work

I will try to come up with a negative outcome for every answer in jackass genie style. Others are welcome to do the same!

I sort of want to casually throw this discussion out there, because I feel like this is something people sometimes mention in the same conversations without agreeing on it's fundamentals. Especially when talking about sites, like Tildes, leaning too much towards one particular worldview.

What is the goal of having diverse opinions? Why do you think it is necessary or desirable? Is it for a practical reason, or for a more ideological/principal one? What is the barometer by which you measure whether or not the level of achievement of a such a goal? And do you think it could produce undesired secondary effects?

To perhaps give a concrete hypothetical: do you think Tildes would benefit from it if we had more members who are of the opinion that the Australian Bushfires were caused in large part not by Anthropogenic Climate change but by, deliberate malicious actors (arsonists)?

Or if you disagree with the example what would your hypothetical be?

An odd question to ask, I'll admit, but I think it's worth asking.

It's hard to have a public conversation today about political or politicised topics because people will pipe up and tell you that you're crazy and your ideas are completely backwards. And the reason why people say this is often driven by conflicts between personally held values rather than the ideas themselves. As a result, these conversations usually end up with both sides arguing past eachother and no concensus is ever made; nobody is happy.

One of the more common reasons for these arguements is typically because one party believes in egalitarianism - the belief that all people should be treated the same - and the other one does not. It's particularly strange to see given that so many countries have egalitarianism as a cornerstone to their government and laws. Yet we still see many people trying to take away rights and freedoms from certain classes of people.

Regardless of any particular conversation, what do you think is the best way to convince someone in the value of egalitarianism? How do you convince someone that they're not part of a higher class who has power over another?

I've commented on explanatory frameworks before. These are the unifying narratives that we use to make sense of ourselves, political concerns, economics, and even science and mathematics. Narratives are accounts of connected events or phenomena that attempt to express the connections in an explanatory story.

We're often afflicted with "just-so" narratives that attempt to reconcile or explain the way the world works with little or no evidence, like claiming inequality of inborn capacities, innate racial differences, or the intervention of supernatural entities and forces.

So this is everyone's chance to tell a story, at whatever length they find convenient, which explains something that concerns them. Possible examples of story topics:

"Why finding work is a struggle for me"
"Bayes' Theorem accounts for everything"
"Political parties can't handle reality"

These examples aren't about me or my beliefs - I'm just flinging things out there. This also isn't a college narrative essay exercise. So just tell a good story about something you care about, that's likely to engage others' interests and concerns.

Conspiracy theories are probably not a good idea here; the tendency towards them is a dysfunction of humans' ability to create, and desire for, narratives.

I ask that participants in the thread refrain from attempting to argue with or disprove others' stories here, but they can become jumping-off points for new Tildes topics.

If this exercise is well-received, it could become a monthly recurring thread. Feel free to advise on better structure.

Kitchen knives are frequently used to stab people. This results in serious injury or often death. Most stabbing murders are perpetrated with kitchen knives, reflecting the huge numbers of knives available (most homes have one), and where most murders happen (in the home). (I'm talking about UK here).

Kitchen knives have a cutting edge and usually a sharp piercing point. There's nothing that can be done to make the cutting edge safer. But we can look at the pointy tip.

Pointy tips are useful, but we tend to find that only professional chefs or experienced home cooks use them. Most people cooking at home don't use or need such a pointy tip.

There are some companies releasing knives without the pointy tip, and I'm interested to know what you think.

https://twitter.com/JohnHMCrichton/status/1209095901102387200?s=20

Admittedly highly unlikely ... but also becoming less inconceivable by the day. She is 2nd in line after Pence.

So, let's just say, 3-5 months from now, They swear in Pelosi as the next POTUS. What does that do to both Repub and Dem Primaries? What does it mean for the next election? Does the US keep itself together long enough to have an election?

