[HN Gopher] Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
___________________________________________________________________
Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
Author : dynm
Score : 911 points
Date : 2021-11-25 13:11 UTC (1 days ago)
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| capnahab wrote:
| I am thankful haemoglobin can carry so much oxygen without the
| iron in it turning to rust. Otherwise we wouldnt be able to
| breathe. Well described here,and i have no affiliation
| https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102010332
| pfdietz wrote:
| "it's surely better than the light of consciousness vanishing
| entirely when the sun eats the Earth in 7.5 billion years, no?"
|
| The Earth will lose its oxygen in about 1 billion years and
| undergo runaway warming in about 1.4 billion years. By the time
| the Earth is eaten by the Sun (if it is; mass loss by the Sun
| might prevent this), the Earth will have been sterilized for
| longer than it has currently existed.
| kiba wrote:
| This is assuming that humanity or our successor won't do any
| stellar engineering or starlifting, or moving the Earth for
| that matter.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Also, thankful that (despite the timescale for O(1) changes to
| O2 in the atmosphere being ~10 million years) not once since
| the Precambrian did O2 levels fall low enough to wipe out
| vertebrate life.
|
| Although I'm not sure it's really correct to be thankful for
| effects of observer selection bias.
| ask_b123 wrote:
| I think it is perfectly correct. It is a great thing to be an
| observer and I'm thankful I can be subject to the effects of
| observer selection bias. :)
| esarbe wrote:
| Hot shower in the morning.
|
| Think about it; how many of your ancestors did have the option of
| having a _hot_ _shower_ _every_ _morning_. Think about the labor
| involved!
| maceurt wrote:
| Not going to argue my point or bring up any real evidence because
| this guy didn't either, but Hunter Gatherers absolutely lived
| better lives than we do now and the amount of human beings who
| die to homocide or suicide is higher now than during that time
| period. This time period is hell, just look at suicide rates and
| mental illness rates. No other point in human existence has our
| life held as little meaning as it does now. And our biggest
| killer in the West happens to be a disease that has some of the
| worst comorbidites. Most people in the west are living their life
| in a inflammation, sleep deprived, vitamin defficient, hormonally
| disrupted brain fog.
|
| I also don't think people realize how the suffering of lack of
| pleasure and of short excruciating pain like being eaten, is
| infinitely better than a lifetime of stress, deppression, and
| nihilism. Slavery to pleasure is the worst hell, and most of us
| are enslaved in one way or another.
|
| p.s. False positivity doesn't do shit for your brain, it can
| actually cause harm. Even if it could do something good, you are
| basically just brainwashing yourself to have a less truthful
| understanding of the world. Joy is self-evident for Joyful people
| and doesn't require deceiptful mantras.
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| > Due to some [reason], an overpopulation calamity hasn't yet
| happened and we might coincidentally stabilize at a level that's
| somewhat close to what maximizes average utility...
|
| Given the birthrate trends in developed countries, it's more
| likely the population will peak and then decline as prosperity
| spreads. The cause isn't hard to discern - child labor laws -
| they turn children from potential assets into guaranteed
| liabilities.
|
| A declining population will be a bad thing; our modern way of
| life is built on systems that depend on growth (from Wall Street
| to our tax structures to the various Social Security safety nets
| countries have in place); take that away and we will have real
| problems.
| ldehaan wrote:
| I'm thankful for my kiddos, single dad full time for years and
| after the alternative i wouldn't have it any other way. I've got
| a shock of white now because of them though :D I couldn't be more
| thankful. And I'm gonna stay single until they grow up so they
| know beyond a doubt how important they are.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| If we have something like #2, would that debunk the idea that
| backing things up exclusively on magnetic media (HDD, tape) is
| sufficient for restoration? I've never found optical media to be
| particularly reliable, but it might be a decent hedge against a
| huge magnetic event.
| mrleinad wrote:
| I know optical media deteriorates over time, so in order to be
| a hedge, you would need to record it over and over again
| periodically, preparing for an event you are not sure when it
| might come. Poses a problem with waste and needed resources.
| supernova87a wrote:
| There is really something to the idea that despite the daily news
| and political doomsaying that goes on every day, it's hard for
| people to remember or celebrate the long progression that we've
| experienced towards living in the most peaceful, materially
| prosperous, and positive trajectory time in the history of
| humanity.
|
| (I think there was a podcast on Hidden Brain about this. Also
| video like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU).
|
| It's really good to periodically think about how much we benefit
| from, say, the miracles of air conditioning, available
| infrastructure and cheap travel beyond your town, clean water and
| air, medicine, vaccines, public health -- and reset what you're
| grateful for. And stop making every little transgression of
| modern life feel like a disastrous setback.
|
| But of course it's very unfashionable to point this out when
| someone's <xyz> cause is being neglected, or is in the news and
| everyone is outraged. Of course when you make such comparisons
| you get hissed out of a room for being so callous, because
| anyone's relative suffering is supposed to be treated with utmost
| respect. And the short, acute, headline making problems are
| always louder than the long progression of gradual improvement.
|
| But taken in perspective, by intelligent people who can discuss
| such things, we've really reached the age of 1% problems. (which
| are being exposed because our huge disastrous human-generated
| conflicts, etc. are decreased compared to 100 years ago). Health,
| social issues, etc. are such luxuries to have problems about now
| (and glad to have them discovered and debated), but remember how
| wonderful a time we live in. We aren't generally dying of
| terrible diseases during childhood, etc. or because of world
| wars. More people are living longer to experience the wonders of
| humanity than ever before. Although, things like climate change
| we'd better allow to rise to the top of our list of problems,
| soon...
|
| Anyway, definitely very thankful for all these things, and all
| the daily unsung people who make our humanity's progress
| possible.
| notfed wrote:
| Related: a TED talk by Steven Pinker about his analysis on
| whether the world is getting better or worse:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting...
| uwagar wrote:
| didnt he goto that TED talk on epstein's jet? ;)
| watwut wrote:
| The bigger issue is that historians and sociologists tend
| to complain each time he makes sweeping claims about their
| area of expertise.
| lisper wrote:
| I've done a lot of traveling in less developed countries. That
| has taught me to be thankful for the fact that I live in a house
| with heat and air conditioning, and hot and cold running water
| that I can drink without getting sick. Many people in developed
| countries (especially the U.S.) take these things for granted,
| but in many parts of the world these are things people only dream
| of.
| lovecg wrote:
| Modern plumbing and sanitation is one of those things that's
| nearly invisible and taken for granted, but is almost
| miraculous how well it works most of the time. If I had to
| choose, I'd rather have a weeklong electric outage than a
| weeklong water supply disruption, it's not even close.
| autarch wrote:
| Oddly, I regularly think about how great plumbing is, and I've
| been noticing this for the past 5-10 years, I think (I'm in my
| 40s).
|
| I think one day I was probably in the shower and thinking about
| how awesome it was to have a hot shower. Then I started
| thinking about how great not having to use a "night soil pot"
| or an outhouse is, especially in hot or cold weather.
|
| I don't think I've spent as much time contemplating the joy of
| HVAC systems, but I know I've thought about them from time to
| time.
| lisper wrote:
| > I don't think I've spent as much time contemplating the joy
| of HVAC
|
| You haven't spent enough time in hot, humid climates. Go to
| Houston in the summer and you will not have to contemplate
| for long.
| autarch wrote:
| I've been there. I've also been to Taiwan in the summer
| multiple times.
| lisper wrote:
| Without air conditioning???
| autarch wrote:
| No, fortunately. AC is pretty pervasive there, and my
| mother-in-law's house has it.
| lisper wrote:
| OK, well, try it without AC some time and you will be
| amazed how quickly you will learn to be thankful for it
| :-)
| agumonkey wrote:
| That rotten milk is edible and quite tasty AND that heated up
| again it becomes semi-fluid and even more delicious than before.
| [deleted]
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Thank you, a lovely list.
|
| 7, 23, 24 were driven by the common unusual political occurrence
| of fair economic opportunity. These rare times where a balance of
| power occurs, by special circumstances, between the former
| autocratic rulers and everyone else.
|
| In Britain (7), domestic Royal monopolies were abolished etc
| creating an economic and legal environment where entrepreneurs
| would be rewarded. So people started investing their very
| expensive free time tinkering because it might lead to profit.
|
| Ancient Greece (23) developed the Solonian Constitution which
| similarly protected the property rights of 'citizens' like never
| before, so Athens became a cultural center of tinkerers,
| hustlers, thought leaders, influencers etc, and the ideas are
| what we still have today. Because unlike with Ancient Phoenicia,
| the Greeks wrote on clay, not on perishable papyrus.
|
| (24) Obviously the US Constitution managed to establish unusual
| property rights for its European male citizens, and again we see
| hustlers, thought leaders, influencers etc, because their efforts
| are far more likely to be rewarded. But this time we see what
| this political environment looks like close up and we see regular
| people's bright ideas materialize in society because the law
| protects them.
|
| I am thankful that we still today, I mean 11/26/2021 today, still
| maintain the balance of power that enables our egalitarian laws
| to stand, and hope that some new technology won't kill that
| balance.
| jaclaz wrote:
| To be picky, the timescale/locations of #23 is way off:
|
| Socrates (Athens= 470-399 BC
|
| Plato (Athens) 423-348 BC
|
| Aristotles (Athens) 384-322 BC
|
| Archimedes (of Syracuse) some 2-3 centuries later 287-212 BC
|
| Euclid (of Alexandria) was active in Alexandria around 300-270
| BC
|
| Hyppocrates (of Kos) 470-360 BC
|
| Pytagoras (of Samos) 570-495 BC
|
| Thucydides (Athens) 460-400 BC
|
| Herodotus (of Halicarnassus) 484-425 BC
|
| Aesop (?) 620-564 BC
|
| Solon (Athens) 630-570 BC
|
| Pericles (Athens) 495-429 BC
|
| Aristophanes (Athens) 446-386 BC
|
| Sophocles (Athens) 497-406
|
| the:
|
| >That some unknown miracle blend of circumstances happened to
| arrive in Athens in 500 BC leading a tiny city of 250k people
| to produce Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid,
| Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aesop, Solon,
| Pericles, Aristophanes, and Sophocles, and that it might be
| possible to intentionally recreate such conditions today around
| the world and spur incredible human flourishing, and why aren't
| we working on this?
|
| is more accurately something _like_ :
|
| In the course of several centuries over a vast territory
| comprising almost all inhabited mediterranean countries some
| 10-15 people excelled in their fields and many of them happened
| to live in the main city (and cultural capital) of the area.
|
| Sounds a lot less a miracle, between 630 and 300 BC is three
| centuries.
| mistermann wrote:
| > is more accurately something like:
|
| > In the course of several centuries over a vast territory
| comprising almost all inhabited mediterranean countries some
| 10-15 people excelled in their fields and many of them
| happened to live in the main city (and cultural capital) of
| the area.
|
| Your restatement excluded what I think is the most
| interesting part:
|
| >> and that it might be possible to intentionally recreate
| such conditions today around the world and spur incredible
| human flourishing, _and why aren't we working on this_?
|
| "Why aren't we working on this" seems like a very good
| question, one that you don't hear very often - "Why don't we
| _even encounter_ these sorts of questions more often? " might
| be an interesting sibling question.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Because recreating _such conditions_ isn 't possible,
| basically because _such conditions_ never existed and the
| idilliac setup the article seems to describe never
| happened.
