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Thinking about sword swallowers makes me really proud to be a human. We partake in such idiotic activities that life nearly never becomes boring. After attend
by smokel 3y ago
Thinking about sword swallowers makes me really proud to be a human. We partake in such idiotic activities that life nearly never becomes boring.
After attending art school for a year, when its magic waned a bit, I lamented that there were not many totally crazy artists at the school I was at. Then someone introduced me to a graduate student who tattooed on himself using a modified sewing machine, and who was indeed also a proficient sword swallower. Life was good again.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThis is the shit we're meant to do not worrying about KPIs or building ad delivery networks or whatever.
- jonhohle 3y agoIf all advertisers were fire swallowing carnival barkers people might respect them.
- dingnuts 3y agoMeant to do? We're apes that have figured out how to build decent shelter and communicate over long distances. There's nothing we're "meant" to do. Just be grateful you live in a time after the invention of indoors
- giraffe_lady 3y ago[flagged]
- tempodox 3y agoWhat a boring attitude. Not everyone equates mere survival with living to the full.
- dillydogg 3y agoI didn't interpret what they said in this way. I have yo agree with them that it is hard to say what a species is "meant to do". We have certainly done what we have done, but who is to say that was our purpose? Beyond "successfully produce offspring at a rate to maintain the species" I think it's hard to prescribe an intended purpose.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoThis is HN. People will take "what we're meant to do" literally and not understand it's not to be taken in a literal evolutionary sense.
- tempodox 3y agoThat's actually an excellent explanation, now the comment I answered to starts to make sense.
- mcv 3y agoThere's a lot we're meant to do. But we decide what we mean to do.
- echelon 3y ago> This is the shit we're meant to do not worrying about KPIs or building ad delivery networks or whatever. We're not "meant to do" anything, unless this is somehow -- absurdly, and seemingly unlikely -- a simulation. But I can make some suggestions as to what we should be doing. As far as we can tell, intelligence is rare in the universe. Perhaps that intellect is smart enough to be beyond our means of detection, transcended our physical understanding. Maybe it's afraid of being seen by whatever else lurks out there. Or maybe we're not looking in the right places. Or we're just early. Or it all got wiped out. But whatever the case, intelligence in the universe appears to be exceedingly rare. If thinking is rare and interesting and important, we should probably be doing whatever it takes to preserve it and expand it. A lot of people quote Sagan to say we're just motes of dust in an infinite universe. It's a humbling view, but I think it dismisses just how important we are. Life on earth has existed for a third of the age of the universe, and we have no evidence of anything else anywhere at all. That's an incredibly long time to work towards where we are today. It'd be a shame if it were all to vanish. It's the longest-running experiment we know of, and the results thus far show incredible promise.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoI already got a religion tho.
- smokel 3y agoSomething being "interesting" or "important" can only be judged by (somewhat) intelligent beings. It is unlikely that the rest of the (not intelligent) universe cares anything about us. Hence, it does not follow that we should preserve life or even intelligence. However, I think evolution had made us into systems that frantically try to procreate. I consider that a valid enough reason to continue preserving life. But note that the reasoning is different.
- dfxm12 3y agoEveryone wants to be a crazy artist until someone whips out the modified sewing machine to give matching tattoos.