I’m also from a country with such a language, and as a kid I couldn’t understand the concept of spelling bee competitions in American movies, like, what’s even the point?
What a short-sighted attitude. Colonizing Mars opens the door to a lot of advances in many, many fields. At first it will be difficult and expensive as it has happened with every new advance in the past. Precisely because of it, people will think of ideas to improve all the process and related problems. And presenting those new problems that we aren't facing now can lead to solutions that could be used in other common areas that we are used to and are kind of stuck.
I’d say do like bill gates and put the billions directly into worthwhile causes instead instead of suggesting the trickle down will be unquantified but amazing.
I'd say let's do both; let's try every approach, in rational proportions.
There is likely an optimal ratio of spending between humanitarian causes and existential risks. What is it? Is this ratio, and others that have the potential for shaping the future of humanity, openly discussed somewhere?
Bill Gates is funding some humanitarian ventures without thinking to the next decades externalities it has. 100% feel good and PR actions, yet questionable in the grand scheme of things.
One externality I have seen mentioned goes as follows: fewer childhood malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa mean more unemployed or under-employed young men being tempted to cross the Mediterranean, exacerbating political tensions in North Africa and Europe. But obviously, if you are a philanthropist and saving every human life is your chief concern, then such thinking can seem repugnant.
Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...
Mars is significantly less hospitable than either the summit of Mt Everest or Antarctica; by developing the necessary tech to colonise Mars, you could re-populate the Earth after any environmental catastrophe short of the planet being physically dismantled.
One more immediate benefit is that the ability to refuel on Mars is identical to the ability to take CO2 out of the air and turn it into (un)natural gas.
Well you said it's not helpful because everyone would be dead, this response seems like moving the goalpost, also do you think these people will be born mostly on Mars?
For a start, people having a problem with our current society on earth can build a life away from it. Have you ever noticed racists yearning for "their own" homeland? With a self-sustaining colony on mars, the tech should be available for them to build one. I'd love reading about their attempt to govern something independent with no one else to blame.
Many people also like having bigger goals to strive for, and this one might cause less conflict than those wanting to reorganize society in whatever direction.
At the same time I also hardly see it hurting us. The cash is certainly better spend that way than putting another few billions into entertainment, cosmetics or the likes.
But yes, the direct impact on your own backyard will be limited, if that is all you care about.
We've got plenty of land on Earth that we don't exactly consider habitable but still beats Mars. That is not why sending our racists to Mars is a ludicrous idea.
> this one might cause less conflict than those wanting to reorganize society in whatever direction.
Is that the "go to North Korea/Chile/Somalia" argument on steroids?
The difference is that all the unhabitable land on Earth is still nominally owned by someone, and human society has committed itself to treating these claims of ownership with a lot of respect. Modulo a few famous and very small exceptions, even stretches of hundreds of square kilometres of empty desert far inland belong to some country and building an earthbound sovereign "Mars base" there will quickly result in missiles and dudes with guns raining down on you with the full backing of the international community.
Hardly anyone who suggests that the racists move to Somalia believes that the racists, after doing so, should be free to take over the place and rule over, displace or genocide the Somalis. Conversely, if this offer were actually on the table, I'm sure plenty of racists would step up to take it.
The ability to build a Mars colony is not the same as the ability to seastead, but there is some overlap. I suspect that the 2/3rds of this planet currently treated as international waters would become habitable on a similar schedule as a Mars colony.
Not that I have any reason to believe racists can be convinced to go away no matter where or how appealing the destination is. If anything, I would expect the contrary.
> Nunberg can see how scrolling through AITA might be a “stupendous timewaster,” but he believes the sub has the potential to do some good in the world
I hardly believe so. Reddit is an echo chamber by itself and people's judgment there is way far from perfect. In this subreddit you can see a similar effect than the "fake news" one: present an emotional scenario in which you look like the victim, no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side. That's why you need to hear all the parties involved in a conflict resolution, otherwise you can be easily manipulated.
present an emotional scenario in which you look like the victim, no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side
That is in some ways the point of the subreddit. Many people are acting rationally, if not reasonably, from the facts and mental state available to them. And whoever was making them feel like a jerk and driving them to the site to get a second opinion either couldn't or didn't accept that second set of facts and mental state.
But sometimes even if you tell the story from your own perspective, you're still an asshole. Witness the large number of YTA resolutions: those were people who told their own side of the story and still had the angry mob come after them. The subreddit can't resolve all disputes, but it can identify those cases.
> That is in some ways the point of the subreddit. Many people are acting rationally, if not reasonably
I think you are mistaking commonality for rationality. That by no means sounds rational.
It is this sort acceptance and worship of echo chamber nonsense that I deleted my Reddit account. If I enjoyed being called names or slapped in the face by ignorant fools I would go work in a child day care or with developers too scared to death to read code in their primary language.
He's saying that at times the point is to demonstrate to an opponent that your side of an emotional narrative makes sense to broad numbers of others. Just about everyone is rational according to their own systems of reasoning, and it's the reconciliation of those oftentimes implicit systems that the subreddit is about.
I don't think the point of AITA is conflict resolution. On most of the internet people aren't really looking for the answer to a problem. They're reaching out for emotional support, human connection, and a little encouragement that they're not doing everything wrong. Part of the problem with the way many 'technically-minded' people act online is that they don't realise other people are perfectly capable of Googling the answer to a problem but they don't actually want the answer; they want something else.
Many years ago I was a fan of /r/personalfinance. To learn a bit but I also missed out on finance advice as a kid and wished that I had some good input, so figured I might be able to help.
But the sub spiraled into emotional stories about why people were so bad off and looking for comfort. Not that that is a bad thing, but a very different content than people looking for finance advice. Since the stories were one sided, it became hard to get useful insight out of it other than just be thankful to be fortunate.
I get the sense that some people are sympathy trolling for fake internet points, but it’s not really possible to tell one way or the other.
At least with Reddit, you get to choose your own echo-chamber by subscribing to subreddits. For some other sites such as Facebook and Twitter, you aren't even sure what echo-chamber the all-mighty "algorithm" is guiding you.
I think the best way to enjoy Reddit is to first unsubscribe to all the default ones (I did this with the exception of /r/Art), and then pick really niche subreddits that you want to be a part of, not the general big ones that usually has the shortcomings that you've mentioned.
>no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side.
I think you're overstating it with regards to the specific subreddit, but I take your point in the general case. Most (if not all) recent internet outrage mobs are driven by only taking one side of the equation and sometimes taking the word of the singular individual as gospel, even though the vast majority of cases are more nuanced.
I totally agree and I would love to see this idea implemented in many other places but sadly not all the countries share the same mentality that Japan has about social duties.
I really like this idea. You have your personal space (I saw a video in which you even have a small kitchen and bathroom in your room) and then the rest are shared areas. I don't believe it could work in many other countries but in Japan, where people are more concious of colaborating to keep everything clean AFAIK, it could be a great way to fight the feeling of loneliness that is spreading around the world.
Make some groups, teach them an easy method to encrypt messages (like Vigenère cipher) and let them play writing encrypted messages between groups or think about a game in which they need to decipher a secret code. It worked quite well for some adults I taught few years ago.
