DocWatts
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Posts posted by DocWatts
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14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:@DocWatts Who the hell knows Ohio?
Ha!
Well at least a handful of us have it as a next door neighbor and drive through it on our way to more interesting places.
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8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:Now if only someone wanted to live in Michigan.
Zing!
A way I like to describe Michigan for people who don't live here is: imagine a blend of Oregon and Ohio, with a scattering of post-apocalyptic looking cities, and you won't be far from the mark.
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How long until we're all surprised by seeing "Joe Rogan Experience #2145 : Leo Gura" pop up in our YouTube feed?
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On 9/20/2020 at 10:24 PM, Lyubov said:Something can fit the green model and not appear like the stereotypical hippy / urban hipster stuff. Punk rock is not pure orange lol. It is more a dysfunctional green. It also depends on the band. earlier bands seem to be going against fundamentalist blue and then against orange so earlier bands can be counted as orange. Most counter cultures start out one stage ahead of the average development of the population.
Look to The Clash for a great example of stage Green punk.
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Considering that Trump has had four years to make an ass of himself,
13 hours ago, lmfao said:I think Trump would dig himself in a deeper hole if it happened.
And its not like it would even be a serious or real discussion. You don't have to watch many Trump interviews before knowing the general pattern of how he answers questions or handles opposition.
Growing up as a young kid, probably when you're 4 or 5 years old, everyone had that one friend who would constantly make the most nonsensical and outlandish stories up, and brag.
That's basically Trump.
And it's cute. Unless they never grow out of that phase and become president.
And when something is good, it's not just good. It's the best! Number 1 quality!
Considering that Trump has had four years to make an ass of himself, the bad publicity from multiple scandals and corruption charges, and his disastrous Covid response fresh on people's minds going in to an election, the hole he's been digging is deep enough to reach China. Yet despite this enough people have been propagandized by right wing media to leave the election results very much in doubt.
Also keep in mind that this is a guy who won last time despite losing the popular vote by 3 million votes, and became president despite two thirds of the country not liking him
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29 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:In what way unreliable?
Fair question! The reason being that human memory and visual perception are fallible and prone to biases. Our visual perception doesn't record events like a video camera, instead of creates stories that warp and change due to the emotions and biases of the person in question.
The article I posted goes in to more detail on the issue; I'll just add that a number of people have been wrongly convicted of crimes due to eyewitness testimony, only to have their convictions overturned due to more objective verification methods.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/teaching/myth-eyewitness-testimony-is-the-best-kind-of-evidence.html
That's not to say the eyewitness testimony is worthless %100 of time; just to keep its limitations in mind. -
48 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:It's not just grainy footage. At least 4 people had visual contact. And also they were seen on radar of a ship.
Anyone who's studied psychology could tell you how unreliable eyewitness testimony is.
Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but for such a huge paradigm shift it feels like the sort of thing we should withhold judgement on until it can be verified to the high standard that would be used if life were discovered on another body in our Solar System.
I don't really have a dog in the race on way or another, but I do see alot of overlap between this subject and the larger Conspiracy Theory community.
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Surprised this isn't being talked about more than it is. I guess microbes aren't as exiting as grainy footage of flying saucers
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32 minutes ago, No Self said:As someone alluded to earlier, fundamentalist Christianity is often interpreted with the narrative that humanity is inherently incompetent and will fail, leading to end times and Jesus coming down to fix everything and create heaven for his followers. This is not worth going into further, as it is just another internal story that the human mind laps up to evade personal responsibility, rationalise conspicuous consumption, excuse one's self from having to contemplate difficult issues and so on.
Very well thought out post. I'd like to take a moment to give recognition and praise to the current Pope, Pope Francis, for using his position of authority to advocate for urgent action to combat Climate Change; framing it as an issue of social justice that the world's poorest people will end up shouldering the burden of. Mad props to the guy for using his religious authority to advocate for social responsibility.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082020/climate-change-pope-francis -
I think the catch-22 is that it's generally hard to find Conservatives who are thoughtful and open to growth, because that sort of mindset is inimical towards the rigid thinking needed to maintain that sort of worldview. And the ones that are open minded to growth will have already realized this and left that worldview behind them. While there's alot to be learned by interacting conspiracy theorists or religious fundamentalists, and it's important to understand what attracts people to these ways of thinking, there's plenty of others forums on the internet to do so. I would hope that the selection bias here is such that most of us are aware of the dangers of echo chambers, and that we have enough common sense to have interactions with the real world to counter balance this.
