Classic Conversation Thread

[dxmatrixdt]

.

 

Edited February 19, 2019 by Slave Animal Rights

[FantasticBeasts]

Just now, Telemachos said:

 

What? No.

 

Sure, there are charities that do dubious things and people who over-promote their own "charitable" doings. But by and large most charities do good work around the world. Do I wish they didn't need to exist? Sure. But that doesn't make them terrible.

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”

That's the synopsis of what I believe. You can't be part of the system that is responsible for the problem that you are pretending to be fixing. It's hypocritical.

[Plain Old Tele]

3 minutes ago, FantasticBeasts said:

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”

That's the synopsis of what I believe. You can't be part of the system that is responsible for the problem that you are pretending to be fixing. It's hypocritical.

 

These are weird definitions that I personally don't use. In a fundamental way, can I help others with (some particular action)?

[FantasticBeasts]

2 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

These are weird definitions that I personally don't use. In a fundamental way, can I help others with (some particular action)?

It's not about helping one specific person or one very specific group. That's very short-sided. It's about fighting a system of such terrible imbalances and in order to do so the first step is to change yourself and the way you live.

In a practical way yeah you are helping with charity. But it's barely enough. 

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, FantasticBeasts said:

Western societies are basically able to exist the way they do simply because there is so much poverty and starvation in Africa and Asia

I doubt that if tomorrow everyone in Africa living from their one acre agriculture barely making enough food to feed their family stop to exist that Western world country will be much worst off. I get the the earth cannot sustain 7 billion people with the western lifestyle but a lot of people that rich are trying to help are not necessary to their lifestyle.

 

That what the extreme poverty population around the world evolution look like:

 

https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/491479aad8c86c289773df980ae11cee1bafd3a6/7b5d1/exports/share-of-the-world-population-living-in-absolute-poverty_v1_850x600.svg

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/World-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute.svg

 

 

Westerners didn't became suddenly much poorer when extreme poverty started a massive downfall after 1970, someone in extreme poverty isn't doing much for others in global exportation, specially relative to someone less poor. South Korea going from extreme poor farm society in making cars/smartphone/tvs and joining the western world in a relative short period of time didn't made us poorer, same for Japan or China.

 

 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Barnack

[Plain Old Tele]

11 minutes ago, FantasticBeasts said:

It's not about helping one specific person or one very specific group. That's very short-sided. It's about fighting a system of such terrible imbalances and in order to do so the first step is to change yourself and the way you live.

In a practical way yeah you are helping with charity. But it's barely enough. 

 

But even “the system” can be defined many different ways. Are you talking capitalism? Corruption? Imperialism? Racism? What that means for your country is very different from mine, or someone else’s. 

 

Some middle-class dude might volunteer at a soup kitchen or something — charitable work, in other words. Is that a bad thing because he’s not trying to permanently alter his societal system? Or, in a bigger example, the Bill Gates Foundation has done a ton of work minimizing and in some cases eradicating deadly diseases around the world. That’s charitable work and someone can donate to it in some small way (and of course Gates’ money got it started and sustains it). Is that to be frowned on because he’s a billionaire?

 

edit: the great irony is that, in sum, people around the world are better off now than any point in history. Less disease, less poverty, fewer wars, and so forth. There are many things that are still terribly wrong and much to be done but there’s also a lot of positives.  

Edited December 18, 2018 by Telemachos

[The Futurist]

Google had to build one of the biggest data center in the world to sustain the giant traffic of Youtube.

Here s the good news : this facility is fuled by solar panels and windmills.

 

Just kidding ...

 

They had to build a power plant that runs on progressists favourite energy source :

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by The Futurist

[The Futurist]

6 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

But even “the system” can be defined many different ways. Are you talking capitalism? Corruption? Imperialism? Racism? What that means for your country is very different from mine, or someone else’s. 

 

Some middle-class dude might volunteer at a soup kitchen or something — charitable work, in other words. Is that a bad thing because he’s not trying to permanently alter his societal system? Or, in a bigger example, the Bill Gates Foundation has done a ton of work minimizing and in some cases eradicating deadly diseases around the world. That’s charitable work and someone can donate to it in some small way (and of course Gates’ money got it started and sustains it). Is that to be frowned on because he’s a billionaire?