Heck, while I'm asking, what about a President Pence in 3-5 months. That's at least an order of magnitude less unlikely. How would that play out?

PS: Somebody recently started a 'what do you daydream about' thread ... so, you-know ... this.

@gergir mentioned the idea, and I thought, why not give it a try?

I'm a young adult from Turkey, lived up until now in Istanbul. Whether specific to that city or not, and whether about life, tourist attractions, politics, culture, etc., just AmA.

If you have anything you don't want to publicly ask, I'l love to help if you PM me your question.

Reading HackerNews and saw that some mentorship software launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20656223 and someone mentioned another software as a service that does mentorship: https://mentorloop.com/

Now I'm wondering where the mentorship for leftists and leftist organizing is.

And I'm wondering if anyone else feels like most of the good ideas that leftists have slowly trickle into businesses but in ways that can be controlled by executives/managers. Their "features" include these slogans:

Tools to Turn Human Resources into Superheroes

Don't let employees slip through the cracks
Stay on top of hundreds to thousands of mentoring interactions in a way that still feels personal. Check in on employee relationships, give them the right nudges they need.

What's your take? Is there a need for more mentorship and peer to peer training/collaboration amongst anarchists and communists? Is that realistic? Or is this something that we just need to be on the defense against and form our own networks outside these systems of control?

I'm in too much of a left-wing echo chamber, to the point where anything conservative or right wing appears to be 'evil' or not necessarily purely right-wing. For example, conservatives generally promote family values and the family as the foundational unit of a society. But this too often gets grouped together with same/opposite sex marriage arguments. Another point is small government, but that often manifests in deregulation in areas where regulation is now necessary (e.g. environment).

So, what does it mean to be an ethical right-winger today and in the next decade?

I normally never take reports of ufos seriously, but major news outlets are reporting on videos taken by Navy pilots and the news anchors seem to take it as a joke. Even if these ufos are just high tech government drones or weather balloons, you'd think people would at least be curious in finding out what these things are.

Around the office normally I hear chatter about the news and current events, but nothing about these ufos. Nobody brings them up. On discussion forums, talk about the ufos seems really sparse as well. Even subreddits dedicated to ufos seem to not care very much about these videos being on the mainstream news. Now with legitimate proof that there is something strange in the air, why does nobody seem to care?

What are the leading explanations to what these things are? One explanation I've heard for at least one of the videos is that it's a stationary weather balloon that only appears to be moving due to the camera on the plane moving. I can accept this explanation for that video, but what about the other videos? And what about the navy pilot testimonies? Is this all just a publicity stunt for History Channel's new show?

Do you believe that some cultures/societies are more 'civilized' than others? What is your definition of 'civilized' / what does it mean to be 'civilized'?
~
If you've studied history and/or anthropology then surely you've heard many uses of the term "savages" to describe groups of people that were considered to be less 'civilized' than whomever was writing that piece.
I was also just reading a book that described in detail some of the really horrible war crimes committed by both sides in the Sri Lankan civil war including but not limited to: raging mobs burning people alive, murder and rape of civilians, use of child soldiers, suicide bombers, etc. Please note that in no way am I considering the people of Sri Lanka as 'uncivilized', just using an example of what seems to be 'uncivilized' behavior.

An initial thought that I had was "huh, I'm glad I don't currently live somewhere where I could be burned alive based on my ethnicity/religion/beliefs by a rage fueled mob of people", but then the history of the western world came to mind - some of those exact same thing happened less than 100 years ago to many non-white groups of people in America, including some things even worse (read: human slavery). From here came a flood of other thoughts poking holes in whatever my initial definition of 'civilized' was. Plenty of things in present-day United States could be considered uncivilized. Yet one could make an argument that a more 'civilized' civilization might be one that allows many personal freedoms.

So, I want to ask all of you what you think of the concept of being 'civilized'. Is it a colonialistic-type term used to promote a higher sense of placement in the world that should be abolished. Does it have any merit in its use? If so, what do you think makes a civilized group of people and does one exist?

