Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[The Ozzman]

Thoughts on QAnon?

 

[Dak]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45183049

BBC sorta agrees with Bakker.

 

[Einherjar86]

In this case, the peers were robots. When children aged seven to nine were alone in the room, they scored an average of 87% on the test.

But when the robots joined them, their scores dropped to 75% on average. Of the wrong answers, 74% matched those of the robots.

Those algorithmic fucks...

 

[Dak]

Those algorithmic fucks...

Well it's not explicit AI but the principle.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

For many there is a desire to be a "part of something bigger than themselves", and all sorts of organizations appeal to this explicitly.

And this is why I participate in the GMD yearly polls.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think that's the funniest anyone has ever been in the "Dakryn's Batshit Theories" thread.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Aside from Dodens when he edited the thread title to what it is now.

 

[Dak]

Live-in-his-basement-man was always funny.

 

[Einherjar86]

They see God's hand in something and derive meaning from the idea that God does everything for a reason and we all have our purpose etc etc and you and I see a meaningless event that inspires a similar amount of awe. I'm not sure how we can ever bridge such a chasm.

Peter Watts (another writer, similar in ways to Bakker) has a theory (may not be his, but he promotes it) that belief in gods/deities was, intriguingly enough, actually an adaptive measure.

He says to consider two primitive homo sapiens on the African steppe, and both of them notice some odd, unnatural motion in the tall grass. One of them says it's nothing, just the wind, but the other says there's a predator in there, and he runs. Maybe the movement is nothing, and one of the men just gets a good workout. But if there is a predator in there, one of the men survives, and the other is dinner.

So people began seeing faces in clouds and meaning in the winds, because it was more dangerous to assume that it was nothing.

 

[CiG]

I think that's more or less the evo-psych theory no?

 

[Einherjar86]

Very well could be, I'm not familiar enough w/ evo-psych. Dak might know.

Speaking of Watts, he posted something interesting about a recent paper published in the journal Aging:

Naturally, the paper’s got a fair bit of attention in the popular science press. There’s one thing that none of those articles have mentioned, though. This is not the first time hydrogen sulfide has proven useful in a medical— even in a life-extension— context. Way back in 2005, Blackstone et al exposed mice to 80ppm H2S and reduced their metabolic rate by 90%, with no ill effects. So now we have a simple compound, endogenously produced, which is instrumental both in extending life and in suspending animation.

Or, if you want to be lurid about it, in conferring “immortality” and inducing an undead state.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8183

This could actually go in the "weird science" thread, but I don't want that thread to become nothing but Watts re-posts.

 

[Dak]

The "undead state" comment seems a bit clickbaity, but otherwise interesting.

 

[CiG]

This is somewhat of a batshit theory I suppose, but I was having a small debate with a friend and this came up:

The concept of cultural appropriation is unintentionally nationalistic (or at the very least perpetuates basic nationalistic concepts) in its desire to maintain borders around cultures which are closed off from people based almost entirely on racial and ethnic criteria. It's the very opposite of the concept of free movement and internationalism.

 

[Dak]

Almost all ideas are appropriated.

 

[Einherjar86]

This is somewhat of a batshit theory I suppose, but I was having a small debate with a friend and this came up:

The concept of cultural appropriation is unintentionally nationalistic (or at the very least perpetuates basic nationalistic concepts) in its desire to maintain borders around cultures which are closed off from people based almost entirely on racial and ethnic criteria. It's the very opposite of the concept of free movement and internationalism.

All things being equal, yeah I would agree. But all things aren't equal. I think there's a significant difference between physical bodies crossing national borders and privileged white people dressing in blackface at Halloween. And I think that makes a difference for qualifying the "nationalism" of cultural appropriation.

 

[CiG]

I don't know that anybody would call blackface cultural appropriation. Having a black face isn't the same as having a culture that has ingredient preferences or fashion styles.

 

[Einherjar86]

I have to disagree. Blackface has gone hand in hand with cultural appropriation, and has been integral to American appropriation of black culture since the nineteenth century.

Cultural appropriation is sometimes so blatant it smacks us in the face. The Black and White Minstrel Show ran on British television for – what seems now to us, looking back at it – and astonishing 20 years, from 1958.

Even halfway through its run the show, in which white entertainers “blacked up” to sing songs in a Deep South of America style, was the subject of petitions calling for it to be taken off the air because of its in-your-face racism. It can hardly be seen now without an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment. How did we ever think that was acceptable?

The show was harking back to the minstrel shows in 19th-century America, and blackface was a popular form of entertainment until the enlightenment of the 1960s, coupled with rising racial tensions across the US, finally put paid to it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...s-blackface-performance-costume-a8356526.html

 

[CiG]

This is part of the problem I see and part of why I think this narrative is fundamentally nationalistic, because this comparison compares skin colour (arbitrary racial characteristic) with culture. It feeds directly into the notions of white nationalism which claims that minorities will be the direct cause of the downfall of the west because, by the sheer fact that they're non-white, they can never perpetuate western values nor integrate into white cultures.

The left utterly underestimates the degree to which they fuel nationalism.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not sure I follow. I mean, black culture can't be separated from skin color. That's not a leftist notion, it's just black culture. There are some cultures that aggregate around people of particular appearances.

The difference between white nationalism and those who support black culture is that the latter feel that black culture is an integral part of Western culture at large. You don't have Western (or American) culture without black culture. This is basically what Ralph Ellison wrote back in the 1950s.

This is why I don't totally buy the nationalist angle--because black culture doesn't fall along national boundaries, but American culture certainly does. "Culture" can apply to many different kinds of groups.

 

[CiG]

I'm not saying that black culture is nationalistic, I'm saying that the ideology of "that is cultural appropriation" and its obsession with reinforcing the boundaries around cultures is a nationalistic act. This is also why I said it is unintentionally nationalistic in my first comment.