 

edit: the great irony is that, in sum, people around the world are better off now than any point in history. Less disease, less poverty, fewer wars, and so forth. There are many things that are still terribly wrong and much to be done but there’s also a lot of positives.  

Exactly and how do you think this enormous advance in living conditions occurred ?

E

N

E

R

G

Y

Lots of it.

Loooooooooots.

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by The Futurist

[Eric Loves Rey]

 

[The Panda]

Finished 10 out of 16 of my graduate school applications, the rest aren't due until late Jan/Early Feb so I can chill a little bit.

 

Kind of stressful realizing you have no idea where you're going to be this time next year.  Depending on where, or if, I get accepted that could be on either coast, North or South, or anywhere in-between based on the places I've applied (although I am hoping for Austin, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Tuscon or California).

Edited December 18, 2018 by PANDA

[Barnack]

9 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

They had to build a power plant that runs on proggressists favourite energy source :

 

Google is still the biggest buyer of renewable energy source in the US I think, if they have to use coal because of the local grid they build renewable elsewhere to compensate..

 

Apparently:

In a blog post Wednesday, Google's Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, described what the business meant by "matching." Put simply, for every kilowatt hour of electricity the company used in 2017, it bought a kilowatt hour of renewable energy from a solar or wind farm built specifically for Google.

 

http://www.clickclean.org/usa/en/

According to this, youtube:

• Clean Energy: 56%
• Natural Gas: 14%
• Coal: 15%
• Nuclear: 10%

Edited December 18, 2018 by Barnack

[The Futurist]

5 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Google is still the biggest buyer of renewable energy source in the US I think, if they have to use coal because of the local grid they build renewable elsewhere to compensate..

 

Apparently:

In a blog post Wednesday, Google's Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, described what the business meant by "matching." Put simply, for every kilowatt hour of electricity the company used in 2017, it bought a kilowatt hour of renewable energy from a solar or wind farm built specifically for Google.

 

http://www.clickclean.org/usa/en/

According to this, youtube:

• Clean Energy: 56%
• Natural Gas: 14%
• Coal: 15%
• Nuclear: 10%

That s cute.

But it makes no sense at all.

Eveything is interconnected in our global economy , Google exists ONLY because China has built hundreds and hundreds of coal power plants in the last 30 years.

And Google will discover soon enough all the big problems caused by what they call "clean energy", which is an oxymoron.

 

What energy source had the biggest developement in the last 20 years ?

Hum ???

Hint : Not the ones Leonardo Di Caprio babbles about at the UN.

Edited December 18, 2018 by The Futurist

[The Panda]

Also, I still haven't found a movie that's been a runaway favorite for my top movie of the year.

 

Maybe Leave No Trace, The Favourite, Spiderverse or Poppins will end up doing the trick (or another indie or something, I'm trying to watch at least 1 2018 movie each day until the 30th when I'll do my personal 'awards').  The only other time I had this problem, since I've been doing year rankings, was 2015 and that was because I had three runaway favorites (Fury Road, Inside Out and Force Awakens).  Looking through what I've seen this year and I feel like I could shuffle any of the A-grade movies I've seen in any order.

[FantasticBeasts]

9 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

But even “the system” can be defined many different ways. Are you talking capitalism? Corruption? Imperialism? Racism? What that means for your country is very different from mine, or someone else’s. 

 

Some middle-class dude might volunteer at a soup kitchen or something — charitable work, in other words. Is that a bad thing because he’s not trying to permanently alter his societal system? Or, in a bigger example, the Bill Gates Foundation has done a ton of work minimizing and in some cases eradicating deadly diseases around the world. That’s charitable work and someone can donate to it in some small way (and of course Gates’ money got it started and sustains it). Is that to be frowned on because he’s a billionaire?

  

 edit: the great irony is that, in sum, people around the world are better off now than any point in history. Less disease, less poverty, fewer wars, and so forth. There are many things that are still terribly wrong and much to be done but there’s also a lot of positives.  

1.)Well I believe that corruption,imperialism and racism are all synonyms to capitalism. In practice they go together just like communinsm means authoritarianism and autarchy. But l am pretty confident we will disagree and I don't think that neither one of us would like to go in some big debate about it.