Businesses, especially in tech industry, sometimes have some okay support for clients, but in general the crucial things are walled off.

A simple example: someone in a company decides to place an ad and does that, people see that ad on YouTube, find it obnoxious, but cannot confront the original decision maker directly - they are unknown, unreachable.

Another example: many people used Google Inbox app and then Google discontinued it. Users are unsatisfied. Someone in Google, a person, made the decision. But they are unknown. A user cannot come up and ask them, "Hey you, why did you do that?" and at least get a clear honest answer. There are sugary press releases and damage control in such cases.

I understand that if many of us started a business we would want to wall our decisions off the external environment (users) too. It's a dilemma. But still, what do you think about that? How would you deal with this problem in a different way?

I've been thinking a lot recently about space exploration and colonization, and the big question that's been running through my head has been this: would I be willing to leave everything on Earth behind and go to Mars, even if there was a strong possibility that I would never return home?

Wondering what everyone here on Tildes thinks about that question.

What’s up tildorans, This is more of a thought experiment then anything else, is the impact of consuming calories more or less impactful then producing the electricity needed to power the bike? And I also understand this is extremely affected by circumstance. Let’s say you eat beef 3 times a day and live in a part of the world where power is mostly generated via nuclear or hydroelectric. At that point, would the impact via electricity be less then the one via calories? What if you flip the spectrum and you’re a vegan living somewhere that produces all its energy via coal and oil, how does that affect the equation? Thanks

I was just thinking about this. It has no basis in evidence or anything, it just popped into my head. Could using terms like POC that are catch-alls for all non-white races cause a rift between white people and POC? I feel like it has the potential to create a kind of "us VS. them" mentality if it hasn't already. Because it's saying you have all the races in the world, and then you have white people. I don't really have an alternative or a solution. It was just an observation I made. Of course, me being white myself, maybe there's just something I'm not understanding. I think it could spark an interesting discussion because people are bound to have many different opinions on this subject.

First let me say that I long considered myself an independent until I realized I always voted Democrat a number of years ago because I find they best represent my interests, so that's my POV coming into this. I consider myself generally liberal on most issues with a few exceptions (gun rights, against college for all, etc)

Some observations:

• There was much there to please Republicans regarding the economy, etc
• There was much there that I'm not sure will play well with Trump's base: economic programs for women in other countries (Ivanka's influence?), criminal justice reform, lots of praise and visuals of black Americans including several guests, seeming to waffle a bit on the "wall" - I think he reduced it to fencing, did I get that right?, he stated several times he was in favor of legal immigration (something his actions have indicated otherwise and his base seems to be against)
• We're going to make peace with the Taliban - that was a jaw-dropping moment for me and I could tell from the reaction of the Rs in the crowd that it didn't play well with them
• Democratic women wearing white - smart political move and I didn't catch they did it during his first speech
• Pelosi was great to watch. Calm as a cucumber. She had several little subversive moments where instead of immediately sitting down after clapping she shuffled some papers or pretended to read something, sending a clear message of what she thought of POTUS' remarks
• Trump's anti-immigration push still isn't focusing on any facts...sigh.
• Russia investigation was only mentioned once or twice so he didn't succumb to temptation there
• I thought this was by far his best and most presidential speech
• The Rs at work were not impressed so I thought that was interesting

Regarding Stacy Abrams' response:

• I was totally disappointed
• She completely lacked energy and I had a hard time following along because of it
• Kennedy was 100x better in his response (even with the excessive lip balm)
• I don't have much else to say...it was bland

What did you think?

EDIT: Forgot he announced we're back in a nuclear arms race with Russia and China. And what was up with bringing in all of the Holocaust survivors and WWII vets? Was that a blatant appeal to the oldest members of his base or simply to recall the last "good" war the US fought?

