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How do we reconcile the part of humanity pushing advancement towards understanding the universe and creating entirely new paradigms every six months while half
by seiji 13y ago
How do we reconcile the part of humanity pushing advancement towards understanding the universe and creating entirely new paradigms every six months while half the world is still monkeys with sticks (and the monkeys inevitably get advanced technologies without the wisdom or maturity required to use it responsibly)?
- alexsilver 13y agoYou start acting. That's how.
- fit2rule 13y agoWell, you start with your own education. Then, when you are confident that you are capable, you start with educating others. How that works? Go there. Simply, go to the most impoverished place in the world that you can stand, and teach what you know. This isn't so hard as it sounds, but for some reason is also (at the same time) one of the most difficult things in all the world for humankind to do. Same as it ever was.
- sp332 13y agoAs explained in the article, every person's actions were explainable by aspects of our shared humanity. We are not inherently better than those people, we're just luckier about our surroundings. A human in fear of his/her life every day can't take any risks, so they can't make new paradigms. You can recruit these people to your "universe-understanding" side by changing their circumstances to be more like yours.
- seiji 13y agowe're just luckier about our surroundings. Quite. I've often wondered how different I would be if I was born to a higher higher (affluenza) or lower (government assistance) family. We should make a point of getting people out of mud huts and away from mob mentality though. That's just good world building. Or we can make another Uber for Buzzfeed. Get the top 10 cutest kittens EVAR delivered to your door in 20 minutes or less or you get free toppings next time.
- amerika_blog 13y ago"We are not inherently better than those people, we're just luckier about our surroundings." It seems to me people choose their own actions. When enough choose badly, the society as a whole decays.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- thenmar 13y agoIt's a good question but I don't think the characterization of "glorious pioneers holding lanterns in the dark" vs. "monkeys with sticks" is fair.
- seiji 13y agoLet's talk about dating. The dating world is full of monkeys. Baristas, out of work actors, "office managers," bartenders, literal starving artists, set designers who make $15k/year for working 60 hours a week all year, .... (We're talking "this is what they do" people, not goodwill hunting "unlimited potential" people who turn into rocket scientists at the drop of at hat.) Imagine you're a YC person: Altman or Dallas or Quinto or whoever they have these days. At what point in a relationship does it get annoying not being able to share the upper parts of what you are and what you do? Sure, you can always commiserate about the weather and the latest TV shows or what your 188th level Orc Paladin did in WoW this week, but does that give meaning to "high achievers?" That's the lanterns in the dark versus the rabble of reality tv watchers. (Cutting off some replies here: yes, there's a continuous gradient between "only-a-barista" and "only-a-serial-billionare," but there are levels people seems to get chunked into fairly easily after talking with them for 5 seconds to 5 minutes. yes, some of these positions are due to life circumstances and coincidences along the way, but that's the life we end up with—we can't all go back in time to be born to the mother of Bill Gates.)
- thenmar 13y agoSorry, what? Do you think that by being an engineer you have a level of consciousness that commoners can't comprehend? Have you ever dated anyone?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kylemaxwell 13y agoHelp me understand: are you under the impression that shared professional interests are what make a personal, intimate relationship work? Really?
- Paul_S 13y agoCourts in the western world also make mistakes, police brutality is a fact of life and deaths do sadly occur while in custody. Bad things happen everywhere.
- seiji 13y agopolice brutality Yup. Just because we're not talking about shared grandmothers in villages doesn't mean we're more sophisticated. The brutal kill-the-infidel groups can form anywhere scared people with low self esteem get grouped together. "If I hurt these people, others will think highly of me!" Except here, the weak low self esteem people have electricity, chemicals, and guns instead of sticks and stones.
- judk 13y agoI hope you didn't mean that the way it looks. Which "half" is the "monkeys"?
- seiji 13y agoThe side without minds just going along with their tribal affiliations for the glory of their own actions. Wait, that doesn't clear anything up. Also see: UK football hooliganism, SF/LA sports riots, SF/Berkeley injustice riots, and YC circles making rich well known people richer and weller knowner.
- sswaner 13y agoStart by leaving the word "monkey" out of any discussion involving African people.
- seiji 13y agoWhoops. Didn't mean it that way (or read the post long enough to figure out where or who in the world it was referencing). We're all apes anyway, not monkeys.
- mistercow 13y ago>We're all apes anyway, not monkeys. I know we're getting way off-topic here, but this is a compelling argument that the "apes, not monkeys" thing is kind of silly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-dMqEbSk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-dMqEbSk8
- nilved 13y agoIs this deliberate or accidental racism?
- sp332 13y agoLooks like seiji didn't know "monkey" is a strong racist term, and just used it to describe behavior. Still insulting but not racist.
- nilved 13y agoAccidental racism is still racism, but this isn't even accidental.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- seiji 13y agoMy language isn't entirely confined to reality all the time. Sometimes there's crosstalk in inadvertent ways. Sorry for any hurts.
- frenchy 13y agoThere are two kinds of accidental racisms. The kind where the speaker means what he says, but does not identify it as being wrong. The second is where the speaker mis-speaks and doesn't actually mean to convey what the readers see as racist. I believe this is a case of the second.
- waterlion 13y agoAccidental deliberate misunderstanding is still deliberate misunderstanding.
- seiji 13y agoThe noble behavior of stoning people to death based on tribal affiliations doesn't really require dignified descriptions of the people. Urban Dictionary barely mentions the word monkey may be racist. It's 3x more likely to be slang for girl parts.
- dylandrop 13y agoYou could see it this way, or you could also claim that those "creating entirely new paradigms" themselves don't have "the wisdom and maturity required to use it responsibly". (See: nuclear weapons, nuclear power facility meltdowns, climate change, overfishing, the list goes on and on.) Perhaps a desire to live in a state of less technological advancement is in most cases just fine. Not at all defending stoning here, but you should realize that technologically advanced societies have a great deal of problems, in most cases to a larger scale than tiny undeveloped countries.
- pessimizer 13y ago>the part of humanity pushing advancement towards understanding the universe and creating entirely new paradigms every six months while >half the world is still monkeys with sticks These categories are not exclusive. Middle-class professionals are the authors of most of the horrors of the modern world. Just because you can do math and/or program for a smartphone doesn't mean that you don't have utterly irrational and/or repugnant views. >the monkeys inevitably get advanced technologies without the wisdom or maturity required to use it responsibly They "get" them because middle-class people sell them for profit, or give them away because they agree with what the "monkeys" are doing.
- kylemaxwell 13y agoThe white man's burden truly is a difficult one to bear. /sarcasm