Same in return!:-D

I like to think that we all waste many of our talents here - it’s what brings us all together:-).

My theory was that they had kept him tucked away somewhere in Vorlon space all that time - I forget if they said he worked over others, but if so then he could have been kept either in stasis or merely with no work to be done in-between, which might be heaven for some but for his personality type seemed like hell.

But either way, like you said about Lyta, he was an absolute tool - their absolute tool.

Yeah and he could also have been a clone, so both rather than either-or:-). I don’t think they’d hesitate to lie to him, or conversely to tell the truth about his abduction, so if he has memories that they allowed him to keep I presume they would be real - the Vorlons just couldn’t care less otherwise so why not? (Occam’s Razor)

You bring up a very interesting point about Kosh: yes the Vorlons were assholes, but he (it? they?) was not - and oddly enough, it wasn’t that he “wasn’t a (real) Vorlon”, but rather like he was a true one and all the others were the fakes?

I don’t quite have the words but like, he was what he was because he knew about the ancient task that they had set out for themselves hundreds of thousands or even millions of years hence, and decided to actually do it rather than as the others all seemed to, do the exact opposite of “guide” the younger races (to self-discovery).

John Sheridan was ofc the same type, as too was G’Kar: both men ready for war, while in the service of peace (a different purpose than the Vorlons… or is it?).

We see this all over now: people showing up on January 6 at the USA capital to “defend” democracy by… overthrowing it? And religion that somehow becomes warped into diddling kids, yet side by side with others in the “exact same” religion who take care of widows and orphans and do so much good in the world. The cheaters are never going to be honest about who they are, preferring instead to hide out within the existing substance living as parasites rather than do the work of making their own structures, borrowing its reputation and forms of earned authority - e.g. President Clark did not declare himself an emperor but retained the title of a democratic “President”, despite the literal coup that gave him that position.

Kosh, John, and G’Kar were those who refused to blindly follow their culture to “just do the thing”, and instead questioned everything according to the logical principles of self-consistency: “is what I’m doing right according to the goal that I want to eventually reach?”, and by doing such they not only served their peoples (hehe, but not necessarily the ones in charge at the time) but also lead them, as in they went out ahead and did that next right thing, thus setting an example for others to follow, if they wanted.

So I said that I lacked the words but a stab at it could be: Kosh was who he was not despite being a Vorlon, but rather because of it. However, if true, that has massive implications for the nature of Truth, i.e. it must not be defined by a majority-rules consensus (even for something like a race of people or a democracy) and rather some other standard that if not purely external then at least is not entirely internally defined, in the sense that it is a combination of whatever was internal but also subject to the (external?) constraints imposed by the need to remain logically consistent.

As in, there was a “correct” way to be, and Kosh chose it in defiance of his people, which we as consumers of the media recognize and respect.

That show is so deep. Or perhaps it is better to say that I feel deeper as a result of thinking about the material presented in the show.:-)

Are you implying that the credit is here? If so, where? I am not seeing it.

Afaict he is the last “investigative journalist” left in America, though he is biased himself, yet who else comes close that amount of depth?

At the same time, his leaving was also a success story in itself. He had all the money he ever needed in life, he was at the top of his game except just was exhausted working that continual grind, and was feeling his age so unlike e.g. any member of Congress, decided to voluntarily relinquish his power in order to create room for new people to step up, while he went on to blaze entirely new pioneer territory outside of mainstream TV, which was quite a risk even for someone like him. Wow… what a class act! 😍

I have heard that that word most often translated as “virgin” is elsewhere translated as “maiden” aka young woman just out of girlhood. I always wonder how much emphasis has been placed on that translation effect:-).

Open source software may be a good model to look at. People contribute bc they want to, regardless of any monetary remuneration.

But it’s hard, and a for-profit corporation can often move forward more quickly to develop an objectively better project. Except even though they *could", they (usually) don’t, and really they have zero reason to, bc their goal is to make a profit, not a product. Reddit vs. Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin/etc. is one such example.

But it gets complicated bc of all the counterexamples, like at one time Google really was awesome, and free, so most of the open source projects did not push hard to replace it, bc it worked so well for so many. Similar to Lemmy I suppose - before the Rexit it had existed for many years, but it wasn’t until that shakeup that it was propelled forward extremely quickly by the influx of developers, e.g. who made the front end apps. Before that, the Reddit experience was fairly good even if not great, so not as many people bothered.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

It is so creative! Like, is he good/redeemed, or rather still has evil/maladaptive qualities even if harnessed to now be put to better use for the benefit of himself + (a wider, larger) society, or is the situation far more complex than that? It is definitely one that sticks with you:-).

That’s so neat, thanks for sharing!:-)

I want to be able to say it is copium, where they want to do well but are just hiding the truth from themselves how predatory the game would be.

But I cannot, bc some people in the world really truly are like that. Sometimes they make games and sometimes they merely play them.

If your TV is talking to you… you might be possessed? :-D

“I speak alternative facts, making others do the work of figuring out what I meant.”

vs.

“I have researched in-depth and know what I am talking about and why.”

Tbf there are probably far-right people who are more like the latter. Just b/c I do not recall ever hearing those arguments does not mean that they don’t exist!

First, a lot of people are indeed falling into solipsism. However, not everyone is, and not everything is “impossible”. It is true that the barriers can sometimes be high, but they are never insurmountable - e.g., how hard would it be for someone to go get a medical degree? Okay, so that one is high, but there are other, much more low-hanging fruit! e.g. if a religious authority figure says that “nobody will die”, and then a couple of months later, half the congregation dies, that does not need a decade’s worth of study to figure out that the person “lied”. Either knowingly or unknowingly.