I've had part of this discussion today with a work colleague: under our country's laws a judge (there's no jury) may take into consideration the condition and general being of a victim of a crime when judging the perpetrator. For example an conviction of assault and battery may be higher of the victim was disabled/had a fragile constitution compared to a more "normative" able-bodied person.

My colleague maintained that this was unfair if there is no way the perpetrator realizes the victim's fragility, as it means unequal punishment for equal actions. Specifically he takes issue with the Eggshell Skull rule. In effect his argument seemed to be that what should be judged is the action and intent of the crime itself.

I maintained that is was fair because the judgement should be proportional to the effect caused on the world.

What do other users think?

If reality is a simulation, then why is evil allowed to exist, or why did our creators let evil exist?

I know that the point of having a simulation is so that we can learn about life, but why is it more likely to be in a simulation with 'real' characteristics rather than one where everything is utter happiness? Why didn't our creators make infinitely more simulations where people are just happy all the time?

Of course this brings us to the question of whether you can know happiness without pain. If reality is a simulation, couldn't it be possible to make people happiness with only the memory of pain (or just knowledge of pain) without actual pain? I would think so.

What do you think?

In lieu of the recent Gillette ad, and seeing as the conversation around it has stirred the pot quite a bit, I wanted to propose a conversation where we start from the very beginning:

Without yet talking about subsets, variants, or interpretations of masculinity/femininity (toxic or otherwise). How do you define it for yourself: what makes you masculine or feminine, or what parts of you would you describe as such, do you feel that those things go as universal descriptors or are they specific to your case?

There may also be some deeper questions in here about where you think you gained this conception (your family? your immediate circle of contacts? Role models?) or who you think best embodies your ideal definition of your gender.

I was thinking about the intersection of internet privacy and politics. You could even say I was having a bit of a mini-crisis. I like to think of myself as being pretty liberal, but I wondering how that fits into privacy. I was a little upset when I learned that Obama called Edward Snowden unpatriotic. I was kind of thinking that what he did was patriotic. Wasn't the NSA monitoring US citizens without warrants. That's morally wrong right? I think I would be pretty fine with the government monitoring someone if they had a warrant given to them by a non-secret court. I'm wondering if anyone here can give me some insight on this or if anyone else feels/has felt this way.

Today I got into a conversation with my coworkers about how cursive is all but dead with our students. We adults all grew up learning it and were often forced to use it even when we didn't want to, but it has been out of vogue in American schools for a while now, so most of our students legitimately don't know how to read or write it. Opinions as to whether or not this was a bad thing were split. Some people considered the skill unnecessary and were happy to see it go the way of the dinosaur. Life moves on, they said--and the skill was inessential anyway because students could simply print instead. Some even took things a step further and argued that print was also going to become outdated with the prevalence of computers and phones. Nevertheless, others argued that cursive was important and valuable for kids to learn, particularly if they wanted to be able to sign their names or read documents written in script (e.g. old letters from family members, historical documents, etc.)

The discussion then continued to analog clocks. Being able to read them is still technically in the curriculum standards for many states, but it's the kind of thing that often gets briefly touched on and then discarded. Because digital clocks are so prevalent now, many students never practice reading analog clocks outside of those specific lessons, and thus they never truly master it. While more of our students can read analog clocks than can write in cursive, it too seems to be headed down the path to extinction. Opinions about whether this was bad were much stronger, with nearly everyone agreeing that it's a worthwhile skill rather than something inessential.

The conversation made me curious to hear what everyone here thinks--not just about these but about dying skills in general. What are some skills that you believe will fall out of widespread use in the coming years? Is their departure a good/bad thing?

From the environmental standpoint shrinking of human population is often quoted to have desirable effects, and that's reasonable. But from the point of view of our daily lives and functioning of the human society, what negatives could we then expect? (I mean a soft decline due to lower birth rates, not some abrupt events.)