|
| The article seemingly conveys (at least to me) the idea
| that "by miracle" all those famous philosophers, writers
| and mathematicians were in the same place at the same time
| (and possibly had coffee or dinner together), this simply
| never happened.
|
| So, if the idea is about creating brand new conditions
| (which ones?) capable to create a city/location where -
| over three centuries - a handful of people, excelling in
| their field lived, this has already been done, let's say
| Rome 200 BC - 100 AD, London 1600-1900, i.e. more or less
| the capitals (administrative and/or cultural) of large
| empires that lasted several centuries.
| mistermann wrote:
| My interpretation of the intended meaning[1] of the
| author was to attempt to reproduce ~ _conditions
| conducive to producing this sort of effect_.
|
| If you reconsider the idea under this reframing, does it
| seem like more of a reasonable, "maybe worth a try"-class
| idea?
|
| [1] where "such conditions" ~= "of the kind, character,
| quality, or extent"
| watwut wrote:
| What about saying that such conditions exists right now in
| contemporary world. We have great amount of thinkers and
| scientists and technologists and populists and cult
| leaders.
|
| All of them producing and moving world forward. It is
| crowded competition, actually.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yep, the cynic in me thinks that actually creating the
| conditions where a dozen people's speculation on stuff
| dominates discourse for a couple of millenia like the
| Greek philosophers is less about the quality of
| speculation, and more about ensuring that not much else
| of note is written down...
| mistermann wrote:
| Lots of stuff gets written down nowadays, but so much of
| it is crap, and most of everything kind of vanishes into
| the ether of old forum posts as time marches on.
| watwut wrote:
| A lot more crap or even super high quality thinking
| vanished in that era.
|
| Socrates was even refusing to write at all. All we know
| is what Plato wrote for his own reasons.
| mistermann wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible for these people and
| others to produce in a more collaborative manner, perhaps
| with a shared roadmap, strategy, etc. To me, it seems at
| least plausible, what's your take?
| watwut wrote:
| Socrates was not particularly collaborative. Lived
| through dictatorship+revolution led by his students and
| got killed after. The resentments were real. Quite a few
| people were tortured and killed in that story of
| betrayal, revolution, contrarevolution, amnesty and
| broken amnesty.
|
| Like seriously, it was way more violent and bloody then
| your average western society now. And we don't even go to
| regular wars against other cities and don't keep slaves.
| Neither of those two are collaboration.
|
| And now you can actually become citizen without being
| born from citizen father.
| mistermann wrote:
| This difference would be advantageous to us though
| wouldn't it?
| aduitsis wrote:
| That today, thousands of years later, we have managed to
| retain what those people said or wrote is also a very good
| reason to be thankful.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Plus, Archimedes not only was from Syracuse (Italy) but
| flourished under a complete (even if benevolent) monarch.
| pratik661 wrote:
| Also, the capital of a major economic/military power will
| usually attract the ambitious people from the surrounding
| regions. Its equivalent to saying "wow, so many famous actors
| lived in Hollywood!"
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| And Aristippus the inventor of capitalism? :D Or Antisthenes
| the one I use to see how the mental issues were valued in the
| past? :D
| Lamad123 wrote:
| Some of those haven't been reported to sit foot or have much
| to do with Athens!! At least Archimedes and Pythagoras.. Even
| Aristotle was a foreigner to Athens, although he learned a
| lot from his Athenian counterparts! Herodotus wasn't Athenian
| either!!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| (7) was driven by the invention of patent law. Expressly royal
| monopolies on inventing stuff.
|
| (23) is because it's not independent random events. First,
| Plato literally taught Aristotle and was taught by Socrates.
| Second, Athens was the capital of an empire (okay, technically
| a league) so of course the best and brightest descended on
| Athens.
|
| So, literally like Hollywood attracting actors or SV attracting
| startups, it's a self-perpetuating cycle.
| matbatt38 wrote:
| Also #23 is mostly based on slavery. It's easier to have smart
| elite when nobody really works
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Slavery was widespread.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| I actually wondered why the industrial revolution didn't happen
| in China, great to see one possible explanation menioned in the
| article [1].
|
| Does anybody know other theories about this?
|
| [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2017/03/book3.htm
| _hao wrote:
| There's a very good book that goes into it (and other things)
| by Ian Morris -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_West_Rules%E2%80%94For...
| andi999 wrote:
| Personal opinion: same reason why it didn't take off in ancient
| Greece (steam engine was invented back then) , no shortage of
| cheap labor.
| JackFr wrote:
| There's an argument to be made that the Black Death broke
| Europe (or especially Britain) out of a local minimum, by
| killing off labor. This reduced the necessary rate of return
| to physical capital and innovation. (Why invest in an iron
| plow, when you can just set more serfs to the task with
| wooden ones?) and ultimately this planted the seeds of the
| industrial revolution.
| rrss wrote:
| though Hero's engine is _a_ steam engine, it is practically
| useless as anything besides a curiosity and certainly could
| not have powered an industrial revolution
| andi999 wrote:
| Yes, but I am confident if there would have been demand,
| they would have improved on it. It can open temple doors so
| I do not think it is too far away from a useful machine.
| versale wrote:
| This is clearly an idealistic approach. A materialistic view is
| better explained in Fernand Braudel's "Civilization and
| Capitalism, 15th-18th Century".
| lenkite wrote:
| Same reason it didn't happen in the Gupta Empire in India
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I'd recommend guns germs and steel by Diamond if you're
| interested in such thoughts. He doesn't cover china, but the
| book is basically about this topic. Nice easy read, recommended
| if you've got time to kill over the holidays.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I assume the intent of that item is to be thankful that the
| industrial revolution happened at all, not that it happened in
| England specifically.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Armchair philosopher - From my reading, it appears that the
| corporation structure really took stronghold in Europe, giving
| huge incentives to tinkers and risk takers.
|
| That, and the collapse of Dutch East India outposts to British
| East India company opened up access to new trade. Resources
| from the new world also jumpstarted the process. It was the
| perfect combo of corporate incentives and unrestricted access
| to global resources that propelled people to wealthier lives
| and thus, higher level of productivity (you can spend years
| researching on steam engines if you don't have to spend your
| life farming). This is exactly the state of America since after
| WW2, if you were to compare.
|
| In comparison, China was not handed any colonies, lacked the
| corporation structure and was caught up in dynastic infighting.
| There was no new world to extract resources from and almost
| certainly wasn't united the way it is today.
|
| No systemic incentive structure and inability to access global
| resources left people in poverty or produced little in the way
| of innovation.
| makach wrote:
| Well that article made wonders with my preexisting depression
| cmehdy wrote:
| If you are receptive to lists of gratitude, it is worth noting
| that one of the many tools of cognitive-behavioural therapy
| (CBT) is to try to keep a journal of everyday gratitudes[0]
| (something like "write 3 a day in a journal" works, but other
| things like open prompts about "what are you grateful for this
| week?" can also work). Plenty of other examples out there[1]
| can help too.
|
| Not everybody will enjoy doing that or benefit from it, but CBT
| overall is proving itself to be very valuable for people
| suffering from clinical depression, and if that tool from the
| toolbox doesn't resonate with someone it's always possible to
| look at other tools[2] too.
|
| [0]
| https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_...
|
| [1] https://positivepsychology.com/gratitude-journal-pdf/
|
| [2] https://www.therapistaid.com/index.php/tools/cbt/none
| arduinomancer wrote:
| #5 is actually pretty amazing if you think about it
|
| If zero-calorie sweeteners didn't exist I feel like we would view
| discovering one as a holy grail/miracle drug
|
| I bet a ton of obesity has been prevented just due to diet soda
|
| Imagine if the same thing existed for carbs
| tejohnso wrote:
| I wonder why #5 singles out aspartame though.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| That's really weird. I'm not thankful for aspartame or other
| sweeteners, and even less thankful for corrupt food agencies
| approving them. Refined sugars aren't healthy, but aspartame
| isn't a solution. In my household, a kilogram of sugar lasts
| for months if not a year. Yes, we do buy food with added
| sugar, but always avoid artificial sweeteners, except when
| they are unavoidable in drugs or food supplements. I'm 192cm
| 75kg in early 40s and just occasionally ride a bike or take a
| walk.
|
| #5 is like: I'm thankful that you can smoke a cigarette and
| not die immediatelly of it.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| What science are you basing that on?
| bricss wrote:
| > When your body processes aspartame, part of it is
| broken down into methanol.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Which is also found in citrus fruits.
|
| Do you think those are unhealthy too?
|
| > Aspartame is one of the most rigorously tested food
| ingredients.[5] Reviews by over 100 governmental
| regulatory bodies found the ingredient safe for
| consumption at current levels.[6][7][8][9][10] As of
| 2018, several reviews of clinical trials showed that
| using aspartame in place of sugar reduces calorie intake
| and body weight in adults and children.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Because its the most famous/infamous and is the most studied.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Great article overall.
|
| 10 and 13 are somewhat contradictory.
|
| 10 posits "the hard problem of consciousness" and "for whatever
| reason we have phenomenal experiences" while:
|
| 13 says "That selfhood is possibly an illusion... and the idea
| that you are the same person you were yesterday is an illusion
| your brain-meat gives to you"
|
| I happen to think 13 is closer to the truth. As we learn more
| about the brain, it will become more clear that "consciousness"
| is just a movie your brain puts on for you. Bats and dogs and
| dolphins watch different movies, but we cannot say they are "not
| conscious."
| scubakid wrote:
| Not about to start being grateful for aspartame, sorry
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Why, what has it done to you?
| scubakid wrote:
| Nothing concrete I can point to of course, I'm just wary of
| being actively grateful for it... it seems to me that some of
| the subtle and/or knock-on effects may not be fully
| understood, and there could also be better alternative
| sweeteners that didn't make this list.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > it seems to me that some of the subtle and/or knock-on
| effects may not be fully understood
|
| There have probably had hundreds of studies done by people
| who were actively trying to prove something and wrote that
| they fully believe that there are bad side effects yet not
| one states they proved something.
| cheese_it wrote:
| I've found that aspartame gives me really bad insomnia.
| Almost every time this happens I'll go through what I ate
| that day and it's always something containing aspartame
| that was not in my normal diet. This is how I learned
| that those flavor packets that are mixed into water
| bottles and some zero-calorie flavorings used at coffee
| shops contain aspartame.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I'll take this space to mention two simple life changing
| gratitude practices that I have habitualized:
|
| 1. Every morning, before I allow myself to look at
| email/news/etc, I think of three things that I am grateful for.
|
| 2. Every night at bedtime, my partner and I tell each other three
| things we are grateful for about each other and one thing that we
| are grateful for about ourselves.
|
| I find that bookending my days with gratitude like this makes it
| easier to live each day in a state of thankfulness.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Being grateful is good! But being jealous, angry, bitter etc.
| are also valid emotions, not sins. (I don't believe in Dante's
| Inferno etc.). Those emotions are signal that something needs
| fixing. Sometimes it can be fixed in a second if it's a silly
| thing. Sometime it can take a lifetime, if it's grieving for
| example.
| uwagar wrote:
| i hope ur life gets less boring and more adventurous ;)
| pkdpic wrote:
| I love this and Im going to try this with my partner. Thank you
| for sharing it :^)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Our family's ancient religious practices also incorporate these
| rituals.
|
| It's great giving the children an opportunity every night to
| share what they are thankful for. My favorite was 'blankets' :)
| k8sToGo wrote:
| To me this sounds too much like the daily scrum meetings or
| stand ups where you have to come up with something just so you
| can say something and, in this case, go to bed.
|
| But I only mean this as a joke. I think it is great to have
| "rituals" that help us look and appreciate more stuff what we
| have already or where we are and where we came from.
| lovecg wrote:
| There's some research behind this though. It's the act of
| thinking of something to be grateful for that's useful - it
| strengthens your "gratitude muscles". It was surprisingly
| hard for me to come up with three new things day after day
| initially. Try it for a week - you have nothing to lose and
| the potential upside is huge!
| cgriswald wrote:
| Maintaining sleep hygiene takes precedence to me over
| essentially anything else and coming up with four things
| before sounds anxiety-inducing. We do this type of thing
| before our evening meal, instead. For me, anyway, this is
| much lower stakes and so there is less anxiety. Which results
| in it just sort of flowing out--especially after doing it for
| awhile--but not in an 'autopilot' sort of way.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Part of the point of our bed time ritual is to look for and
| accumulate "gratefuls" throughout the day. In this way, I
| am training my pattern recognizing CPU to spot the
| positives rather than the negatives that it tends to focus
| on.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| "I'm thankful for the way the adversity you gratuitously
| create in my life advances my spiritual practice. Sweet
| dreams!"
