Read a story in my news feed this morning about a foiled terrorist plot to poison 400 people at a Hindu temple near Mumbai. After initial shock and outrage my thought is, what am I supposed to do with this information? If I were a Hindu, should I start fearing Muslims I come across as potential terrorists? That's not reasonable because there are close to 2 billion Muslims, so even a terrorist attack every day wouldn't warrant that. It's like how America has too many mass shootings, yet it would be crazy to suspect everyone around me as a potential shooter just because they are American.
Same thing any time I watch or read news, I'm not sure what the information is good for besides context for understanding things. Very little of it changes my actions. I still believe that being well informed is a good thing yet it's hard to articulate why. The reasons are obvious for people who have power and influence, but less so for those who don't. I think trying to understand the world is fun for its own sake, but it doesn't necessarily lead to power. Sometimes it even seems like the ignorant tend to have all the power while the knowledgeable waffle about in obscurity or extreme specialization.
Just consider that there are some crazy people out there, which while unfortunate, is thankfully a small portion of the world population so things like this are out of the norm. There are around 7 billion people on the planet so imagine just how much stuff goes on that you aren't privy to. For instance, I read an article the other day that something like 130+ villages in India hadn't had a single girl birth in months which was perplexing. Either something was going on or there was some data error somewhere. There's a lot of these kinds of news out there.
IMO, it's best to stay informed even if the news shatters your own reality. Being ignorant in this day and age is not an excuse though granted, you are only able to digest so much between the struggles of daily life.
"A little learning is a dangerous thing ; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring : There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again." --Alexander Pope
The best thing to do is to consider everything from the reference point of population statistics and causation.
On July 30 2019 02:22 Starlightsun wrote: I think trying to understand the world is fun for its own sake, but it doesn't necessarily lead to power.
Al Davis used to give prospective employees a simple quiz. If you could have 1 thing what would it be (i) money (ii) love (iii) power? If you picked power you were an "Al Davis guy". This is because in his world if you had power you could get anything else.
In this day an age, when you see a news story, you should always consider its impact. You can start with you and think about how it impacted you and then distance yourself from this effect and study it - you may often find that events have the weird tendency to happen conveniently so that the emotions of news viewers and readers are swayed in a direction from which someone may profit. Then you should ask yourself, is that really a coincidence? But while we live in the age of fake news, you may often find that most news stories (unless you get your news from a nutjob source) are indeed true, so what gives? It's the choice of the events that get presented to you. The amount of stuff happening any day in the world is simply incredible, which creates the opportunity to manipulate your perception of the world by carefully picking news that fit in a certain narrative.
This is happening every day, right here in Europe. A better part of my (Czech) nation is scared shitless of refugees because every crime by a migrant gets orders of magnitude more coverage than those committed by the local population. We have reached the point where women are honestly scared of walking of walking outside because one brown guy raped a local woman, fully ignoring that statistically their partner and family pose at least a thousand times larger danger to them. But people don't want to watch statistics, they want stories and people who derive their wealth and power from abusing their primal emotions are fully aware of that.
There is nothing wrong with watching the news, but you have to approach them for what they really are - they are a tool to make you feel in a specific way. If you can truly reflect on that, then you can overcome the manipulation and derive information. But you should, in this sad era, never base your worldview on any information that you have not actively sought out - once something is presented to you by an action of someone else, it carries their agenda.
The news stations and Tvs are all political by now. So whoever shared this information had specific goals in mind. As for me, I just consider information that is known by millions of people to be useless. I advise you to refrain from watching news, reading news, anything with news. I feel your time would be much better spent if you instead read something, whether work related or to improve your mind somehow.
Good thoughts everyone. Yeah I hate how "fake news" has become such an overused phrase. It's true but not in the way it's being used. The best lies are when you take facts that are true, but arrange them in such a way, emphasizing here and omitting there, that you create a totally distorted picture. See this a lot with the news and I'm not sure if its sloppiness or intentional.
They simply sellout more since print media aren't the sole news source anymore and lost a lot of subscriptions. So they cater more strongly to certain political groups and overstate shit that isn't that important to generate more revenue and keep a strong customer binding.
