[evilgenius]

I just read about some person who was upset that their dog died after it was stuffed into an overhead bin on an airplane, in its cage, I guess. I have to ask, what did they expect would happen when they tried to take an animal on a plane? Was it going to get a seat of its own? Were they going to let it roam all about the plane, getting into other people's stuff and licking at their feet and hands? That's cute for about five minutes. I like dogs, but not everyone does. Should people who don't expect such a thing in a confined public space have to endure it simply because the person who brought the dog needed it for emotional support? What makes it so important that someone's emotional state reigns over the terse emotional environment that we have come to expect from our public spaces to date? As much as I've defended political correctness in the past, I have to blame it for this sort of thing.

Isn't it political correctness that seeks to justify behaviors based upon something in a person that is understood to be basic to that person? It began rightly enough. We don't tolerate restaurants that won't serve black people in society anymore. We don't accept the accusations of systemic retardation that even people in academia have raised against minorities. But what about when a youth of color breaks the law and tries to claim it was an act of their culture or their color itself? I don't mean a simple rebellious breaking of the law which is mostly the result of how teenagers test barriers. I mean doing something that deliberately insults or harms either known or unknown others and fobs it off as inherent to their race. They don't care because they have a 'right' to act that way. It isn't like once they've been caught, and schooled, they feel they need to change. Teenage rebellion changes when it meets the right kind of reason. It only has to be shown the arguments for the barrier. If the arguments don't apply to them, at least they will understand why other people still hold it up. Sometimes, they will respect that and sometimes they will labor against it, but society understands that process. It puts the principles at the forefront. Someone's personal interpretation of their own background is a little more cloudy. That's more moment by moment.

Race is just a small part of it. The selfishness with the dog epitomizes something that is not tied to race. The excesses being done in the name of race have come about from a philosophy that is misunderstood, and, therefore, extrapolated onto a person of color's own understanding of what it means for them to come from where they do, not a consensus or a scientific approach. When we say that a reason for honoring a person means that society must bend to it, we don't mean that to be a personal reason subject to that individual's moment by moment emotional state. We mean it to be something much more clearly understood in the public mind, something that is derived from a consensus. Political correctness began as a voice that tried to say that the consensus had to be more honest and fair, not to personalize it. When did it become personal?

If conservatives don't think this applies to them, then consider what it means to have a well regulated militia as opposed to each person exercising justice according to their own interpretation. What would your average person arguing for gun rights at all cost in society do if they could be taken back in time to become part of a militia and the militia told them they couldn't use a certain musket because its caliber was not the standard caliber? They'd come off the rails is what they'd do. They would want to personally interpret something that was supposed to be understood by consensus. They don't either ask if the free for all they are encouraging around the issue of gun rights has any obligation to the consensus of society. They don't ask if their form of interpreting the Second Amendment would protect us from tyranny or serve as such a mangled and obstructed way of coming together that such would easily fall before any tyranny. There isn't any modern understanding of what it means to have a well regulated militia because people are too selfish to endure such a thing. It would require discipline. It might require adherence to a code of conduct or a form of understanding that doesn't just allow for the easy use of guns, mostly told like a storybook work of fiction, to solve problems.

Remember Dick and Jane? They taught generations of kids how to read. Well, they didn't come alone. In those generations influenced by them there were also books and pamphlets that used to extol the virtues of civic life, and civic obedience. When was it that people began to laugh at such things? Why did they? Do you think it could have been ever so slightly out of rebellion? Signal like this to make a turn in this direction on your bike. Look both ways before you cross the street. Use the crosswalk. What is so wrong with that kind of advice? Apparently, everything, for they interfere with a persons 'right' to make those decisions for themselves. That's all fine and good, however, until you come across a person riding a bike and you have no idea by what their hands are doing, or not doing, which way they are going to go. If there is any kind of a close call, be prepared to find out what their raised middle finger means. Those pamphlets were precise and they didn't try to offer advice about things that were too complex. There isn't any room in those pamphlets for advice about how to behave with a brown paper bag outside the front door of a liquor store, for instance. They couldn't massage the egos of those who read them and wanted them to point more gloriously at something much more aloof, so I guess they had to go.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I just read about some person who was upset that their dog died after it was stuffed into an overhead bin on an airplane, in its cage, I guess. I have to ask, what did they expect would happen when they tried to take an animal on a plane? Was it going to get a seat of its own? Were they going to let it roam all about the plane, getting into other people's stuff and licking at their feet and hands? That's cute for about five minutes. I like dogs, but not everyone does. Should people who don't expect such a thing in a confined public space have to endure it simply because the person who brought the dog needed it for emotional support?

