The Wow I Can't Believe That News Story Thread

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by Anteater

if the Mongols or Aztecs ended up conquering Europe. You might be riding a yak instead of driving a car

*facepalm*

I'm just gonna pretend that you're self aware enough for these posts to be ironic.

[Anteater]

Originally Posted by Frownland

*facepalm*

I'm just gonna pretend that you're self aware enough for these posts to be ironic.

I thought everyone wanted a high speed yak. Better fuel economy. Or at the very least a steam powered vehicle.

[Frownland]

Gotta work with you got. Yaks are the best that those Hispanics can do amiright

[The Batlord]

He didn't even read my post right but still came off as ignorant white trash. That must be some deep ****.

[OccultHawk]

Was the Rape of Nanking also white supremacy's fault?

Japanese imperialism was indeed inspired by Western imperialism. They had been minding their own business for generations until we insisted on cracking them open. The Perry Expedition ended two centuries of Japan intentionally minding its own business.

[Anteater]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Gotta work with you got. Yaks are the best that those Hispanics can do amiright

Mexicans would win the race war, but not on yaks.

Originally Posted by Dharma & Greg

He didn't even read my post right but still came off as ignorant white trash. That must be some deep ****.

I saw it, laughed, stepped over it very gently, then went on my merry way. Don't lead with ad hominem attacks next time.

Originally Posted by OccultHawk

Japanese imperialism was indeed inspired by Western imperialism. They had been minding their own business for generations until we insisted on cracking them open. The Perry Expedition ended two centuries of Japan intentionally minding its own business.

[OccultHawk]

This is also from Fareed Zakaria

It might be taboo but I think understanding the biology behind racism might help us get past it

This is a professor from Stanford

SAPOLSKY: When you look at the neurobiology of how we process "uses versus them," there's some incredibly hard-wired stuff going on. Flash up faces of people that somebody has categorized as either an "in group" or an "out group" and, in a fraction of a second, your brain is differentiating between them. If it's a "them," parts of your brain that are related to fear, aggression, disgust, activate. Parts of your brains that normally process faces don't activate as much as normal. Parts of your brain related to empathy don't activate as much as normal, if it's a "them." We've got this gigantic fault line in our heads as to who counts as an "in group" member, who evokes empathy, who evokes concern and who's a "them" who just gets us bristling.

ZAKARIA: And you talk about how it's very easy, as a result of this dynamic, to scape-goat. You say scape-goating is a, kind of, very human response?

SAPOLSKY: Well, one of the more interesting parts of the brain that's pertinent to this, an area called the insula -- the insula, if you're a normal mammal, what it does is tell you if you've bitten into some disgusting food. It keeps you from getting poisoned. And in humans it does that, but in addition it also activates at morally disgusting acts, at people whose actions we consider to be disgusting.

What it does is give this tremendous viscera to who we think is appallingly different. And what that winds up meaning is we're incredibly easy to propagandize into "thems" as vermin, "thems" as malignancies, "thems" as cockroaches, all these historical examples of genocides being built around, sort of, dehumanizing "thems."

And, basically, if you're some autocratic tyrant, if you can get your followers to activate the insular cortex as soon as they contemplate the "thems," you've just checked off half of your to-do list on your, like, ethnic cleansing shopping list.

ZAKARIA: You know, you've studied this all, you know, very deeply. But you also talk about how you -- you've come to this even personally. You grew up in a very small, insular Jewish community that was suspicious often of the outside world. Is this something that one can do anything about?

SAPOLSKY: Well, there's -- there's some good news lurking in there. It's some very fragile good news. But it's one of the ways in which we're different from your typical chimp or baboon going about an "us- them" dichotomy. We belong to multiple groups. We belong to multiple groups, and thus we have multiple "thems" in our heads. And who counts as a "them" could change in a fraction of a second.

ZAKARIA: So the hope is that we, kind of, embrace the idea that everybody has multiple identities; we're -- we belong to many different groups, that no one can -- you know, people can't just be put into a box. Is that right?

SAPOLSKY: Well, the hope is that could be used for good. Of course, we have no shortage of examples of it being used for the worst. During the Rwandan genocide, Tutsi and Hutu people there, who had been neighbors for years, suddenly a neighbor, a classmate, a student, a parishioner, all of those were transformed into a "them," thanks to the propaganda of that. Insofar as we are a smart species that can juggle lots of categories in our heads at once, we are species that could be terribly vulnerable to manipulation.

I think it's fair to say we are fairly hard-wired into dividing the world into "uses" and "thems" and not being very thrilled about the "thems." But who counts as an "us" and who counts as a "them" could change in a fraction of a second. ZAKARIA: Wow, sobering stuff. Professor Sapolsky, pleasure to have

[Anteater]

^ That's pretty on-point actually. You see it all over the world in every major culture across time.

You'll start to see something similar to racism across all demographics and socioeconomic classes once functional AI and automata become a norm as well.

One day we'll all look back and say "It all started with Flippy..."

USA Today - Hamburger-making robot Flippy is back at Calif. chain

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Anteater

^ That's pretty on-point actually. You see it all over the world in every major culture across time.

I hate how you word things. Like this. ****ing duh. Tribalism isn't a new concept. And yet for this point you paint the aesthetic that it's only now just being brought up and you are assuming the role of the generic middle class white pseudo-intellectual who is recognizing new information and as a gatekeeper to generic middle class white pseudo-intellectualism (which you manage to imply in one sentence IS intellectualism) you are giving the idea legitimacy that it needs by virtue of being recognized by one of your caste.

You do it so ****ing much in different ways and it's the smarmiest bull****.

[Anteater]

Originally Posted by Dharma & Greg

I hate how you word things. Like this. ****ing duh. Tribalism isn't a new concept. And yet for this point you paint the aesthetic that it's only now just being brought up and you are assuming the role of the generic middle class white pseudo-intellectual who is recognizing new information and as a gatekeeper to generic middle class white pseudo-intellectualism (which you manage to imply in one sentence IS intellectualism) you are giving the idea legitimacy that it needs by virtue of being recognized by one of your caste.

You do it so ****ing much in different ways and it's the smarmiest bull****.

Other people have brought up all these points before on other threads. Just because I say something doesn't make it special. You need to smoke some weed or something and relax. Nobody is going to come up with some magical remedy for white supremacy here (or whatever eventually replaces it).

I don't really care if you want to project for the sake of projection, but the whining gets tedious when people complain about something ridiculously abstract yet somehow all-powerfully pervasive. Your no different than those jackasses back in the 80's who whined about heavy metal corrupting the youth but when pressed couldn't come up with anything concrete other than "it's just there111".