Pavlov, Lemmings, BS, & Strawberries

This forum is definitely tons more interesting with Martin around. Que pasa, hombre?

 

the reason i mention the third world poor folks:

given the premise that human lives matter, you have to ask yourself, what is the most efficient and cost effective way to minimize human misery? and the answer is not to worry about global warming, but to worry about malnutrition and disease. global warming may kill millions of folks two hundred years from now. but millions of folks are dying right now from other reasons. why are they ignored?

the answer is that we do not actually care about people. we care about finding a topic that makes us feel good about ourselves while also being sort of distant and simple.

yes, but i didnt start until later yesterday so i was sober when i wrote that part.

i believe that there are reasons certain memes are catchy and work, and propagate. i think human nature is such that we love to introduce semi-random reasons to feel guilty so that we can seek salvation. so we go out of our way to cast ourselves as guilty. this is one of the foundations of christianity. we are all damned by the original sin. and i do not think it is a coincidence that the original sin was aginst the environment. pople want to feel like they have hurt the precious earth, it makes them feel important and guilty and they like that.

 

Efficiency and cost effectiveness? Those are the only choices you can come up with? Maybe it is more looking out for ourselves first and others second. The poor in Africa aren't ignored, they are abused by those in power in Africa. A lot of Americans wouldn't want to go to war to save many of the countries in Africa... that would cost a lot of money. Climate and pollution issues on the other hand are something that we directly contribute to and are something that may threaten us in the future, so to say it is a problem derived from guilt isn't fully true.

You must have felt guilty before you embraced nihilism.

 

well, you would want to actually save lives and not just waste time and money, right?

again, you are nuts if you think you are going to be personally hurt by global warming.

if you were to, for example, put your money into malnutrition programs or disease research or even mosquito nets for malaria, you would save far more folks. dont you think that we should allocate our resources to most efficiently save lives?

of course your argument is that global warming will, at sometime in the future that never quite gets here, kill more people than anything. sure it will.

i was never convinced by any of the stupid philosophies most people are into and therefore never was riddled with religious or white liberal guilt.

 

I think its noble to want to help others in Africa. It is still hard to get around the political strife in Africa that causes a lot of the need for help. But concerning ourselves with global warming because it will harm us (or our progeny) or because we want to be good stewards of Earth is not misguided, I don't think. Anyway, buying a billion mosquito nets won't solve the problems of Africa.

I believe someone here noted that the US sends more aid to Africa and around the world than does any other country. I guess we're driven by a whole lot of guilt, with no ounce of benevolence between the whole lot of us.

 

i am curious. do you think that global warming will harm your children or their children or their children's children? i am not clear just how menacing this is, and if you genuinely fear for the future of your genes, which i suppose you should, if what al gore has said is true.

also i am curious about how many million americans you think global warming will kill in the next 200 years. my guess is zero.

 

I haven't given it much thought and don't spend sleepless nights thinking of impending doom.