I saw that yesterday.

There definitely need to be well defined procedures. IMO, just like a small child, the dog would require a seat be paid for. The dog (in a cage) would be required to stay in the seat, with the cage belted in.

IMO there would also need to be some kind of stated procedure/standards for the dog's behavior -- and everyone's safety, including the dog. If the dog starts barking loudly and won't stop, or it starts puking or other physical unpleasantness and won't or can't stop -- then it needs to get stored with the other animals in the freight area (assuming this can be done in flight -- if it can't, then I don't think such animals should be allowed in the passenger compartment -- period).

...

OTOH, having employees NOT well versed in official procedure and just stuffing it in an overhead bin, where it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it likely suffocated (the article I read said they heard it barking in possible distress, but didn't check on it -- implying the bin stayed sealed the entire flight) is pretty outrageous. People DO care about their pets' welfare.

...

As for the rest of it -- I've kind of given up on generally social norms. Once political correctness becomes the norm, it's just a slide to complete insanity from there. Just my opinion, which I'm sure the entire left coast, for example, will strongly disagree with. So be it.

[Ibon]

It seems that each generation regardless of ideology succeeds in tuning in ever finer detail their needs and wants. That the external environment can deliver in ever more precise ways for ones comforts. This ends up breeding a society that is less tolerant and less resilient and more demanding of their comforts. In breeds indolence, softness, narcissism and a sense of entitlement.

Cultivating internal strength and character is sacrificed for demanding that ones external environment is fine tuned.

This is a normal result of a society that for several generations satiates their desires. This is the purest definition of cultural decadence and as I mentioned it has no party affiliation. It is a result of affluence in part.

The digital age that can enable you to be a kingdom of one on your digital device hasn't helped this trend, it has only aggravated the decadence. Enhanced the decadence. Enabled the decadence to more finely tune its wants and needs.

Are you guys controlling how many hours you spend here and on other sites?
Are you able to acknowledge the theme of this thread and see your own complicity?

[Outcast_Searcher]

Are you guys controlling how many hours you spend here and on other sites?
Are you able to acknowledge the theme of this thread and see your own complicity?

I don't get it. As long as one lives one's life responsibly overall (honest, legal, pays taxes, meets family obligations, etc), why does one's choice of hobbies imply them doing something wrong, if their hobby is hanging out on the computer?

As far as I'm concerned, if someone is honest (and single) and wants to make their life about beer and hookers -- as long as they aren't hurting anyone else and don't drive drunk and pay the hookers -- they're just as morally OK as someone who chooses to be a practicing Quaker or Amish person.

Is hanging out on the computer less moral than golfing or fishing or attending sporting events or any of scores of other things people do in their spare time?

Or is it immoral to not be working 100 hour weeks all the time because two centuries ago, that's what the vast majority of farmers had to do to survive?

To me, saying "X" is bad, without a lot of context is unhelpful, unless "X' is blatant, like being an axe-murderer (or liking disco music -- ).

[Ibon]

Are you guys controlling how many hours you spend here and on other sites?
Are you able to acknowledge the theme of this thread and see your own complicity?

I don't get it. As long as one lives one's life responsibly overall (honest, legal, pays taxes, meets family obligations, etc), why does one's choice of hobbies imply them doing something wrong, if their hobby is hanging out on the computer?

