alanwatts

8 ms·

31.
by alanwatts 10y ago
GDP != quality of life or standard of living
32.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Economics 101: increased risk = increased reward
33.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>Worthless but happy is not a worthy goal. How should one measure self worth? >Verify any approach to life by generalisation: what would happen if everyone followed it? The Buddhist approach leads to stagnation. Who said everyone shou
34.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>the poor will spend all their money on drugs, If and when attempting to formulate coherent arguments, avoid using such absolute statements.
35.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc. Not being able to afford
36.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Which one is that?
37.
by alanwatts 10y ago
There's an old Zen saying that goes: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." And another which reads: "Miraculous power, marvelous activity. Drawing water, chopping wo
38.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Google "subconscious social conformity" and take your pick
39.
by alanwatts 10y ago
If someone has access to cameras on the ground it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to integrate this with a facial recognition system
40.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Most self-censoring and social conformity is done subconsciously as an important evolutionary survival mechanism, thus most people are completely unaware of it.
41.
by alanwatts 10y ago
What exactly do you mean by free will? Do environmental factors have no influence over the individual?
42.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>collateral damage and rippling effects into their respective communities all the time. Study history, and we find that declaring war on those things increases the collateral damage and massively strengthens criminal syndicates.
43.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>teachers are better than digital lessons. What about a combination of the two[1]? I.e. recording digital lessons and then using a community question and answer forum to fill in the gaps. [1] https://laracasts.com
44.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Comparing to the lowest common denominator to feel better about something is often akin to denial.
45.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Off topic
46.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>NSA, CIA and all their friends exist for the sole reason that they can't spy on Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#NSA_mon...
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by alanwatts 10y ago
Classic social engineering tactic.
48.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Yes, 99.99% of the data analysis could be done with machine learning which could then send alerts to human operators once a certain pattern of interest is discovered.
49.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Just did some number crunching and it appears Holland spends roughly half as much on advertising per capita than the US. http://www.statista.com/statistics/272314/advertising-spendi...
50.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>Perhaps we could consider what is going on here to be something of a small-townification of cities. >I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it. This is a phenomenon Mars
51.
by alanwatts 10y ago
I'd be interested to see a comparison on the amount of advertising done per capita in Holland vs. the United States. Once I stopped watching television, I was no longer exposed to such incessant advertising. As a result, I stopped cari
52.
by alanwatts 10y ago
It has gotten cheaper in terms of physical resources (reality), but not in terms of money. Two of the three main goals of the money system, as stated in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, are to maintain stable prices and maximize employment.
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by alanwatts 10y ago
>Which is human-made and not a property of the universe Precisely my point. >it can be changed very easily. It would seem this is not the case, though I wish it was.
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by alanwatts 10y ago
>The difference is that the ambient advertisement doesn't meaningfully change the appearance of your piece of property. Property: a thing or things belonging to someone. Do our minds not belong to us?
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by alanwatts 10y ago
>Why must we insist on squeezing radically different new situations into existing categories that were clearly designed for something else? This is a problem which Marshall McLuhan wrote about frequently, he described our situation as if
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by alanwatts 10y ago
The opinion is tautological, there is no real difference. >ambient light entering private space as a side effect of projecting a message elsewhere Advertisements are not designed to be projected anywhere else besides your psyche. >foc
57.
by alanwatts 10y ago
That's pretty much what Tay did with Twitter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)
58.
by alanwatts 10y ago
Rock climbing is also a great way to stretch out your body after sitting in a chair for ~8 hours a day. It's like a form of Yoga but much more fun and exhilarating.
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by alanwatts 10y ago
Reminds me of a Buckminster Fuller quote: >"I'm going to give you an important kind of a picture. I hear a lot of people say "I don't like machinery and technology it's making a lot of trouble", so we'r
60.
by alanwatts 10y ago
>Every app, every piece of code has to be written just once, then replication is free This is true in terms of physical reality, but not in terms of the patent system.

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