And that's where knowledge comes in. If you have the statistics and the background it helps you to analyze the information you get presented and make a meaningful decision for yourself. Ofc you realistically lack the power to change the behavior of millions of others, but information still gives you the power to correct your own behavior, while having no information just leaves you guessing.
A lot of the islamophobia we see is because people lack the statistical context f.e., they lack the bigger picture and as a result can't make an educated decision for themselves. It's easy to think that getting raped or blown up by a fanatic Muslim is a realistic perspective until you put it into perspective and notice that it's a very unlikely event.
On July 30 2019 02:22 Starlightsun wrote: If I were a Hindu, should I start fearing Muslims I come across as potential terrorists? That's not reasonable because there are close to 2 billion Muslims, so even a terrorist attack every day wouldn't warrant that.
From an evolutionary perspective, it is human nature to be paranoid about potential danger even if the chance is small.
When our ancestors were cavemen, and they saw a rock that looked a little bit like a lion, would they run away from it? Let's say for instance that in 99% of cases it was actually a rock. Those that ran away every time would survive and pass on their genes. But those who didn't run away were eaten by the lion about every 1 in 100 encounters.
Paranoia increases survival rate and is a trait that has been selected for in many generations of humans.
On July 30 2019 11:30 opisska wrote:We have reached the point where women are honestly scared of walking of walking outside because one brown guy raped a local woman, fully ignoring that statistically their partner and family pose at least a thousand times larger danger to them. But people don't want to watch statistics, they want stories and people who derive their wealth and power from abusing their primal emotions are fully aware of that.
You are also committing a statistical fallacy by not considering the duration of time. People spend inordinately long periods alone with partners or family members where they are vulnerable to rape, but only very short durations alone with strangers in situations where that might happen. Factoring this in, it becomes obvious that partners and family members pose a much lower risk of rape per length of duration in vulnerable situations.
The same fallacy is used by environmentalists claiming sharks are less dangerous than cows, etc.
On July 30 2019 11:30 opisska wrote:We have reached the point where women are honestly scared of walking of walking outside because one brown guy raped a local woman, fully ignoring that statistically their partner and family pose at least a thousand times larger danger to them. But people don't want to watch statistics, they want stories and people who derive their wealth and power from abusing their primal emotions are fully aware of that.
You are also committing a statistical fallacy by not considering the duration of time. People spend inordinately long periods alone with partners or family members where they are vulnerable to rape, but only very short durations alone with strangers in situations where that might happen. Factoring this in, it becomes obvious that partners and family members pose a much lower risk of rape per length of duration in vulnerable situations.
The same fallacy is used by environmentalists claiming sharks are less dangerous than cows, etc.
C'mon, you can't accuse people of a falacy while commiting one yourself, it's just not right How is the time spent relevant here? It is just an arbitrary metrics you invited to reverse the point. Considering the lifetime-averaged risk of rape, no amount of walking outside ever comes even close to the risk of getting raped by someone you know, yet the amount of worry people show about it is disproportionately higher. This is really the same situation where people freak out about the dangers of terrorist attacks and incredible amounts of public funding is used to "prevent" that (sometimes with almost unbelievably low efficiency, such as airport security) while the same money could have protected you from more serious threats or saved more lives if used based on rational reasoning, not emotions
On July 30 2019 02:22 Starlightsun wrote: If I were a Hindu, should I start fearing Muslims I come across as potential terrorists? That's not reasonable because there are close to 2 billion Muslims, so even a terrorist attack every day wouldn't warrant that.
From an evolutionary perspective, it is human nature to be paranoid about potential danger even if the chance is small.
When our ancestors were cavemen, and they saw a rock that looked a little bit like a lion, would they run away from it? Let's say for instance that in 99% of cases it was actually a rock. Those that ran away every time would survive and pass on their genes. But those who didn't run away were eaten by the lion about every 1 in 100 encounters.
Paranoia increases survival rate and is a trait that has been selected for in many generations of humans. .