As far as I'm concerned, if someone is honest (and single) and wants to make their life about beer and hookers -- as long as they aren't hurting anyone else and don't drive drunk and pay the hookers -- they're just as morally OK as someone who chooses to be a practicing Quaker or Amish person.

I am not making a moral judgement. The theme here is how entitled we have become of demanding our needs and wants as in the example of the dog on the plane that Evilgenius mentioned on the opening post. This sense of ones personal space and rights eclipsing the public around you IS actually aggravated by digital media. Here you are a kingdom of one, your whole cyber existence is perfectly tuned to your needs and wants and requires no civic compromise. This reinforces exactly the point of evilgenius opening thread. I am not morally judging the digital cyber reality like it is pornography. I am simply stating that it reinforces ones fine tuning of ones personal space requiring very little consideration of others. Each and every one of us right now is reading or contributing to this thread while sitting in their own organic space. The only disturbance perhaps being a loved one bitching at you for spending so much time on line. Hopefully most of you still have a loved one or mate demanding real human contact. Most likely most of you right now if you look up from your screen will see others around you with their heads just as deeply immersed in their own digital devices. I don't call this a hobby. I do call it decadent.

[Cog]

Think about why people come to your retreat down there Ibon. They want to interact with nature and have some quiet in their life. I'm sure they interact with other people there but not to the extent of the crowded cities they left behind.

The digital world can be as quiet or as raucous as I wish it to be. My time, my rules, my choice. I've earned a little decadence.

[Newfie]

Interesting thoughts here. None of them mine at the moment.

[Ibon]

Think about why people come to your retreat down there Ibon. They want to interact with nature and have some quiet in their life. I'm sure they interact with other people there but not to the extent of the crowded cities they left behind.

The digital world can be as quiet or as raucous as I wish it to be. My time, my rules, my choice. I've earned a little decadence.

I will try to be quick in my comment since my allowance of digital decadence per day is now 10 minutes

The digital decadence is only a symptom actually of evil genius's main point of this thread which resonated for me as I watch many of our guests and the public in general which in my view have lost a center gravity around humility. The way folks have become accustomed to demanding their needs and wants is largely unconscious but if you would bring your average citizen from a couple of generations ago and beam them to the present they would be aghast at how unabashed and with what blind narcissism many folks go about cultivating their external environment to be fine tuned to their needs and wants while neglecting their internal environment of tolerance, humility, acceptance of imperfections etc.

As I mentioned this affliction is cultural and not parked in any one party or ideology. It is the result of several generations of focusing on the external....

What started out as a washing machine to reduce toil has ended up with therapeutic dogs on airplanes....

Something somewhere along the way lost its bearings.

[Newfie]

Interesting. We move from place to place to see how other people live. But we do enjoy our Western enclaves and convieniences. We retreat from that also, can only take so much, to loud, to invasive. TV, yuck! Back to our mobile floating cave of (relatively) primitive acurtuments.

[evilgenius]

You know what's funny is that what people mostly do is take what is given in their lives and then try to claim that they wanted it all along. Take a look at this Ted Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/petter_johansson_do_you_really_know_why_you_do_what_you_do, it gets at the point. The video's subject is the appeal of human faces. I think you can see how this applies to religion and politics as well. After all, most people tend to believe and think according to the backgrounds they come from. Few people free themselves. Being free, however, may not mean being separate from, or without adherence to. When you understand it you may squirm a bit, realizing that a culture where individuals get everything they want without reference to society at large can be dangerous. In a world without humility all that it takes for a person to fall afoul is to tell the truth, whatever that is.