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I really like that list!
|
| Thanks!
| TwinProduction wrote:
| Hahaha this article is a lot more meta than I thought it would be
| on a Thanksgiving morning.
|
| Great article nometheless; it seems like we just got really,
| really lucky.
| autarch wrote:
| > 11. That it happens to be a game-theoretic equilibrium to have
| a near-equal sex ratio, although honestly, I have no idea what
| things would be like if that wasn't the case and maybe it would
| be fine.
|
| Well, let's think about if this would be fine.
|
| If there were a 10:1 female to male ratio, I think we'd expect
| that a modern, "civilized" society would be reasonably fine for
| everyone. There'd probably a lot more polygamy and polyamory than
| we have now, but the polygamy wouldn't be the "old school
| backwoods fundamentalist" type, because women would be in charge
| of the government and effectively make all the laws. I wouldn't
| be surprised if there were also a requirement that all healthy
| males donate at the sperm bank once a month from the onset of
| puberty to age 50 or so. This doesn't seem too onerous.
|
| If there were a 10:1 male to female ratio ... it would be a
| dystopian hellscape that's makes me shudder just to think of it.
| Women would have basically no rights. There'd be an incredibly
| high level of violence. Nearly everyone except the alpha males
| would be miserable a lot of the time.
|
| Anyway, that's my idea of how things might be like in an extreme
| scenario. If we're talking 1.1:1 or 1.2:1 either way it might not
| be a big deal, though I'd expect men outnumbering women to get
| bad at a surprisingly low ratio, well before even 2:1.
|
| Note that this isn't because I think men are inherently bad and
| women inherently good. It's simply that nearly everyone has a
| very strong genetic drive to reproduce. In the world with more
| women than men, everyone who wants to have a biological child can
| do so quite easily. In the opposite world, most men cannot do so,
| which means reproduction is a scarce resource. And we know what
| humans do in response to a very strong need for a scarce
| resource.
| jiri wrote:
| Wow, this seems like our society needs to control this ratio in
| the future! We can have more peaceful society if we reduce "men
| count" to keep ratio above 1:1.1 (male:female) :-)
| ateng wrote:
| This is done "accidentally" with major conflicts in history.
| Post WWII Soviet, for example. Lots more men than women got
| killed during the war and the post war male:female ratio is
| (from memory) around 1:1.15
| huttongrabiel wrote:
| There's an interesting paper that touches on #2. From Assistant
| Professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi. Definitely worth a read.
|
| https://www.ics.uci.edu/~sabdujyo/papers/sigcomm21-cme.pdf
| soheil wrote:
| I think it's important to be thankful only about stuff that are
| not descriptive but took some agency to make happen. To keep
| rehashing that we should be thankful that sun exists or that
| earth has a magnetic core to shield us against the nasty solar
| flares, etc. fall in the first category and devalue the idea of
| thankfulness. Because you wouldn't be here to talk about it
| otherwise.
|
| So let's show thankfulness for things that took agency to make
| happen so we learn to do more of those things.
| achillesheels wrote:
| _That even though we evolved as ruthless replication machines,
| we've somehow risen out of the muck and we currently find
| ourselves running cultural software that's way out of sync with
| what game theory would dictate, and perhaps we can seize the
| moment and build a civilization that can tame the brutal dynamics
| that created us._
|
| This. Our scientific understanding on how humans cooperate to not
| simply feed each other, but prosper with endless creative
| opportunities of cultivation, demonstrates we are at a tipping
| point to potentially permanently limit the recurrence of violence
| inter-generationally. Think of it as reversing unjust hereditary
| trauma. So many humans being born now see a path to their own
| prosperity, this century will be remembered as leaving the Planet
| of the Apes behind.
| juanani wrote:
| I am grateful for the ignorant. I think we are heavily misguied
| yowards violence being the problem and not violence lead by
| greed. Greed leads to violence. We are just conditioned/tamed
| to believe what gets repeated 24/7 on the screen. I am grateful
| for the plug. I see we wont have a choice to unplug from our
| Utopic visionaries soon enough.
| __s wrote:
| ??
|
| I feel quite the opposite. Game theory helps understand why
| people act, & it let's you reverse engineer what they really
| value, as opposed to what they claim to value
|
| It's like saying physics has been conquered because airplanes
| should fall out of the sky. No, your existing notion was
| flawed, but reality didn't change
|
| People don't act towards incentives because of game theory,
| it's that game theory models their incentives. If you're acting
| differently, it means you've built a different incentive system
|
| This is important because it means game theory can be used to
| construct incentives to guide corporate behavior (ie we can
| avoid tragedy of the commons by forcing externalities to be
| accounted for, rather than left for the people), but pleas that
| corporations will act for the incentive of moral goodness is
| only a method to fool public debate into letting the tragedy go
| on. Because it's in the corporate interest to not pay for their
| externalities
|
| Maybe we're getting at the same thing, & I'm just picking up
| too much of a "shed thy mathematical yolk" vibe
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Im thankful for the miracle of modern medicine which has allowed
| my mother to see so much more of my life than otherwise would've
| been possible. And though there are many bad things that have led
| to the situation, the good things still exist also. The extension
| of the human life may seem strange or counterintuitively painful
| at the large scale but for the individual human/family is the
| most important thing about our modern existence.
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| I can't tell if this article is tongue-in-cheek or not. These are
| all just excruciatingly detailed versions of "I'm thankful the
| human species came out on the positive side of a lot of dice
| rolls".
|
| Just say you're happy to be alive and move on.
| hasmanean wrote:
| Was this article written by a shill for aspartame?
|
| They just threw it in there as something to be thankful to for,
| right after the sun, the earth, nature etc.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| This blogger (whom I like don't get me wrong) is a health crank
| who has written before about the health harms of sugar and how
| aspartame is comparatively not as bad. It's part of his beat,
| if you will.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I'm grateful to have been born in the good part of the world
| which allows me to be grateful that we're allowed to sustain our
| lifestyles thanks to the exploitation of others, and I'm not the
| exploited one
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Yaay! Me too. Wait.. :/
| endorphine wrote:
| I'm thankful for all the humans over the centuries, all over the
| Earth, that created music which I can experience, now,
| effortlessly. I'm thankful for all the strong feelings that that
| music awakes. Thank you everyone putting their heart out there
| through music.
| krosaen wrote:
| > That the FDA, Health Canada, and the European Food Safety
| Authority all agree that at the doses humans consume, aspartame
| is perfectly safe--not genotoxic, not carcinogenic, does not
| cause an insulin spike--or at least has small, unknown harms,
| meaning that people with a sweet tooth can avoid the large, known
| harms of sugar with minimal exertion of willpower, and this is
| still true even though people for some reason seem to reject and
| despise this extremely lucky fact.
|
| 2020 paper published in Cell:
|
| "Short-Term Consumption of Sucralose with, but Not without,
| Carbohydrate Impairs Neural and Metabolic Sensitivity to Sugar in
| Humans"
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32130881/
|
| From Huberman Lab (deep link to part where he talks about this):
|
| https://youtu.be/E7W4OQfJWdw?t=4404
|
| Takeaway: if you consume artificial sweeteners with foods that
| increase blood glucose, your brain will learn to secrete insulin
| in response to artificial sweeteners even when consumed by
| themselves. So if you drink diet soda all the time with and
| without snacks - you can throw your insulin regulation system out
| of whack and even cause pre-diabetes!
| maneesh wrote:
| Sucralose isn't aspartame...
| krosaen wrote:
| apparently it applies to all artificial sweeteners, including
| plant based ones like stevia
| pydry wrote:
| >That even though the turn humans made from hunter-gatherer bands
| into agriculture pretty clearly made life worse, it eventually
| led to the industrial revolution
|
| Which also made life worse to begin with. Without the enclosure
| movement depriving peasants of their land and pushing them to
| work in the factories in horrendous conditions for pitiful pay it
| likely wouldnt have happened.
|
| Though I'm pretty thankful for the workers' movement that
| followed that led to innovations like the weekend and
| criminalization of child labor.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Hunter gatherers routinely starved to death, and had violent
| confrontations with other tribes. This is evidenced by the
| different propagation of Y chromosomes vs mitochondrial DNA, as
| well as other evidence.
|
| It was not better. It was just different, and ultimately less
| safe than living in agricultural communities.
|
| The unibomber's manifesto goes into a lot of detail on the
| merits of nativeist life, and many modern anarchists subscribe
| to this philosophy and co-opt it into a neo-socialist dogma,
| but it is entirely without scientific merit.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm thankful that I was born in the late 20th century, in a
| country where working in a factory paid well, farming isn't
| done with slave labor, where wars are limited (unless you live
| where the war is) and my middle class standard of living and
| lifespan would be the envy of kings in the not so distant past.
| It's an amazing time to be alive, and so easy to see the
| negative. The truth is, for many of us, we're living a life
| that our ancestors couldn't imagine. Let's keep striving to
| make life better on earth for everyone.
| okr wrote:
| I would like to see evidence, that people were pushed into the
| factories. I was under the impression, that many went into the
| factories, because working in agriculture was not easy, as
| machines were not common.
|
| And once factories were there, humans improved working
| conditions there. While in agriculture, well, way more
| difficult to do, as the work had to be done.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| In seeing what has recently happened in China, I would agree.
| A gigantic migration has occurred in the past few decades
| where Chinese peasants moved from rural areas to the cities
| to work in factories. I thought for a long time "Why would so
| many people do this? This factory conditions are quite
| horrible, or at least the definition of soul-crushing
| monotony.
|
| I watched a pretty good documentary about this, and the
| answer pretty clearly seemed to be _opportunity_. It 's kinda
| similar to how legions of people move to LA to be actors. 99%
| of them will be worse off for the experience, many of them
| much more so, but even the chance to escape the conditions of
| their situation is a powerful draw for a lot of people.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > "Why would so many people do this? This factory
| conditions are quite horrible, or at least the definition
| of soul-crushing monotony.
|
| Because, as horrible as the factory conditions might seem
| to modern eyes, they weren't, in general, as horrible as
| being an agricultural stoop labor peasant (either in the
| west in premodern or Victorian times, or in China today).
|
| Serfs were running away to the cities way back in the
| Middle Ages, long before any Enclosure Acts.
