What a difference a decade can make
What a difference a decade can make
97 comments
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No, the earth will not be ok of we do the bare minimum
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We aren't doing the bare minimum. We're doing less than the bare minimum. That's the problem.
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the Earth as we know it
We'll cause a mass extinction, possibly taking us down with it, but the planet will survive at least until the sun expands and eats us whole in a couple billion years
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I think that depends on how you define the bare minimum.
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Ok fair. But what if I do nothing instead???
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of course the moon exists, but it is hollow. it is a reptilian space ship and arrived 12.8k years ago
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Nah, it's a giant spider egg.
Don't worry, though, when it hatches it will inexplicably lay an egg the same size and density as the first one somehow.
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How can it be hollow if it is made out of cheese?
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It's swiss? With a huge air bubble in the middle?
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And the Nazis flew their UFOs through a hole in Antarctica into their secret base.
There really were people who thought the world was hollow.
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Hollow World is an interesting D&D setting.
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Because the Earth is a hypersphere, and Antarctica has numerous geographic features in the w dimension
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Some people have always believed batshit stuff with no good supporting evidence. But anti-intellectualism has been on the rise for the past, day, 30 years in particular.
Carl Sagan presciently called it out in "A Demon-Haunted World" back when new age and crystals and alien abductions were popular woo woo beliefs.
It seems to have become more popular to reject "bOoK LaRnin'" in favor of anti-science, which has also been co-opted for political purposes.
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Full quote for somber appreciation, emphasis mine:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
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The freedoms of speech and expression have morphed into a freedom of stupidity, and it really, really sucks that this isn't something we as a culture have proven able to repudiate.
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Using your freedom of speech to tell someone they're a moron that should shut the fuck up doesn't count as free speech, apparently.
Also, 1a specifically refers to the government silencing you.
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Eh back then it was just evolution and climate change instead of this stuff
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Unfortunately, not instead of, but as well as... We're still dealing with the anti climate change and evolution people =\
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Don’t forget about vaccines. The anti-vax craze happened well before the pandemic. Vaccines cause adultism.
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So that's why anti-vaxxers are so childish?
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That would explain the vast amounts of menchildren in their 30s lately
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Yeah the anti vax thing goes back like 20 years at least.
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It's 2023... People still believe some dude walked on water... And some other dude split the moon in half with a sword.. Then put it back... The stupid has been with us since forever.
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That exhaustion is the whole point.
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Yup. It’s just bad actor syndrome and has nothing to do with ‘being right’ if they can move their goal posts so easily.
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The moon does exist there's just 3 of them. Single moon theory is a a hoax /s
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Also science way back: "Hey guys, isn't phlogiston just the absolute best? And lobotomies are so cool they deserve a Nobel prize."
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Lol fair.
But the difference between science and superstition: science gets closer to the truth over time in spite of ourselves while superstition either keeps the same bullshit or makes up new bullshit regardless of evidence or lack thereof.
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science gets closer to the truth over time
Now we step into epistemology. This claim cannot be substantiated. We don't know if science is getting closer to the truth because we don't know what the truth is.
Science finds what works, it may or may not be finding the truth. It's incredibly useful, and gets more useful over time, but we cannot claim that it gives us the truth. We cannot measure the "truthiness" of a science claim.
Unless you assume "If something works, then it's the truth.". I wouldn't support this statement though.
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Lobotomies still work in certain cases of epilepsy
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Did you think this was a clever response?
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Did you think this was a clever response?
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Scientists =/= Science Educators.
Both groups existed decades ago and still exist today
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really do be like that
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It's almost as if Western Governments have been cutting funding to education or something
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We're still making incredible advancements. Have you read the stuff on gravitational waves?
The real issue is that scientists have access to twitter and have the same basic urges as anyone else, the urge to correct the people who are wrong.
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Sharks have smooth skin
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Can confirm. I'm petting a shark right now, it's like silk
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The Earth is not flat, it's a hypersphere. It literally explains everything, and yet no one will engage me on that fact
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I'm provaccine but not getting the vaccine doesn't automatically mean your kid will die. That sort of stuff helps feed vaccine deniers.
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Right now with increasing amount of people not vaccinating their children we see outbreaks of diseases that we have not seen in a very long time. So yeah, not vaccinating your kid kinda means your kid will die or at least will be at much higher risk of premature and completely avoidable death
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It's all about risk. Smoking doesn't automatically mean you'll get lung cancer, but it greatly increases your risk. Same goes for refusing any vaccine that could be potentially life saving to a child, it greatly increases their risk of death.
But sorry a meme wasn't extremely precise with its verbiage lol
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Where do you draw the line in terms of individual rights VS the safety of the entire society?
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Sometimes being hard and straight forward is the only way for people to listen.
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97 comments
I don't think it's so much that people have gotten dumber, there's always been dumb folk, but the age of social media has made them less fearful of looking stupid.
You don't feel so dumb when you can find a bunch of people who agree with you.
There's also the compounding effect of being able to hear more voices from around the world thanks to the internet.
Every village has an idiot. These days you don't need to visit the village to run into their idiot.
And the idiots can have conferences now
And now that it's easy to do so, they're banding together to form entire metropoli of only idiots.
They have their own village now.
As I tend to say: before social media every village had a village idiot. Now the village idiots are connected, more easily to find and spreading their lack of knowledge.
Then they legitimize each other too, "How can we be wrong, there's thousands of us!"
My father was hi-jacked by QAnon so bad that he won't even read anything else because he sees any contradictory information as an attack.
The internet has made it easy to find others to group with no matter how extreme you are.
There was a ton of stupid conspiracy theories around the whole clones sheep thing back then. I think looking back on that time period (like two decades ago, not one) the dumb conspiracies were forgotten as they didn't lead to anything outside of fearmongering.
Same for the moon landing, there are still conspiracies that it was all faked.
I never understood the goal of things like denying the moon landings or saying the earth is flat. "Ok, you're right. Now what?" I especially like that they think NASA is powerful and has a huge budget. Tell that to congress and watch them laugh.
It's also allowed then to connect with one another. Pre- digital age, every village had their idiot. Now every village idiot can share their stupidity with one another instantly.