IIRC most recent anthropological/archaeological evidence regarding early human society is fairly pessimistic. Evidence suggests life was much more Hobbes than Rousseau. ie, an egalitarianism of violence.

Unlike a modern band, an orchestra or classical ensemble usually doesn’t have a particular set of songs that it knows. It is expected to perform a variety of pieces throughout the entire spectrum of world music.

If, for example, you had an orchestra memorize every symphony it played you’d have a massive decrease in the number of pieces it can perform each year in exchange for the unclear benefits of memorization.

There’s no bribery involved, Hochul is just a well-documented idiot. There was nothing forcing her to agree to what the lobbyists from the companies said, she was just genuinely swayed and signed their suggested amendments.

The US did not force India to ban it. I checked the article wikipedia cites for details, and in a 1961 UN treaty, India agreed to ban consuming certain parts of the cannabis plant while permitting others. There’s no suggestion of any coercion; UN treaties aren’t the most forceful things on Earth.

The way the paradox of tolerance is smugly intoned as though it’s already the law of the land is genuinely one of the worse uses of philosophy I’ve seen.

Who do you trust to condemn someone as unworthy of the toleration of society? To say the intolerant should not be tolerated is like saying only good people should be allowed to vote: it’s a totally subjective judgment.

Giving the state the power to suppress those it deems intolerant will not protect liberty or democracy.

Terrible tip. I don’t know if there’s anyone on the planet that would benefit from having more soda in their diet.

Looking into it, Copernicus was called an idiot more than he was a blasphemer. He had noticed something that was correct, but it was hard for others to believe because it meant the entire field of astronomy up to that point had been wrong. The theological argument was secondary to the scientific criticism.

The criticism was in good faith, and debate over it led to further investigation and the Copernican Revolution.

Every time there’s a new bit of tech there’s pearl clutching about its price. Pretty much everything new starts its life as luxury. If people with money to burn don’t want one, it dies. If people actually like it, it gets mass produced and prices drop.

There doesn’t need to be immediate gratification. There are many ways for climate mitigation solutions to satisfy greed. You get much further selling people a solar-punk future than you do by trying to scare them. Doomsday predictions only convince people its futile to make an effort.

It is a fact that wildlife populations have declined. This is a problem to reckoned with, I’d argue more successfully with an optimistic attitude than a pessimistic one.

Evidence shows that people are more greedy than fearful. To convince people to combat climate change, it is more useful to appeal to what they have to gain than what they have to lose.

This is the exact type of pessimistic fatalism that is antithetical to actually accomplishing anything.

You get to enjoy a more circuitous and fruitful route with optimism.

>There mat be so little it may well be 0.

I’m sorry, but that’s a fundamentally unserious view.

Carbon capture and free energy won’t save us, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be invested in. It’s a fine line in that they’re both essential and deserve heavy investment, but shouldn’t be used as an excuse to neglect conservation efforts.

Optimism doesn’t mean being in denial about the challenges we face.

Of course. But there’s no circumstance that could make striving to make tomorrow better than today not worthwhile. Regardless of what’s ahead, throwing up our hands benefits no one.

This attitude is why pessimism leads nowhere but the grave. Every day, tens of millions of people are working to apply existing solutions to mitigate climate change or to develop new ones. You’re even hyperfocusing on certain elements of society to paint covid as a loss, and not as the tremendous achievement of medical science it was to develop safe, effective, and mass produceable vaccines with ground breaking technology.

To say that there is no hope is a self-fulfilling prophecy and does not match the evidence we have.

I think it’s important to distinguish pessimism from being critical or skeptical.

If Thunberg is to be taken as the “arch-pessimist” of this article, then that is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the approach. Thunberg is a high profile activist figure, but her pessimism leaves her vulnerable to attack by her opponents who may offer a brighter, or at least less alarmist version of the future. It also weakens her impact on the sympathetic, those most directly pressured. They call her and have her castigate them for ruining the world as a secular penance.

Climate change calls for a specific action to address it. Objectively speaking, there is a lot that can still be done. The only ethically correct message when it comes to climate change is a specific, effective one.

Pessimism will never be as motivating as telling people about the bright future ahead if they invest in climate mitigation now.

Over optimism can become carelessness. But even a small amount of pessimism leads to fatalism.

Geralt learns pretty quickly that refusing to get involved doesn’t work out. Refusing to choose means an endorsement of the status quo by inaction. To choose between a greater and lesser evil is an unfortunate fact of life. Triage, for example, is a fairly irresistible example of this. The choice must be made to allow some to die so that others may live.

Of course there are a plurality of approaches to any given situation. That does not mean dilemmas are useless for examining schools of philosophy.

As well, in reality, when faced with a situation, from the myriad of options, we tend to eliminate them until we are left with a dilemma.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is junk science without investigating.

Automatic weapons weren’t new. Every squad had an automatic rifleman, and submachine-guns were used widely. The question was whether it was worth equipping every rifleman with an automatic weapon. This wasn’t obvious at the time.

The M1 and M14 had superior range and stopping power. Being able to reliably kill the enemy and not end up outranged are intuitively important. Semi-automatic weapons also mean you don’t have your entire army burning through ammunition. When you’re fighting expeditionary wars, this is a major concern because every bullet has to get shipped halfway around the world.

I wasn’t going to get into that, but there were a variety of people involved in the conspiracy. Some were just dissatisfied with Hitler’s leadership, others felt it was a moral issue.

Nazi officers had no honor and deserved no gallant treatment. Those with integrity died in July ‘44.

Unless faster than light travel is discovered, interstellar endeavors are not worth discussing.