The Wow I Can't Believe That News Story Thread

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Qwertyy

eminem still trying to cling to his bit of relevancy i see. if you make a song about Donald Trump in 2018 chances are you're either a money loving sellout looking for an easy target or... well, no. you're a money loving sellout looking for an easy target.




that's nuts. if you have a decent health insurance package through work here then everything in the field can be practically free. i'm still covered under my mother's which means any dental work or optometry (including braces, glasses, etc.) is reimbursed in full, alongside the usual free hospital trips. only thing i've had to pay for is prescriptions, and even those don't usually = more than $10.

i think it's something that a lot of people take for granted here, and most spend more time complaining about the wait time than they actually using it to their benefit. but it's certainly something i'm grateful for.

What's even better is that, if you stop your medical insurance, even for a short while, you have to pay serious loading charges to get reinsured, which makes it prohibitively expensive for people like me, as it's all based on age. That means that whether I want to or not, whether I can afford it or not, I'm stuck paying this. Talk about fearmongering!

Originally Posted by Chula Vista

Frowny, Ori, Bat, and Hark (who's invisible to me) will be by soon enough to use their "cynic sticks" and poke holes.

I'm slowly becomming immune.

Yeshua had it right. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know."

Comparing yourself to Jesus, Chula? That's a slippery slope...

[OccultHawk]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Take it up with elph homie.

I will say that most of those tyrants were products of a world where they understood the tyrant as an acceptable form of government. If we found that isolated cultures that deflect the idea of a predisposition towards tyrants, we can determine that it's something that's driven by culture, which effects how we would approach it if we wanted to move away from it.

Pueblos

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Take it up with elph homie.

I will say that most of those tyrants were products of a world where they understood the tyrant as an acceptable form of government. If we found that isolated cultures that deflect the idea of a predisposition towards tyrants, we can determine that it's something that's driven by culture, which effects how we would approach it if we wanted to move away from it.

Originally Posted by elphenor

If humans are doomed to their biology why should there have been any female leaders nonetheless someone as notable as Cleopatra

it seems to me what is usually natural to humans is to adapt to their social environment

however I wouldn't say it's all nuture, nor do I claim to know which is which, but it would seem something like The Golden Rule is natural from empathy as every culture seems to develop a form of it

Nature vs. nurture is worthless while nature is clearly ruling human nature atm. Pointing out exceptions can in fact be counterproductive since it encourages you to ignore the mountains of evidence that nurture rules the vast majority of human history. I don't think that it's impossible to overcome that, but humanity's current approach is not fixing anything anytime quick.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Nature vs. nurture is worthless while nature is clearly ruling human nature atm. Pointing out exceptions can in fact be counterproductive since it encourages you to ignore the mountains of evidence that nurture rules the vast majority of human history. I don't think that it's impossible to overcome that, but humanity's current approach is not fixing anything anytime quick.

Actually, if it was nurture that would suggest that it could be learned and would make a drastic change more sensible than if you were pressing up against something that's inherent to man.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Actually, if it was nurture that would suggest that it could be learned and would make a drastic change more sensible than if you were pressing up against something that's inherent to man.

Sensible does not equal feasible atm. Again, that's pretty clear over the past few thousand years. Yours and elph's points basically sound like, "Wouldn't it be nice if...?"

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Sensible does not equal feasible atm. Again, that's pretty clear over the past few thousand years. Yours and elph's points basically sound like, "Wouldn't it be nice if...?"

Nah trust me, it would absolutely be easier to change something that's culturally influenced than something that's physiologically influenced, and I'm pretty sure that the latter would require more baby steps.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Nah trust me, it would absolutely be easier to change something that's culturally influenced than something that's physiologically influenced, and I'm pretty sure that the latter would require more baby steps.

That's all theory. Thousands of years of human tyranny are not disapproved by your points. Democracy at this point is still an experiment as far as I'm concerned, and it has not proven itself reliable longterm. I'm not an uber anarchist like OccultHawk, but I do agree that democracy may very well be doomed to failure. At least temporarily.

Originally Posted by elphenor

Polysci 101 but Batlord is a proponent of the Hobbes view of the state of nature that was used to justify monarchy and isn't taken super seriously in modern political philosophy

mostly because the formations of rudimentary forms of democracy

Democracy in practice mostly justifies Hobbes afaic even if I'm not familiar with Hobbes in detail. His ideas don't sound nice and uplifting to modern sensibilities, but that doesn't mean that he isn't at least partially right. I guess I should read Hobbes if I'm gonna agree with anything he has to say tbh. I guess I should overcome my laziness and at least read some cliff notes.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

That's all theory. Thousands of years of human tyranny are not disapproved by your points. Democracy at this point is still an experiment as far as I'm concerned, and it has not proven itself reliable longterm. I'm not an uber anarchist like OccultHawk, but I do agree that democracy may very well be doomed to failure. At least temporarily.

Thanks. I was just explaining why an exception would be valuable, I'm not trying to make a moral argument.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Thanks. I was just explaining why an exception would be valuable, I'm not trying to make a moral argument.

It's not about morals but pragmatism, and I get that you're not making a moral argument, but the facts of history do not support the idea that humanity can so quickly (as in the last 200 years) switch from tyranny to democracy in an efficient and long term manner. I do believe that democracy, or at least some derivative probably based in post-human ****, is the endgame, but what we have now has not proven to be feasible.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by elphenor

the notion that democracy and anarchy are not compatible is strange

anarchy as a tradition is very much a school of democracy

keep in mind representative democracy does not have a monopoly on the concept

Regardless, the current concept of democracy is the only dog in the fight atm as far as anything that resembles democracy. There may be more or less socialist ideas of democracy throughout the Americas, Europe, and other places, but they're all essentially the same idea. I'd love it if your concept of communism won out in the end, but I simply don't think that's it's at all feasible in anything like a predictable evolution of our current political spectrum.