[HN Gopher] Japan's 'killing stone' splits in two
___________________________________________________________________
Japan's 'killing stone' splits in two
Author : ksec
Score : 184 points
Date : 2022-03-07 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| klyrs wrote:
| Before and after photos on wikipedia :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessho-seki
| wildzzz wrote:
| All the old pictures of the rock show a big crack that looks like
| where it split recently. Inevitable event for for sure but it's a
| funk folktale.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This (superficially) reminds me of the stone idol "Ungit", in
| C.S. Lewis' "Till we have Faces" [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_We_Have_Faces
| ffggvv wrote:
| quick the hokage needs to trap the fox spirit in a little boy
| a_shovel wrote:
| I saw some discussion about how in (some versions of) the myth,
| Tamamo-no-Mae was purified and became good upon touching the
| stone, not trapped inside it.
|
| Then, they started speculating that maybe her evil and malice
| were split from her, and they became its own evil kami, and _that
| 's_ what's trapped inside the rock.
|
| The funny part is that it was clear they were making this up on
| the spot, not constructing it from historical myths. When given
| the opportunity to tell a story about an evil spirit sealed away
| a thousand years ago in a magic rock that kills you if you touch
| it, who has now escaped, which we know because the rock split in
| half _in real life_ , and who is now presumably causing chaos
| across the countryside, people aren't going to let minor
| technicalities get in the way. (I wouldn't let them get in the
| way, either.)
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Meanwhile, EA has blamed the rock for the bumpy Battlefield 2042
| launch.
| everyone wrote:
| This is so dumb. We don't need extra made-up stress on people on
| top of the real shit we have to deal with.
| Imnimo wrote:
| Probably shouldn't have just left it sitting outside where it
| could break then. Absolute negligence.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Some anime company just got a premise for their next hit show.
| ksec wrote:
| Oh that was done a long long time ago. Take a look at Ushio and
| Tora. The story Tamamo-no-Mae would attach herself to emperors
| and drive them mad, causing them to commit massacres.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Sure, but I'm assuming that was Feudal Japan setting.
|
| You could easily have another one with a _modern_ setting,
| since the rock splits in 2022.
| ksec wrote:
| Woah...... Ok I am sold.
| ihuman wrote:
| Tamamo-no-Mae is already a popular anime character due to the
| Fate franchise
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Natruto is literally "about" (about in the
| sense that it's what starts the story) this. I've only seen a
| handful of episodes though and it was a while ago so I'm not
| sure.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Naruto is the host of the nine-tailed fox spirit. Though it
| has a different name in the show (Kurama) and there are 8
| other tailed beasts. So it is similar but different.
| roughly wrote:
| Yeah, yeah - get in line, buddy.
| HNDen21 wrote:
| Interesting... Started reading Change Agent by Daniel Suarez last
| week.. and it's in that book that I first heard about the nine-
| tailed fox
| arielweisberg wrote:
| I blame Tanjiro https://kimetsu-no-
| yaiba.fandom.com/wiki/Episode_3
|
| Timing can't be a coincidence.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I guess someone shoulda glued it back together when it cracked
| open? Is it too late to glue it back together now?
|
| "For lack of some caulk civilization was lost"
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| have they tried sealing the spirit inside of a newborn baby yet?
| vitiral wrote:
| Preferably from a village tribe of Ninjas.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Hidden amongst some trees or tree-related objects. And then
| leaf them all alone
| Kretinsky wrote:
| I see people saying "it's just water that made the rock crack,
| nothing is goign to happen".
|
| While I understand this point of view, I personnaly think
| religion, mythology and beliefs such as this one give much more
| flavor and diversity to the world than what rational thought will
| ever produce. Religious people made magnificent temples,
| cathedrals, songs, paintings and so on : what if this way of
| thought was in fact beneficial for societies, in some aspects?
| toyg wrote:
| You personally hold the same views exposed in the XIX century
| by the Romantic movement.
| t-writescode wrote:
| You have a _lot_ of karma, so I imagine you 're not a troll,
| but I would love to know more information about what you've
| said here. I imagine it carries with it some deep, meaningful
| info.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Confirmation bias, religion was the dominant thinking for a
| long time, therefore people built things in its name. Now we
| build cathedrals of engineering every day simply to explore the
| universe. Constructs far more complex and diverse in people.
| w-j-w wrote:
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Religion is poison to the mind. It shuts down your ability to
| consider things rationally. Thinking Putin is a demon possessed
| dictator is going to be a much worse frame of mind than simply
| considering him a deranged despot who needs to be treated as
| such. Religious people didn't make those things, crazy rich
| people abused the poor and took their money, labor, and time to
| build those "magnificent temples and palaces" when instead they
| could have lived up to those elements of their religions about
| being compassionate and generous to each other and looked out
| for humanity's welfare. Instead they built monuments to their
| pride and abused the trust of the religiously devout. The
| golden rule is great advice except those in power never really
| pay any attention to it.
| avz wrote:
| > give much more flavor and diversity to the world than what
| rational thought will ever produce.
|
| I don't know. The religious and mythological concepts such as
| punishment, judgment, sacrifice, angels, daemons and elves look
| like a derivative reflection of humans and their society. By
| comparison, the concepts from science and technology such as
| force fields, wavefunctions, wormholes and black holes seem
| genuinely novel and weird.
|
| Personally, I would certainly not give up on the scientific
| truth - often in conflict with religion and mythology - to
| enjoy some of that mythological flavor.
| MildlySerious wrote:
| Hardly anyone with some nuance thinks of religions and related
| beliefs as exclusively bad, I think. That doesn't mean that
| there is not plenty of surface area for people to be
| overexposed to the negative aspects of these beliefs, leading
| to cynical takes and the perceived need to shoot down any
| semblance of it. Regardless of the side one is on, those
| comments rarely add something of substance to a given
| conversation, though.