|
| The expected payoff wasn't nearly as low as it is for
| acting. While life in the cities wasn't a bed of roses by
| any means (deaths from infectious diseases were at a
| horrific level, to name just one downside), the one big
| advantage was that you no longer had a "master" or "lord of
| the manor" who essentially had the power of life and death
| over you. Yes, a factory might have a cruel foreman, and
| many did, but the workers were allowed to _change jobs_.
| Serfs didn 't have that privilege.
| helpfulmandrill wrote:
| But on the other hand, the Enclosures provoked a number
| riots[1], so I don't think everyone agreed with you that
| "free" city life was better than rural serfdom, with
| common rights intact.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Enclosure_riots
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Of course everyone didn't agree. People don't work that
| way. Even today, there are people who prefer living in
| cabins without electricity or running water somewhere out
| in the Brooks Range of Alaska. However, most people don't
| do that (though a large number claim to aspire to
| something like that, few actually do it, and of the ones
| who actually do it, even fewer stick it out once the
| realities set in).
|
| The point is that the migration to the cities was in
| progress long before the Enclosure Acts came on the
| scene.
| helpfulmandrill wrote:
| I'm not sure that is the point. I personally don't think
| we can treat the choice made by such large numbers of
| people as comparable to the choices of a few modern
| cabin-dwelling weirdos. I think we should take seriously
| what appears to have seemed preferable for large numbers
| of people at the time, given the information they had,
| and lacking the benefit of centuries of hindsight.
| Aunche wrote:
| > 99% of them will be worse off for the experience, many of
| them much more so
|
| Chinese migrant workers aren't comparable to aspiring LA
| actors. 99% of people aren't stupid or easily deluded by
| dreams. You don't decide to move into a factory because you
| think you'll become the next Andrew Carnegie. You do so you
| can send money to your family in case if the harvest isn't
| good or they need to see a doctor. People have it so good
| here that they have completely forgotten all the hardships
| of preindustrial life.
| okr wrote:
| Opportunity, yes, it describes it pretty well.
|
| I also have seen friends from east europe leaving their
| home countries for opportunity in the west, even when
| judging from my warm, cosy, settled place, i thought, that
| their jobs were crappy. But it was opportunity for them.
|
| And now they also judge from their warm, cosy, settled
| place. and try to make working conditions better for for
| their fellows.
| watwut wrote:
| > Why would so many people do this? This factory conditions
| are quite horrible, or at least the definition of soul-
| crushing monotony.
|
| Another part of the answer is that their lives in
| agriculture were not all that great either. Many of them
| could have moved back, but they did not, because as bad as
| this was, it was still better or comparable. The factories
| made them earn more money and regular money.
|
| People tend to romanticize the agricultural or even
| hunters-gatherers lifestyle. In ideal conditions, it can be
| good. But conditions are not always ideal.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I was going to argue about the dangers of factory work, then
| I remembered just how dangerous a scythe can be. Work, in
| general, was a dangerous thing back then.
| Veen wrote:
| It depends on your definition of "pushed" or "forced". People
| often migrated from country to city for economic reasons. It
| was the only way to make a living for many. Others simply
| wanted to make more money or take advantage of other
| opportunities. You might say economic circumstances forced
| them to give up agriculture for factory work.
| okr wrote:
| I agree. Or as someone above said, it created opportunity.
| helpfulmandrill wrote:
| Google "The Enclosures". In Britain people had their right to
| subsist off common land removed by Parliament[1].
|
| You can argue that the move from agriculture to industry,
| from countryside to city, would have happened anyway. What is
| indisputable is that for many people, the possibility of
| subsisting in the ways they had before were systematically
| removed by the state (at the time under the complete control
| of the property-owning classes).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Parliamentary_Inc
| los...
| Aunche wrote:
| Would enclosures not have happened if industrialization
| didn't? IMO this was inevitable because peasants simply
| lost the leverage that they had received after the black
| plague. Countries like the US had no such laws, yet they
| all went through the same industrialization occurred all
| the same.
| helpfulmandrill wrote:
| I don't know. Impossible to tell, I guess. I'm just
| pointing out that choice didn't come into it for many
| people. What choices they would have made had history
| gone differently, I can't say.
|
| Whatever might, hypothetically have happened in another
| timeline, as a matter of historical fact it was _not_ a
| peaceful, free-market process of people voting with their
| feet.
| pratik661 wrote:
| Theres been some research in modern day Bangladesh that seems
| to suggest that a presence of a garment factory in a village
| (aka sweatshop to some people) is associated with higher
| educational attainment for women and school completion rates.
|
| Basically, garment factory work requires some level of
| literacy and numeracy. Having a factory in your village which
| provides jobs and independence vs farm labor work provides
| people an incentive to complete a certain level of schooling.
| netcan wrote:
| The story is complex. There aren't really no "gimme evidence"
| answers to these kinds of issues. A lot of people over
| centuries in many countries give you a lot if stories.
|
| One major factor was population growth. This was due to the
| coming of American crops (corn, potatoes, etc) and the green
| revolution (fertilizers, machinery, etc.).
|
| Another major factor (say in Ireland, where I'm from) was a
| change in the social-political system. There was a shift from
| old the old lordship order to a more modern landlord order.
| Relationships (rights, obligations) between lords/landlords
| and the landed an unlanded peasantry... Today we might call
| it rural unemployment and/or a small farm debt crisis. The
| latter half of this change is known in Ireland as "the land
| wars."
|
| There were also "pull" factors. These are more complicated,
| because they do involve choice. Cities offered a lot of hope.
| You _might_ do very well in a city. Many did poorly though,
| and food /sanitation was often worse. A lot of the migration
| was (for example) adolescents sent to work as domestic
| servants... so thinking in terms of "homo economicus" is best
| tempered with some visualisations... say Oliver Twist.
|
| Similar things happen today in developing economies. Rural
| unemployment and stagnation. Cities that offer shiny
| opportunities in a game with few winners and many losers.
| Hence urban slums, 80 hr workweeks, etc.
|
| Working conditions in factories was also a 200+ year process.
| Unions played a big role. Politics played a big role.
| Revolutions and fear of revolutions played a big role. In
| Ireland, Soviet and pre-soviet revolutions were the threat
| that catalyzed land and labour reforma immediately before
| independence from the UK and after it. The Irish independence
| war was contemporary to the Russian Revolution, so the
| politics were naturally intertwined.
|
| For the most part, material conditions for the poor were a
| lot worse in the cities for most of the industrial era(s).
| Education was better and people became more worldly in
| cities. Rural peasantry tends to be culturally stagnant by
| default. Marx, in his day, saw this migration as the
| preceding factor to revolution. He was snobbishly dismissive
| of peasants' ability to evolve culturally, so revolution had
| to wait until a generation or two was seasoned by city life.
| jll29 wrote:
| I like this more unusual list of things to be grateful for, as it
| complements well what one is usually reminded to be grateful for.
| I'd like a more fundamental point there, though:
|
| Gratefulness seems to be primarily a ternary operator: "<SOMEONE>
| is grateful to <SOMEONE> for <SOMETHING>." (like "a ? b : c" in
| C).
|
| That second SOMEONE is the one that the being grateful is
| directed at, as they are responsible for things being the way
| they are. (Being grateful to anyone not causally connected to
| what one is grateful about seems most weird.)
|
| Does that not mean that every grateful person acknowledges God's
| existence, at least implicitly?
| thwave wrote:
| Unless gratefulness is actually binary (x is grateful for y),
| and directing this gratefulness towards someone is completely
| optional. (One might argue that the object of gratefulness is
| optional as well, and you can be grateful simpliciter, in an
| unqualified way. But to them I'd say there's an implied,
| general, object: the world, life, existence, or something like
| this.)
| mistermann wrote:
| > That second SOMEONE is the one that the being grateful is
| directed at, as they are responsible for things being the way
| they are. (Being grateful to anyone not causally connected to
| what one is grateful about seems most weird.)
|
| How does one go about (accurately) decomposing causality in a
| system this complex and poorly understood though?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| And a system founded on a complete misunderstanding of the
| ternary operator
| ssener2001 wrote:
| This is also good point. Maybe the following paragraph can
| help. "causes is the two things coming together or being
| together, which is called 'association;' they suppose the two
| things cause one another. Also, since the non-existence of
| one thing is the cause of a bounty's non-existence, they
| suppose that the thing's existence is also the cause of the
| bounty's existence. They offer their thanks and gratitude to
| the thing and fall into error. For a bounty's existence
| results from all the bounty's conditions and preliminaries.
| Whereas the bounty's non-existence occurs through the non-
| existence of only a single condition.
|
| For example, someone who does not open the canal to water the
| garden is the reason and cause of the garden drying up and
| the non-existence of bounties. But the existence of the
| garden's bounties is dependent on hundreds of conditions
| besides the man's duty and the bounties come into being
| through dominical will and power, which are the true cause.
|
| Yes, 'association' is one thing and the cause is another. You
| receive a bounty, but the intention of a person to bestow it
| on you was the 'associate' of the bounty, not the cause. The
| cause was divine mercy. If the man had not intended to give
| you the bounty, you would not have received it and it would
| have been the cause of the bounty's non-existence. But in
| consequence of the above rule, the desire to bestow cannot be
| the cause of the bounty; it can only be one out of hundreds
| of conditions.... from meaning of Quran "
| vcxy wrote:
| > Does that not mean that every grateful person acknowledges
| God's existence, at least implicitly?
|
| No. It means that the emotion of gratefulness isn't always a
| simple reduction to what you have there. Similarly, I think
| thwave who replied to you is also wrong. The emotion doesn't
| have to always follow such a simplified framework or be legibly
| caused. Of course it has to have some causal chain, but I think
| the legibility could be as opaque as "X is grateful for Y
| because Z suggested that maybe they should be" where Z didn't
| have anything to do with Y, Y doesn't necessarily do much for
| X, and so on. It doesn't make the emotion of gratefulness any
| less valid. I expect the ways the emotion could come about is
| varied enough to avoid these simplifications.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Actually, it depends on if there is free will, which by
| definition is supernatural, else we have as much choice to be
| grateful as a rock.
| skim_milk wrote:
| >25. That evolution happened to settle on this trick of "love" to
| serve the interests of evolution rather than, like, causing us to
| feel like we're being burned alive every time we don't find mates
| or feed our kids or whatever
|
| I liked the article but this strikes me as strange because this
| is clearly not the same for everyone. Depending on who you ask
| there's a sizeable population of people who, because of
| environment and genetics, cannot focus on the "love" parts of
| relationships and are predisposed to focus on fears of
| abandonment etc to stay in relationships without lots of help and
| drugs.
|
| Be happy you got a decent dice roll if you regularly feel
| positive about your relationships, triply so if this "positive
| affect" guides the majority your life decisions!
| ElectronShak wrote:
| I'm thankful for the Internet, you wouldn't be reading this
| otherwise
| pkdpic wrote:
| Im thankful to have a job and a roof over my head and a little
| bit of savings. Not having to really worry about money still
| blows my mind now and then.
|
| Looking across the street every day in California and seeing the
| homelessness crisis in full swing is an ever present reminder of
| what this economy and this society can do to you if you slip up
| for even a second and / or have even a minor run of bad luck.
|
| Working in software isn't always easy or fun or fulfilling but
| its still an incredible privilege to be working in this industry.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| This strikes home for me. I come from an extended family of
| laborers and addicts. All of us had the same future: miserable
| work, low wages, multiple bankruptcies, and early death.