For example, with smaller population fewer music albums could be made every year than some time before, and people would maybe feel less inspired and satisfied. Less scientific research, less choices for relationships... and maybe other things? Would being more technically advanced compensate for the issues? Won't we feel ourselves in oblivion and romanticize the "numerous" past?

hey everyone! found this interesting post on /r/6perks, and i wanted to share it here and see what ideas get shared.

You wake up in a chemist's lab. In front of you is a table with 10 different-coloured pills. You may only choose 3. A warning label notifies you that taking more than 3 will cause instant combustion.

Which do you choose, and why?

🔵 Future Pill 🔵

You can see 10 years into the future or any time sooner, whenever you want. You can see any part of the world.

🔴 Xray Pill 🔴

You gain the ability to see through anything as far as you can normally see. Works at any layer.

🔸 Fly Pill 🔸

You can fly. You start at a slow speed and require time to speed up to a maximum of 100mph (161kph). You are not immune to low oxygen or harsh temperatures.

🌿 Drug Pill 🌿

You gain the ability to automatically be affected by any drug that exists as much as you want, no bad side effects.

❤ Sex Appeal Pill ❤

Anyone you want is instantly attracted to you, you are cured of and immune to STD's. Anyone who you "do" also becomes immune, and son on. Cure the world?

💠 Disease Immune Pill 💠

Gives you the ability to become immune to all harmful diseases.

💰 Money Pill 💰

You don't become rich, nor have infinite money, but it's like you do. Every time you want to do or have something, your bank account/wallet has exactly as much money as you need.

💮 Wish Pill 💮

Gives you the ability to wish for one of two things: any existing object to be teleported in front of you, or for you to be teleported wherever you want. Can only be used once a week. You get a free return ticket if you teleported somewhere. You cannot wish for other pills.

♠️ Death Pill ♠️

Gives you the ability to have any person of your choice killed, with no risk of consequence. Can only be used once every 5 weeks.

🌟 Painproof Pill 🌟

You are tougher than Wolverine after drinking green tea or eating spinach. You can still get hurt but you have Olympian-like physique, the skills of the greatest martial artists in the world, you are twice as fast, and your wounds regenerate very quickly.

Maybe I'm just not very well versed in this sort of thing but I couldn't find anything online. I've always been sort of paranoid that a company might not be truthful in their privacy policy. Is there any sort of law to keep them honest or do we just have to take their word on it?

If the cookies never stop being produced, then it is logical to assume that, if unchecked, uneaten cookies will eventually choke the earth, leaving us uninhabitable. What is your plan, and how long do you think we'll last in this cookie apocalypse?

As for some general rules, the machine is impossible to break, and it can inexplicably produce cookies infinitely without having to refill on ingredients.

I recall recently seeing an article posted that was related to euthanasia, and I started thinking about the subject. I see both potential pros and potential cons associated with it. For example, there's the concern about family members or authority pressuring an ill person to opt for doctor-assisted suicide to ease financial burdens, for instance. There's also the benefit, on the other hand, of allowing someone who is terminally ill or guaranteed to live the rest of their life in excruciating pain the option to go out on their own terms. With proper oversight and ethical considerations, it generally seems to be an all-around ideal to provide an "opt-out" for those who would only continue to suffer and would rather not prolong it, as a merciful alternative to forcing them to live it out.

But then there are some trickier questions.

As a disclaimer, I spent nearly a couple of decades struggling through depression and have been surrounded (and still am surrounded) by people who struggle with their own mental illnesses. Because of this, I'm perfectly aware of the stigma and subpar treatment of mental illness in general. With that in mind, I completely recognize that there are certain conditions which are, at this time, completely untreatable and result in peoples' quality of life deteriorating to the point that they become perpetually miserable, particularly with certain neurodegenerative diseases.

