Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[SS-18 ICBM]

praise jesus.
"The 419 scam comes in many shapes and sizes [...] letters, faxes, and e-mail beseeching Americans in particular for funds to erect a new church or bolster a congregation are frequent"
-Misha Glenny, p. 165, McMafia

 

[Tee Kay]

"We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don’t think that was right and it never was right."

- Malcolm Fraser (as Prime Minister, 1980)

 

[MacAttack]

History is the autobiography of a madman - Alexander Herzen

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"I don't know of any liberals who buy chicken sandwiches from ISIS, so perhaps you don't have a point?"
-Mitbert Strangejoy, response to a comment on "An Attack on a U.S. Military Recruitment Facility" lamenting Chick-Fil-A's stance on homosexuals getting more US press than ISIS, The Atlantic

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Because they lacked the opportunity. When you have your basic needs taken care of it is only natural to turn inwards and look into ways of satisfying ego by external validation.

A) Culture matters
Apes have culture. Groups of the same species can have large hierarchies with lots of cruelty or low hierarchies with lots of love. You don't get to just dismiss it with an appeal to naturality like that. It to me seems clearly too pervasive as a factor for such acute lack of consideration.
B) The validation of our ego you speak of can just as much be love and kindness as it can be dominance or prestige, can it not? But you seem to merely focus on the latter, for some strange reason. Sure, humans got an ego and that ego is hungry. But there are many ways to feed and satisfy it. I have no idea why fighting for a place in a relatively adversary social hierarchy would be the "natural" way to feed it. But I'd agree that it naturally happens when thrown into such a hierarchy (since that is how it is the easiest to cope with it) and that this process has natural consequences. Such as cultural emphasize on narcissism and competition.
I also agree that this is not a new phenomena. Rather, it looks to me like a natural tendency of large societies. However, I agree with Hygro that we have reached new heights in that tendency. And as most natural tendencies, it can be fought, if so desired and kept in check. Or not.

 

[madviking]

It's ain't yeezy being rational, when your girl's booty transcends the noumenal

ahaha this is the best one

So If the devil wears Prada, and Adam and Eve wear nada, where does leave the constitution of man's aesthetic judgement?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

This is the best YouTube comment ever.
"You possibly don't know anything about world war WW2 is Axis vs Allies WW1 is Japan vs America"
-papa200991, comment on Let's Play Silent Hunter 4 - 0 (A Test Run, Lessons Learned)

 

[MacAttack]

This is the best YouTube comment ever.
"You possibly don't know anything about world war WW2 is Axis vs Allies WW1 is Japan vs America"
-papa200991, comment on Let's Play Silent Hunter 4 - 0 (A Test Run, Lessons Learned)

The posterboy for revisionist history?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"Lev Timofeev argues that prohibition tends to distort the market, favoring cartels and monopoly tendencies. This is because, he continues, larger organizations are more efficient at enforcing their monopoly than smaller ones. Translated into the vernacular, this means that big criminal groups can beat the the s*** out of smaller ones."
-Misha Glenny, p 227, McMafia

 

[cardgame]

Rules are supposed to keep you safe, not subjugated. - SkaeLeeOhs

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

English über alles!
"This article is one of the silliest I've read. If everyone published primarily in their native language science would be much less of a global endeavor. I don't get the point of the examples he gives of useful information being contained in the culture and language of small, isolated peoples in Indonesia and Australia. If anything those examples are reasons to send people to isolated cultures to teach them English. Of course that would likely destroy those cultures within a generation or two so I am NOT proposing it."
-Hineni47, response to "The Hidden Bias of Science’s Universal Language", The Atlantic

 

[Kozmos]

A) Culture matters
Apes have culture. Groups of the same species can have large hierarchies with lots of cruelty or low hierarchies with lots of love. You don't get to just dismiss it with an appeal to naturality like that. It to me seems clearly too pervasive as a factor for such acute lack of consideration.
B) The validation of our ego you speak of can just as much be love and kindness as it can be dominance or prestige, can it not? But you seem to merely focus on the latter, for some strange reason. Sure, humans got an ego and that ego is hungry. But there are many ways to feed and satisfy it. I have no idea why fighting for a place in a relatively adversary social hierarchy would be the "natural" way to feed it. But I'd agree that it naturally happens when thrown into such a hierarchy (since that is how it is the easiest to cope with it) and that this process has natural consequences. Such as cultural emphasize on narcissism and competition.
I also agree that this is not a new phenomena. Rather, it looks to me like a natural tendency of large societies. However, I agree with Hygro that we have reached new heights in that tendency. And as most natural tendencies, it can be fought, if so desired and kept in check. Or not.

