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snek_boi

@ snek_boi @lemmy.ml

Posts
40
Comments
340
Joined
4 yr. ago

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • After reading what I have posted, it's totally fair to believe that I do not find beauty or inspiration in nature. However, I can give you some reassurance.

    How? Well, I actually I find the battle against entropy amazing and inspiring. A while ago I was sipping tea while my dog nestled next to me, and I was moved thinking about how we make each other so happy. I am also moved by people, people who look beyond their belly button, people who are kind, people who are good at what they do.

    It's not just that we're doomed to accept brutality and appreciate tiny slivers of beauty. There's actually steps that we can take to support life. For example, we can become a part of an assemblage that we like. Sometimes that assemblage is a group of friends, a political group, or an organization. You know you're in the right place when your incentives align with that of the group. There's an alignment around shared values, shared goals. Your atoms are keeping your structural integrity. Your cells are keeping you alive. Your thoughts are aiding you in problem solving and connecting with others. And your friends are connecting with you.

    There's quite a bit more to this, so if you're interested in this way of understanding the world, you can check out Prosocial by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson and psychologists Paul W. B. Atkins and Steven C. Hayes.

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • How so?

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • I agree that there’s a layer of human subjectivity in this whole discussion. Within that layer, I think it’s okay to get a gut sense that nature is brutal and grotesque. My goal is to avoid romanticizing nature.

    Once we’re able to avoid our human bias of romanticizing nature, we can take the discussion to another layer, a layer that could be called more objective.

    For example, we could talk about entropy and evolution’s attempts to fight against it. We could talk about evolution occurring at multiple scales and dimensions simultaneously, such as atomic structures, cells, and multicellular organisms. These are examples of assemblages, and they expand the possible behaviors of the parts. In other words, assemblages make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

    So, how does entropy, evolution, and assemblages connect with our discussion? Well, brutality and grotesqueness can usually be translated into the language of entropy and assemblages. Killing someone destroys an assemblage and increases entropy. Torture and trauma reduce the probability of an organism exhibiting variation in their behaviors. They reduce the emergent properties of the assemblage.

    Is it always better to choose the language of entropy and assemblages over brutality and grotesqueness? No. Context matters. Again, if the goal is merely to avoid the romanticization of nature, the brutality and grotesqueness layer is appropriate.

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • Ouch. Looked it up. Its brutal. https://enviroliteracy.org/do-lions-eat-their-prey-alive/

    TIL lions eat some prey alive because it saves the lions energy. They avoid spending too much energy killing a prey that is difficult to kill. Instead, they incapacitate (but not kill) a prey and start eating right away.

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • I agree. The boundary can easily become diffuse or even silly.

    However, there’s a reason I asked what I asked. My ultimate purpose is to show that existence is not perfectly designed, that sometimes it is brutal and grotesque. Unfortunately, people often retort saying nature is brutal and grotesque because of humans. So, by focusing on non-human nature, I’m sidestepping the retort.

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • Pinecones are indeed beautiful. However, they are decidedly not one of the greatest arguments for the existence of an intelligent higher power. In fact, the whole claim about pinecones having the Fibonacci sequence is false https://youtu.be/1Jj-sJ78O6M

    Additionally, I wouldn’t think that cones having nice shapes are an example of nature being brutal and grotesque. But I suppose you wanted to make the opposite argument: that nature is perfect and beautiful.

  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • If someone said “humans suck, but nature is a perfectly beautiful creation 😍” what examples would you think of that show nature being (1) independent of humans and (2) brutal and grotesque?

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  • Here’s some I know:

  • NSFW Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • Long ago I had a friend who claimed something similar. In front of the camp fire, he claimed he was feeing spirits inside of him and that he became possessed. He gained attention from the group for about a minute. At first they asked if he was okay. He continued to act possessed, so they stopped being kind. They yelled at him, made fun of him, imitated him….

    I sat next to him and quietly asked if he was okay and needed anything. I didn’t really know what his reaction would be because I didn’t know him. He was a friend of a friend. Still, I told him that him and I could leave to take a walk and talk. He didn’t respond and simply stared at the fire. He ignored us for the rest of that night.

    The following morning, he decided to act ignorant. “What happened? I don’t remember anything.” The group was pissed at him and barely talked to him. He hasn’t been invited to anything ever since.

    This whole thing was very unfortunate. It’s a memory of mine that is painful. I understand back then we were teenagers. Teenagers explore their identities, sometimes in cringy ways. That’s normal. But still, the event isolated him from the group. And if I talk about this whole incident to anyone who was there that night, they still resent him.

    I suppose this is a long answer to your question. If someone claimed they had a vision of the vehicle crashing/exploding and everyone dying, nobody would believe them and they’d be in for a tough time.

  • If AI was going to advance exponentially I'd have expected it to take off by now.

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  • What well known maxims/rules are over exaggerated, but generally still true?

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  • Don’t judge a book by its cover

  • What are the requirements to graduate from college cum laude?

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  • Others have talked about the ultimate measure: your GPA. However, for you to get that high GPA it can help to:

    • Train your relational frame skills.
    • Develop good learning habits through Tiny Habits or something like that.
    • Develop a good relationship with your thoughts and emotions through something like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or the Healthy Minds Program or any program designed to improve your relationship with your thoughts.
    • Internalize something like Make it Stick or another book that teaches how to learn quickly and well.
    • Internalize habits of mind such as Harvard’s Project Zero’s Visible Thinking Routines.

  • I'm very bad at convincing people to care about their privacy

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  • We share the goal of making the world more private. I’m not trying to be cheeky or mean. I’m genuinely curious. Would you be against reading to learn how to talk more compellingly?

  • When talking to yourself, do you use the pronoun 'I' or 'you'?

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  • Could be thinking out loud or reflection via writing 🤷‍♂️

  • What tools or resources do you wish existed?

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  • Dead-easy, beautiful web apps so groups can quickly and easily vote using Ranked-Choice Voting or Majority Judgement (with or without uncertainty). Something FLOSS with reproducible builds, to build trust in the software.

    Automated systems (could be an app 🤷‍♂️) to go from a textbook, a YouTube video, or a web course to a comprehensive set of spaced and interleaved quizzes and flashcards.

  • What's an important (in your opinion) skill too many people seem to lack?

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  • Fair enough. If it is fundamental, it affects many things. How do you think it’s best taught or developed? What are the specific activities that you as a teacher or as a student would do to improve it?

  • What's an important (in your opinion) skill too many people seem to lack?

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  • Ah. It sounds as if you’re saying that critical thinking skills are the base of many skills. That’s actually an interesting issue: could you increase skills by skill and end up with someone that is a critical thinker? Or is critical thinking something fundamental that naturally manifests in many different skills?

  • What's an important (in your opinion) skill too many people seem to lack?

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  • other things

    Interesting. So you're saying that critical thinking is not what I mentioned, but rather it is something different (an "other thing"). What would you say critical thinking is?