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Because THE END IS NIGH, HEAR YE, HEAR YE. There's truly nothing new under the sun for human beings, we just keep play-acting out patterns etched by millions o

Because THE END IS NIGH, HEAR YE, HEAR YE. There's truly nothing new under the sun for human beings, we just keep play-acting out patterns etched by millions of years of evolution.

ben_w 3y ago
> There's truly nothing new under the sun for human beings, we just keep play-acting out patterns etched by millions of years of evolution. Like flying to the moon, and launching artificial satellites in greater numbers than naked-eye distinguishable stars, and some more to places so remote that even the sun is naught but a bright star; like flying above the clouds, around the world, and faster than sound; like refining metals from sand, poisoning it, etching on literally occult symbols (the word means hidden and they are smaller than light itself) and feeding them artificial lightning in order to trick it into doing our thinking for us; like transmuting metals and gasses to create weapons that can level cities and moderate-sized hills; like altering the global balance of fauna to be overwhelmingly us, our pets, and our livestock, with only a small fraction of the total now being wild animals; like wiping out entire diseases, learning to see colours beyond those our eyes can perceive (and also with sound) in order to look within living bodies; like having the power of Morpheus to keep someone asleep throughout as their heart is removed and replaced without killing them; like the power to read and write the language of life to bend it to our will, giving us spider-silk yeast?
- boringuser2 3y ago
  Uninteresting reply because you've made a fundamental categorical error. I was clearly referring to psycho-social patterns, not arbitrary lists of technology.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    First: no it was not clear that's what you were referring to. Second: given how much we've changed our environment, our food, the substances we take for mental health, any take regarding our "nature" must account for the impact of this environment Third: ditto nurture, as we now insist on educating ourselves to adulthood, and — in opposition to our earliest comprehensible written records — many of us are now in societies that reject things like slavery and husbands having arbitrary power over their wives (and increasingly, though to a lesser degree, religion); we have, essentially, domesticated ourselves.
    - boringuser2 3y ago
      The problem with your assertion that it wasn't clear what I was referring to is that it is contingent on the supposition that your mental ability put you in the category of someone I intended to present my ideas to.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1984:_Misinterpretation https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1984:_Misinterpretati... (Yours would be a better insult had I not fallen off the top of the cognitive scoring mechanism when it was tested — which only means "at least +2σ" because it is poorly defined as a concept, but yours was still a woefully inept attempt at a put-down). I rather hoped that #2 and #3 would have given a hint as to why #1 — but "communication is not a single-player game" isn't just something I'm telling you so you can be better.

Because THE END IS NIGH, HEAR YE, HEAR YE. There's truly nothing new under the sun for human beings, we just keep play-acting out patterns etched by millions of years of evolution.

ben_w 3y ago

> There's truly nothing new under the sun for human beings, we just keep play-acting out patterns etched by millions of years of evolution. Like flying to the moon, and launching artificial satellites in greater numbers than naked-eye distinguishable stars, and some more to places so remote that even the sun is naught but a bright star; like flying above the clouds, around the world, and faster than sound; like refining metals from sand, poisoning it, etching on literally occult symbols (the word means hidden and they are smaller than light itself) and feeding them artificial lightning in order to trick it into doing our thinking for us; like transmuting metals and gasses to create weapons that can level cities and moderate-sized hills; like altering the global balance of fauna to be overwhelmingly us, our pets, and our livestock, with only a small fraction of the total now being wild animals; like wiping out entire diseases, learning to see colours beyond those our eyes can perceive (and also with sound) in order to look within living bodies; like having the power of Morpheus to keep someone asleep throughout as their heart is removed and replaced without killing them; like the power to read and write the language of life to bend it to our will, giving us spider-silk yeast?

boringuser2 3y ago
Uninteresting reply because you've made a fundamental categorical error. I was clearly referring to psycho-social patterns, not arbitrary lists of technology.
- ben_w 3y ago
  First: no it was not clear that's what you were referring to. Second: given how much we've changed our environment, our food, the substances we take for mental health, any take regarding our "nature" must account for the impact of this environment Third: ditto nurture, as we now insist on educating ourselves to adulthood, and — in opposition to our earliest comprehensible written records — many of us are now in societies that reject things like slavery and husbands having arbitrary power over their wives (and increasingly, though to a lesser degree, religion); we have, essentially, domesticated ourselves.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    The problem with your assertion that it wasn't clear what I was referring to is that it is contingent on the supposition that your mental ability put you in the category of someone I intended to present my ideas to.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1984:_Misinterpretation https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1984:_Misinterpretati... (Yours would be a better insult had I not fallen off the top of the cognitive scoring mechanism when it was tested — which only means "at least +2σ" because it is poorly defined as a concept, but yours was still a woefully inept attempt at a put-down). I rather hoped that #2 and #3 would have given a hint as to why #1 — but "communication is not a single-player game" isn't just something I'm telling you so you can be better.