Thus, the question occurred to me: wouldn't such a condition be the mental health equivalent of a terminal illness? Would it not be unethical to force someone to continue living under conditions in which their quality of life will only diminish? Shouldn't someone who has such a condition, and is either of sound enough mind or with a written statement of their wishes from a time when they were of sound enough mind, be able to make the same decision about whether or not to opt to go out on their own terms?

And yet, as reasonable as it sounds, for some reason the thought of it feels wrong.

Is there something fundamentally more wrong about euthanasia for mental health vs. euthanasia for physical health? Is it just a culturally-learned ideal?

More importantly, what makes euthanasia acceptable in some cases and not others? Which cases do you think exemplify the divide? Is there something more fundamental that we can latch onto? Is there a clear line we can draw? Is psychology itself just too young a field for us to be drawing that ethical line?

I'm genuinely not sure how to feel about this subject. I would be interested in hearing some other thoughts on the subject. The questions above don't necessarily have to be answered, but I thought they could be good priming points.

Under the right inputs opinions and worldviews can be changed relatively easily, but what about the more subtle stuff underneath? Can a workaholic with a strong drive later in life become lethargic? Can an innately introverted person later in life become innately extroverted?

Those aren't the best examples, but that said my intuition would be that these tendencies are too deep rooted to be significantly altered and can only be superficially mitigated against one way or another.

If this is to a degree incorrect I'd love to hear some anecdotes.

In France, we all need two identity documents to vote, a voter's card and a national identity card (or passport). It is not at all controversial, even at the far left of the political spectrum. In America, people say it's voter suppression.

I'm curious to see what the public consensus towards the site is nowadays. They have been controversial since their inception, but no matter what you think of them, there is no denying that the information they've released has sparked massive debate around the world.

Why?

Quick story: I was in an elevator with a coworker I didn't really know and he told me a story of when he asked a stranger in a restaurant if she were pregnant. She was not! And he said he was so embarrassed that he had to leave.

I didn't get a chance to ask him, so I'm asking you fellow tilderinos - why ask this question at all? Especially to a stranger? What motivates this question? Is it really asking why someone looks fat?

Have you been on the receiving end of this question? (If you're a women older than 25, I'm going to guess yes). What are your stories?

I'm doubling down here folks :) My prior post was called-out for being click-baity and rightfully so. The title was especially poor. I'll try to do better moving forward.

I'm starting a discussion here because my hope is that we can talk about the ideas within the article, rather than the article itself.

Here was the original post for those interested: https://tildes.net/~humanities/3y1/mark_cuban_says_the_ability_to_think_creatively_will_be_critical_in_10_years_and_elon_musk_agrees

I posted the article because at it's core are several interesting observations/propositions from two billionaires, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, that presumably know a lot about business, and in Musk's case, a lot about STEM, and have a history of making winning bets on the future.

The article supposes that:

• Many (most?) STEM jobs will become automated
• This will happen very quickly; more quickly than we anticipate
• Creative skills will soon become more highly valued than STEM skills

There was a time when parents told their kids to "become a lawyer or a doctor" but after enough time we end up with too many people going into the same profession and there is more competition for those jobs as the market becomes flooded. I know anecdotally that's happened for lawyers (not sure about doctors).

I can see this happening with STEM as well.

Should parents encourage kids to pursue STEM but pair this with equal study in the humanities? Is STEM the next target of automation? Will creative skills be more highly valued? Will engineers find themselves in the bread line?

I've been consuming the darkness that is wartime histories from the past three or four centuries and I feel like I've encountered a lot of people who had what they believed to be justifiable reasons to launch wars against other powers. There are people who thought they had divine right to a particular position of power and so would launch a war to assert that god-given right. There are people who believed in a citizen's right to have some (any) say in how their tax money gets used in government and so would fight wars over that. People would fight wars to, as John Cleese once said, "Keep China British." Many wars are started to save the honor of a country/nation. Some are started in what is claimed to be self-defense and later turns out to have been a political play instigated to end what has been a political thorn in their sides.