Perhaps that is so. If our ancestor cavemen were exposed to constant news and social media about dangerous lions though, I wonder how useful the paranoia is then in proportion to the distress it would cause. It seems a lot that was useful back then is no longer so in modern society.
On July 30 2019 02:22 Starlightsun wrote: If I were a Hindu, should I start fearing Muslims I come across as potential terrorists? That's not reasonable because there are close to 2 billion Muslims, so even a terrorist attack every day wouldn't warrant that.
From an evolutionary perspective, it is human nature to be paranoid about potential danger even if the chance is small.
When our ancestors were cavemen, and they saw a rock that looked a little bit like a lion, would they run away from it? Let's say for instance that in 99% of cases it was actually a rock. Those that ran away every time would survive and pass on their genes. But those who didn't run away were eaten by the lion about every 1 in 100 encounters.
Paranoia increases survival rate and is a trait that has been selected for in many generations of humans. .
Perhaps that is so. If our ancestor cavemen were exposed to constant news and social media about dangerous lions though, I wonder how useful the paranoia is then in proportion to the distress it would cause. It seems a lot that was useful back then is no longer so in modern society.
Yep, the evolution arguments are nonsensical, the society changes several order of magnitudes faster than any evolution is possible, so, nope.
full transparency when read the tittle i was expecting more sass
ok here goes nothing ..
i feel smart.. i feel powerless..
for what i can recall, i have felt powerless almost all of my recorded life..
started thinking i might be smart around 30/35, 10 years ago
Don't get me wrong powerless to do "x" "y" "z" not all the alphabet
Don't get me wrong .. i'm also a very happy dude, just .. i can see more than what apparently most people see .. and that has consequences.
Ever see a couple fight in the street? Ever feel powerless to help? seeing the kid between the two adults arguing with no end in sight?
Would you say it is smart to shield yourself and close your blinkers and ignore these things or do you often face it down?
When you are young ignorance makes life huge and tastier, when you grow old you become jaded i guess and lose this passion we all go through in the adolescence .. if we pull out of it...
i suppose no one goes through puberty unshaken or unhurt? No one goes through life without looking away .. at least once, for sure! But that does not mean one should forego completely the exercise of that strength .. that might! that allows us (or at least some of us) to go further.
Figuring out stuff like a detective is a pathway to many things?? too many things nowadays..
i mean just picture it today for instance .. to not look backwards dumb one has to be tech savvy (you must learn to swipe both ways) or you must text funny or meme often .. if you never do then u get isolated quickly no?
Knowledge is the essence of a concept, because it exemplifies so well what a concept is : powerful and yet always in the air, being juggled about like a circus act. We crave knowledge as an instinct until we are 4 or 5 and then we put it to use more and more while we grow.. so much so that when we get old we want more knowledge than we use, we get so much more than we deserve, and finally reject the whole concept from being bitter at not having the knowledge to select or even worse, impart knowledge <3
i feel every day you learn stuff
i feel every thing i learn leads only to more questions.. walls of questions.. a prison cell of questions.. no, worse.. like the bottom of the well...
This deep in the well floating analogy has served me well .. so i'll elaborate:
you are at the bottom of the well.. u are not in immediate danger or pain someone will hear your screaming if you conserve your energy well.. but you do have to shout your heart out "once in a while" .. in order for someone to hear you and for help to come.
This analogy is so rich it always astounds me!
The idea is simple enough.. ..
you will live if you shut up to conserve maximum energy and not panic (getting knowledge is often hard to digest and here the idea is that staying afloat is you keeping your sanity)
on the other hand, you will die of apathy if you don't shout and/or intentionally hurt yourself on the issue (you need that body to not lower its temperature and you need adrenaline to swim/float so you can't just wait patiently either)
you will cry for help and maybe it won't rain...
if it rains then the analogy becomes an allegory
(here i would like to add an illegal twit ch orgazum emote but i won't because "on tl tl rules")
So in this allegory you must know a bit about physics ?! every rain drop forced entry / falling into the water of the well will generate the equivalent response in the water in the well.. (archimedes stuff)
.. so if the water in the well represents your own knowledge (or human's knowledge, same thing) then every new piece of knowledge falling down in drops of water makes ripples into all of the previous knowledge,
furthermore you can cry or shout in heavy rain, you will not be heard. (if there is an over abundance of knowledge available and constantly revisited, who's to say if knowledge even exists as more than a concept at that stage?)
