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Wait..So it's confirmed? I swear I had no idea, and had no clue on what I was supposed to Google to find it. Interesting. But I'm not budging on the paranoia

Wait..So it's confirmed? I swear I had no idea, and had no clue on what I was supposed to Google to find it. Interesting. But I'm not budging on the paranoia statement. If your beliefs make you worry about killing random things you can't even see, say "bye" to any semblance of good mental health.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
Too many people who aren't "paranoid" about killing little insects even sweep the murder of humans under the rug. We also have no real answer to the fact that in a century, there might be no more insects, with all the further extinction of other species that'll entail. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 Even when we're extremely selfish and petty, if we take too much effort to take care of ourselves, that's generally fine, as long as it's legal and not too annoying -- but when others worry "too much" about yet others, and change their own behaviour accordingly, they can't possibly have "any semblance of good mental health"? Come on.. The insects at least actually exist, what of caring about random people that don't even exist yet, wouldn't that be even crazier? > Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational. -- Noam Chomsky

PavlovsCat 8y ago

Too many people who aren't "paranoid" about killing little insects even sweep the murder of humans under the rug. We also have no real answer to the fact that in a century, there might be no more insects, with all the further extinction of other species that'll entail. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378 Even when we're extremely selfish and petty, if we take too much effort to take care of ourselves, that's generally fine, as long as it's legal and not too annoying -- but when others worry "too much" about yet others, and change their own behaviour accordingly, they can't possibly have "any semblance of good mental health"? Come on.. The insects at least actually exist, what of caring about random people that don't even exist yet, wouldn't that be even crazier? > Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational. -- Noam Chomsky