In all this time, I've struggled to really justify many of these wars, but some of that comes with the knowledge of what other wars have cost in terms of human carnage and suffering. For some societies in some periods, the military is one of the few vehicles to social mobility (and I think tend to think social mobility is grease that keeps a society functioning). Often these conflicts come down to one man's penis and the inability to swallow their pride to find a workable solution unless at the end of a bayonet. These conflicts also come with the winning powers taking the opportunity to rid themselves of political threats and exacting new harms on the defeated powers (which comes back around again the next time people see each other in a conflict).

So help keep me from embracing a totally pacifistic approach to war. When is a war justifiable? When it is not only morally acceptable but a moral imperative to go to war? Please point to examples throughout history where these situations have happened, if you can (though if you're prepared to admit that there has been no justifiable war that you're aware of, I suppose that's fine if bitter).

Just got in a huge argument with my aunts and uncles who are engineers (I am as well) who don't believe climate change is real. Or as my chemical engineering aunt and my emissions engineering aunt put it "I don't believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant"

What are your guys family gathering stories?

This is a hard topic for me personally, so please be gentle. I am at my core an institutionalist and an incrementalist, so I tend to want to both value and improve institutions through incremental (bit-by-bit) change.

A common concern and criticism of people who are impatient with incremental changes is that there would be tons of unintended consequences. While that concern resonates with me, it clearly doesn't seem to resonate with much of anyone else right now.

So in this I feel alone, frankly, and a lot of the reason for that loneliness is because incrementalism seems to have been firmly rebuked by both left and right wing political groups around the world. Help me understand what's happening. Where is incrementalism failing for you? Do you see any role for bit-by-bit change?

The scope of this thread could expand to the high heavens, so please understand how widely varied the examples might be that we each might bring to this discussion.

I wrote this thinking about how people think that world peace is something worth moving towards in a lot academic spheres. It is being used to justify modern continued injustice and i have a lot of problems with that. I think that this more 'peaceful' world isn't that great of one if it comes at the sacrifice of our many current problems we face today. I look at few major academic theorists like Ian Morris and Pinker. I was thinking of actualy discussing both in more detail but i just gave their wiki sums for their books though i have read them becaause i was a little lazy. i should change that in a possible follow up but i wanted to hear what people thought about this before that. https://diogenesoftoronto.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/a-closer-look-at-world-peace/

Dear Tildes community,

this is an issue that's bugged me for some time. I might struggle to put this into the right words initially, because I have not studied either philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology or anthropology. Yet, all of those fields could input into this. I will edit this post to clarify things once people start commenting.

I will begin by stating the question at the root of the issue I am trying to explore:

Does de-humanisation of others occur automatically, as soon as we believe that we can predict their actions?

Things to consider:

