Well this is interesting

Thread:

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Same issue here in Aus. Chinaā€™s refusing to take our recyclables, and the local councils responsible for collecting it are complaining about the huge stockpiles building upā€¦ and mostly sending it to landfill, as far as I can tell. :unamused:

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Not that itā€™s needed, MIT is working on a psychopathic AI.

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Why?

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I think to show input bias on AI algorithms using social media.

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Thatā€™s what Norman would say, but he would be thinking something quite different.

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Great. Someone should introduce it to Parry, Elizaā€™s paranoid chatbot cousin.

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For all their death-dealing, zombies are kind of fragile, evidenced by the fact that a human can kill dozens or hundreds and remain standing. This makes zombies an early-warning signal species for environmental issues.

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Right? Like the first big storm should just take them all out.

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I watched this book-tour interview with Pete Buttigieg because I didnā€™t know anything about him and heā€™s declared himself a Presidential contender. It turned out to be an interesting and thoughtful conversation, and his high intelligence showed. Oxford scholar, naval officer, mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Anyway, what really caught my attention was his body language right at the start of the interview. His posture was betraying a large internal stress, upright through his torso, hunched from the sternum up, then upright from the top of the neck. Right as I noticed it, the interviewer (Frank Bruni) made an abrupt and obvious shift of posture himself so he reclined in his chair a little, after which Mayor Pete also adjusted and leaned back. I suppose the interviewer sent a signal, and Buttigieg got the message? Iā€™ve never seen that before, if thatā€™s what it was. Thatā€™s what I thought was interesting.

Also, itā€™s not often your hear a politician talk about the drawbacks of using SSN as primary key.

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Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence

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Never thought about it this way before. Food for thought:

The biblical myth in Genesis 1 is diametrically opposed to all this (Genesis 1, it should be noted, was developed in Babylon during the Jewish captivity there as a direct rebuttal to the Babylonian myth). The Bible portrays a good God who creates a good creation. Chaos does not resist order. Good is prior to evil. Neither evil nor violence is part of the creation, but enter later, as a result of the first coupleā€™s sin and the connivance of the serpent (Genesis 3). A basically good reality is thus corrupted by free decisions reached by creatures. In this far more complex and subtle explanation of the origins of things, violence emerges for the first time as a problem requiring solution.

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And wow, that conclusion.

Great find!

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wow
Ā 

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Cosmic order requires the violent suppression of the feminine, and is mirrored in the social order by the subjection of women to men and people to ruler.

ā€¦

Neither evil nor violence is part of the creation, but enter later, as a result of the first coupleā€™s sin and the connivance of the serpent (Genesis 3).

Thatā€™s a rather convenient interpretation. Usually itā€™s Eve who gets blamed for listening to the serpent and leading poor Adam into temptation.

If sin were equally on the first couple, how come Christianity (and Judaism, for that matter) spend so much time suppressing the feminine and excluding women from leading sacred rites (and yes there are women rabbis and ministers now, but how long did that take and how widespread is it?).

In a period when attendance at Christian Sunday schools is dwindling, the myth of redemptive violence has won childrenā€™s voluntary acquiescence to a regimen of indoctrination more extensive and effective than any in the history of religions.

So the suppression of heretical sects, the Inquisition, the ongoing exclusion of women from official positions of influence in most churchesā€¦ thatā€™s because of TV violence?

That the Myth of Redemptive Violence is with us and influences us ā€“ thatā€™s clear. That Christianity somehow stands against it is not.

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I have some trouble recognizing this too:

The simplicity of this story commended it widely, and its basic mythic structure spread as far as Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Germany, Ireland, India, and China. Typically, a male war god residing in the sky fights a decisive battle with a female divine being, usually depicted as a monster or dragon, residing in the sea or abyss (the feminine element).
I know Greek and Roman myths best and recognize sky gods fighting battles to establish the world, but not the overthrow of this female monster; Uranus, Cronus, Typhon, and the Gigantes are all males. The best recorded Germanic myths are Norse, where the world is made from the corpse of Ymir, a primordial monster but again male. I know the others less well, but the closest thing I could find for India was the sacrificial man Purusha, and I don't think I recognize the story at all from Egypt or China.

All in all, it looks like women are more likely to be left aside than made a central victim. Between this and what you point out, as far as femininity and creation stories go, their dichotomy between such creation myths and what happens in Abrahamic religions looks invented.

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I think I understand what the authorā€™s saying, but isnā€™t violence sort of part of nature? Early humans and proto-humans were predator and prey to small and large animals, and I canā€™t imagine that hasnā€™t become part of our genetic (neural) history.

I do agree that violence has become an end in itself (especially in historic feuds) but it seems to ā€œsell.ā€ Perhaps thereā€™s partly a biological reason for this.

That said, I enjoy murder mysteries (why? I dunno) but it sure would be nice if real violence could be done away with. But what could replace stories with a protagonist and an antagonist? Would such stories be as interesting?

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The point, as I understand it, is that, sure, itā€™s part of us and our history, but that thereā€™s a kind of fatalism thatā€™s taken hold, and weā€™ve come to believe that it canā€™t be overcome.

Isnā€™t that the entire point of the argument: that thereā€™s an implicit assumption that such conflicts must be solved violently, with either the destruction or the pacification of the antagonist?

Take Star Trek: The Next Generation as an example. There were always clear protagonists, and often clear antagonsists. How many of the problems were resolved through violence?

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Or you can have other antagonists: epidemics, floods, etc.

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