|
| I'm 57. I've worked as a photographer for 32 years, made a
| great living and traveled the world. I've collaborated with
| incredible people, and seen (and documented) amazing things.
|
| I live in a beautiful house (I paid it off years ago) in a
| great city. I have zero debt and have so many options about
| what I'll do.
|
| My retirement investments have been done very well (good luck
| getting me to stop working). I have a wonderful family and an
| incredible daughter.
|
| I never take any of this for granted. I am so thankful. My
| siblings, cousins, aunts, etc see me like an alien creature. At
| 57 I'm the oldest living male in generations of my family.
| [deleted]
| human wrote:
| I don't think you read the piece.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| California sounds so extreme in this regard. When I started
| working in software in the UK I made much less than say a
| hairdresser, and never saw homeless people (not in a city
| so...). I didn't feel this stark difference that being in 2020s
| + SF seems to highlight.
| kortilla wrote:
| If you weren't in a city that's the difference. You only need
| to travel like 20 miles south of San Francisco to never see
| homeless people. Mountain View might as well be a different
| country.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I'd visit London on business in the 80's, the homeless
| were very much present and visible. The concierge at the
| hotel told me not to leave the hotel before 6AM (I had jet
| lag and was headed out for a walk) because I'd be easy meat.
| dave1999x wrote:
| London really cleaned up in the 90s. There is still visible
| homeless, but nothing like US cities with homeless camps.
| Officially, there are a lot of "homeless" but far fewer
| "unsheltered"
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've lived in Seattle since the 70s. I never saw tents
| until recently.
| axiolite wrote:
| > Im thankful to have a job
|
| I think you've got that backwards. Everyone is thankful for
| money and possessions. A job is just how you happen to get
| them. Would you be unhappy to be very wealthy, without a job?
|
| > seeing the homelessness crisis in full swing is an ever
| present reminder of what this economy and this society can do
| to you if you slip up for even a second and / or have even a
| minor run of bad luck.
|
| I've known a lot of homeless people. Their circumstances are
| overwhelmingly caused by drug addition or mental illness. Not
| that anyone will admit to it.
|
| If you're willing and able to work full-time, you can manage a
| reasonable living. There are government and private programs to
| support the disabled, unemployed, keep the impoverished who
| don't fit those categories from starving, etc. Not to mention
| charities, and friends/family groups who will help most anyone
| who doesn't get enough support from those programs, or just had
| "bad luck". Mental illness and drug addition does a good job of
| cutting you off from all those sources of support.
| late2part wrote:
| _Would you be unhappy to be very wealthy, without a job?_
|
| Yes.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Would you be unhappy to be very wealthy, without a job?
|
| Absolutely. Working on stuff for my job that I'm passionate
| about gives me great fulfillment. Being paid for my skills is
| recognition from society as to the value I provide.
| esyir wrote:
| Eh, between the two, I'd reckon it'd be foolish not to go
| with the wealth. I can always get a job, or use the
| breathing room provided by wealth to gain skills for a job.
| The inverse is not nearly as reliable.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > A job is just how you happen to get them
|
| I happen to enjoy my job very much. I'd feel useless and
| bored without it.
| axiolite wrote:
| If you didn't have to worry about money, you'd have ample
| time to find fulfilling hobbies to occupy your time.
|
| You could even do all the parts of your job that you enjoy,
| while skipping all the unpleasant parts of it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I created my own job by starting my own business, which I
| enjoyed a lot and it paid well.
| ronbarr wrote:
| I feel sad for you if you see work only as a way to make
| money. A good job with a team that is working together
| towards a goal is a very satisfying experience. I would be
| unhappy to be very wealthy without a job. There are many
| people who end up lost because they don't have a sense of
| purpose, and a job helps with that.
| someelephant wrote:
| I agree with everything you're saying except for your usage
| of purpose. To me, life is not about doing meaningful and
| purposeful things. It's about satisfying yourself. With the
| right incentives, we can satisfy ourselves in ways that are
| meaningful and purposeful. Finding the right work with the
| right people is extremely satisfying. If you don't enjoy
| your work, it's likely you are not working on the right
| things or you have some mental health issues which are
| lingering beneath the surface.
| xpe wrote:
| It can be both. I would guess that most people, once they
| have satisfied their basic needs, begin to strive to help
| their kids, their friends, their community, and possibly
| even their country and/or world.
| chasil wrote:
| I was lucky enough to have spent my youth in one of the five
| least expensive places to live in the United States, and I
| stayed. I can easily buy a home for $30,000 here, and I have
| done so a few times.
|
| I was fortunate enough to find a company where I live that
| wrote their major systems in assembler in the late 1960's; they
| use UNIX/Linux to glue modern systems to a vertical wall of
| technical debt. This is an endless amount of fun.
|
| I go only so far into these legacy systems (we even have an
| emulated VAX running VMS, which I keep at arm's distance). I
| should be thankful for having an unprivileged VMS account. I
| don't want to run that system.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I hear you man, I hear you
| igorkraw wrote:
| If you can and aren't already, maybe consider organising with
| less privileged workers for things like striking in unison. Or
| getting politically active to grow economy and society so it
| will be kinder and allow a slip up.
|
| One of the many reasons I would never move to the US is that in
| Europe I _don 't_ feel like a minor slip up or bad luck will
| send me into financial ruin. I'll need surgery on my shoulder
| soon and hopefully it should be fully covered by my health
| insurance, no added charges. It's an example that comes up
| again and again and I'm sure people in your position worry less
| about it, but it's something I keep seeing play a role with my
| acquaintances and online
| aksss wrote:
| If you have talent, show up, and a clean criminal record, you
| can make it in the US without a problem. There's more money
| than talent, meaning if you have talent, there are people
| ready to give you plenty of money. It's not hard in and of
| itself. It says something that many people's problem in the
| US is getting in their own way. People in other places in the
| world have far less mobility opportunities than we have here.
| I'm thankful for that.
| igorkraw wrote:
| If you compare globally sure, if you compare with Europe,
| the data tells a different story. The US are 27th in social
| mobility behind all of the northwestern European nations
| with high taxation (data from the WEF, infographic from the
| site I link to).
|
| While Germany and the other European nations are far from
| perfect and I like some of the business aspects of the US,
| coming from money matters more in the US than in Europe,
| statistically.
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-
| mobility-...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Very grateful for your notification of the existence of
| visualcapitalist.com (It also has RSS, though through an
| external provider)
|
| I wanted to reciprocate revealing something along the
| lines, but apart from ourworldindata.org (which has a
| numeric approach instead of notional), I can only find
| the promising JunkChart,
| https://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/ , and The
| Economist's Graphic Detail,
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail?page=1 , blogs.
|
| Edit: the said branch of The Economist seems _very_
| promising: the latest article, "Just like modern humans,
| honeybees avoid each other amid plagues // They segregate
| behaviours in different parts of their hives to prevent
| parasites from spreading" as a stub shout heading reads
| <<Social distan-sting>>. Thank you dear editor!
| gjs278 wrote:
| that will only increase prices for poor people
| thegypsyking wrote:
| I moved from europe to the us because I could never become
| financially independent with the low compensation and high
| taxes in EU. I would never wish for us to ever be as
| unambitious and hard to grow as the eu is.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think it's quite possible to find a middle road there.
| cafeoh wrote:
| You would never wish it for those that achieve growth or
| for the people suffering homelessness, debt,
| precariousness, etc? My gut tells me we both have very
| different ideas on what ambition is/can be, what form of
| growth is valuable, and how economic liberalism weighs in.
|
| Ethics aside, the taxes I've been paying out of my salary
| since I've been in the industry allows me today to benefit
| from an incredible financial safety net as I'm attempting
| to put together my own R&D software company.
| mojuba wrote:
| On Europe vs. the US: if you consider private health
| insurance in the US a part of your taxes, then the
| difference is not that big anymore. In fact it may even be
| the other way around: in the US you may be overpaying for
| health services if you are insured [1]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/22/upshot/h
| ospit...
| kortilla wrote:
| A minor slip up doesn't ruin people financially in the US the
| vast majority of the time. That's why it's a non-issue
| politically.
|
| Your perspective of US life is just shaped by what they
| report on in the news/reddit/here/etc. Nobody reports on the
| people that live boring, comfortable lives.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Even if a minor slip up doesn't ruin you, the paperwork,
| hassle and the constant fear is ridiculous. That's no way
| to live a civilized life - and I say this as an American
| who has experienced better care even in third world
| countries.
| igorkraw wrote:
| I know enough US citizens personally that I can assure you,
| I'm aware of the correction that needs to be applied _but_
| consider that you might be underestimating how bad things
| are in the US because _you_ are comfortable.
|
| I personally would not want to live in that system. I am
| 29, debt free, with a university education from one of the
| countries top universities where I spend 1.5 years extra
| for an exchange and having needed hospitalisation multiple
| times in my life. This experience is something that,
| statistically, not many US citizens my age have (especially
| the debt freeness), and I have had enough interactions with
| exchange students who expressed genuine surprise I had no
| second thought of going to the hospital to appreciate this
| carefreeness over the benefits the US system might bring
| for people like me in the happy path.
|
| But that's personal opinion of course.
| WalterBright wrote:
| In Seattle anyway, 90% of the homeless are either drug addicts
| or alcoholics. Becoming one is a choice under your control, not
| god smiting you.
|
| > Working in software
|
| is a heluva lot better than stoop labor, what people have done
| for millennia. Every time I work on the yard I'm reminded again
| at how hard stoop labor is, and how I'm glad to work sitting in
| a comfy chair in a warm house with the stereo playing in the
| background. And I can play on HN when waiting for the test
| suite to run.
| renjimen wrote:
| > Becoming one is a choice under your control
|
| To an extent. Some people are predisposed to addiction and
| the poor are much less likely to have the knowledge or
| support required to recognise or battle addiction.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I know that some people are predisposed to addiction. It's
| harder for them, sure, but becoming an addict is still a
| choice for them. I know some who chose to get and stay
| clean, too, despite being predisposed.
|
| I wager that poor people are far better at recognizing
| addiction than non-poor. I hired a stoner once, not
| recognizing it. He robbed the company blind to pay his
| dealer.
|
| Social workers are always trying to get the homeless
| addicts into rehab. They generally refuse to. It is their
| _choice_ , not lack of money. In fact, I suspect that the
| lack of money is _caused_ by their choice to be addicted.
| After all, addicts lose interest in their jobs and
| employers don 't want stoners and drunks coming to work.
| mysticmode wrote:
| This is a sort of response that makes the conversation
| stink and as well has no optimal solution would come out.
| > I know that some people
|
| I know that this writing will make no change in your
| bigoted perception but at-least it might to others. So,
| I'm writing it.
|
| Addiction is NOT a choice, and it is a form of chemical
| imbalance that happens in our complex brain that makes
| the person get into addiction with any substance. It
| could be said like any other mental health illnesses. AND
| when the person who got addicted doesn't get enough
| support and the compassion (likely not from you) to the
| way where they can be able to stay away from their
| addiction, there is a possibility that such person could
| go worse.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Addiction is NOT a choice
|
| Drinking alcohol is a choice, so is sticking the needle
| in your arm.
|
| > likely not from you
|
| I support programs for treatment for addicts. Successful
| treatment, however, involves the addicts accepting
| responsibility. Nobody ever said recovery is easy. It
| isn't. Compassion is in order to help them recover.
|
| But ultimately it's still up to them to make the choice.