A) Culture matters, of course. You can have a culture that tries to subdue the ego for the benefit of the majority. You end up with Japan with it's own peculiar statistical oddities and national quirks. Gaijin are still not appreciated very highly though. There are small communes and tribes that focus on cooperation, peace and love. It works, yes, but only on that level.

B) How many people can you make love you? Love and respect you in the real way, not in the popular media way of today, where you read up on biographies or watch documentaries and decide you know a person or something about anything. One, two, maybe a dozen or a hundred at most. But by dominating circumstances (economic, military, political, academic, <insert category>), you can make people fear and/or respect you in countless numbers. As history has shown. You are correct that this is a tendency of large societies, but large societies had to be built first, usually by before-mentioned process, at least to my knowledge.

I do think it should be fought, either by networking everyone at the thought level or by removing this silly belief in the idea of 'choice'.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

A recovering neocon explains why free-market triumphalism gets it so wrong:


"Political liberty—that is, the ability of societies to rule themselves—does not depend only on the degree to which a society can mobilize opposition to centralized power and impose constitutional constraints on the state. It must also have a state that is strong enough to act when action is required. Accountability does not run in just one direction, from the state to the society. If the government cannot act cohesively, if there is no broader sense of public purpose, then one will not have laid the basis for true political liberty. ... A political system that is all checks and balances is potentially no more successful than one with no checks, because governments periodically need strong and decisive action. The stability of an accountable political system thus rests on a broad balance of power between the state and its underlying society."

—Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order

 

[Kyriakos]

Worth noting that Francis Fukuyama is the one who in the 90s wrote the book "The End of History", with the core premise that there won't be more mass changes to borders or conditions, as in the past.

Which i suppose is why he has been trying to distance himself from Francis Fukuyama

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man

The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, expanding on his 1989 essay "The End of History?", published in the international affairs journal The National Interest. In the book, Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the endpoint of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."[1]

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Fukuyama pretty much states in the preface that The Origins of Political Order is a refutation of everything he said in The End of History. While he still thinks liberal democracy is 'the way', he no longer believes political evolution follows a linear, deterministic path of development, much less that it's inevitable or permanent.

 

[dutchfire]

English über alles!
"This article is one of the silliest I've read. If everyone published primarily in their native language science would be much less of a global endeavor. I don't get the point of the examples he gives of useful information being contained in the culture and language of small, isolated peoples in Indonesia and Australia. If anything those examples are reasons to send people to isolated cultures to teach them English. Of course that would likely destroy those cultures within a generation or two so I am NOT proposing it."
-Hineni47, response to "The Hidden Bias of Science’s Universal Language", The Atlantic

To be perfectly honest, I also found the article rather silly. Certainly less quality then I'd expect from the Atlantic. It seemed out of touch with the realities of the academic industry. The writer mentions the Netherlands as an example of an almost fully English speaking research nation, but fails to mention that a significant part of the research staff here is foreign. Changing to publishing in Dutch to accommodate for the locals wouldn't be a good idea.

The example of the indigenous tribes was also a bit strange, since to me it mostly demonstrates that there is useful knowledge to be gained outside of academia. Language has little to do with it. I doubt the isolated, native tribe from Indonesia would've been invited to scientific conferences even if they were somehow fluent in English.

 

[madviking]

"To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable."

Beethoven

 

[jackelgull]

"The world will never have lasting peace as long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith."
John Foster Dulles

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"It's the ultimate creationist argument, people getting upset over biological processes that must have happened for them to exist in the first place."
-Luke McKinney, on people getting horrified at the thought of their parents having sex, "6 Sexual Identities Everyone Still Thinks It's OK To Mock", Cracked

 

[classical_hero]

There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs &#8212; partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. Booker T Washington Pg 118 My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience