5 ms·
Agreed, that was the essence of what I was trying to say.
by camelNotation 11y ago
Agreed, that was the essence of what I was trying to say.
- ethbro 11y agoIf you one starts to look at the things we do as a classification, then it gets very messy very fast. I work on magic boxes all day and construct intangible realities that spit out numbers. Am I still the same group as a member of a tribe untouched by modern civilization in the depths of the Amazon? What about the same group as Kelly Johnson? Tim Berners-Lee? Vint Cerf? Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce? GalileoPascalNewtonFranklinEulerFourierMaxwellCurie? MandelaDeKlerkMLKGandi? It seems pretty presumptuous to say "we (as a pan-global diaspora) have achieved great things, therefore we are all special."
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThe assertion is, that we as a race are special, right? Not 'all'
- ethbro 11y agoIf not all then how can we as a race be special? I'd say that if we lump going to the moon onto our collective accolades, so do we lump the Holocaust and various other genocides. My personal opinion, but it seems like there's a desire to overstate our differences with "other animals." Which generally seems like a prelude to exterminating them without feeling bad about it / trashing the environment / generally believing in our manifest destiny and right to same as humans. But that's my personal opinion.
- camelNotation 11y agoI think you're reading more into my assertion than what was there. Don't assume that superiority gives us the right to abuse (I would argue quite the opposite) and don't assume that regarding ourselves as equal to other forms of life will somehow lead to virtuous behavior (I would argue the opposite here as well). However, those are debates of their own.