| adriand wrote:
| A heartless and uninformed perspective that is all too
| common among people born into privilege (you may not have
| been but in my experience, most people who believe this
| were).
|
| The majority of addicts are people who have experienced
| trauma. Often this is childhood trauma, specifically
| sexual, emotional or physical abuse. Of course it may
| also have occurred in adulthood. Veterans are one common
| example but there are millions of other causes.
|
| Shit happens man. You can be an armchair judge but it's
| all too easy to go off the rails in this world. Be
| compassionate! Instead of "you made some bad choices"
| maybe try thinking, "there but for the grace of god go
| I".
| WalterBright wrote:
| I never said compassion was unhelpful. If compassion
| helps an addict choose to stop using, great! But it's
| still, in the end, the addict's choice.
| adriand wrote:
| You could choose compassion but instead you choose
| judgment.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Asserting that people have agency over their lives
| empowers them. That does not preclude compassion for the
| state they're in. Not at all.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| How much of a choice is it to be attracted to a given
| individual? Or to crave a certain kind of food? Or to be
| consumed with a specific kind of work? Or to care for
| your child?
|
| I.e. I think we overestimate how much of a 'choice'
| certain outcomes are for most people.
| refurb wrote:
| The choice is not the in feeling, it's in the action.
|
| At least when it comes to addiction, there can be no
| recovery unless _there is a conscious choice to do
| something about it_. Nobody can save these people unless
| they want to be saved.
| blago wrote:
| It was 100% my choice to smoke 1.5 packs per day for 20
| years. Just like it was my choice to quit. The first
| choice was easy, the second was not. You don't choose how
| you feel about things, but to a large extent you choose
| how you act.
| WalterBright wrote:
| People often conveniently claim they had "no choice" so
| they can absolve themselves of responsibility for their
| actions.
|
| > How much of a choice is it to be attracted to a given
| individual?
|
| Don't confuse ones' choices with ones' desires. You have
| free will, you can indulge in the bad predilections, or
| not. Your choice.
|
| Nobody said making the better choice is easy.
|
| If I had my druthers, I'd eat nothing but donuts and ice
| cream all day. But I choose otherwise.
| kiba wrote:
| _People often conveniently claim they had "no choice" so
| they can absolve themselves of responsibility for their
| actions._
|
| Choices or no choices, or free will, doesn't absolve
| someone of consequences, responsibility, or reality
| stemming from actions being undertaken.
| meken wrote:
| I agree with this.
|
| I've often contemplated that given that the part of me
| that has a poor work ethic and refuses to get help has
| generally won out, I would easily be on the streets if I
| was born into a family of low socioeconomic status,
| rather than having lots of savings and living in a nice
| apartment. Also, I've spiraled downwards many times, and
| I'm lucky that food, isolation, internet are my vices,
| rather than hard drugs.
|
| In the times I've finally "decided" to improve my life, I
| honestly have no explanation for why I did that, versus
| continue to spiral downwards.
| foobarian wrote:
| > In the times I've finally "decided" to improve my life,
| I honestly have no explanation for why I did that, versus
| continue to spiral downwards.
|
| It's interesting how much these kinds of choices are
| affected by people around you. E.g. when I had classmates
| depending on me to finish a part of a project, or a
| partner needing a good night sleep, I am much less likely
| to goof off into the wee hours of the night playing video
| games or such.
|
| Makes me wish I could have recognized this way earlier
| and set up periodic "check-ins" with a group of friends.
| I've seen some people accomplish this via "life coaches."
| Some people have really involved parents. Explains why
| people with poorer backgrounds may do worse - less of
| this kind of involvement. Conversely I wonder if
| church/temple participation helps the other way.
| kiba wrote:
| _I know that some people are predisposed to addiction. It
| 's harder for them, sure, but becoming an addict is still
| a choice for them. I know some who chose to get and stay
| clean, too, despite being predisposed._
|
| A fairly useless way to think about when it comes to
| solving problems in our society.
|
| At the end of the days, people's choices are determined
| by large number of factors, most of which we are unaware
| of or currently ill equipped to understand.
|
| It would be like a person having a seizure and people
| deciding to blame said person for making a choice to be
| corrupted by a devil.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A seizure is not the same thing at all. Nobody can choose
| to have a seizure, or choose not to have one.
| ineptech wrote:
| Seizures were once thought to be caused by sinfulness. We
| used to think problem gambling was a decision, until we
| discovered a drug that can cause it. I don't think we
| know why addicts become addicts just yet, so it might be
| a little early to orate upon it.
| [deleted]
| kiba wrote:
| _A seizure is not the same thing at all. Nobody can
| choose to have a seizure, or choose not to have one._
|
| Nobody chose anything without being dictated by physics,
| biological, sociological, and cognitive factors.
| esyir wrote:
| This is a fun one, let's take the case of mental illness.
|
| Assume we know the person's addiction and subsequent
| dysfunction is from said mental illness. The person
| doesn't want to be treated, as is often the case. Do you
|
| A: let him carry on as is, resulting in both self-harm
| alongside other externalities
|
| B: Violate his right to self determination and have him
| committed to a mental institution.
| [deleted]
| boplicity wrote:
| >In Seattle anyway, 90% of the homeless are either drug
| addicts or alcoholics
|
| That's a big claim to make. Do you have any sources?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The "Seattle is Dying" video produced by KOMO, the local TV
| station.
|
| "60 Minutes" also ran a segment on the Seattle homeless a
| couple years ago. They went in looking for people who were
| down on their luck. They found drug addicts and alcoholics.
| boplicity wrote:
| Your number of "90%" isn't even close to accurate:
|
| https://our.news/external/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2
| Far...
| rkk3 wrote:
| Not really, he was just referring to Chronic Visible
| Homeless, your article doesn't break out SUD for that sub
| group but even at just the Chronic Homeless level (many
| who aren't on the street) it puts the rate at 2/3 having
| substance issues.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The drug addicts and alcoholics are much easier to find
| than the people down on their luck, who mostly are still
| functional and instead make up the more invisible portion
| of the homeless population. They are also the most easily
| helped by existing resources (easy cases that don't
| involve rehab and can live independently).
| alexanderdmitri wrote:
| Here's a write-up from Seattle's government about the
| root causes of homelessness in the city:
| https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/the-roots-of-the-
| crisis
|
| This is a take on the issue by the Seattle Times:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/why-
| are-p...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I remember that ST article. Their statistics have
| problems - for example, a big reason people lose their
| jobs is because of drug addiction or alcoholism. The same
| for evictions. The same for their own families throwing
| them out.
|
| Drug addiction and alcoholism is the proximate cause of a
| lot of calamities in peoples' lives.
| pininja wrote:
| When I hung out with a homeless guy in North Beach, SF
| for a good hour while he was painting his perspective on
| shelters was that the addicted folks were in shelters,
| and non-addicts that went to shelters were treated as if
| they were addicts. He felt rather de-humanized by the
| whole system and so he stays on the street.
|
| I haven't seen these videos yet, but I'm curious if they
| went to shelters or streets.
| erect_hacker4 wrote:
| Addiction is a choice. Classic HN.
| xpe wrote:
| Describing human actions as either 'under one's control' or
| 'not' is an oversimplified and inaccurate world view.
|
| I think the evidence suggests a different understanding:
|
| 1. One individual's willpower varies significantly over time
| (over a day for example)
|
| 2. One individual's set of options varies in many ways -- not
| limited to education, awareness, culture, economic
| opportunity, and luck.
|
| 3. Many important actions are not consciously decided.
|
| This plays out in many ways.
|
| Many individuals that achieve some kind of success mistakenly
| over-attribute it to hard work or intelligence --- and
| downplay the role of culture, opportunity, privilege, and
| luck.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I understand that today it is popular to assert that people
| are just hapless victims of circumstance, that they don't
| have agency.
|
| I don't buy it.
|
| Furthermore, when people _take responsibility_ for their
| lives, they tend to have much better outcomes. I 'm old,
| and I've observed this play out constantly. Blaming others
| and circumstance might make one feel better, but it is
| completely _useless_.
|
| And lastly, successful treatment for addiction and
| alcoholism involves the person _taking responsibility_ for
| the addiction.
| WalterBright wrote:
| For those who disagree, take a look at Alcoholics Anonymous.
| It's about making choices. I don't believe it is a mean,
| heartless, compassion-less organization.
| thowaway959125 wrote:
| > Looking across the street every day in California and seeing
| the homelessness crisis in full swing is an ever present
| reminder of what this economy and this society can do to you if
| you slip up for even a second and / or have even a minor run of
| bad luck. Working in software isn't always easy or fun or
| fulfilling but its still an incredible privilege to be working
| in this industry.
|
| I'm a senior software engineer with decades in the industry,
| but a few years ago I completely burned out, ended up addicted
| to alcohol, and lost everything.
|
| And when I say lost everything, I mean _everything_. I ended up
| in a homeless shelter.
|
| Climbing out from there to get back into the industry was an
| insane battle. I finally got control over all of it and back on
| my feet, but I have a new found respect for just being able to
| keep a roof over my head and pay bills now.
|
| That's all I want. I use my free time to give back to society
| now.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Thank you so much for sharing this, its deeply inspiring and
| feels like really important context / wisdom for someone
| still at the beginning of their dev career. This is exactly
| why HN can be such an amazing community (imho). Im more and
| more thankful for that as well.
| major--neither wrote:
| yikes! glad you climbed back.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I'm glad you're doing well.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Even things like not having to budget for groceries and the
| occasional going out to eat is something I often take for
| granted. I stay frugal, but have never really had to hem and
| haw about whether I should spring for the organic produce or
| fair trade coffee.
|
| "I can't afford this" is a lot more difficult of a circumstance
| to be in than "boy that was a dumb idea to purchase some
| pricey, fancy, but nasty cheese on a whim"
| pkdpic wrote:
| I could agree more with this, word for word. It still hits me
| almost every time I go to the grocery store somehow.
| krisrm wrote:
| Realized after reading this that it's American Thanksgiving
| today. Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends. I'm thankful
| for a lovely forum where we can read and share articles like this
| one.
| borepop wrote:
| Agreed. The tone of the HN comments section is occasionally
| somewhat more contentious now than a few years ago, but it has
| not generally devolved into the sort of partisan pissing
| match/bad-faith clusterfuck seen elsewhere in the interwebs. To
| some extent I attribute that to the fact that valuing science
| and reason can be a helpful quality in moderating the tone of
| interaction, even among anons. Which is really a lucky thing.
| Method5440 wrote:
| Prove it, you partisan hack. :)
| kubb wrote:
| Also respectful condolences to the Native Americans in their
| day of mourning.
| throwamon wrote:
| On Thanksgiving I'm especially thankful I'm not a Native
| American living a few centuries or decades or even seconds ago.
| swader999 wrote:
| I'm happy that ice floats.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Happier that water freezes at a pretty tolerable temperature
| and happens to be our main source of sustenance. Makes adding
| water ice to things a very refreshing experience!
| pfdietz wrote:
| And that the carbon 12 nucleus has that excited state at just
| the right energy to make the triple-alpha process work.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| I wrote an essay about this for my AP Chem test in high school.
| I still remember this question almost 25 years later!
| blago wrote:
| Only 12 hours ago I was grateful the we hadn't been hit by
| another, even more dangerous, COVID variant but's that's back on
| the table now.
| decremental wrote:
| I'm thankful for the HN moderator dang.