2.)About the second paragraph... I believe I already answered. Of cource it is a good thing if a middle-class dude volunteers but if it comes together with him overspending excessively and also supporting indirectly or not the system that creates those imbalances then it's just not enough. About Bill Gates pretty much the same situation but in a larger scale/

3.)The statement in itself is true but lots of other parameters should be taken into account. First of all the gap is much wider now than ever before. The needs are far more. Nobody can survive in a western society only by having a food on their table while the people in developing countries are in larger numbers aware of the type of lifestyle people in the west do. If everybody around you is poor, you can get used to being poor. Injustice fuels rage as much as practical difficulties.

[The Futurist]

Generosity is a luxury good I am sorry to announce.

[Barnack]

20 minutes ago, FantasticBeasts said:

Well I believe that corruption,imperialism and racism are all synonyms to capitalism. In practice they go together just like communinsm means authoritarianism and autarchy. But l am pretty confident we will disagree and I don't think that neither one of us would like to go in some big debate about it.

 

This is such a stretch of concept/words that make a conversation almost impossible.

 

Communism mean the inverse of authoritarianism, communism is a form of anarchy (that was never tried at any large scale and I doubt can exist for a population of more than some thousands of people without some GMO humans improvement)

 

Corruption is people in a position of authority doing something illegal or dishonest with that power in exchange of benefit, it occurred before capitalist started and were capitalism is low. North Korea is probably the most corrupt place on earth, not exactly strong on capitalism. Not sure corruption would be a valid concept in a pure capitalist world, not so sure why there would be any link between racism and capitalism.

 

Racism is obviously much older and fully existing outside capitalist society, Hitler was violently anti capitalism and anti communism, didn't made him non racist.

 

Socialist society were quite Imperialism (like the Soviet), I am not sure why it would be a synonym to capitalism.

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Barnack

[FantasticBeasts]

Just now, Barnack said:

 

This is such a stretch of concept/words that make a conversation almost impossible.

 

Communism mean the inverse of authoritarianism, communism is a form of anarchy (that was never tried at any large scale and I doubt can exist for a population of more than some thousands of people without some GMO humans improvement)

 

Corruption is people in a position of authority doing something illegal or dishonest with that power in exchange of benefit, it occurred before capitalist started and were capitalism is low. North Korea is probably the most corrupt place on earth, not exactly strong on capitalism.

 

Racism is obviously much older and fully existing outside capitalist society, Hitler was violently anti capitalism and anti communism, didn't made him non racist.

 

Socialist society were quite Imperialism (like the Soviet), I am not sure why it would be a synonym to capitalism.

 

Ι am aware of what all those means mean in theory that's why I said "...in practice". The word "synonyms" was wrong though I meant that capitalism goes together with all those things.

[Plain Old Tele]

10 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

Generosity is a luxury good I am sorry to announce.

 

My friend, this is one of the silliest things I’ve read unless you choose to define “generosity” purely as “financial generosity”. 

[Barnack]

10 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

Generosity is a luxury good I am sorry to announce.

Well yes and no, depend what you mean by luxury.

 

Could be surprised by this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/most-generous-countries-in-the-world/

The 20 most generous countries

1. Myanmar - overall rating: 65
2. Indonesia - 60
3. Kenya - 60
4. New Zealand - 57
5. United States - 56
6. Australia - 56
7. Canada - 54
8. Ireland - 53
9. United Arab Emirates - 51
10. Netherlands - 51

 

Top 10 countries for helping a stranger

Sierra Leone - 81%

Iraq - 78%

Libya - 77%

Kenya - 76%

Liberia - 75%

 

Or:

http://perilofafrica.com/umuganda-rwandas-day-community-cleaning/

[The Futurist]

10 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

My friend, this is one of the silliest things I’ve read unless you choose to define “generosity” purely as “financial generosity”. 

You ve never noticed ?

 

Who are the people we call philantropists and humanitarians ?

 

The average Walmart employee ?

 

The chinese worker who assembled the computers and smartphones that alllow us to have our little convos on BOT ?

 

I wonder ...