The crux of the matter is this: How did life happen?

what developed inside of the organism that made it want to replicate — christian2017

Nothing. They don't "want" to reproduce, they just do. For that matter, it isn't entirely clear that the higher animals "want" to reproduce; they just do. Females get pregnant because fucking makes males feels good. It might even make females feel good. Reproduction follows because it does (the machinery kicks in), not because the two agents involved wanted it to happen (at least below the primate level). As far as I know. I could be wrong. Maybe lions, tigers, and bears--vultures, snakes, and lizards-- really do WANT their little offspring running around.

This is also true for single cell plants and single cell animals — christian2017

Many/most single celled creatures in the Archea group (that were neither plants nor animals) didn't even need sunlight. All they needed was a minimal amount of H2O and chemicals from which they can derive energy. There are extremophiles found in very deep rocks that haven't seen the sun for ... hundreds of millions years. There are extremophiles living in very hot ocean floor vents that don't need the sun either.

The blue-green algae that could benefit from sun light and could change CO2 into O and carbohydrates wrecked the stable environment that earth had been perfectly happy with for a very, very long time. The excess O poisoned everything else.

Whether virus-type-structures existed before bacteria is hard to say. Viruses as we know them definitely came later; we know viruses as obligate intracellular parasites--so the bacteria had to come first. But the viruses could have moved in later, even if they existed first.

The viruses we know all have the genetic material to take over the cell, so again, those bacteria definitely didn't come first.


We don't know how life started -- you and I, for two, weren't there when it happened. It all probably began as some sort of crypto-life that just wasn't quite biology yet, but was capable of forming some stable boxy structures. But it's a very long way from stable boxy structures to stable boxes that are able to keep themselves nourished and are able to reproduce -- something they just do, without any desire--as far as I know.

I know intelligent people who managed to reproduce without actually wanting to do so. Fucking felt good, and then there was a baby. "Fuck!" they said.

What's more frustrating is how it seems to go more quickly the older you get. — Terrapin Station

It seems to me that there is a physical explanation for time appearing to pass faster as one ages. Our brains, like some other animal brains, seem to be able to track time. As we age, this facility slows down -- and time seems to speed up as a result.

Time goes by so fast when you are alive.

What are some things that would be important in this new world wide religion or system of beliefs? — christian2017

Christians and Moslems have been trying to convert everyone to their religions all over the world for a combined number of 3400 missionary years, and have so far not exceeded the half way mark. So, were we to have a new religion (or belief system) that could save us from whatever, it will have to spread a lot faster than Abrahamic religions have.

One belief system that has spread very fast is Capitalism. It's pretty much the going thing among most people, whether they like it or not. Communism/socialism hasn't been able to make anywhere close to the same dent.

If some prophet can come up with something as persuasive as Capitalism, then it might become the new world belief system. However, like Capitalism, it might be the very last thing we need more of.

Note to Harrari: Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

My own opinion is that Neanderthals were never really a separate species and that they really were arbituarly classified that way. — christian2017

Neanderthals never died out they just combined into other Cro Magnons or modern humans. — christian2017

If Neanderthals and Denisovans had just merged into the Homo sapiens species, it seems to me one would see much higher levels of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA than we do. I might be wrong about that, but it seems to me reasonable to suppose that it would be higher than 1 or 2%. They could and did breed with Homo sapiens, but there were apparent differences that stood in the way of a species merger--life style factors, ability to tolerate cold, fertility, etc.

Neanderthals were a separate species, so were Denisovans. But that doesn't mean they were radically different. If they had been radically different, they wouldn't have interbred. You know, birds of different species quite often mate producing hybrids that may or may not be fertile. Obviously eagles and hummingbirds are not going to mate (size problem), and parrots and hawks aren't going to mate -- even if they lived in the same tree, their habits, wings, beaks, etc. are incompatible.

I'm not interested in mind reading or minds separate from bodies. Have you ever noticed that fortune tellers never predict that one's life is going to be as boring in the future as it has been in the past? Bad for business.

But I have been reading a not-very-good-book, Title: Gargoyles; author: Ben Hecht***; published: 1922. The set of Chicago characters are chock full of little self-deceptions of various kinds. They often find their words, actions, even their thoughts, to be problematic because they sense that if they are not careful of what they say, do, or think some ugly truth might be revealed to themselves or others.