In the wake of the Florida bridge collapse, where some engineer called up a state worker's phone and warned about cracks, I've been thinking about AI. You know, the AI that Google used to beat the world's best Go players did so without any of its programmers understanding how it did that. AI as it is developing now is based upon what is termed 'machine learning.' That means that they let the programs learn for themselves, and the programmers often can't follow what that is doing to the program. It becomes very complex. What happens if it develops the equivalent of cracks? Nobody would know! If it's just how to place cat pictures all over the internet, that's one thing. If it's a program designed to manipulate public opinion, that's quite something else. The way that people integrate the trivial world into their lives and then claim ownership leaves them naked before such manipulation. The only protection is an anchoring in a society that moves more slowly. But AI thinks far faster than we do, and it can follow its purpose without resorting to appeals. It's kind of scary.

[Newfie]

Interesting. My Wife was reading an article that described some AI. When the machine relied ally upon it core computing power it learned at one pace. It then they gave it a “hand”, something it could manipulate. Then the learning accelerated. The programmers don’t understand this interaction. But it is real.

Unintended consequences.

I wonder what a true AI robot would consider its “personal space”?

[KaiserJeep]

You know what's funny is that what people mostly do is take what is given in their lives and then try to claim that they wanted it all along. Take a look at this Ted Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/petter_johansson_do_you_really_know_why_you_do_what_you_do, it gets at the point. The video's subject is the appeal of human faces. I think you can see how this applies to religion and politics as well. After all, most people tend to believe and think according to the backgrounds they come from. Few people free themselves. Being free, however, may not mean being separate from, or without adherence to. When you understand it you may squirm a bit, realizing that a culture where individuals get everything they want without reference to society at large can be dangerous. In a world without humility all that it takes for a person to fall afoul is to tell the truth, whatever that is.

In the wake of the Florida bridge collapse, where some engineer called up a state worker's phone and warned about cracks, I've been thinking about AI. You know, the AI that Google used to beat the world's best Go players did so without any of its programmers understanding how it did that. AI as it is developing now is based upon what is termed 'machine learning.' That means that they let the programs learn for themselves, and the programmers often can't follow what that is doing to the program. It becomes very complex. What happens if it develops the equivalent of cracks? Nobody would know! If it's just how to place cat pictures all over the internet, that's one thing. If it's a program designed to manipulate public opinion, that's quite something else. The way that people integrate the trivial world into their lives and then claim ownership leaves them naked before such manipulation. The only protection is an anchoring in a society that moves more slowly. But AI thinks far faster than we do, and it can follow its purpose without resorting to appeals. It's kind of scary.

This has already happened. No, I'm not talking about an AI with an agenda controlling our lives. I am talking about hundreds, thousands, and millions of people, each with an agenda, posting fake news. In fact the signal-to-noise ratio on the Internet is very very low, and it's not improving. People actually very much prefer a fake news source to a real one, as long as it more or less fits their prejudices.

Social networking is not a source with any standards or any credibility whatsoever. Donald Trump's tweets are the perfect example of what I am talking about. The little cult of climate doomies here at the Peak Oil forum is another. No, I'm not referring to whether or not CC/AGW is real or unreal, or whether it has serious or trivial impacts. I am talking about a clique of people with completely fringe opinions on this topic who love to spend minutes and even hours per week discussing just how screwed we are by CC/AGW, in between snarky comments about real news and politics.

When I came here in 2012, I was one of the non-technical reviewers of a doctoral thesis by one of my daughter's high school classmates, who was performing original research into the far-reaching impacts of the online world we live in. In fact she is a user here and some of you were her test subjects, and her observations of you were published in anonymous form, and she is now making some impressive salary numbers as an internet media consultant. That's as explicit as I am going to get about this topic, since she once told me I had disclosed too much for one phase of her experiment. Many long term PO members probably remember that thread, and it gets revived periodicly.

The vast majority of people in the online world get what amounts to near zero inputs from other sources. This means that most of what they believe they know to be facts are pure and unadulterated BS. There are almost as many people posting BS as personal amusement as there are people who believe either all or almost all of what they read online.

Interestingly enough, the journals she publishes her work in are not available to the general public. Like the earlier results of the pure science version of the Human Genome Project, what is available to the public online is the Bowdlerized version, because the original research into online behaviors and how they can be changed and influenced is incredibly dangerous. Her work is at the center of the online battlefront, and she has stopped interacting with me to a major extent, probably because I understand all too much about what she is working on, and her work is now (I'm guessing) classified.