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1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:Yes, he will, if they see him side by side with Trump.
Joe Biden is not like Hillary Clinton. He doesn't have strong disapproval ratings. Most people would be happy with Joe Biden. He comes off as a decent, reasonable guy. Only the fringes of both sides strongly oppose him. It's very hard to paint Joe Biden as some radical or crazy person. He feels competent, and right now I think most people just want some competent non-divisive leadership.
All Biden has to do is present himself as reasonable and competent. Trump should self-destruct.
Really hope this is one of those situations where my initial misgivings turn out to be completely unfounded; could be that I might be over reacting somewhat to 2016 without giving enough consideration to the differences between the situations then and now. Welp, guess I'll try to convince who I can to get out and Vote.
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23 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:The point is mobilizing people to vote.
He who mobilizes his base the most will win.
Fair point that I agree with wholeheartedly; but is Joe Biden the kind of candidate who would get anyone excited enough to go vote who wasn't going to already? I could see someone like Bernie or Yang encouraging otherwise apathetic people to go vote, but Biden? The fact that much of his support is a reluctant "well at least he's better than Trump" isn't exactly encouraging...
I suppose the fact that normies without MAGA hats who voted for Trump in '16 might stay home after seeing Trump make an ass of himself in a debate is an interesting point though. -
I guess I don't see the point? As I'm having trouble believing that there's anyone out there who's still undecided as to whether they're on board with on board with Trump's brand of Authoritarianism or not. I know that from a factual standpoint these people must exist, but it's harder for me to put myself in the mindset of an undecided than it is for me to understand a Trump voter.
I imagine the more relevant question is whether the potential apathetic person will bother to vote at all in the upcoming election.
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On 9/14/2020 at 5:17 PM, Forestluv said:Ime, people are much less defensive when the person being evaluated is not them, however it is less direct. For example, I teach college students SD - we recently covered stage blue and discussed all sorts of different stage blue mentalities and students gave presentations of kkk, the amish, boy scouts, military etc. It's much easier for them to take a meta view when they are the observer. If I pointed at a student and said "OK, now let's take a look at YOUR blue level traits and views" - that is much more threatening. Yet observing others is often diluted. I have to remind the students that they may get some insight from observing others. As we observe Blue in others, do we have some in ourselves? What are the healthy and unhealthy aspects? What do we need to work on.
Great to hear that Spiral Dynamics is being taught in University classes; I actually listen to a number of podcasts and lectures from people in the world of Academia and don't hear Spiral Dynamics brought up very often. Not to mention that it wasn't a subject that was covered in any of my classes during my time in college.
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47 minutes ago, Roy said:Do your best in your personal life to minimize your impact and contribution, if not for the planet but for your own mental health and conscious.............
..because yeah we are unequivocally fucked. Civilization is going to collapse in less than 50 years. Enjoy it while lasts and try to spread as much love to the world as you can in the meantime. It's the only thing any of us can do.
We don't know that; the mindset that Civilization is doomed so nothing we do matters is highly counterproductive (and I'd go so far as to argue toxic). Yes climate change is going to change the world in profound ways over the upcoming century, but we do have a choice for how to respond. Do we continue down the destructive path that led us to the point, or do we put pressure on our governments to invest in sustainable energy production and agriculture? Do we let corporations have a free reign to destroy the planet , or do we make an attempt to reign in and regulate corporations? Do we stick with the capitalist system that helped get us in to this mess, or do we evolve the system in a way that the social and environmental costs are factored in to the price you pay for something at the supermarket?