| drewcoo wrote:
| And nuanced does not mean more correct.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Whether the nuanced view is more or less correct depends
| entirely on whether your view of correctness is black-and-
| white or more nuanced.
|
| Suppose I spill a bunch of puzzle pieces on a table and ask
| two friends to tell me what picture is on the puzzle. My
| friend Alice blurts out "Elephant" because she has seen a
| lot of grey pieces. My friend Bob spends more time and
| looks beyond just the color, at the shapes and the other
| colors present and determines the image is Fort Knox.
|
| In this case does it matter what is actually on the puzzle?
| Even if Alice gets it right, she's basically just guessing
| in the dark. She's ignoring all kinds of other evidence and
| reaching a conclusion. Does she deserve a reward if she
| happens to have guessed correctly despite not developing an
| understanding of what she's actually seeing? (Put another
| way, is real life like a gameshow?) Conversely, is Bob
| 'less correct' for having taken the time to understand
| other details of the image?
|
| I say, no. I don't think Alice _can_ be correct here. Her
| view can only align with truth _coincidentally_. That she
| got lucky this time has no meaning.
| olivejun wrote:
| Honestly I thought the same thing about your comment tbh lol
|
| I don't understand what's negative about the folklore. I feel
| as if you're conflating this folk tale to an organized
| religion or something.
| MildlySerious wrote:
| _> I feel as if you're conflating this folk tale to an
| organized religion or something._
|
| The comment I replied to reads "religion, mythology and
| beliefs such as this one".
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Sorry man I've lived long enough to see very bad people use
| religion to explain what they do or to forgive themselves for
| awful things that they do. I have met very few "saintly"
| people over the course of things. Luckily most people (at
| least in the west) don't give religion that much time in
| their thoughts and general don't shape their lives around it.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| The nicest people I've met and the strangers who helped me
| when I needed it were religious. I don't think anecdotes
| can be used to accuse a massive group of people of
| wrongdoing. Religious people are people, judge the
| individual. And I don't think forgiving yourself is a bad
| thing. The only other options are kill yourself or wallow
| in guilt for the rest of your life. Just because you
| forgave yourself doesn't mean there wasn't consequences or
| guilt felt.
| packetlost wrote:
| I think there are some religions that are a net-negative on
| society, their members, etc. Most religions are _probably_
| not in that category though. I only say this because I grew
| up in a cult that has had lasting impacts on my social and
| mental health despite leaving almost a decade ago and I have
| nothing good to say about that particular organization.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They absolutely are. They have been used for thousands of
| years to hold back the populous and abused by leaders who
| manipulate it to get what they want. I'm not saying
| atheists don't do bad things either, it's just they don't
| justify it as "the will of God(s)". I think by and large
| religion has an awful track record down through history and
| has actively attempted to retard human progress and
| learning, they want to be the only source of "truth"
| bsedlm wrote:
| It's certainly more 'fun' to wake up everyday in a word in
| which this demon might have escaped than in one in which you
| may only look forwards to the next opportunity to consume goods
| and services.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Religious people made magnificent temples, cathedrals, songs,
| paintings and so on
|
| Non-religious people may not have made temples or cathedrals,
| but I can promise you they have made songs, paintings,
| theaters, other random impressive looking buildings, and so on.
| The only things that really prevents the existence of more
| massive, impressive looking buildings is current worry about
| sustainability, safety, accessibility, and not having the
| budget of the entire Catholic/Christian/Other church to build
| them.
| moltke wrote:
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| what if non-religious people are actually the most religious
| of them all. humor me. I'm not a religious person and demand
| scientific facts for anything I want to understand and
| believe that there is a rational explanation for everything
| even we do not yet agree on the science behind it.
|
| While different religions all still agree on the idea of a
| higher power to explain the unexplained, my believe system is
| the most radical of all. Because it leaves no room for any
| other gods except science. I don't just dismiss their gods as
| false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all
| religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm
| dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact that
| the majority of people historically identified as
| religious, without examining the number of confounding
| reasons for that (like it being the best theory previously,
| or the threat of being put to death for not identifying as
| the regions majority religion, etc). I think this is
| basically an appeal to authority argument no?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _> I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact_
|
| yes totally (in this argument) ignoring anyone that might
| have been historically or currently been agnostic,
| atheist, or anti-theist.
|
| _> this is basically an appeal to authority argument
| no?_
|
| I think so. And I couldn't think of a better example then
| what you just gave with mentioning "appeal to authority".
| The fact that we deconstruct language the way we do in
| order to decide the validity of the argument is already a
| scientific process.
|
| Sibling comment just mentioned trust which I also agree
| would be an important element of religious belief
| systems. In scientific process this trust is only
| temporary until we either managed to learn enough about
| this subject to see the truth for ourselves, or gave up
| on it and trust that those specialists who know (your
| appeal to authority argument) are qualified to know it
| for us.
| malfist wrote:
| This is often described as "God of the gaps" if you're
| curious about the argument you're making:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
|
| "Science" isn't a god. You don't believe in science, you
| don't have faith in science. You might have faith, or
| believe in people or textbooks that describe the current
| state of "science" but they're not divine.
|
| Science doesn't "leave no room for any gods", if there was
| evidence of a god (or gods), then that would be science
| too. There just isn't any evidence to support such a thing.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also
| dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are
| built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing
| it) that my belief is just another religion.
|
| Assuming the "my belief" here is still talking about
| science, I think it would be wrong to say that it dismisses
| gods as false. Instead, it dismisses most arguments of the
| existence of a god as unfalsifiable, and thus cannot be
| reasoned one way or the other. There is no proof one way or
| the other for something unfalsifiable, and instead time can
| be spent on what is.