| moneywoes wrote:
| I'm thankful for Hacker News and this post
| flycaliguy wrote:
| I really like this idea of listing things to be thankful for. I
| might just start up a mega list in my house for my kids to
| contribute to. Maybe a binder? Something we can revisit together
| and contribute to.
| [deleted]
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > meaning that people with a sweet tooth can avoid the large,
| known harms of sugar with minimal exertion of willpower
|
| Aspartame tastes so awful I can't see how that's going to make me
| thankful.
| brink wrote:
| On top of it tasting bad, it gives me migraines. The only
| theory I have for why that is is that I'm allergic.
| Kranar wrote:
| Another more plausible explanation is that it's
| psychological. It's common among many who believe aspartame
| is unhealthy that it gives them migraines or headaches, but
| in a double-blind study, every single person who self-
| reported adverse reactions to aspartame were unable to do so
| over the course of the study. On the other hand, those who
| claimed sensitivity rated very high on various psychological
| metrics such as perceived stress and anxiety:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4364783/
|
| This is not to say that you don't genuinely feel something
| and are just making it up, but that it's not a consequence of
| aspartame and is rooted in an entirely different phenomenon
| that you've associated with aspartame for one reason or
| another.
| jturpin wrote:
| Diet sodas to me taste awful, but lately I've been putting a
| single packet of Equal in my coffee with some vanilla and it
| tastes great. Lord knows I can cut out the sugar wherever
| possible.
| dham wrote:
| > That large animals like humans seem to be able to develop
| sophisticated defenses against parasites that parasites can't
| counter-adapt against, meaning that parasitism is way less of an
| issue for us than it is for smaller animals, which is good
| because parasites are bad.
|
| The lack of parasites probably leads to most auto immune diseases
| in humans.
| avl999 wrote:
| citation needed
| dham wrote:
| Basically after populations are treated for parasites (in 3rd
| world countries) the rate of autoimmune diseases goes up.
| It's thought that since the immune system has nothing to do,
| it starts attacking itself which makes sense from an
| evolutionary stand point.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/
| okl wrote:
| > Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is
| an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find
| myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me
| staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| Obligatory:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmig...
|
| > "This hole...! It was made for me!"
|
| > A short horror manga story by Junji Ito. A boy named Owaki,
| and a girl, Yoshida, meet on Amigara Mountain, where an
| unsettling discovery has been made. An earthquake has created a
| huge fault in the mountain, and human-shaped holes are
| scattered across the face of the fault line. It soon becomes
| clear that the holes are "calling" to the people they are
| shaped like. So what happens when they enter the hole? Well,
| you can be sure that massive amounts of claustrophobia and
| Nightmare Fuel are involved.
| elwell wrote:
| It's all perspective.
| mistermann wrote:
| Imagine if it actually was! That'd be pretty funny I think.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| I'm thankful that the freak accident of multicellular life
| happened, possibly once ever, billions of years ago.[1] The near
| impossibility of that momentous event happening could be The
| Great Filter that explains the Fermi Paradox.[2] Thanks for being
| here, fellow multicellular friends.
|
| [1] (Start at 2:15)
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/cellm...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
| 5faulker wrote:
| When we understand that life is an opportunity rather than a
| given, it really changes our perspective on life.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| I'm thankful for every HN user and moderator who helps remove
| political or mean comments.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Re #15 I watched a show about a boy who got infected with ecoli.
| The defence was plasma transfusion (I think) which was
| experimental at the time. He survived ... barely. The bacteria
| tore through his body, made a hole in his stomach. The point is
| out sophisticated defence goes beyond the immune system into the
| knowledge, technology, science. Imagine what covid would be like
| without technology, governments, money, coordination. May have
| spread more slowly at the global level of course without
| technology but would be way more deadly.
| pyrrhotech wrote:
| I'm thankful we still live in a society with personal and
| economic liberty. Both those on the far left and the far right
| are trying to take those from us, and the center is vanishing as
| America becomes more polarized each cycle. I'm convinced one day
| in the future, we will no longer have the freedoms we enjoy
| today, so I live each day to the fullest knowing that nothing
| good lasts forever.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I am thankful for online bill payment. I remember my dad having
| to go and queue up for paying electricity and water bills every
| month - even when it was sweltering hot.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Every day you can wake up, put your feet on the ground and stand
| up, is a beautiful day.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I'm thankful for Hacker News and internet cultures that support
| and share articles like this. Things that are intellectually
| gratifying without being overly specific, topical, or focused on
| any particular goal. Just interesting thoughts for the sake of
| their interestingness.
| alexanderdmitri wrote:
| Thankfulness as an end is not necessarily valuable or positive. I
| think the associated feeling does little to the make the world a
| better place, I put it in the same category as remorse.
|
| Just as remorse should lead to rectifying action, thankfulness
| should lead to reciprocal action to provide objective value.
|
| What's interesting is the impetus between internal perception and
| outward action both share is a sense of indebtedness.
| Thankfulness becomes a passive accumulation of debt in this lens,
| whereas remorse casts our hero in a more active role.
|
| I think also actions spawned from thankfulness will be more
| comedic [dynamic] in nature and whereas those from remorse will
| tend toward the tragic [static]. The efficacy of either approach
| will reflect the constraints of the systems they are acting
| within and how well conceived the individual's solution is.
|
| Not sure where I'm going with this. Spitballing, not preaching
| ...
| bobsmooth wrote:
| >Thankfulness as an end is not necessarily valuable or
| positive.
|
| I strongly disagree. I moved to a new city and the experience
| allowed me to truly appropriate all the things I have. My
| living situation only improved slightly but being thankful has
| massively improved my mental health.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I think thankfulness is more of a tool to be used to counter
| act nihilism. That's why it can be useful. not on its own, but
| as a buttress against despair.
| alexanderdmitri wrote:
| I think this very good point. There is an undeniably good
| vibe to it. Maybe something akin to a general faith?
| exolymph wrote:
| > Thankfulness as an end is not necessarily valuable or
| positive.
|
| Yes it is; it makes me feel good.
| alexanderdmitri wrote:
| If the inherent value is solipsistic and self-justifying,
| then it is more likely to be detrimental to the overall
| system. This would make it a net negative.
| [deleted]
| fnord77 wrote:
| how about: Ice is less dense than liquid water, so it floats.
| That means bodies of water don't freeze solid in the winter,
| which would have precluded life anywhere colder than the tropics.
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| "Oh, and also that the universe exists at all"
|
| That's the one to keep coming back to. Could've been nothin.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| On the other hand, nothingness has no cause or means for
| suffering.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Which comes back to #19:
|
| > That even if, as most scientific-minded people seem to
| assume, there is no afterlife, that's not ideal, but is much
| better than other possibilities like, say, being tortured for
| eternity.
|
| Like, we could all be a bunch of Boltzmann brains[1] popping
| into existence in an empty universe, writhing with
| unimaginable pain in every pseudo-neuron of our temporary
| brains. But it's not like that, at least yet. Which is pretty
| cool.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
| saltyfamiliar wrote:
| There is no "we" that could be like that if it's boltzmann
| brains all the way down. It could very well be mostly
| unimaginable agony that exists, it's just that the
| temporary boltzmann configuration of "posting a thought on
| HN as a human with human memories" happens to not be a part
| of that.
| 323 wrote:
| Some, like Stephen Wolfram, say that the universe must exists,
| that non-existance is not possible.
|
| https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/why-does-the-uni...
| elil17 wrote:
| I'm thankful for yeast. It's so, so convenient that we have a
| non-pathogenic bacteria which will eat pretty much any simple
| sugar, can be found on the surfaces of most fruits, and is
| essentially effortless to cultivate, which also does a bunch of
| useful things like leaven bread and make a bunch of delicious
| short chain fatty acids (both in bread and on their own, like in
| marmite) and make alcohol (although that one maybe does more harm
| than good)!
| sombremesa wrote:
| Alcohol definitely does more good, just consider the uses it
| has aside from being ingested.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Also, consider how many flights went smoothly because of
| alcohol.. I mean, outing myself as British here but (every
| flight) without a stuff gin or three, that woman in-front of
| me would have had a stern talking to I can tell you! :}
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I wonder if British are more reserved because they've
| evolved to have about a unit or two of alcohol in the blood
| stream at all times at which point it's the sweet spot. I
| jest of course. Also I'm a Brit.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Well, we certainly developed an effective preventative
| against malaria... And that's before we get to the
| ballmer peak [0], which I think many of us experienced at
| one point ;)
|
| 0: https://xkcd.com/323/
| PapaSpaceDelta wrote:
| I suppose that I have to put this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTSCppeFzX4 here. Many a
| true word...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yeast are not bacteria. They are eukaryotes.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Well to be fair the poster was referring to starters for
| bread which contain natural populations of both yeast and
| bacteria. So really we should be thankful for both yeast and
| bacteria. :)
|
| That said, just as the other poster I'm also thankful for
| pedants like yourself. This is a mistake I probably make
| myself all the time.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I'm thankful for nerds who make corrections so I can learn
| some interesting fact.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm thankful for wikipedia which has probably taught me
| more biology than my professors ever did. So many detailed
| articles, and it's actually fun to read them because they
| contain so many details that never seem to get mentioned in
| school. The abundance of links lead to a fun exploration of
| the subject and a massive respect for nature and its
| designs.
| victorcharlie wrote:
| Actually, yeasts are unicellular fungus. I believe that
| fungus are the most important life-form in this planet _by
| far_.
|
| Pretty cool, huh? :)
| bckr wrote:
| > unicellular fungus
|
| Belongs under the Eurkaryote heading, no?
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| yes
| dgb23 wrote:
| That is pretty cool! Paul Stamets is worth mentioning
| here. One can find a ton of media presence, books and
| projects from him. Very interesting stuff!
| noisy_boy wrote:
| For a second I thought you were referring to Stamets on
| Star Trek. Stamets, mycellium... tribute or coincidence?
| thewakalix wrote:
| > Stamets is inspired by a real-life mycologist of the
| same name.[1]
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Thanks - just saw his wikipedia page - very interesting.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Fungi, like plants and animals, are eukaryotes. However,
| eukaryotes and bacteria occupy the same rung in the
| taxonomic divisions (they are domains), so it's the more
| appropriate correction. The third domain is prokaryotes.
| riedel wrote:
| My wikipedia fact checking tells me that the third domain
| is archaea which together with the bacteria are
| prokaryotes. Or did I read sth wrong?
| dan_mctree wrote:
| >I believe that fungus are the most important life-form
| in this planet by far.
|
| Would love to hear more about this!