One character, a widow, having recovered from grief (or at least the habit of living with a husband) has become ambitious. She engages in many charitable fund raising causes, because the fundraising activity serves as a means for her petit bourgeoisie self advancement. She is unusual in that she knows full well that she doesn't give a rat's ass (my phrase, not hers) about the prospective beneficiaries of her charitable work. She admits to herself that they are generally a disgusting lot. She doesn't particularly like the other women she must work with either, especially those who out-rank her socially.

But the widow is unusually honest with herself. Most of the characters engage in all sorts of petty self-deceptions to maintain their self-images. Those who aren't good at this game suffer.

"We Don't Want To Believe - Because, If We Believe, Then..." we might have to deal with inconvenient realities. We won't be honest with ourselves, usually. We may prefer to lead lives of sexual abandon, but don't want to admit it. Instead we maintain a front of sexual probity. Or, like one of the characters in Gargoyles, actually leads a life of sexual gluttony but not without various self-inflicted prevarications.

A lot of people (everyone?) play elaborate games to avoid the inconvenience of truth. Our image is more important than the raw facts.

***Gone with the Wind, Scarface (1983), Notorious (1946) and Spellbound (1945) are some of the movies Hecht wrote scripts for.

I liked Peters' post; I'd just hate to see it squelched by one of the less imaginative moderators. Names need not be named.

But yes, the sentence you called out struck me also as a substantial problem statement.

I don't know where to turn

when nowhere near is any nearer to better — Robert Peters

And congrats on rhyming couplets. It's all good.

You wrote this (it's not a quote)?

If so, nicely done. An elegant howl. You've got good uninhibited momentum.

When will the Valkyries Ride?

Where do I turn when nowhere near is any nearer to better?
How do I dream when all I can hope for is a little clean water?

I don't know when the Valkyries will ride, but you might want to add another post, in prose where you ask or propose something political in philosophical terms, or one of the moderators (our valkyries) will be circling over head about to claim that your post wasn't "philosophical".

I'm just suggesting that no one will open their pay envelope, see a raise, and exclaim "cool - the supply/demand for labor thing is paying off." — Relativist

Right. People don't operate that way. Even professional economists who get raises don't say that. What they say is, "Finally my brilliance has been noticed, however slightly they are rewarding it."

There is still a problem in the wage/unemployment/employment relationship. Some regional chiefs in the Federal Reserves are against an increase in the interest rate, because they believe the reserve of unemployed is still too large. For some reason (apparently not clear to them) structural problems are keeping workers out of the job market. They may not have any of the demanded skills; they may have criminal records which are effective bars to employment; they may be sufficiently out of the loop to even know how to get into the job market. They may not be able to get to jobs. (Transportation between areas with higher than average unemployment and areas with unfilled jobs is often non-existent. If you don't have a reliable car (and most long-term unemployed people don't) getting to a job that is 15 miles away is impossible.

No, the qualification doesn't belong there. The idea is that when there's demand for labor, workers are enticed to move to better paying jobs. — Relativist

OK. Yes. True. And wages have to be high enough. I wouldn't cross the street for a job that paid $3 an hour. That's the problem with "Americans just don't want to work" or "just won't do that job." Slaughter house jobs, for instance, are too dangerous for Americans to work in for anything less than a competitive wage. Meatpackers can hire illegal immigrants at very low wages because the wages they are competing with are in Mexico or Guatemala, not Iowa, Missouri, or Minnesota. And yes, the immigrants get seriously injured working on the meatpacking disassembly lines.

"We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber." — Maw

I'm sure some people are thinking about how big the concentration camps, gas chambers, crematoria, and ash pits will need to be, and where they should be located. Though, the rage of the dominant US demographic doesn't seem to work that way these days. Separating children from parents at the border and then losing the connection between x child and x parent is more like the current regime. There are ways (...ve have vays...) of keeping undesirable groups fairly wretched without actually running them through an extermination center.

Look at blacks. The majority of them have been kept out of the economic horn of plenty for 150+ years. Enough have made it to deprive the rest an excuse for not succeeding. We could make life a lot less convenient for illegal immigrants without resorting to hydrogen cyanide in the showers. The unpleasant bureaucratic resources of the State have not been fully unleashed upon illegal immigrants. The hounds have not been released, yet.

Remember, the Nazi's were successful in encouraging a lot of Jews, communists, and decadent intellectuals to get the hell out of Germany without the gas chambers (that came later). Late night visits to the local police station, limitations on work, residence, travel, benefits, etc.-- people got the message and left if they could. Eventually the Nazis took over the countries where many of the unwanted fled -- like Holland and France. We'd have to take over Mexico and Central America to effect a final solution to the problem, which would be really bad PR. It was bad PR for Germany too, but they were on a roll at that point and war had already commenced, so not too much was made of it.

There is also an economic theory that low unemployment results in demand for labor exceeding supply, and that this drives up wages. I don't know if this has ever been confirmed, but it's not an implausible theory. Even if true, no individual is likely to notice it, so I don't see how this would get him any votes. — Relativist

What you wanted to say and almost did was "Demand for labor which can not be met by reserves of unemployed workers tends to drive up wages."

It's sound theory, but it's not a law of nature. Over the last few years (during the recovery from the last deep recession) unemployment was dropping, employment was rising, and wages were stagnant for quite some time--in violation of the theory. Now, they finally have started to rise.

People don't notice these increases in wages? Bullshit! Of course individuals notice, whether their wages rise or fall. Most workers are living paycheck to paycheck, and changes in their take-home pay whether from a tax change or a wage change has immediate consequences. I've lived paycheck to paycheck, and believe me, a $10 difference in the check is noticeable (even if it doesn't allow one to change one's lifestyle. It just feels good to see a little more.)

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The downside is he's Biden. — Baden

The downside is that whoever runs with even a small chance of success will be a professional politician. "Professional politicians" are not all liars , thieves, knaves, and scoundrels but a lot of them are. Some that are not outright LTKorS are beholden (aka in hock) to powerful interests such as the petroleum industry, the defense industry, or something of that sort. Most politicians are not intellectuals with broad interests and long-term perspectives (they'd go nuts if they were). Then there is the political system which is in charge of delivering the kind of results we tend to get, which are the results the political system wishes to get.

Voters are almost not part of the political system. The individual's single participation in the system (voting) is practically irrelevant. It's irrelevant not because the other candidate won; it's irrelevant because all of the candidates were losers, to use a favorite term of the current Loser in Chief, Donald Trump.

Is Senator Sanders something other than the rest? He might be something other than the rest; so might Mayor Buttigieg. Maybe Elizabeth Warren is the real McCoy. But in any case--gay mayor, socialist senator, or progressive hero--the political system is what it always is, and whoever wins will be unsuccessful in conducting a revolution from the white house. Presidents are successful because their actions conform to the range of options provided by the political system.

Physical and chemical processes are the means by which bodies and brains operate. It might be an error to suppose that the means and output are the same thing.

Did "I decide to respond" to the title of this thread, or was "I compelled to respond"? Did this series of symbols on the landing page of TPF "Unfree will (determinism), special problem" caused me to respond? Or, was I moved by my interest in the perplexing issue of will--determined, free, or a combination of compulsion and freedom?

People don't seem to be entirely free to respond however they wish (or we wish they would), and they don't seem to be automatons, either. (Of course, if we were all automatons, we wouldn't, couldn't care or notice that we were.)

It seems impossible to claim all freedom or all compulsion in our behavior.

All shepherds are sheep shaggers. Where men are men and the sheep are nervous.

AAVE isn't non rhotic like New England, British, or old South (I do declaa), — Hanover

You are not the first person to use "rhotic" on TPF; that honor goes to andrewk, but you are 1 of the first three. You are the first person to say "I do declaa" here.

I think that distinction should be easier to spot for Americans than for other British speakers, because most varieties of American English are 'rhotic', meaning they pronounce terminal 'r's, whereas British and Australian English do not, instead pronouncing the ends of words ending in 'er' as 'ah' or 'uh'. So that distinction is lost on we Poms and Aussies. — AndrewK

Now, what pray tell is a "pom"? Pomeranian (a variety of German)?