|
| There are certainly religious scientists who maintain their
| faith and scientific contribution without compromising one
| or the other.
| adventured wrote:
| > what if non-religious people are actually the most
| religious of them all. humor me.
|
| I can't. It's self-contradictory. Religion is wholly based
| in faith: believing when you have no concrete,
| demonstrable, scientific reason to. No religion can exist
| without that core concept, you have to be willing to
| believe when you have no proof. More broadly all mysticism
| is based on faith, and all mysticism (ghost hunters! magic
| rocks! miracles!) similarly runs counter to science
| accordingly.
|
| So non-religious scientifically-oriented people have more
| faith (willingness to base their lives and beliefs around
| things they can't prove exist) than religious people do?
| No.
|
| In terms of religion, asking for proof, requiring evidence,
| is the true first sin: thou shalt not! Religion builds upon
| that first step, you must first suspend your rational
| mental self and then turn your brain over to someone else's
| opinions as fact (which you then must accept as true, even
| if there's no way to prove such; religion is always based
| on subservience to someone else's faith-based opinions;
| religion begins at the point where you turn off your brain
| and hand it to someone else who says: because I say so, and
| you must believe what they're saying and specifically not
| let reason interfere). Here's how religion begins for
| everyone: someone tells you a (typically fantastical)
| story, with absolutely no evidence to support it, and then
| you believe it; to believe it you have to shut down
| inspection, debate, skepticism, reasoning, and so on. One
| of the core tenets of all religion is: don't ask such
| questions; who are you to question; etc. Even the more
| docile religions fold at those corners eventually and
| require that you stop asking questions or challenging (aka
| shut your brain off and just believe on faith).
|
| Science is contrary to faith. People occasionally try to
| worm around that in touchy-feely ways, you'll run across
| historical quotes by famous scientists saying dumb things
| like: my science is rooted in a powerful faith, dur dur
| dur. But that's just someone smart (at a thing) saying
| something exceptionally stupid about a different realm of
| thought and should be regarded as such. Like putting much
| stock into the dumb things Stephen Hawking used to say in
| the political or economic realm; geniuses are quite
| typically gifted at one thing, very rarely at two things,
| and people commonly seem to make the mistake of thinking
| that translates widely, when the opposite is true and it
| very rarely translates widely.
|
| Science grows stronger through questioning, debate,
| inquiry, challenging notions, requiring evidence to
| believe. Religion - and all faith based systems - wither
| when confronted by such, without exception. They react in
| such opposite manners, because they are indeed opposites.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Most people who are religious nowadays know that the
| stories aren't real or are embellished. It's a story to
| teach a lesson. The faith allows comfort for people who
| need it, the community does as well. If you don't need
| that comfort, fine, don't make fun of people who do. They
| aren't stupid, they're filling a hole in their heart with
| community and a shared belief / interest. My wife fills
| mine, some people don't have that or lost it.
|
| Pro-tip, instead of asking for "proof" like an
| interrogation, ask for clarification to understand the
| story or viewpoint. Getting in a fight over something
| neither side can prove is ridiculous.
|
| But if you want to debate what we cannot know, riddle me
| this, how do you know we're not in a simulation made by a
| higher being? Math and science is the reverse engineering
| of our created universe. It's more probable we were
| created in some way than a random occurrence.
| mistermann wrote:
| As an armchair Taoist, I have a feeling that my
| impression of your style of thinking is quite similar to
| your impression of a fundamentalist Christian (or,
| basically what you've written here about "religion").
|
| Seriously: if you reread your text, do you see no errors
| (or at least potential errors)?
| honkycat wrote:
| > what if non-religious people are actually the most
| religious of them all. humor me.
|
| Atheism is not an assertion that there is no god. It is the
| understanding that we cannot with our current level of
| technology prove there IS a god. Therefore, we cannot
| believe in a god.
|
| That is the baseline argument: Prove it. You can't. That is
| the end of the conversation.
|
| In other words, the assertion you make here is one of the
| very few things we CAN prove and DO know. We CANNOT prove
| there IS a god. We CANNOT prove there is NO god. Therefore,
| we abstain from believing in a religion until sufficient
| evidence is provided.
|
| That is why atheism is not a religion. There is no belief
| involved. Because we do not pretend to know. We assert that
| we do not, and currently can not, know.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You're thinking of agnosticism. Atheism is the assertion
| there is no God. A-theism.
|
| But it's a highly debated topic itself (as most things
| are in this realm).
|
| In general though, people mean it as they don't believe
| in God, and use agnosticism to indicate they do not
| believe one way or another.
| honkycat wrote:
| People can interpret Athiesm in different ways, and I was
| a bit clumsy by asserting anything about Athiesm in a
| broad sense, since there is no category or group of
| people who all have the same opinions and interpretations
| of Athiesm.
|
| However, by dictionary definition and from citing
| Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
|
| "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief
| in the existence of deities."
|
| Anti-theism is the assertion there is no god. The prefix
| "a" can mean "not" or "without." "anti" means "against",
| "opposite of."
|
| So no, it is not the assertion there are no deities. It
| is an absence of the belief in any deities.
|
| The perspective I am arguing from is that there is no
| other coherent argument to be made about the existence of
| deities. We cannot currently prove there is no god. We
| cannot currently prove there is a god.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| As I said it's a debated topic, you have to use the
| interpretation of what people mean, not the broadest one.
|
| Wikipedia's first sentence is the broadest definition but
| not the de-facto, the second sentence you left out shows
| that.
|
| If you don't want confusion you'd want to use atheism for
| belief no God exist and agnosticism to indicate you don't
| feel one way or another. Which I believe is what most
| people do.
|
| Otherwise you start a semantic debate which is as
| pointless as a religious one. If you want to communicate
| the nuance of your beliefs without much explanation, use
| the two different words, otherwise use atheism as an
| umbrella term, which is what the "broadest sense"
| wikipedia is hinting at.
| honkycat wrote:
| I'm not a philosopher by any means but the interpretation
| of Atheism I presented above is widely used. Specifically
| by Matt Dillahunty and a lot of modern Atheist.
|
| I wouldn't be against an interpretation of agnosticism
| that is functionally identical to my interpretation of
| atheism, but at a certain point one word to describe a
| world-view is never going to be sufficient and
| explanation of the nuance is going to be required.
|
| You can say "Christianity" and you would be referencing
| both the Westborough Baptist Church and Christian
| Unitarian Universalists.
|
| I already described in detail in my first comment my
| interpretation of Atheism so I don't know where confusion
| could possibly come in.
|
| Therefore, I reject your premise that I "have to use the
| interpretation of what people mean, not the broadest one"
| because:
|
| - that varies from person to person and I cannot read
| people's minds.
|
| - Your interpretation is not universal
|
| - the interpretation I presented is actually quite widely
| understood and common.
|
| So while you are correct that I cannot assert "Atheism is
| X", you are wrong that I am wrong.
|
| Also you are the one having the pointless semantic debate
| about something I already explained and clarified in my
| first comment. Call me agnostic I don't care, even though
| an interpretation of agnosticism is that god CANNOT be
| proven, which is NOT what I said.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You started the semantic debate with GP.
|
| > So while you are correct that I cannot assert "Atheism
| is X"
|
| Yes, that is my point. You said "Atheism is (not an
| assertion that there is no god = X)"
|
| > you are wrong that I am wrong.
|
| You are wrong that GP is wrong. Everyone is also right.
| [deleted]
| yosito wrote:
| Does anyone know if this is just fun folklore or if there are
| people who actually take it seriously?
| lithos wrote:
| Do you still tell your kids about Santa? (Or whatever your
| equivalent is)
| k_ wrote:
| Eh, good one :) (btw we don't, and I think the whole
| preschool parents will soon hate us but hey they're the ones
| lying!)
| yosito wrote:
| My question, as I know very little of Japanese folklore, was
| whether this is more like the Easter bunny (just a game) or
| the second coming of Christ (something people actually build
| their lives around).
| dymk wrote:
| It's not clear to a western audience if this is closer to
| Noah's Ark or closer to Santa in terms of "how literally do
| people interpret this event".
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| a little of column A, a little of column B. A lot of the
| stories are just stories, but the traditions borne of them are
| still culturally important.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I mean, most cultures will pretend to take this shit seriously
| then just ignore it and forget it ever happened.
| Psyladine wrote:
| As much as any culture takes its system of beliefs and
| underlayment of culture seriously.
| signa11 wrote:
| imho, the demon is a day late and a dollar short...
| docdeek wrote:
| > While others speculated that the demon spirit of Tamamo-no-Mae
| had been resurrected after almost 1,000 years, local media said
| cracks had appeared in the rock several years ago, possibly
| allowing rainwater to seep inside and weaken its structure.
|
| Hard to tell which one is more likely considering recent global
| events.
| [deleted]
| peteradio wrote:
| > Local media suggest groundhogs have no bearing on future
| weather patterns.
| Yoric wrote:
| That's what _they_ want you to believe.
| magusdei wrote:
| According to myth, Tamamo-no-Mae would attach herself to
| emperors and drive them mad, causing them to commit massacres.
| Hmm...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I am never going to get this out of my head
|
| https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Tamamo-no-Mae
| foobarian wrote:
| Wonder if the stone had a bunch of naturally occurring
| tetraethyllead or dimethylmercury or similar that unknowingly
| affected people nearby.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| https://news.usni.org/2022/02/16/japanese-mod-voices-
| concern...
| illwrks wrote:
| I thought you were joking..
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamamo-no-Mae
| BurningPenguin wrote:
| Out of all coincidences, this one is now my favorite.
| akincisor wrote:
| I'm now wondering if there is a time in history when this
| would _not_ be seen as a coincidence?
|
| Like a time when there was no crazy ruler.
| rocqua wrote:
| What would have been the thought half a year ago?
| taejavu wrote:
| Xi Jinping
| codpiece wrote:
| The same as now: D) All of the above
| [deleted]
| emerged wrote:
| At this point it makes as much sense as most other world
| news.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| If only someone was an effective emperor of a near japan
| power with a long history of war... but where...
| ramraj07 wrote:
| A bit of survivorship bias. There are superstitious things
| like this all over the world , just one of them happened to
| break now so everyone's like we're doomed.
|
| I mean I agree we're doomed but what the H does this rock
| have to do with it!
| Root_Denied wrote:
| This along with the groundhog dying the day before Groundhog
| Day makes it seem like there's some dice game being played by
| the gods for the human race.
|
| A friend of mine said at the end of 2020 that his prediction
| was that "2020 will be the best year of the decade" and it's
| scary watching that cynicism come true.
| rat87 wrote:
| > makes it seem like there's some dice game being played by
| the gods for the human race.
|
| Have you ever read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett? Great
| book. Your comment reminded me of it because it includes
| the gods of that world dicing over a war of their followers
| seanhandley wrote:
| Great book.
|
| "Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you."
| miriam_catira wrote:
| He plays with that same "gods playing dice" concept in
| The Last Hero too. Highly recommended.
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34503.The_Last_Hero
| subsubzero wrote:
| There was talk of a recently written book that said
| everything is on a 75-100 year cycle of peace and chaos,
| and chaos was going to be happening again and soon. This
| was in 2018-2019 and every year since 2020 has been worse
| than the previous.
|
| edit - book is the fouth turning, pretty accurate given it
| was written in 1997:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/protests-coronavirus-
| crisis-...
| pintxo wrote:
| 75-100 years is roughly 3 generations. Which is, I guess
| about the average number of generations we have in our
| smallest social unit: the family. I guess we learn a lot
| from our parents and grandparents, but hardly anything
| from our great-grandparents, as they are usually not
| longer around. Which means 75-100 years is the learning
| horizon within our families, and therefore for a big part
| of our journey to become social beings.
|
| I am a bit worried that we are loosing quickly the last
| people remembering the atrocities of ww1+2.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Maybe the Internet and its function as memory of
| humankind may break that cycle in the future?
| ben_w wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere that there's a specific name
| for that period of time, but I can't find it even on
| Wikipedia's lists of humorous units.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Saeculum
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum
|
| > A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the
| potential lifetime of a person or, equivalently, the
| complete renewal of a human population.[1] Originally it
| meant the time from the moment that something happened
| (for example the founding of a city) until the point in
| time that all people who had lived at the first moment
| had died. At that point a new saeculum would start.
| According to legend, the gods had allotted a certain
| number of saecula to every people or civilization; the
| Etruscans, for example, had been given ten saecula.[2
| trhway wrote:
| 80 years Sun/climate cycle. We're almost on the peak of
| it.
| ssully wrote:
| Only speaking for myself here, but I thought 2021 was
| much better than 2020. With that said, it is better in
| the sense of "This shit sandwich tasted a little better
| than this shit sandwich".
| je_bailey wrote:
| The older I get, and the more experience I have with the world.
| I know that rain water caused the split but I am also popping
| popcorn in my shelter as I wait for Tamamo-no-Mae's first move.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Since the pandemic started I've found myself believing less-
| and-less in mundane, worldly explanations for things.
|
| My favorite example is the 2016 presidential election. While
| there are many who would like to believe that Trump won due to
| Russian interference, I actually believe he won due to meme
| magic. A bunch of social misfits got together, sharing frog
| memes, while listening to Shadilay
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadilay), and memed their
| candidate into office.
|
| I just think that objective, material reality is less objective
| and less material than I thought all along.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > I just think that objective, material reality is less
| objective and less material than I thought all along
|
| When people say "objective, material reality" they normally
| mean ... well, things like the gravity and chemistry and
| stubbing your toe being painful. What story you want to use
| to describe the aggregate behaviour of 100 million human
| voters has very little to do with that, surely
| zackmorris wrote:
| Ya I'm 44 and have had multiple personal experiences around
| the metaphysical that science simply has no explanation for.
| Now that I'm older, I realize that it's the models that are
| wrong, not reality. So I'm open to substantially more
| spiritual explanations than I used to be.
|
| I'd even go as far as the say that stochastic and emergent
| behavior is what forms our reality, not determinism. And that
| consciousness itself is the emergent behavior of the chaos
| working at the lowest levels of reality. At the end of the
| day, emotion and love and magic and all of that woo woo stuff
| is at least as real as atoms.
|
| But we don't have good language today to talk about the
| physics of our own personal realities. The things that are
| true in my life may not be true in yours, and vice versa. We
| just assume that the true reality is the one we all agree
| with, but I have not found that to be the case.
|
| So we talk past one another about, I don't know, critical
| race theory or whatever the flavor of the week is. When it's
| really about, how is my reality impacted as I learn the
| truths of your reality and our shared reality? If I'm wrong
| because I don't know something, does that mean that my
| reality is wrong? What happens if I make decisions over years
| of my life based on incorrect information? What does correct
| mean if it diminishes my quality of life? Can I be correct
| without hurting anyone else?
|
| Some of these questions in the end aren't answerable. In my
| own reality, I struggle with having to eat meat because
| that's what my body was designed to do. I carved a rotisserie
| chicken last night, divided the breast into portions and
| consumed it. There was almost no separation between the
| chicken's life and my own. How do we solve something like war
| when an awful lot of people haven't even stopped to think
| about the violence their own survival requires?
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be
| regarded as real." - Niels Bohr.
|
| If we're at the point in physics where string theory is the
| answer to "what are atoms?", it doesn't seem that woo-woo
| to ascribe some kind of reality to consciousness and the
| other abstracts that come with it. Unfortunately, as with
| string theory, there doesn't appear to be any empirical
| proof.
| can16358p wrote:
| About the first paragraph...
|
| I know this might go a bit off topic. I used to be a
| hardcore-non-spiritual until the recent few years of
| scratching the surface of the possibility of there might
| more more to reality than we see.
|
| I'd love to hear any of your experiences that led you to
| turn to metaphysics, if it's appropriate to share of
| course.
|
| I also sometimes experience phenomenon which can't be
| eliminated away with physics, or weird coincidences that
| can't be explained with confirmation bias or selective
| attention, and trying to pinpoint a pattern, so anything
| that you'd think worth sharing in that direction would
| help.
| krypton2k wrote:
| Could you please detail some of these phenomenon?
| golergka wrote:
| Ukranian president played Ukranian president on TV before
| actually becoming him. He also used to dance topless in latex
| pants, and now he's symbol of a true modern wartime leader.
|
| We live in South Park episode now.
| drakythe wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| Russia employed a bunch of trolls, who helped create and
| amplify the memes.
|
| I think reality is a lot more complicated and humans just
| look for the simplest possible explanation, like "Russia did
| it!" Or "Meme's did it!" Or "Racists did it!" When it was all
| of them and many other reasons. See Dan Olson's "In Search of
| a Flat Earth" video for a genuinely brilliant breakdown of
| this idea and how it relates to Flat Earthere and other
| nonsense.
| Yoric wrote:
| > Russia employed a bunch of trolls, who helped create and
| amplify the memes.
