I think about this a few times a year and I become sad each time. We only get this one planet in the whole ass universe. And we can barely see all of it, unless we're lucky and/or rich (at least moreso than most of humankind).
It's profoundly ridiculous.
I was flying to south East Asia, looking at the digital map of the plane. From above, you can kinda see the country lines.
What made me feel that incredible sadness is that within a 1000 mile radius, a child born might live in a world where they struggle with starvation and have worms in their stomach, or wake up each day with anime and toys. Some countries have so much wealth and resources. Where others barely have anything. I think about all of that as I fly to my vacation destination, having been incredibly lucky to have been born in a pretty wealthy country.
One could argue that you can be poor/abused anywhere. But there's a clear difference in quality of life here.
Mobility is better now than it has ever been, so don't get too sad about that.
Black science man always talks like he's done weed for the first time and is trying to impress his nephew's friends.
We live in a society
We live in a patchwork of societies, I think is the thing
Only plebs wait in line. I put my request in an envelope, a government servant picks it up at my door and takes it to more government servants who do all the work before hand delivering it back.
This dude really is a pompous ass sometimes.
Agreed he can be pompous but I think since he's an astronomer he is making the point that if you were in space and looked at earth you would wonder why are there borders
Because it turns out sociology, anthropology and politics also exist.
If you were in space and looked at Earth you wouldn't see any people.
EDIT: Crap, someone is going to point out that you can see lights at night, aren't they? This thread is for pedants and now I've started a conversation about biomarkers you can see from orbit.
This needs one of those bell curve memes.
Yes borders are bullshit, but he really doesn't have to come across all high and mighty about it
Hits the joint "borders man"
This is not interesting.
I'm not saying NDT isn't a smart guy, but yeah he does tend to do that thing a lot where you describe a normal concept in a sort of detached anthropological way so it sounds profound even if it isn't.
If I said the shit that fart smeller says people would literally say “shut up stoner” to me.
As if humans weren’t fiercely tribalistic forever. Other species beat each other to death, too.
The post may be right, but getting a bunch of homo sapiens from far away not to club each other to death is, historically, a hard problem, and countries and passports are kinda a stepping stone.
Maybe it's because I know autistic people, but NDT's obtuse starry-eyed splaining never triggered me as much as it seems to others.
He's an astrological trapped on a planet. What do you expect
Personally, I find him irksome because I get a strong vibe from him that he thinks of himself as a very smart person, looking down on the intellectual peasants. Part of why I perceive him that way is because this is how I used to think, as an autistic nerd who built much of my identity up around being smart. That's also why behaviour of the sort that shows up on /r/iamverysmart (such as many of NDT's posts) makes me cringe so much.
Dissecting this a bit further, it's not necessarily that I think he thinks he's better than other people — rather the opposite: some of the most intellectually arrogant people I have known are, at their core, deeply insecure and feeling the need to justify their interests by presenting themselves in a certain way.
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