Right.

Right (conservative)
Right (correct)
Right (in the direction of most people's dominant hand)
Right (I totally agree)
Right (verbal insertion without meaning)
Right (proper -- as in "Meet, right, and salutary")
Right (a bishop)
Right there, right here, right now, right away, etc.

and many more.

Good point. The overabundance of 'schwa' sounds and liquefaction of ending consonants makes AAVE difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand. From all the "What?"s I hear in black on black conversations on the bus, I don't think AAVE is working all that well for the primary users, either. Couple AAVE with mumbling, and it's incomprehensible.

But then I couldn't understand a good share of the dialogue in "Trainspotters" which was a film made in Scotland. There are dialects that appear on Masterpiece Theater (usually BBC sourced) that are tricky too. The midwest should probably send missionaries to the UK and help them learn how to speak their own language. The stupid slobs!

Ah gonna ge me som smahz lie tha honky gah. Ah be lauyah lie hi."

Thanks for that search result. The results for on-line searches should be quite different than appearance in print, since on-line searches represent the ripples of current interest/confusion/outré-wish fulfillment, and so on. For the same reason, searches for "flu symptoms" have been shown to match (more or less) upticks in ER visits for acute influenza symptoms.

Presumably (but I wouldn't be too sure) Google doesn't have detailed demographics on the searches -- age, race, economic status, education level, and so on. That would be interesting.

Ironically irreverent... you have no idea how much energy it takes to maintain that stance.

It's the same word. — frank

The phonetic difference between "nigger(s)" and "nigga(s)" probably has its origin in the AAVE tendency to drop the final 'r'. [Dropping the final 'r' is also characteristic of white New England speech, completely unrelated to AAVE.] AAVE has at least some origins in white southern speech, which uses a soft 'r' pronunciation.

The pronunciation of the final 'r' is a good geographical marker. Midwesterners (broadly defined) tend to use a hard final 'r'. There are regional and class differences in pronunciation in the US, and even more so in the UK.

Whether "nigger(s)" and "nigga(s)" is one word with two racially inflected pronunciations or one word (or two) with racial inflections and two separate meanings seems to me unsettled. Time will tell. Lots of words have had decades of popularity, then disappeared (and sometimes, lamentably, have refused to go away.

One of the neologisms I have tracked is "get-go". "She was popular from the get-go." According to informed sources, it appeared in 1962. I first heard in Massachusetts in 1968. I see it in print occasionally, but hear it used only rarely in my Minneapolis milieu. According to Google Ngram, the phrase "from the get go" took off about 1990. We are at peak get go now.

Here is an example of culturally limited knowledge. Google Ngram measures the frequency of words in print. Usually, 1800 is the starting date of its measurements. Here's the Ngram for nigger and nigga. "Nigga" is obviously used more often than indicated here, but it's use isn't showing up in print.

The idea that, if I were teaching in America, I should further the goal of helping my students by potentially insulting a significant number of them on some bogus free speech anti-PC trip, is, frankly, retarded. — Baden

You wouldn't do that, I wouldn't do that, and most people wouldn't do that. The overwhelming majority of people don't. A good share of my work life was involved working with very disadvantaged black people (white people, too). I never used the racially insensitive language with them. Our discussion here, though, is not a classroom or a social service. It is public, and is one of the few settings (like a college classroom) where language can and should be discussed honestly.

If someone says, "Those god damned n word don't belong in a civilized country." that would be unacceptable in any public conversation (and a lot of private ones). Referencing the word 'nigger' explicitly when talking about that very word should not, and I think would not be taken as an insult in most settings -- except those where persons are wired up to react to a list of verboten terms.

Well, class figures in here. While upward mobility has been possible for a lot of people, downward mobility is an ever-present risk. Working people (which most people are) can sense many gradations in working class culture, from securely prosperous, to tentatively prosperous, departing prosperity, and so on down to rock bottom. Trailer trash and white trash are not the bottom, but they are close to it, and people are afraid of ending up there.

A lot of working class prosperity is quite shallow and operates paycheck to paycheck. Lose the job and the appearance of prosperity can fall apart. Depending on how much credit they are floating on, a family hit by adversity (losing the main job, or both jobs) can lose everything in a few months. people are afraid of that happening to them.

So, while they are riding high, they look down their noses on the people toward the bottom -- unsuccessful, poor, defeated, riff raff, trailer trash, white trash, white 'n's, and so on.

If pejorative class terms have disappeared from Finnish usage, my guess is that class distinctions have become smaller and people feel more secure. There are probably fewer poorer Finns, and poorer Finns are just poorer Finns, not a group representing a feared personal financial collapse.

I can't relate to the childish joy you get out of being ignorant about this. — Baden

That's because you are suffering from humorless pedantry.

I understand it perfectly well, which is why I am opposed to words being judged "unspeakable". Childish rules call for a similar response. I do not use the word "nigger" in casual conversation or writing, but that does not mean I approve of anyone's ban on the word. Yes, Baden, I ridicule intelligent adults discussing language using circumlocutions like "the n word" when the word in question is "nigger". It's childish.

B-word people (AA err, N word, n word?) use "the n word" in the same way that "c s word" use the "Q word". Ameliorating the term "Q word" or "n word" is a way of disarming the term when it comes out of the mouths of people who hate the people to whom the "x" word is applied.

"Now quiet down children, you know we aren't allowed to reveal what the "..." words are until you are at least 18--possibly 28. So you are 13 now -- you will just have to wait until you are all grown up."

Blacks (African Americans, err, Negroes... niggers?) use "nigger" in the same way that cock suckers use "queer". Ameliorating the term "queer" or "nigger" is a way of disarming the term when it comes out of the mouths of people who hate the people to whom the term is applied.

I do remember feeling that I had overstepped a mark when I once tried to discuss the exact meaning and use of the six-letter C-word with a French person — andrewk

What word was that? Cospic? Crutle? Cuckoo? Confus? Christ? Caudal?

Oh common, tell us...

The N word problem again. We are all grown up here so we can actually write the word: Niggard! There I wrote it. Watch the ceiling collapse.

Peak niggard was at least as far back as 1800, according to Google Ngram. It comes from somewhere in whitest Scandinavia, at least as far back as 1400 give or take 15 minutes, when the Middle English started using it. Those creeps.

"Nigger" can't be verboten, because I hear Negroes (another N Word) who perform rap using it almost continuously. If it were so insulting, they surely wouldn't use it. Just like I don't hear people describing themselves as "niggardly". Usually not, anyway.

"Jew" strikes my ear as problematic. One can't read periods in European or American history without seeing the term used again and again as a vicious epithet. One almost hesitates to use the word at all.

Not as traumatic as there of course, yet slavery, segregation and the hangings of blacks simply is an issue that white America has a problem with. — ssu

But not nearly as big a problem as black America has. Frankly, I don't know why we white people should have much of a problem with it -- after all, white people were owners not slaves, and white children went to the better schools, and were rarely if ever lynched (though it did happen, but not in quite the same context as black lynchings). White people got the better end of the stick, which somebody always does.

Losing those feelings of racial guilt will help us white folks deal with the bad hands that have been consistently dealt to black folks. After all, most of us have not had the opportunity to personally oppress black people. Most of us (like 99%) were not involved in writing the Federal Housing Administration rules back in the 1930s. Those rules were the key tool of post Jim Crow oppression -- creating the modern black slum and white suburbs. Those rules set the pattern for continuing segregated schooling. Quality of school and place of residence are geographically linked.

Most of us weren't personally responsible for maintaining the long term impoverishment of blacks, and the resulting degrading slums.

Guilt doesn't always lead to repentance. Sometimes it leads us to hate some people even more. Racial hatreds have long been used to divide the working classes. As the song says,

...That if you don't let race hatred break you up,
You'll win. What I mean, take it easy, but take it! — Songwriters: Peter Seeger / Lee Hays / Millard Lampell

Oil can be produced from coal in a non-pollutant manner (the Nazis did it during WWII), along with methane being utilized to produce oil. — Wallows

Yes, that's true. The Germans made synthetic gasoline from coal. Many cities in the US (and elsewhere) had coal gas plants up until the 1950s, when natural gas pipelines replaced coal and goal gas for heating and cooking. These plants were not exactly environmentally friendly, because goal gasification and synthetic fuel production leaves a lot of waste material that is difficult to dispose of in a harmless manner.

Keep in mind how much oil will need to be replaced: the world currently produces and consumes about 34 billion barrels a year -- each barrel containing 42 gallons. Now, we are not going to run out of oil next week. The peak in the curve of supply is a half-way mark. So, we have been extracting oil since say... 1880. The peak was in 1980, and the practical end of extraction will be around 2080 assuming that the current extraction rate continued. The end of oil won't be like falling off a cliff. It will be more of a fizzling out. We see signs of fizzling in the US -- fracking is an effort to maintain production in marginal geologic formations. In the end, a lot of oil will remain in the ground -- not by reason of ecology, but because the energy required to extract it will be greater than the amount of energy in the oil.

Switching to electrified transportation and an all electric world will obviously reduce the use of oil for fuel (it won't eliminate it, because pound for pound, gasoline contains a lot of energy and is very portable). Completing the changeover to the all-electric world will take... oh, at least until 2080, probably longer. That's only 61 years away.

I'm not sure how long the coal supply would last if we switched to coal to replace petroleum and natural gas.

We can make hydrocarbons by cooking garbage at high pressure; we can reverse engineer waste plastic back into an earlier stage of manufacture. But these sorts of maneuvers take a lot of energy. It would take more energy to make 1 million gallons of crude oil out of x million pounds of garbage than you would get back.

There are all sorts of researches going on into various sources of raw material; algae; lignin (the tough plant fiber); corn, etc. Some of them are kind of crazy -- using corn to make fuel for cars. Corn production is too resource intensive and too hard on the soil to keep that up for a long time.

Part of the solution is to live a much simpler lifestyle that requires less energy, fewer raw materials. This isn't a plan to live in the woods eating roots, berries, and squirrels. I won't go into what "simpler lifestyle" means.

And with the continued valiant efforts of the antinatalists, the population will start dropping and billions will avoid having to live happily ever after.

Is it possible there are people who have an advanced understanding of the world but protect their secret knowledge so as to exert influence over human affairs? — Jonmel

Not only is it possible, it is a fact. Yes, we have secret knowledge and we exert influence over human affairs. Any given ordinary individual may not like the way things are working out, but they are ignorant of our objectives. And they are going to stay ignorant, because we are not going to reveal what our objectives are.

We advise you to discontinue this line of inquiry, for your own good.

I am willing to talk about population growth. That's easy. It's population reduction that is difficult. I defer the problem of population reduction to natural (if unpleasant) processes.

What YOU don't seem to get is that the economic world we know, ever increasing efficiency, decreasing cost and all, is built on and depends on cheap plentiful oil, coal, and natural gas. What nuclear power can not do is provide feed stock in place of these three substances. The entire agricultural, domestic, and industrial machine is fueled by, processes, and requires cheap feed stock. There is no substitute for oil, coal, and natural gas as feed stock or fuel. Yes, electricity created by nuclear, wind, and solar is possible and is being produced, and more will be produced in the future. But solar, wind, and nuclear do not produce one drop of petroleum that can be turned into the gazillion products that fossil fuels can be turned into.

As we run out of coal, oil, and natural gas we run out of a critical substance that is a) cheap, and b) plentiful. Nothing comes close.

Your economy of growing efficiency and decreased cost will become moot once oil disappears. And it will disappear. (Technically, there will be oil left in the ground no matter what, because it will require more value to get it out of the ground than it can have as a product.

IF we favored insects, birds, fish, plants, and megafauna (including ourselves) we would cease and desist from as much industrial activity (including automobile transportation systems) as possible. A LOT is possible -- people just wouldn't like it.

This discussion isn't the trivial communism vs. capitalism question. It is existence vs. oblivion: What will it be? The route we are on leads to oblivion. Death. Avoiding oblivion means capping the oil wells and closing the coal mines before it is too late. Life won't be the same if we quit using coal and oil. It is the choice of life not being the same or life not being at all.