|
| As long as we all agree that it's a bunch of literal
| trolls. The kind who live below bridges.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| And so there's still definitely a part of me that realizes
| that, yeah, rationally, you can't just ignore the influence
| of Russian interference or the flaws in modern polling.
| Looking back, it's obvious that we underestimated how
| politically motivated working-class white voters could be.
|
| The thing about meme magic though is that there's so many
| spooky "synchronicities" woven throughout that I can't help
| but take it seriously.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| A relatively new to me concept I've been running into is
| that of "memetic virus", intentionally constructed by
| human hands, that, if implanted at opportune times in the
| right minds would cause a conflagration of an irrational
| thought to spread around the world.
|
| Richard Dawkins mentioned something alike this in his
| "viruses of the mind" essay
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind but his
| discourse was limited to denigrating the religious and
| seemed to miss out on the bigger picture, that being,
| that if it were possible to ingrain a meme onto people's
| minds that one day, someone would use it as an instrument
| of mental war.
|
| I've read many anecdotes of people going off the deep end
| with political stuff over the last 6 years or so, people
| who refuse have a reasonable conversation about or seem
| to be unable to explain their convictions that _bad
| thing_ was actually _good thing_ even when shown evidence
| to the contrary.
|
| How did we go from relatively peaceful in the 90's to a
| maelstrom of insanity in less than 30 years?
|
| If it were one person or a certain group of people, it
| might make sense, but this memetic virus seems to have
| spread worldwide, infecting almost everyone, and since
| our frame of reference is also infected we can't see that
| we're infected with it.
|
| Is there a cure? I wouldn't know. Is there a defense
| against it? I don't know? Does it actually exist or is it
| a convenient cover story that I can blame all the woes of
| the world on? Once again, I don't know.
|
| I really don't know if this is true, but I suspect that
| if you brought a group of average people from 2000, 1990,
| 1980, & 1970, I feel like they would all agree that the
| world has gone mad and that there must be some reason for
| it.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _How did we go from relatively peaceful in the 90 's to a
| maelstrom of insanity in less than 30 years?_
|
| It depends on your values for most of the words in this
| statement. For example, sure things ebb and flow, but I
| don't think we can say things were relatively peaceful in
| the 90s. So, for most values, the answer is likely that
| things haven't changed as much as you think; you're just
| more aware of everything now. You can life by the adage,
| "ignorance is bliss", or live a less blissful life aware
| of everything going on, or even try to take advantage of
| those who are living blissfully.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I feel that this kind of response isn't very helpful.
| "Oh, it's always been bad, you just didn't know any
| better" is the same thing that has always been said in
| response to emergent issues.
|
| America was not politically unstable in the 90's. It may
| have been rocky, but not unstable. Saying it was just as
| bad then as it is now is false.
|
| Only a fringe element would have cheered John Hinckley
| Jr's attempt to assassinate Reagan in 1981, but today an
| attempt whether successful or not on either the
| Democratic or Republican front runners would get a
| resounding cheer from a not-insignificant section of the
| population.
|
| I would hazard to say that, under the right
| circumstances, a single bullet could spark an internal
| American Conflict between the groups of people who can
| best be identified not by what they stand _for_ but by
| what they stand _against_.
|
| Trying to say that the tensions the country are facing
| today are equal to the tensions of the past glosses over
| the amplification of the screaming masses thanks to
| technology, the financial whirlwind created by the
| internet, where unimaginable fortunes can be raised and
| erased faster than you can blink, the lancing of the pus-
| filled boil of human misery that education and awareness
| brings, the struggle of the lowest-paid and lowest
| earning members of society to simply survive when the
| financial ladder of arbitrage no longer reaches their
| grasp.
|
| Many of these things existed in some proto form in the
| 90's, yes, but they have grown since then and, like an
| abused child who becomes a sulking and angry teenager,
| may reach the point where they start to swing back. You
| can't treat the teenager like you treated the child,
| you're far more likely to get a black eye.
| mistermann wrote:
| > How did we go from relatively peaceful in the 90's to a
| maelstrom of insanity in less than 30 years?
|
| I would speculate some combination of these (plus some
| things I'm missing):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-
| counterfactual/
|
| https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/heuristics
|
| https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2022/02/is-
| reality...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
|
| > I've read many anecdotes of people going off the deep
| end with political stuff over the last 6 years or so,
| people who refuse have a reasonable conversation about or
| seem to be unable to explain their convictions that bad
| thing was actually good thing even when shown evidence to
| the contrary.
|
| And I've interacted with hundreds and observed
| tens/hundreds of thousands of "right thinking" people who
| suffer from the same inability to substantiate their
| "correct" beliefs, or the ability to address legitimate
| criticisms of their claims/logic without resorting to
| rhetorical wildcards like "that's pedantic".
|
| > Is there a cure? I wouldn't know. Is there a defense
| against it? I don't know? Does it actually exist or is it
| a convenient cover story that I can blame all the woes of
| the world on? Once again, I don't know.
|
| My intuition is that you just demonstrated a substantial
| portion of the cure: the ability to implement Unknown() -
| it is an amazingly rare ability these days. If you don't
| believe me, read internet discussions for one week
| deliberately looking for instances of people noting
| uncertainty in their beliefs, and the opposite: instances
| of people claiming to have knowledge of things that are
| unknowable (such as the contents of other people's minds,
| the future state of reality, etc), knowing the "correct"
| answer to subjective questions, and various other highly
| irrational behaviors that are typically excused as "you
| know what I meant" or "that's just people being people".
| vkou wrote:
| > Is there a cure? I wouldn't know. Is there a defense
| against it? I don't know? Does it actually exist or is it
| a convenient cover story that I can blame all the woes of
| the world on? Once again, I don't know.
|
| I don't know about a cure, but a likely defense is the
| same damn thing as slows the spread of an actual virus -
| slow down the spread of information. Social media that
| promotes viral content is to a memetic virus what
| globalization, international travel, and high-density
| cities are to an actual virus.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| So, social distance & vaccinate by exposing yourself to
| balanced information and knowledge so that you have a
| defense against crazy fringe thoughts?
|
| If it works in meatspace then it should be somewhat
| effective in the mental realm, right?
| mcguire wrote:
| The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model
|
| https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
|
| I especially like the title of the section, "Russian
| Propaganda Is Not Committed to Consistency".