I am not without fault in this present situation, as I have said in the past. My work products - among thousands of other engineers - make the online network possible. My own contribution was being one of a dozen odd engineers that made electronic money practical, and online transactions profitable and trusted. I tend to think that this is the reason that an academic network called USENET explosively evolved into today's online world, but perhaps you have other opinions about this. Online purchasing was here before social networking, but both were important milestones in today's online world, and the bots most of us use daily are now rapidly evolving into true AI's, which is clearly the third milestone of the online world. But DAMN, I hate talking to computers on the voice telephone.

My parting thought for you would be that you need at least two sources of news. That would be your digital present world and an offline version that is not continuously changing.

The digital present is and probably will always be the one that most people share, and the problem is that almost everything you believe you know that comes from this online media is simply not true and not accurate. Nor do you have a reliable BS detector in your head to glean the few facts from the plentiful online dross.

My personal offline references are two. The one I use most often is the complete National Geographic on CD. I purchased this a few years ago, and have been buying the annual CDs since, an invaluable source of information about Current Events. The second is the archives of the Nantucket Historical Society that I peruse for my published articles on the 18th Century Whaling Industry, which is an anchor in the swiftly flowing river of American History.

You would be truly astonished to know how the online versions of both Current Events and History continue to diverge. I cannot fathom the motives that are driving this change. Have you ever done online research and found subtle online differences from the version you were taught in school, or the one you remember experiencing first hand? I used to believe that this was about local beliefs, when I first noticed significant differences between the history of the American Civil War between the schools I attended in the South (Lousiana and Virginia) and the North (Illinois). Then I attended an offshore school on a military base (Guam) and saw yet a third version.

The online world is like that, continously evolving and never completely accurate, because EVERYTHING is being filtered through the prejudices of the authors, and the underlying facts were incomplete when the piece was written. What most people don't understand is that after decades of re-writing, the online world differs an amazing amount from static texts, and the divergence is growing.

Most people prefer to online version to reality. Many refuse to believe anything else. Think about this, and hopefully act.

[Newfie]

I think we have veered far from EGs core subject. Not unusual.

The digital world probably does effect our personal visions of personal vs private space. Not that the borders were ever very distinct. Humans are a highly social animal and as such we tend to be very attuned to the hives mood.

We have a wee bit of an online hive here I suppose.

Sad though it may be most of my personal interaction takes place here. Sure I meet and talk to other folks. But with rare exception those are transitory interactions. So I guess I’m an outlier.

[KaiserJeep]

Well, you certainly are an outlier when you are out of sight of shore on your boat. As am I when I am rock crawling the granite domes of the Sierras in my Wrangler.

I find that every time I go out, there are fewer and fewer spots that cell service cannot reach. Certainly it did not help when I implemented a high gain cellular antenna and mobile WiFi hotspot in the Jeep. This and the continuing placement of cell towers on various mountain peaks means that you really have to go far to get away from the network. So my compromise is to keep the ringer off and just check for E-Mail every day or two, using an E-Mail account I reserve for that purpose, known only to wife and daughter.

The downside: from time to time I crawl up a peak, and find a cell "tower" that is only about 20' high, with solar PV to power it, and green plastic foliage disguising the tower itself. What a rude shock!

Like Ibon, I can't help myself, I need the network, and it's very definately part of my personal world.

[Newfie]

Obviously I use the network as well. It sometimes I want to just throw the dang thing overboard.

Ibon laments we don’t have a younger more global community. Perhaps this is why. We are largely a group of relatively antisocial FOGs (fat old guys) who tend towards antisocial. Just speaking for how I must appear to the outside world.