Take for instance the idea that we are (the human race) on borrowed time .. what do you do with that knowledge?
mmm..
tldr: if knowledge is a choice, choosing the red pill is the same as choosing the blue?
On July 30 2019 11:30 opisska wrote:We have reached the point where women are honestly scared of walking of walking outside because one brown guy raped a local woman, fully ignoring that statistically their partner and family pose at least a thousand times larger danger to them. But people don't want to watch statistics, they want stories and people who derive their wealth and power from abusing their primal emotions are fully aware of that.
You are also committing a statistical fallacy by not considering the duration of time. People spend inordinately long periods alone with partners or family members where they are vulnerable to rape, but only very short durations alone with strangers in situations where that might happen. Factoring this in, it becomes obvious that partners and family members pose a much lower risk of rape per length of duration in vulnerable situations.
The same fallacy is used by environmentalists claiming sharks are less dangerous than cows, etc.
C'mon, you can't accuse people of a falacy while commiting one yourself, it's just not right How is the time spent relevant here? It is just an arbitrary metrics you invited to reverse the point. Considering the lifetime-averaged risk of rape, no amount of walking outside ever comes even close to the risk of getting raped by someone you know, yet the amount of worry people show about it is disproportionately higher. This is really the same situation where people freak out about the dangers of terrorist attacks and incredible amounts of public funding is used to "prevent" that (sometimes with almost unbelievably low efficiency, such as airport security) while the same money could have protected you from more serious threats or saved more lives if used based on rational reasoning, not emotions
On the contrary, it is not an arbitrary metric but a strategy that is successful in the real world. Women who choose to spend more time alone with family and partners do better than women who choose to spend more time alone with strangers.
I'd like to see you practice what you preach. Maybe you could start off by persuading your mother/sister/partner/daughter that statistically you are more likely to rape them than a stranger. Let me know how that works out for you
Terrorist attacks are less likely to kill people that a lot of other things. But one must consider how we have got to this point. Society thousands of years ago was very violent and one was likely to get killed by someone else. It is this strong emotional fear of humans taking the lives of other humans that has allowed us to progressively become civilized. Loss of such primal biological instinct through ideological brainwashing can only result in regression of society.
On July 30 2019 02:22 Starlightsun wrote: If I were a Hindu, should I start fearing Muslims I come across as potential terrorists? That's not reasonable because there are close to 2 billion Muslims, so even a terrorist attack every day wouldn't warrant that.
From an evolutionary perspective, it is human nature to be paranoid about potential danger even if the chance is small.
When our ancestors were cavemen, and they saw a rock that looked a little bit like a lion, would they run away from it? Let's say for instance that in 99% of cases it was actually a rock. Those that ran away every time would survive and pass on their genes. But those who didn't run away were eaten by the lion about every 1 in 100 encounters.
Paranoia increases survival rate and is a trait that has been selected for in many generations of humans. .
Perhaps that is so. If our ancestor cavemen were exposed to constant news and social media about dangerous lions though, I wonder how useful the paranoia is then in proportion to the distress it would cause. It seems a lot that was useful back then is no longer so in modern society.
Ancestor cavemen did not have social media, but they learnt from the behavior of the other people around them. And the behavior of esteemed people such as tribe leaders were more influential.
This is a similar situation to modern transmission of behavior through social media. The only difference is that through the internet, linear effects can become exponential and transmission is on a larger scale.
On July 30 2019 11:30 opisska wrote:We have reached the point where women are honestly scared of walking of walking outside because one brown guy raped a local woman, fully ignoring that statistically their partner and family pose at least a thousand times larger danger to them. But people don't want to watch statistics, they want stories and people who derive their wealth and power from abusing their primal emotions are fully aware of that.