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| One thing to maybe help, whenever you read "Russian
| interference" just replace it with "Russian Facebook Ads" and
| see how ridiculous it sounds. The argument is that US
| citizens were swayed by shitty Facebook ads to vote
| differently? This does not reconcile with the historically
| small fraction of US swing voters, and also leads to a flawed
| mindset of "I'm smarter than those dumb people over there".
|
| The winner in 2016 pitched themselves as an "outsider" for
| the masses, and sure was propelled by memes which are non-
| traditional. Even if you disagree with the winner, sometimes
| excuses like blaming Russia are just lies told to feel
| better.
| sgustard wrote:
| Not just swing voters. A lot of the effort is increasing
| voter turnout for your favored side.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It wasn't Facebook ads. It was an army of trolls creating,
| sharing, and upvoting "fake news" articles tricking
| gullible people into thinking that Hillary molested
| children underneath a pizza parlor and tricking other
| suggestible people into thinking people said the problem
| was Facebook ads. I was on Reddit at the time, and 90% of
| commenters believed that the Correct the Record PAC was
| illegally astroturfing Reddit, despite lacking any
| evidence, or were trolls pretending that they believed the
| PAC was astroturfing.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Surely it didn't have anything to do with the media pimping
| him nonstop during the primaries, giving him disproportionate
| airtime, or that the democrats ran one of their least likable
| candidates of all time.
|
| Not to mention running a terrible campaign that spent all of
| its time hanging out with megadonors instead of actually
| visiting the swing states that decide elections...
| adventured wrote:
| Russian interference had little to do with his victory in
| 2016, which was an establishment vs outsider election (and
| Hillary was quite unpopular and unlikable), where a very
| famous populist outsider won by telling his rabid audience
| whatever he thought they wanted to hear (little of which he
| actually followed through on). One of Trump's few talents
| is reading an audience and feeding it whatever it wants to
| hear; it makes him dangerous as a potential demagogue
| authoritarian type.
|
| Trump nearly beat Biden in 2020, and he would have beaten
| any other Democrat candidate that year, which
| overwhelmingly points to it not being Russian interference
| as a major influence. Everyone knew what Trump was by the
| 2020 election and he still attracted more votes than Barack
| Obama got in either election (and Obama was a widely
| popular President).
| zdragnar wrote:
| He did actually keep quite a few of his campaign
| promises. Where he really got stymied was lack of
| cooperation from the house under Ryan (early days of the
| dossier hoax).
|
| I made a habit of trying to count broken campaign
| promises starting in the Clinton years, and it is pretty
| much universal that presidents over-promise during the
| campaign and do the opposite once they get into office. I
| haven't really kept accurate numbers, but it certainly
| wasn't unique to trump by any means.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Could you provide any data? I don't know anyone whose
| claims I trust less than Trump.
|
| Saying everyone breaks some campaign promises is like
| saying that everyone lies - there is an enormous range.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't have the data, but let's just say that campaign
| promises are not credible, regardless of the politician.
| A whole lot of the promises made are outside the baliwick
| of the position, and should be rediculed when made, not
| when broken (mayoral candidates often promise to fix
| schools in jurisdictions where the schools are
| accountable to school boards and not city governments,
| for example. Presidential candidates promise things that
| would need to be enacted by the legislature. At the same
| time, a presidential candidate that promises to suggest
| legislation sounds unambitious).
|
| But what makes me less likely to trust Trump's claims and
| promises is his consistent denial of claims he made
| previously that he no longer wishes to make. It's hard to
| trust someone when they change positions and deny that
| they had a different positon. Gives very We were always
| at war with Eastasia vibes.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Respectfully, Bernie would have won.
| jessaustin wrote:
| In 2016, definitely. In 2020, after several troubling
| compromises, I'm not so sure?
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I have to admit I didn't vote at all during that election,
| half because of how unlikable both candidates were.
|
| But the other half of the reason was that I kind of figured
| Hilary had it in the bag. She was simply better resourced
| in terms of money and in terms of the groups and
| individuals who were supporting her. How could she not win?
| Especially against Trump? Sure, she made some mistakes
| along the way, but Trump also mocked a disabled reporter
| during one of his campaign appearances. One could argue
| that he made just as many mistakes, if not more.
|
| I don't really think Trump had any unfair advantages one
| could consider substantial (if anything he had a lot of
| disadvantages) nor do I believe that Hilary made any
| mistakes that were really damaging to her campaign. Its
| nuts, but the most convincing explanation I can think of is
| the weirdest and most esoteric one.
|
| Just can't ignore those spooky synchronicities.
| nwienert wrote:
| It's near impossible to believe around these parts, but I
| think people liked his incorrectness, and also liked his
| general policies.
|
| That he was a showman helped the memes. But I encourage
| you to consider mundane things like maybe people were
| tired of status quo globalism and willing to take a
| bitter pill to try and fix it.
| rajup wrote:
| Yes it really is as simple as what you just said. I find
| it funny and sad when opponents of Trump do all these
| weird mental contortions to explain why he won, from
| "trump voters are brainwashed rednecks" to Russiagate.
| Turns out some people do want lesser taxes, lesser
| regulation, don't care for abortion and simply don't mind
| trumps buffoonery. And no, not all of trump voters are
| racist. I might even say a negligible fraction are
| actually racist.