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| I'm thankful for oxygen because we can breathe it! And it can
| be found pretty much everywhere in the atmosphere of planet
| Earth. And I'm thankful for all the other elements that I'm
| composed of. They can even be used to do other miraculous
| things. Wonderful!
| amelius wrote:
| Nestle is fighting over control of freshwater sources. I
| reckon oxygen is next.
|
| In the future, be thankful with your wallet.
| lisper wrote:
| You don't have to wait. Oxygen bars are already a thing,
| and have been for quite a while.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_bar
| blowski wrote:
| For a moment, I thought it was going to be an empty
| chocolate bar wrapper. I wonder how much better this
| actually is.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nestle uses 0.003% of humanity's fresh water consumption,
| so I'm sure you're properly allocating your worry budget
| there.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm thankful for mitochondria which allows us to use the
| oxygen to perform aerobic respiration, enabling more complex
| forms of life. It seems they were once bacteria which were
| somehow absorbed by eukaryote cells and turned into an
| organelle, an hydro-eletro-chemical power plant. Thanks
| bacteria!
| amelius wrote:
| Be careful with certain anti-bacterial drugs, they might
| affect your mitochondria.
| SubjectToChange wrote:
| Yeast is a type of fungus.
| elil17 wrote:
| True lol thank you. Meant to say "microbe"
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I like this and totally agree! I baked two naturally leavened
| loaves of bread this morning for thanksgiving and am currently
| drinking a beer. On a regular day I would eat some form of
| yogurt as well. It really is an amazing little part of life. :)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Alcohol let our ancestors survive. Weakly alcoholic beer was
| far healthier than water because its production likely killed
| germs in the water.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I recently read that that's a myth, unfortunately.
| rags2riches wrote:
| Brewing typically involves boiling. That can kill a germ or
| two, or so I've read. That's true for brewing tea as well.
| bumby wrote:
| Edward Slingerland Haha written about a hypothesis that beer
| was the major reason for inventing agriculture. I don't know
| how well received that theory is, but it was an interesting
| and unique take
| axiolite wrote:
| > Alcohol let our ancestors survive.
|
| Only true in dense cities and perhaps onboard seafaring
| vessels. Most of humanity could find unpolluted sources of
| water.
|
| You could also say that, without the crutch that was small
| beer, humanity might have been motivated to learn and
| implement water treatment/purification techniques and proper
| sanitation systems centuries earlier.
| jchook wrote:
| Also yeast is used frequently in medical and biological
| scientific studies, and helps us learn more about the role of
| DNA, aging , and certain kinds of cancer.
| adrian_mrd wrote:
| Thankful for marmite :)
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Damn right. Vegemite isn't even shiny...
| chronogram wrote:
| > alcohol (although that one maybe does more harm than good)!
|
| Alcohol in the medical field is critical in doing good. A lot
| of harm has been prevented by alcohol.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I had this same exact thought the last time i was making
| bagels. What an absolute miracle it is! And whoever came up
| with using it to fluff and soften bread through some natural
| symbiotic reliance of raw nature is just such an incredible
| step it seems utterly designed from above.
|
| Yes, I'm saying maybe a god exists and loves us because they
| gave us bread.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Benjamin Franklin thought beer was enough proof that there is
| a God who loves us and wants us to be happy :-)
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| "Every good quote eventually gets attributed to Lincoln,
| Wilde, Churchill, or Jobs."
|
| -- Benjamin Franklin
| flatiron wrote:
| https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/say-what-says-who-
| benjami...
|
| He never said that.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Interesting, thanks!
|
| Looks like he actually said something similar about wine
| though:
|
| _We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the
| marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion
| is, through the goodness of God, made every day before
| our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon
| our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the
| grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God
| loves us, and loves to see us happy!_ (from a 1779 letter
| from France to his friend Andre Morellet)
| luckman212 wrote:
| Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
| bluishgreen wrote:
| "That other animals have more cone cells than humans, e.g. birds
| with four and shrimp with up to 16, and so probably see colors we
| can't even conceive of which, yeah, that limitation of our minds
| is frustrating, but it also hints that there are huge unseen dark
| continents of qualia lurking out there which someday we might
| find a way to visit."
|
| This is based on a misunderstanding regarding the rise of qualia.
| It is processing power and not sensor capacity or at least both
| together in some combination with processing power doing the
| heavy lift. Humans have less cones but several OOM more neurons
| to make sense of what we have. So no - the shrimp doesn't see in
| spectacular color.
|
| Experimentally proved:
|
| https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2015/12/mantis-shrimp-...
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1245824
| ravi-delia wrote:
| It's still true that if we had cones outside our current color
| range we'd have new qualia, even if animals don't.
| 323 wrote:
| In 100 years it will probably be possible to genetically
| engineer humans with more or extended range pigments, which
| are sensitive to IR / UV.
|
| Or maybe we'll just have bionic hyper-spectral eyes which
| plug directly into the optical nerve.
| lovecg wrote:
| ...and sadly those humans still won't be able to describe
| their experiences in any way we would understand. "It's
| just its own color that's separate from all the others. You
| know, the color the black lights are".
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Would we? It seems possible that some other sensation could
| be overloaded as well - ie seeing red where others see only
| blackness...
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I mean, it seems clear we don't have any real consistent
| definition for qualia. I'd argue that every distinct color
| you can see is a different qualia, although an argument
| could be made for a single "color" qualia which takes on
| different forms.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Great now I'm terrified by how utterly screwed the world will be
| when another Carrington Event happens.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I'm thankful for living in a time when there is modern medicine,
| in a country with modern healthcare, without which I would not be
| alive today.
|
| BTW. If society does not prepare for the next Carrington Event,
| it will suffer greatly. Technology is great, but it would be
| stupid to create too hard dependencies on it. Also, there will be
| a next pandemic - as there always have.
| dheera wrote:
| > That the Earth hasn't recently been hit by a solar flare as
| powerful as the 1859 Carrington event
|
| Is anyone thinking about what to do? It's only a matter of time
| before we have another flare 2X or 3X the magnitude of the
| Carrington event.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| If it really would set power lines alight, there isn't a hell
| of a lot you can do aside from going off the grid and having a
| small warehouse full of electrical wiring.
|
| Emergency and catastrophe planning has to happen at the
| national level. I would like to see more leaders (especially
| these days) come into office with ideas about how to recover
| from catastrophic events quickly.
| dheera wrote:
| By what mechanism do they set power lines on fire in a way
| that it wouldn't set the lines in my house on fire? Is it the
| power lines themselves or is it just vicious currents being
| induced in the lines that cause devices plugged on the other
| end of the power lines to go up in smoke?
|
| If the grid just shut off power for 24 hours until the CME
| passed would that solve the problem?
|
| I can easily go 24 hours without power, but not months.
| 323 wrote:
| My understanding is that the flare will induce currents in
| the sub-station transformers, and this is the big problem.
| Not sure if disconnecting them helps to prevent damage.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Emergency and catastrophe planning has to happen at the
| national level. I would like to see more leaders (especially
| these days) come into office with ideas about how to recover
| from catastrophic events quickly.
|
| Me too. I'm hoping we'll get lucky and a relatively small-
| scale catastrophic event will occur, demonstrating to us how
| ill prepared we are both materially and
| socially/culturally/cognitively/etc, and that lesson will
| provide the incentive for us to launch a serious project to
| get our act cleaned up.
|
| And in the event that no political leaders rise to the
| occasion, I am hoping that normal civilians realize there is
| a problem and begin _seriously_ discussing the risks we are
| running, perhaps eventually leading to some sort of a plan
| that our leaders do not have the ability to formulate, or
| perhaps even realize we need.
| 323 wrote:
| > I'm hoping we'll get lucky and a relatively small-scale
| catastrophic event will occur ... and that lesson will
| provide the incentive for us to launch a serious project to
| get our act cleaned up.
|
| The current pandemic makes me pessimistic regarding this.
| There is basically no wake up and preparations for a 10%+
| mortality virus. And that without discussing where the
| virus came from...
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Hopefully our satellites are there to detect it and hopefully
| the world reacts quick enough to shut down the power grid.
| Would still be horrible, but there are mitigations.
| [deleted]
| omnicognate wrote:
| You'll not make me thankful for aspartame however hard you try.
| Some good ones there, though.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I am thankful for sucralose.
| swader999 wrote:
| Honey and maple syrup.
| npsimons wrote:
| Agave nectar.
| swader999 wrote:
| I will have to try this.
| tyleo wrote:
| Same. I have a sucralose energy drink every day after lunch.
| I generally don't add sugar and buy low-sugar products. The
| joy this drink gives me sometimes feels like a drug trip.
|
| Shameless plug: https://www.alaninu.com/products/energy-
| drinks-12pk-cosmic-s...
| randlet wrote:
| > The joy this drink gives me sometimes feels like a drug
| trip.
|
| Caffeine is a drug so saying "it _feels_ like " is rather
| understating it.
| tyleo wrote:
| Agreed but while I drink and enjoy coffee, the equivalent
| caffeine from this drink somehow seems to pack more of a
| punch.
| uep wrote:
| Maybe not the right thread for this, but it seems there are
| downsides.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6363527/
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/
| maneesh wrote:
| Make sure to focus on the aspartame section, which doesn't
| show the same insulin effects as other sweeteners
|
| It is hard to understand how aspartame influences the gut
| microbiota because this NNS is rapidly hydrolyzed in the
| small intestine. In fact, even with the ingestion of very
| high doses of aspartame (>200 mg/kg), no aspartame is found
| in the blood because of its rapid breakdown (29).
| zivkovicp wrote:
| Sometimes I think #1 could have gone either way, and that would
| still be OK. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| matbatt38 wrote:
| Most items are speculative, subjective or even historically
| inaccurate.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Maybe that's why I found this article kind of weird or off-
| putting. A lot of these things, if they happened or didn't
| happen, would have meant I wouldn't be alive and thus I
| wouldn't know to be unhappy about it.
| latortuga wrote:
| Many things we are traditionally thankful fit the same
| criteria. I'm thankful for my business partner who I may
| never have met under different circumstances. Just because
| something could not have been, doesn't mean you can't be
| thankful it did.
| danschumann wrote:
| Feelings wheel is the most underrated thing I have discovered
| this year.
| LocalH wrote:
| I'm thankful for existence itself. Sure, it's not always
| pleasant, but the mere fact that we perceive reality as we do is
| a fascinating rabbit hole, one that I wish I had discovered
| decades ago. The subjective experience of existence is one of the
| big unknowns left in this world, one that I don't think we'll
| _ever_ truly understand. That 's good though, because human
| curiosity is one of the wonderful, amazing things we have the
| capability to do (if other Earth-native, non-human sentient
| beings have similar curiosities, they don't have nearly the
| ability to explore them, that we know).
|
| I hope everyone who reads this is having a good day today. May
| you all have fortune and blessing in your lives.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah if there was nothing at all things would be a bit dull.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| I wish more people were aware that we are likely the only
| radio-using sapients in a 4'ish light year sphere around us [1]
| (4.4 ly for a 1MW broadcast, where the most powerful radio
| transmitter in the world is at 2MW). And that we're roughly in
| the center of the KBC Void [2], about a billion light years
| from the nearest "normal" baryonic density of the currently-
| known universe.
|
| We might not be alone inside the KBC Void, but if we aren't,
| they and us are on a pretty isolated island of sapients in the
| currently-known universe.
|
| Sapience is astronomically, vanishingly rare as far as we can
| tell so far. Some of us treasure it and are thankful for it
| accordingly. Perceiving reality at the level we do, with the
| understanding we only scratched an atom of the total surface so
| far, is both inspiring and humbling at the same time.
|
| [1] https://www.quora.com/How-far-do-radio-signals-travel-
| into-s...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBC_Void
| maxpaj wrote:
| Alternative title: "All the things that make it so that I can
| experience typing this into something we call a computer."
| Lamad123 wrote:
| 0. That some HN commenters rush to call bullshit out when they
| detect a lot of it.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "12: That private life exists and that markets, while we all
| (some?) appreciate their power to allocate resources, don't
| permeate every single part of life, that there are moments of
| beauty and grace that aren't best understood as competition and
| harnessed selfishness."
|
| Hackernews/Facebook in annoyed response: Um, we're WORKING ON IT.
| Sheesh, penetrating all aspects of off-time via social networks
| will have to wait for Meta.
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