wmw999

Personally I think what’s going on is heinous. Looking at each individual soldier/police officer etc and vilifying them is like what happens when people deal with malfunctions sometimes; in a malfunction, you’re dealing with a realtime situation with a subset of the relevant information. How many of you would REALLY go whack the woman or guy that you saw seemingly abusing their kid? Or would you figure there’s more to the story that you don’t know? A frightening thing i see is the description of narrative as being information. In the pre-literate past we largely relied on sagas and word of mouth for information. They led to lots of misunderstanding and most religions. So returning to the narrative as a means of passing on actual information is frightening. Probably not permanent, because technology, but still it’ll change the population Wendy P.

You appear to have gotten a whole lot more aggressively angry since the days when you were Pajarito here. Frankly, that’s a shame. Disagreeing on the meaning of events doesn’t necessarily make one wrong, and we can all only improve if we’re willing to examine our assumptions, beliefs, and ourselves. Me, I’m not perfect yet. I miss that guy; I used to enjoy the discussions Wendy P.

Pretty funny stuff, there. Well, the context for facts matters; after all, ice cream sales and murders go up in the summer, but that doesn’t really mean that ice cream causes murder. And context doesn’t mean the narrative that’s built around it. Think “2000 Mules” (so debunked that they withdrew it) Wendy P.

I used to work for the food stamp office; yeah, there’s a willingness problem sometimes, and sometimes there’s a support problem. Parents who felt as though welfare was the best option because they had a kid or two with asthma and couldn’t afford medical bills. Lack of daycare (and this was the 70’s when standards and insurance were lower). And it’s hard to be a single parent of children and work a full time job. Cooking healthy food has to take a back seat sometimes. Welfare in Texas at the time did not pay enough to live on, so this was a serious consideration I used to posit a system where in exchange for some extra food stamps, qualified (remember, at the time that only meant having a heartbeat) people could provide childcare for the people working. Etc. barter. Now so many people are willing to sue for anything, dunno if it’d work Wendy P.

SCOBY

I’m hoping that in this internet era, there won’t be such a large cadre of people who believe only because there isn’t any other information. He’d have to fuck with Google, FB, etc, the way China is doing. Dunno about what Russia’s doing, other than making sure vocal dissenters have a limited life span. But yeah Wendy P.

Sing song

In the US at least, with the generally good economy of the 50’s and the 80’s, and the huge baby boom consort that did very well indeed (as long as they were the right color and social class), that’s not really likely. And our kids know it. They started at where so many of our ancestors aspired to have their children end up. It’s not that the American dream is dead, it’s just that it’s based on continued growth, like our economy, and we haven’t accounted for the fact that everlasting growth in humans at least generally ends up as cancer, killing the host. Wendy P.

The alternative is “what a stuck up bitch.” Wendy P.

Not sure that’s not their end game. All the others are less likely to make a strategic mistake on the way to power. Wendy P.

867-5309

To expand, a garbage theory is indistinguishable from a narrative. Yes, traditionally humans have used oral narratives to pass on history. That’s how we have ended up forgetting so much actual history, because no one talks about the second-loudest guy, or, virtually ever, women or minorities. You can get a picture from that, but it’s not an accurate picture; it’s a story. Unfortunately, we’re getting to the point where there’s so much recorded data that it gets harder and harder to pull out the relevant. Let’s see what good indexing and AI do with it in the future will we start seeing more and more about how everything good comes from white men, with others contributing to “what white men started,” or will it be more and more that the complex machinery and systems of today evolved from a shitload of precedents and people. After all, even the wheel, the screw, and the inclined plane were once cutting-edge technology. Along with knives Wendy P.

I’m just enjoying the request for help. I will say that, as a rule, someone’s perceived pain doesn’t determine the success of much of anything, since hurting is generally destructive. Like that old metaphor of saying you’ve grown because you’ve chopped off everyone else’s feet. Wendy P.

She started as an illegally-employed immigrant. And her family are chain migration immigrants. Seems pretty high on the “it was OK when I did it but now it isn’t.” Wendy P.

Do you think everything should be buyable with money, or mainly peace? How about integrity — can it be bought? Wendy P.