agamemnonymous
@agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on near zero 16 hours ago:
Yes, but it is infinitesimally close.
- Comment on near zero 17 hours ago:
When taking about limits, you can approach 0 from the positive or negative direction, which can give very different results. For example, lim cotx, x->0+ = ∞ while lim cotx, x->0- = -∞
- Comment on Picasso Moth 1 week ago:
Kandinsky was the first artist to come to mind
- Comment on Just asking questions 1 week ago:
as long as you accept the data
Ehhhh, data isn’t necessarily sacrosanct. Bad methodology, bad equipment, or bad presentation can lead to biased or misleading data. Hell, every once in a while purely fabricated data slips through the cracks.
It’s still the best guide we have, and mountains of date from disparate sources should be very suggestive indeed, but science involves being able to question even well-accepted hypotheses, on the slim-but-not-zero chance that all that data was based on some common methodological flaw. If the hypothesis is correct, it’ll stand up to scrutiny.
Yeah, you’ll get some whackadoos with their thumbs in their navels, but those whackadoos are an important part of the scientific ecosystem; random mutations in scientific evolution which every once in a long while turn out to be useful, of only in getting serious scientists to look at a program from a new angle. Stagnation’s a bitch.
- Comment on True fairy tales 1 week ago:
Proncess
- Comment on orinthologists be like 2 weeks ago:
Bin juice drinking gronks
- Comment on Anon goes to the gym 2 weeks ago:
Ronnie Coleman?
- Comment on I like this text. In which Lemmy community can I best share it ? Thanks. 2 weeks ago:
Classically, the meme would be the semantic content in this context or a derivative one (unless we consider this text itself to be derivative). It might re-emerge periodically, but some degree of contextual integrity would be necessary for it to be considered the same meme.
- Comment on I hate being 10. I wish I was 7 again 3 weeks ago:
I let myself watch the whole thing are there are some surprisingly touching moments.
- Comment on What side do you open a banana from? 3 weeks ago:
The back, that way the peel stays in one large easy-to-dispose-of piece instead of a fragile octopus
- Comment on New best friend for life! 4 weeks ago:
What strikes me is, how old it is, how close the time stamp is to the precise anniversary of the original.
- Comment on I'm sorry, Grandpa 1 month ago:
Your ancestors’ mistakes were quickly lost to the sands of time. Your mistakes can be recorded in 4K and disseminated to everyone you’ve ever met, plus millions of strangers, in minutes. If you goof bad enough, your mistake can be a global cultural phenomenon.
- Comment on Anon has a power fantasy 1 month ago:
It is possible to die falling off a horse. It is nearly impossible to live falling off a flying mount.
- Comment on Anon has a power fantasy 1 month ago:
It’s considerable extra risk and cost for insignificant benefit. Helicopters exist but I don’t take one to work.
- Comment on Anon has a power fantasy 1 month ago:
Fall off a horse -> dust yourself off and get back on. There’s a whole idiom about how falling off horses is a frustrating but ultimately minor inconvenience.
Fall off a gryphon -> you are dead.
- Comment on Door 1 month ago:
Strictly speaking, doorways are the preferred method of entrance. Doors are the preferred method of obstructing that entrance.
- Comment on Put a ring on it? 1 month ago:
I never read the books, but it was my understanding that the hobbits were more resilient against the ring precisely because they were bumpkins without ambitions that left them open to corruption
- Comment on ?? !! 1 month ago:
Replace Jon Arbuckle with a car parked in a driveway sideways; cut that out of a magazine, stick it in. Replace him there in the second panel with a food processor, okay. And then we put a picture of the planet in the third panel over Garfield. It still works.
- Comment on ?? !! 1 month ago:
Sublime. The whole of life can be summarized by a comic about a cat and a pipe.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
Then go back and read the rest of the words I actually said, instead of stopping halfway to confirm your bias so you can feel superior. You do get that selective reading is exactly the toxicity I’m talking about, right?
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
You’re really set on trying to insist I have the exact opposite argument than I do, huh? Despite repeated explanations, and directly calling out the straw-manning, you’re just dead set on it. Despite the fact that “Western countries being developed is a quirk of environment, not the consequence of any innate superiority” is about as diametrically opposed to white supremacy as possible. Anything to validate your assumptions.
Did you forget what the entire topic of the post is?
Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living?
Debunking white supremacy seems like an extremely relevant and logical response. Unless, of course, you believe that white supremacy is the explanation.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
The very next sentences clarify
That is, they’ve lived for an evolutionarily relevant duration of time in places where you need low melanin to get sufficient vitamin D to survive. Places with low sunlight and harsh winters, which means places where failing to develop efficient agriculture, food preservation/storage, insulated shelters, and textiles meant starving or freezing to death.
I brought it up specifically to debunk white supremacy. To point out that any apparent correlation between skin tone and economic development that an actual white supremacist might claim is sufficiently explained by this coincidence. Not because of being smarter, or more industrious, or any other notion of racial superiority. Purely because of certain coincidental environmental conditions.
Not that these conditions are currently relevant, not that they’ve been relevant since the agricultural revolution, simply that those environmental pressures gave people in certain regions a head start in, specifically, the technologies that facilitated the developed West. Not all technologies, not even most. I specifically addressed the main topic of conversation of why Western Europe appears more developed.
I would imagine actual white supremacists would passionately disagree with my claim that that development is due purely to environmental coincidence and not, y’know, supremacy. And yet, thanks to knee-jerk reactions to sloppy reading comprehension, my attempt to debunk white supremacist talking points was misconstrued as support. Because it’s easier to argue against the point you want to debate then the one someone actually made.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
You insist I’m using white supremacist talking points after I clarified several times that I wasn’t, in fact the exact opposite.
You insist that I’m mad despite clarifying several times that I’m not, and consistently using calm, rational tones.
You’re doubling down on proving my point: it’s easier to debunk the argument you wish someone made than to engage with what they actually say.
I’ve been having perfectly pleasant discussions online for 20 years. It’s a shit show now. The majority of the discussions now devolve into this same self-righteous refusal to deviate from assumptions. You continue to demonstrate this behavior . Enjoy your echo chamber.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
My character interpretation was calmly clarifying. The response was “Nuh uh, you’re saying white people are racially superior and evolutionarily advantaged”. One can only talk to a brick wall so long.
Gentle disagreement I love. Straw-manning, the majority of the responses, is pointless. I have only seen one person even remotely agree, the only one who seemed to engage with my point. Everyone else is straw-manning.
The Internet is not gentle disagreement, it’s dominated by oversimplification and echo chambers. It’s toxic. I’m done talking to brick walls.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
If you read back through the responses with a charitable eye
made people think you were attempting to covertly inject racist ideas into the discussion
Yeah, this is the source of my disappointment, and this response is only more disappointing. You only expect nuanced, charitable perspective from one side, and that’s reasonable to you? I clarified multiple times, but some of the words look like an easily opposed argument I wasn’t making, so ignore those clarifications. Way easier to tear down an unrelated straw man than to engage with the nuanced position actually being presented.
The Internet was a mistake. I’m done with these echo chambers. Thank you for the perspective.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
That might be a salient point, had anyone actually engaged the argument I actually made.
I’m not mad, I’m just… disappointed. Nostalgic for rational, good faith discussion on old forums. Frustrated with the post-rational labyrinth of echo-chambers that the Internet seems to have become. Saddened by the apparent abandonment of sincere engagement in favor of sterile down votes. A bit heartbroken that maybe it was always this way and I was just young enough to ignore it, and lucky enough to find little temporary oases of respite over the years.
But not mad, certainly not mad. Mad is groupthink down votes, truth by mindless consensus, rejection of discussion. I’m just… bleh. I saw this shit at Reddit, I thought this place would be better. But I think it’s just people, I don’t think it can be any different. I’m just… kinda done. Whatever, I don’t really care anymore. Bleh.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
There’s no criticism of anything I’ve said here, only a series of emotionally twisted straw men. If you want to be part of conversations, be a part of them. Don’t make up your own imaginary conversations to criticize. I’m done with your nonsense
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 3 months ago:
Because it’s not a non-sequitur? The whole post is about the observed development of Western Europe. I didn’t realize no one was allowed to make comments unless they correct people, I guess I’m using outdated discussion modalities. I forgot that now we over-simplify everything to place ideas into simple, emotionally-directed groupthink boxes
All I said was the development in Western Europe was jump-started by the environmental pressures to develop the technologies that lead to it (seasonal variation, low sunlight, cold climate), and that the same environmental pressures also selects for paler skin. People like you started twisting that into some bullshit about “evolutionary racial advantage”, in comment after comment even after I repeated that that has nothing to do with my point.
Not everything has to be racially charged, but since you insist, I’m done. Bully someone else with your emotionally reductive bullshit.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 4 months ago:
Okay. I am, in the context of skin tone, witch is the only thing relevant to my point. I don’t subscribe to racist ideology. “White” isn’t even a coherent race.
- Comment on Why are so many countries in the world “developing” and poor, while essentially only Western countries have a high standard of living? 4 months ago:
All I’m saying is that regions with harsher winters experienced early consistent pressures to develop specific technologies: agriculture, food storage, preservation, textiles, and weatherproof shelters. Early development of those technologies helped push them toward industrialization earlier. Not that they’re the only regions that were ever developed, especially after the establishment of wider trade routes. I don’t understand the enthusiasm of everyone to turn this into a race thing.