| justinpowers wrote:
| Trump surely didn't think it was a negligible fraction.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| > not all of trump voters are racist.
|
| I am reminded of a comedian's favorite response to this
| statement.
|
| > Not all trump supporters are racist, but ALL racists
| are trump supporters.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It's blatantly false, but hey, gets a laugh from the in-
| crowd right?
| rajup wrote:
| Very cute but that's why he's a comedian I suppose.
| autoexec wrote:
| > It's near impossible to believe around these parts, but
| I think people liked his incorrectness, and also liked
| his general policies.
|
| I think a lot of people were just done with the current
| political system which had been failing them for
| generations and wanted an outsider to come in and shake
| (if not break) up the system. Sanders gained a huge
| following attracting massive crowds and passionate
| supporters for the same reason. People wanted actual
| change but the DNC wasn't having it so they did
| everything they could to undermine sanders before the
| primary. Republicans threw everyone they could think of
| into the race.
|
| Trump wasn't a politician, didn't act like one, and no
| one in power wanted him to be elected. His election meant
| that I lost a lot of faith in Americans, but I gained a
| lot of faith in our electoral system. People can vote in
| someone even when the most powerful don't want them to.
| emmp wrote:
| Surely the idea that a young motivated constituency used the
| most modern communication methods available to them to
| campaign for their preferred candidate, successfully moving
| the needle somewhat, is pretty mundane?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" While there are many who would like to believe that Trump
| won due to Russian interference, I actually believe he won
| due to meme magic."_
|
| There's at least one book on this theory, such as Gary
| Lachman's _" Dark Star Rising"_:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Star-Rising-Magick-
| Power/dp/0143...
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| This actually looks really interesting. I was worried that
| the positive reviews might be due to a right-leaning echo-
| chamber, but it seems like the praise crosses political
| lines. I'll have to check it out.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Also, so this isn't just about politics, I think astrology
| is...interesting.
|
| I mean, rationally, it's hard to take it seriously. So, what,
| you mean to tell me that the planets, which are an
| unfathomable distance away from us, somehow impact human
| personality and how we behave? Doesn't exactly help things
| that the stars over our head are not the same stars as the
| one's over the heads of the ancient Babylonians.
|
| And yet, once I took the time to actually look at my full
| star chart, I found that it described who I am to uncanny
| levels of accuracy.
|
| Rationally, probably just a coincidence that my personality
| actually happens to align to what my personality "should" be,
| astrologically speaking. My alternative theory is that when
| enough people believe in something, that something becomes,
| well, "real-ish". So even if astrology is a bunch of made-up
| nonsense, it becomes real-enough simply because a lot of
| people believe in astrology.
| rocqua wrote:
| Did you check all possible outcomes of the chart? It might
| be that most of them are quite apt.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Essentially every national election in a two-party system
| will be close. Candidates are incentivized to move toward the
| middle, to try and claim the undecided voters.
|
| Because the elections will always be close, they are
| extremely sensitive to relatively small effects. Something
| that moves the needle by 1% or 0.5% one way or the other can
| decide the election.
|
| I think the 4ch-spawned memewar was one of those factors,
| though I also think foreign interference played a role as
| well.
|
| IMO, those undecided voters in the middle are probably the
| least, uh, savvy as well. The type most easily swayed by
| memes, clickbait, etc.
| vkou wrote:
| But many elections _aren 't_ determined by undecided middle
| voters. They are a small minority of the voting population,
| and most effort spent convincing them is wasted.
|
| Elections are often determined by how successful the get-
| out-the-vote campaigns are, to get the base to show up and
| vote. It's both much easier, and much more profitable to
| bring a lazy member of your base to the polls, than to
| badger someone who doesn't care much either into voting for
| you.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Bases are getting much smaller; there are fewer
| registered D/R vs independents.
|
| This makes the "swingable middle" rather large, and
| they're not all rubes.
|
| Campaigns seem to be iterating on scalable/personalizable
| social strategy. Obama figured it out better than Romney,
| Trump (maybe disturbingly) better than anyone before.
|
| Prediction: some future candidate will go "next level"
| and piss everyone off even more, but it'll work and
| they'll be elected.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > Bases are getting much smaller; there are fewer
| registered D/R vs independents.
|
| While this is true, the evidence seems to be that most
| independents actually have a party preference in their
| voting patterns -- they're what political scientists
| sometimes call "leaners", e.g., they register (and
| identify) as independent, but they have a clear lean
| toward Democrats or Republicans. From the authors of the
| 2016 book _Independent Politics: How American Disdain for
| Parties Leads to Political Inaction_ : "The problem with
| leaners is that there is almost no difference between
| people who identify as partisans and people who say they
| are independent and then say they lean toward a
| particular party. More often than not, we can count on
| leaners to vote for that party, support the party's
| positions, and sometimes even donate money to the party's
| candidates. What's more, leaners consistently support
| their party from election to election."
|
| https://www.vox.com/2016/1/22/10814522/independents-
| voters-f...
|
| I think the truly swingable middle -- folks who, for
| example, voted for Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and
| Biden in 2020 -- is actually a pretty small group. And,
| it's a small group that's got both disproportionate power
| at the ballot box and a fairly low engagement with actual
| political issues. I think I (somewhat reluctantly) agree
| with your observation about campaigns iterating on social
| strategy, though, because that tends to be the best way
| to reach those swing voters: they aren't motivated by
| ideology or policy preference, but by star power and
| charisma.
| aliswe wrote:
| Did you see that recent meme where a right wing "influencer"
| with tens of thousands of followers only got 13 likes on a
| recent tweet? would be interesting if true!
|
| EDIT: https://imgur.com/gallery/cZwNWup
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-07 23:00 UTC)