Assuming this is true, what should we do about it? — frank

According to writers like James Howard Kunstler, and others, it is difficult to even imagine a way of living without petroleum and coal and their various byproducts. It could, theoretically, be done. It would mean initially dropping back to agriculture as it existed in the 19th century. Industrially, it would mean dropping back to 17th century industry -- only a little industrialization. It would mean a return to horse power, and small-plot farming. Railroads would be difficult to sustain without the heavy industry of coal and steel production. Autos and highways would be out of the question. The population would drop precipitously. The lifespan would be shorter (even with medical knowledge intact). Production of drugs and medical equipment is a heavy chemical industry too. It takes a lot of feed stock and energy.

Kunstler's A World Made By Hand series depicts life in a community reduced to 19th century tech. It isn't terrible, but life there is much simpler, much quieter, much thinner, and in the event of disease or serious injury, much shorter.

The human footprint was greatly enlarged in the 19th century, and hugely enlarged again in the 20th. IF we wanted to save the rest of the natural world and some of us, we would have to forgo that hugely magnified footprint in favor of a size close to our natural, size 10 footprint.

There is no way of maintaining life as we know it now and reducing our footprint to a much smaller size. It's an either/or choice.

I suspect it's too late to do anything except perhaps to minimise the damage that will be left after we're gone — Pattern-chaser

I tend to think it is too late; 40 years ago, we would have needed 40-50 years to make significant changes in our relationship to energy and the environment. We could have done that, but we didn't. 40 years have passed and we have made just a little progress (all of us, not just the USA). We still need 40 years (or more) to make the radical changeover from fossil fuels and heavy-chemical-use agriculture, assuming that those efforts were now fully underway--which they are not. By the time we completed those difficult changes, levels of CO2, methane, water vapor, and so on will have passed the tipping point by some years, if it hasn't already. Another 40 or 50 years of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides and our goose will have been thoroughly cooked.

I don't think gay guys in his generation were hankering after heterosexual reproduction. More likely he was saying, "This is what economic planning can do in the short run. In the long run we're all dead.

"In the long run, we're all dead." John Maynard Keynes

Good point.

There are far too many examples of suffering and disasters coming out of short-sighted decisions. — Christoffer

On the other hand, didn't our hunter-gatherer ancestors do just fine for 100,000 years of short term thinking? What changed?

EDIT: I should add, "presumably" to that statement. The anthropologists hadn't arrived on the scene 100k ago.

Short term thinking is an excellent candidate for the cause of our doom, don't you think?

Short-term profit. — Pattern-chaser

And at this point, a lot of people are expecting this quarterly result to be better than last quarter's, or else it's "sell".

We've been able to get away with all sorts of disastrous behavior because the consequences don't loom up over the horizon quick enough.

Would it be better for democracy to evolve to be more long sighted? — frank

Oh, heavens, no! What possible advantage could there be in the electorate being more far sighted? Silly you.

Obviously, it would be better, but... by what means can the people, the parliament, or the dictator become "far sighted"? Which society is it that has solved this problem? Were the French far sighted, they would have planted oak trees 200 years ago to replace the timbers required to repair today's burning cathedrals. Or they might have put better fire protection in Notre Dame's attic 6 months ago.

Were San Franciscans far sighted they wouldn't have rebuilt their city on the spot where it was destroyed in 1906. Were Californians far sighted they wouldn't have built Los Angeles in the first place. There are a lot of things that should just have never happened.

It seems to be very difficult, if not impossible, for groups of people to plan for future goals that are more than 25 or 30 years away. What we do is create organizations that are on going and frequently repopulated by new people and new plans. Ancient religions are still here because somebody kept the sacred fire for 3, 11, 17, or some number of years at a stretch, then somebody else took over. Political parties stay in business for 150 years because every 2 years they have an election to attend to. Plus, politicians have to look after their domains every day.

Personally, the longest period for which I've made plans was about 30 years, and that plan didn't work out very well. I've managed 5 and 10 year plans, but that's about it.

Your suggestion is my command.

"why don't they deserve even more?" — ZhouBoTong

The amount of reward that anyone in a company receives -- wage earners, managers, or stock owners, has to be balanced against the needs of the company. If one pays out too much to any one group, the other two groups have to receive less. And the more one pays out, the less there is to retain for research and development to insure future growth.