• What is a measure of 'humanity'? Is it consciousness? Self-awareness? Intelligence? Empathy?
• Is it true that a more 'conscious' or 'intelligent' creature is closer to us in nature and therefore should enjoy more rights, considerations, or respect? (Case in point: Some countries will not allow performing surgery on an octopus without anesthesia, due to them being considered very high up on the ladder of consciousness)
• It is easy to conflate consciousness and intelligence. I think that's a bit of a trap. I have often looked at intelligence as a sort of "clock rate" of the brain. As in, you might be able to process information very quickly, but that's still pointless if you're running the wrong algorithms, or have very little knowledge to rely on. Intelligence all by itself is not a good measure of how 'conscious' or 'aware' or 'human' something is. Often, however, people tend to call animals more intelligent or less intelligent when they mean 'more highly developed', or 'more conscious'. The same probably applies to people as well.
• Additionally, among self-aware, conscious beings (humans), empathy and intelligence van cary wildly. Therefore, does consciousness, or even 'human-ness' vary? Is a highly intelligent psychopath less human than a much less intelligent but empathetic person?
• What do we use to assess whether a human is highly developed, or less developed / desirable? (Brushing aside the notion that we obviously shouldn't do so). I think it is important to look at what mechanisms have been used in the past to demonise swathes of the population, in order to discredit them or further some kind of agenda. Take African people during the slave trade. They were called primitive, less intelligent, less human. In fact, in more subtle ways this even happens to women nowadays. They are constantly belittled by chauvinists, for supposedly being less intellectually capable due to their gender. Are these all forms of de-humanisation, linked predominantly to intellect?
• What is this founded upon? Is it predictability of their actions? Let's try to go full circle. How does one discredit a part of the population? One observes them and demonises their behaviours (and with that, culture, etc.) The predictability of such behaviours is essential in this. You cannot reliably say that "those brutes do [x], how disgusting", without there being frequent evidence of it actually happening. (On the flip-side, could people be predictably advanced or developed?)
• What do we think of predictable people in general? Predictability has negative connotations. At best it's boring (say, a highly intelligent beaurocrat), at worst, stupid / less human (say, racists talking about another culture being predictably primitive)
• Is there an implication of people, or beings, who are more predictable, having less free will? If your intellectual faculties are limited, or you operate on instinct more than you do on rational or logical deduction, you become more predictable, ergo, predictability == stupidity. (I know this is a fallacy, but I am trying to establish why one might irrationally and subconsciously dehumanise, not arguing in favour of this dehumanisation or trying to defend it)
• Take our favourite pets. Cats and dogs. They are pretty highly developed and if it wasn't for humans, they'd be unchallenged apex predators ruling the world. They display complex behaviours, at times even hard to predict ones. But still, they are animals and behave in reasonably reliable patterns. They are also not able to pass the mirror-test for self awareness, implying they are not (or only in extremely limited ways). So, one could argue they are less human, less intelligent. Now look at insects. Even less intelligent. Even though it could be argued that some (like ants) display a form of swarm intelligence, they are still extremely predictable. (Except for, perhaps, the flight patterns of flies or mosquitoes, which evolution has scrambled into extremely random patterns to avoid them being swatted. But that's just hard-coded into their genes, not an intelligent thought process)
• So, once more. Think of someone you really don't like. Do you ever call them stupid for their actions? Would you ever say "here we go again, they are doing this again". Particularly if they are your boss? Perhaps it helps you cope with their shitty behaviour to dehumanise that person. Make them a lesser human being, to compensate for the fact that they make you feel powerless in their work. If dehumanisation is such an immediate and convenient mechanism to protect yourself from feelings of inferiority, or to stop yourself from being threatened (say, by a different culture), perhaps it is in fact an ingrained behaviour, which expresses itself on a larger scale once fueled by propaganda and political intent. If we identify it and understand how it happens, we may protect ourselves against it by elevating others to a higher status of 'human-ness'.
• When we 'have figured someone out', we are stating we can predict them. Are we putting them beneath us, henceforth? Are they 'less' than us in some ways? It gives us power to be able to predict, so it makes us more powerful than them in some way, so it makes them lesser beings in some ways.

Why am I bringing all this up? In my life, so far, I have gone from being very insecure, mistrusting and scared of people, to much more open, trusting and confident.

The more insecure I was, the more time I spent trying to prove to myself that I was somehow superior to others. Generally using intelligence as an argument (uggggh....). You know, like the goth teenager sitting in their basement, who is oh-so-individual and everyone else is so stupid and nobody understands my pain, etc. (see, dehumanising my past self right there, haha).

The more I started trusting people and the more I started seeing everyone around me as humans, humans just like me, the more I began to see how others still apply these weird dehumanisation mechanisms to make themselves feel superior. This made me wonder whether there is some kind of innate drive to do so. Try to predict others, or paint them as predictable, to prove that you are superior to them, because they would not be able to predict your actions, as you are so far beyond their capabilities.

So yeah, uhm....let me know what comes up in yer heads as you read through this, I'd be most interested to hear your perspectives.