Yes civilization could collapse at some point, but that's far from inevitable. I've known a handful of conservative people with the "civilization is going to collapse regardless of what I do" mindset, who use that as a rationalization for their highly selfish and short sighted behavior. -
Slightly different take on the topic, but Jared Diamond wrote a whole book that uses a number of past societies as Case studies for how societies either succeed or fail in addressing ecological problems that threaten their existence. Excellent systems level approach towards looking at environmental issues through the lens of history, in a way that helps bring a bit of perspective on where we find ourselves today.
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Adventure Time introduces the concept of Social Constructs in a way that's approachable for younger people who may be just getting Introduced to the idea.
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6 hours ago, Matt1576 said:https://theconversation.com/au
Stage yellow analysis of news & politics. At least in Australia, I haven't read the other countries editions. Written by academics and not ideologues, and non-profit. Allows for different perspectives and nuanced thoughts.
If anyone is aware of any additional high quality news sources that offer a Yellow perspective on contemporary issues/politics, I'd love to check it out.
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49 minutes ago, Forestluv said:@datamonster I would draw a distinction between considering various perspectives from a meta view vs. being immersed within an ideology and promoting that agenda. For example, the recent video you posted was a meta view looking at a spectrum of ideology from patriotism to nationalism to fascism. And, how a mind can become conditioned to progress from one extreme to another. The Youtuber considered fascist views and spoke of them. That is very different than a YouTuber promoting fascist ideology and trying to recruit people into fascism. The YouTuber you linked spoke of this distinction at the start of the video.
It’s not the ideology itself. It’s more about the mind’s relationship to the ideology. How tightly is the mind attached and identified to the ideology and trying to push that agenda? What harmful impact could that have on a community? A forum without rules will devolve. An ‘anything goes’ forum will succumb to entropy and devolve into 4-Chan.
Maintaining a nice garden takes moderation and work. A gardener needs to pull out weeds. Yet of course the weeds will say “I’m not a weed, I’m a flower!!”. And this is relative.
Well said.
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In regards to the OP, the Roman Empire was also able to stumble along more or less in tact for centuries regardless of whether any individual Roman Emperor was incompetent and/or crazy, before finally succumbing to its internal contradictions and collapsing.
Stakes are quite a bit higher these days when the current analog to the Roman Empire posseses nuclear weapons and is capable of triggering a global ecological collapse if things are bungled badly enough.
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50 minutes ago, Matt23 said:I started the first part of Guns, Germs, and Steel... blew me away. The interrelationships, complexity, systems thinking, and yet how everything works together smoothly, in an ecologically and systemically logical and intuitive fashion. Changed the way I think (at least for a few minutes
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Also the fact that he's writing these books for the general public, and that he's able to present a nuanced look at the complexities of the systems he's analysing in a way that's understandable for a non specialist is a mark of just how good of a communicator he is.
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4 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:Jared Diamond is a really good example as he's all about going to the root as well as systemic issues. He has the systems thinking mentality that the race IQ people utterly lack. And the way that he comes to his systemic conclusions is by studying the systems very well, he sees how history (he's a historian) and the modern day, all of our institutions, are intertwined in a massive web. Jared is a YELLOW historian.
Great points. In addition to this I think that his travels around the world, having spent much of his working life in places like Papua New Guinea forming relationships with indigenous people, have given him additional perspectives to think about the modern world and the problems it faces.
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2 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:Glad to see this series get a mention.
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Since the subject was brought up, I feel obliged to mention the Maryrmade Podcast's 'Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem' series, which felt like an emotional gut punch because of how well the host gets you to empathize with the trauma experienced by both the Israelis and Palestinians in this long and sad conflict. Really in depth and nuanced take that's a wonderful primer for anyone who wants to learn more about the subject.
http://www.martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem/
in Society, Politics, Government, Environment, Current Events
Posted · Edited by DocWatts
No kidding. Scary how prescient that movie feels some three or four decades later.
I'm not saying that Detroit is a microcosm of the decay of American society with its crumbling infrastructure, decimation of the middle class, corrupt governance, and racial tension; but it doesn't feel like too much of a stretch to frame it that way.
Also you'd be surprised at just how rural alot of Michigan is outside of the major cities; travel to the Northern parts and you'd be mistaken for thinking you took a wrong turn and ended up in Kentucky.