You are also committing a statistical fallacy by not considering the duration of time. People spend inordinately long periods alone with partners or family members where they are vulnerable to rape, but only very short durations alone with strangers in situations where that might happen. Factoring this in, it becomes obvious that partners and family members pose a much lower risk of rape per length of duration in vulnerable situations.
The same fallacy is used by environmentalists claiming sharks are less dangerous than cows, etc.
C'mon, you can't accuse people of a falacy while commiting one yourself, it's just not right How is the time spent relevant here? It is just an arbitrary metrics you invited to reverse the point. Considering the lifetime-averaged risk of rape, no amount of walking outside ever comes even close to the risk of getting raped by someone you know, yet the amount of worry people show about it is disproportionately higher. This is really the same situation where people freak out about the dangers of terrorist attacks and incredible amounts of public funding is used to "prevent" that (sometimes with almost unbelievably low efficiency, such as airport security) while the same money could have protected you from more serious threats or saved more lives if used based on rational reasoning, not emotions
On the contrary, it is not an arbitrary metric but a strategy that is successful in the real world. Women who choose to spend more time alone with family and partners do better than women who choose to spend more time alone with strangers.
I'd like to see you practice what you preach. Maybe you could start off by persuading your mother/sister/partner/daughter that statistically you are more likely to rape them than a stranger. Let me know how that works out for you
Terrorist attacks are less likely to kill people that a lot of other things. But one must consider how we have got to this point. Society thousands of years ago was very violent and one was likely to get killed by someone else. It is this strong emotional fear of humans taking the lives of other humans that has allowed us to progressively become civilized. Loss of such primal biological instinct through ideological brainwashing can only result in regression of society.
You what? This last paragraph is making me want to uninstall the game (internet being the game duh) i'm sorry but i got to use this again..
Terror is as bad as death some would argue, you maybe have never felt it yourself which i am happy about.
You .. and i know nothing of how cavemen and women fared, likelihood of you being wrong is quite potent, but again the part where you are wrong is to not have typed one extra magic word: "Society thousands of years ago was very violent and one was likely to get killed by someone else" the word maybe.
"this strong emotional fear" ??? from other humans ..??? i don't get it? maybe .. you should ask any one yourself if they feel it.. this "primal" fear. If they feel it.. then ask them if they could imagine it being worst?
Thank you for being interested, not so much interesting though :/
<3i don't think one needs to be able to impart her/his share of wisdom on the fly like voltaire did in his heyday.. the joke you get on the way home is not better than the one you got during the show, it is just a specific kind of joke, nothing more.
Anything worth saying that has not already been said is worth saying too late.. (if it takes you a week a month a year a decade to figure something out.. who cares? .. you should still share what you figured out).
Truth remains truth even if seemingly universally ignored (insert saddadface)
Sorry about the verbal diarrhea but i love this particular semantic question. i'll go in the corner now and shut the f up so, hopefully, everyone else is enticed and chimes in on this vital subject / issue <3
I think this amount of knowledge is not very useful to you because it is an extremely small amount of knowledge. You basically know a few superficial facts about something. What are you supposed to extrapolate from that?
If you want that knowledge to convert to something usable, you would need to delve deeper and read more about it, not just journalism but about history, economic systems, religious values, etc. Then maybe you have some appreciation for differences in political systems and sympathy for other people that could convert into changing how you interact with people or vote in your local political system.
When you just know a surface detail like this, it's like trying to speak a language with only 3 words. Better than 0, I guess.
Yeah the title was just tongue-in-cheek, it's not a good example of knowledge really or even powerlessness. I do read history and textbooks to try and get real background knowledge but it's a slow endeavor.
EPT
How is the time spent relevant here? It is just an arbitrary metrics you invited to reverse the point. Considering the lifetime-averaged risk of rape, no amount of walking outside ever comes even close to the risk of getting raped by someone you know, yet the amount of worry people show about it is disproportionately higher. This is really the same situation where people freak out about the dangers of terrorist attacks and incredible amounts of public funding is used to "prevent" that (sometimes with almost unbelievably low efficiency, such as airport security) while the same money could have protected you from more serious threats or saved more lives if used based on rational reasoning, not emotions 