[KaiserJeep]

Then there is that other problem, which is age. My main camping buddy, whoom I camped with almost 25 years, died of cancer. Then the other three "sometimes" campers quit going a lot. Two got second wives and second families and are still obsessed with paying college tuition. The third finally admitted to me that he resides in a Senior community and now is not up to the rigorous wilderness camping and fishing we did before.

I still go out by myself. But every time I tell myself how stupid it is to do this alone.

[Newfie]

Which is why I’m fantastically lucky that my Wife is with me, doing it alone is kind of pointless for me. We are not alone in this experience. Yet I know there are other who are completely happy to do it alone. Yet others want to share with 500 of their closest friends, look at bloody cruise ships, yuck! Different strokes

[Ibon]

I think we have veered far from EGs core subject. Not unusual. .

I think it is related. We are sharing our personal relationship in how we deal with two seemingly apposing needs; the tribal and social on one hand and the need for isolation and private space on the other. There is some dysfunction in the collective around the balance between the two which I think is reflected in EG's opening post.

Personally for me if I do not get a regular strong dosage of private time in nature or gardening or pinning bugs or whatever it is then I am unable to recharge my "social batteries". Newfie, if you and your wife absorb pristine wide open horizons on your boat for several days you probably find yourself more interested to socialize when you dock in a marina. Or KJ, when you take your 4x4 to some remote canyon and allow the silence of a nearby wilderness to absorb into your soul then your social battery is then charged.

I think the dysfunction that EG discusses in the opening post is that we have a collective today that has a tremendous deficit of experiences where they can charge their social batteries and for this reason they become intolerant, anti-social, impatient, demanding and imposing their needs and wants on to the society around them. Overly obsessed with maximizing their external comforts and not cultivating internal strengths.

One aggravating factor is digital media, maybe not for you Newfie who balances your time here with long stretches of the wide open seas, but for a huge percentage of the population being tethered to a digital device has eclipsed greater and greater chunks of time being in the organic world.

The most extreme example of fine tuning your external needs and wants is the internet actually. I come back to this repeatedly. It is toxic.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I still go out by myself. But every time I tell myself how stupid it is to do this alone.

For decades, my girlfriend would ask me why I had a certain strong opinion about something. I'd say, "It's the principle of the thing." To which, in some cases, she's say something like "Your principles might kill you", if she thought there was personal risk involved.

To which I replied in more than one case, "I can't think of a better reason to die than over a principle, if it's a truly important one." At which point I would be eyeballed like I was a Martian - which is probably why I'm alone about 95% of the time, even though I live in a top 100 US city - socialization just isn't something I ever seemed to "get" very well. I was "weird" from preschool, on, looking back.

As far as I'm concerned, GOOD FOR YOU if you're doing and enjoying something that is truly important to you, even if it might come to significant harm, or worse, to yourself. The great Jack London, who died 102 years ago, wrote a bunch of novels about the relationship between man and nature and I'm struck by the violence, detailed physicality, and general awesomeness of his descriptions of that relationship every time I read his work. That relationship is natural to us -- not modern life set to be just the opposite.

IMO, as long as you don't resort to the modern meme of suing everyone in sight and blaming someone, everyone else if something goes wrong, then when you go out by yourself, you're likely more "alive" than the vast majority of people around you, and 100% "sane" and justified in taking that risk. Again, kudos.

[evilgenius]

Then there is that other problem, which is age. My main camping buddy, whoom I camped with almost 25 years, died of cancer. Then the other three "sometimes" campers quit going a lot. Two got second wives and second families and are still obsessed with paying college tuition. The third finally admitted to me that he resides in a Senior community and now is not up to the rigorous wilderness camping and fishing we did before.

I still go out by myself. But every time I tell myself how stupid it is to do this alone.

Ah, this gets to the point. Perhaps, the only true way to camp is by one's self. Of course, there is a lot of advice against this. The sort of wisdom that gives it arrives at its bonafides by means of stressing that you could die if you ignore it. Some things are, however, more important than fearing death. One of them is finding yourself. You could simply just be selfish, or you could decide to become something else. I don't know if you really can do that without confronting your fears.