As a stockholder, one might object to management collecting too much money, thus reducing the size of their dividends. Workers who aren't getting pay raises object to management getting huge raises. Managers are in the game to get ahead, and they resent limits on their income. No body is entitled to specific share (unless it is workers, who from a socialist perspective, deserve it all).

Society's interest also matters. If too much wealth is being diverted to too small a group of people (like top managers and the largest stock holders) the broad needs of society are likely to be shorted. The rich can not spend all of their money, really. If you earn 50 million a year, how can you actually go out and spend it? You can't. So you accumulate most of it, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Meanwhile, the larger needs of society are not getting met. It is worth noting that the prosperity of society at large is the critical base for building wealth.

That's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

One says "it is what it is" when no more can be said.

I might possibly understand what you are aiming at. How do definitions have any validity when people have diverse, often incompatible definitions? (But again, we're off the topic here.)

The words in language have meaning by consensus. In the case of objects, the consensus is usually correct. 99% of the population agree on which bridge in the United States is the Golden Gate Bridge and which is the Brooklyn Bridge [100% made up statistic]. True enough, some small town with the name of "Brooklyn" might have a bridge which could be called the Brooklyn Bridge, but no body would confuse some small highway bridge with THE Brooklyn Bridge. [Fact: some small towns are named Brooklyn.]

"Justice" on the other hand is a condition whose meaning maybe only a small number of people will agree with. Everyone wants justice, but who has gotten screwed by the courts and who received justice is (often) in dispute. Should the cop who shot the guy who looked like he had a gun be tried for murder? Opinion will be all over the place. "Justice" will be hard to name. "It is what it is" will definitely not be the case.

There is (or was) a consensus about what the USSR was. It was a union of 15 republics. For all practical purposes it was a single state -- the same what the USA is a single nation, even if it has 50 sub units. It was run by the Communist Party of the USSR, with a very strong executive at the top (a dictator more or less). so on and so forth... The histories of the USSR and the USA are both known. These facts are not open to dispute. "Nations" are collectivities of many people, many points of view, many government units, many industries, and so on. Of course, someone growing up taking care of pigs in the USSR or the USA will have a different take on the country than someone dancing at the Bolshoi or making movies in Hollywood.

But the facts of history are still the same, pig farm or Hollywood.

Someone involved in organized crime in the Soviet Union or the United States will have a radically different POV than somebody engaged in honest work. But the facts of the nations history -- including the fact that some people engaged in crime -- remains the same.

Now, if someone has no idea of what the USSR was (this is possible -- the USSR went out of business almost 30 years ago) then they will just be at a loss to understand what knowledgeable people are saying about the USSR. Someone born and raised in New York City, who has never traveled much, probably doesn't know what a pig farm smells like. Or, for that matter, what a barn for milk cows smells like. That doesn't mean that their understanding of the USSR or the USA is invalid. One could know a lot about the history of both countries and not know what pig shit smells like.

I'm afraid I can't go any further here. My knowledge and interest in the topic is what it is. So, if you want to talk about this more, what you could do is take your opening question to me...

Here's a question: when two people argue about "USSR" or "America," are they arguing about the same USSR or America?

Perhaps the reason they argue so much is because each side is arguing about a different USSR or America (but call their mental representations by the same name).

and start a new thread. You might want to expand those two sentences a bit. Like, adding which Buddhism, or which Christianity people are talking about.

Communication "works" because words have limited meanings. Buddhism and Judaism, for example, or Hinduism and Christianity have distinct properties that characterize the religion. When people use the word "Judaism" for instance, they are using a word that excludes the teachings of Buddha and the Apostle Paul, for example. Judaism, like Hinduism, may be diverse but it doesn't mean whatever you happen t wish it it meant.

Tom and Bob may not agree about aspects of Buddhism, but what Buddhism is (in its several main forms) isn't open to invention. It is what it is. The same goes for capitalism, organic chemistry, the French language, and a lot of other things. They all have specific meanings that don't overlap extensively with other terms. So, "capitalism" and "socialism" mean different things. A parliamentary system is not the same as one man rule. Anarchism and Communism have distinct meanings--they don't overlap.

Make sense?