Which brings me to point 2: if you can say the former phrase about lying unknowingly, then the definition of lying must be a bit broader than what you are using? People can be said to be “living a lie”, as you said b/c they find out later - but perhaps even if they do not? Google’s AI when I type in “lie” says:

used with reference to a situation involving deception or founded on a mistaken impression

So someone can be lying unknowingly if they pass on a statement that is itself a lie - and depending on the context, the punishment might not even be that much less severe, i.e. whenever the consequences are highly severe. But it varies with the level of “responsibility” aka the expectations set forth. Example: a nurse repeats word-for-word what they are told by a doctor to say - are they lying? Not really, especially if they are clear to attribute what is being done, in terms of merely “relaying” the message. The message itself may be a lie, but the person was clear, so is not a responsible agent for the deception, even if participating in it. But a doctor prescribing ivermectin on the other hand? They should have known better, and thereby for a person in such a position of responsibility to pass on improper information, may still constitute a “lie” in that case, even if an unknowing one - b/c they should have known. And if they did not know, then they should have found out. Others may need DECADES of study to catch up to them, but for a doctor who already knows the foundational framework, it is only a matter of a few hours to read some primary source material to catch up on exactly whether that drug is indicated in that scenario, and like what the side-effects are, etc.

In the above I had to make a major presumption here, in that someone did not pollute the various information streams that doctors have access to. Indeed if that were to happen, then it is possible for even doctors to, while passing on incorrect information, not be “lying” while doing so, in the same manner as a nurse. But I think at least that my former scenario is what happened during the pandemic? Someone started talking about using that horse drug, doing the work of a scientist except skipping the parts about actually doing proper testing, and so essentially doing unauthorized “human trial experiments” on actual, live human test subjects! :-( Perhaps they thought it was for the greater good even, like if people were going to die anyway then at least they could offer some protection? Except that’s not even how that drug works under the most ideal conditions, thus doing so violates the most foundational and sacred oaths of the medical profession: to first do no harm. So then… it’s a lie either way? Whether through nearly criminal ignorance or to fully criminal and unethical behavior. Tbf, not every “doctor” is a good one, BUT, in defense of my position, EVERY doctor (in the USA at least, and I thought in every part of the world?) MUST take the Hippocratic Oath. So it gets REALLY hard to defend such a person then, who either lied while taking it (in that they could not in fact manage to uphold those standards of integrity) or got lazy later on in terms of upholding it.

Which begs the next question: how can someone both “lie” and yet “not know that they are lying” at the same time? Admittedly this one is fairly complex in needing to dig deeper into human psychology. Or, I don’t even think this is unique to humans, though it does seem far more developed in us than in animals. Let us switch scenarios b/c I think I have an easier one here. Let us say that a person has read the Christian Bible, and know for certain what the commandment by Jesus to “love one another” means - it means to be patient, and… you know what, let’s just stop there. So when someone KNOWS that they have been COMMANDED to be patient, and yet they are NOT patient, but they still call themselves a “Christian” - that word means “follower of” btw - how then are they not “lying”? The answer, I believe, is that they are lying to themselves. Specifically, I am referring to cognitive dissonance: b/c our brains are complex enough that we utilize neural pathways that interconnect with one another without necessarily having to uphold one single, consistent Truth, it is fully possible for someone to both “know that they are lying”, but also “not know that they are lying”, at the same time. Such a person is usually LOUD in their condemnation of others who lie, and who e.g. are impatient, and yet they do not choose to see that they themselves are being thus. Hence the lie, b/c this is “knowing / willful misrepresentation of the Truth”, the caveat being that here, only half of the cognitive processes are aware that it is a lie, while the other half act as if it is legit. These people will look you full in your face and claim that they are telling you the Truth. And that is the Truth. But it is also a lie.

2+2=4 | 2, 4} ∈ ℤ is a True statement? But if I say then that 2+2=2 {2, 4 ∈ ℤ is also a True statement, is that a lie? What if I have no idea what those things (“numbers”) mean? That gets back to that “accountability” issue from above - I really should know that, and all the more so if I am the one bringing them up? So acknowledging that and setting it aside, adding statements that are untrue converts a True statement into a False one. “There exists a True statement within this pair of statements” is True, but the overall pack of them is False. Hence, someone suffering from cognitive dissonance is guilty of telling a lie, to themselves. We all do it I am sure, it takes ENORMOUS efforts not to, especially when our culture is… well, as you mentioned, the way that it is. Though as we agreed: it is a descriptive statement to say that if and when that happens, those statements are still “lies”, even if they are only partially known while partially unknown.

And all the more so when someone raises themselves up to become a (co-)leader of a nation - e.g. by voting. In that case, the statement that “they should have known” raises that specter, yet again, of responsibility: if they are going to chart the way forward for the entire nation - i.e. by depriving people of certain rights, like to medical care - then they should have thought deeper about the matter, and the excuse “but I did not know” does not work anymore. The reason it does not work anymore is b/c if you ever cross one of these people, they will cite this exact thing to you: YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. It is the metric by which they judge - so it is not even me judging them, so much as acknowledging that this is the metric by which they judge themselves, and indeed by which we all judge our “leaders”. At which point… they really should have known better, than to believe in a lie so hard that they actually vote on it, and all the more so when they do that in order to overturn the determinations of the people who actually DO know better - e.g. the doctors, who are aware that ivermectin is a horse drug, and if ever to be used in humans is only for extreme cases and for malaria, not covid and especially not as a preventative, and all the more so not as a substitute for a vaccine.

(also @Crackhappy@lemmy.world)

The older I get, the more I think that people primarily lie to themselves, and then tell others that “truth” that they have internalized.

Part of this is that people think in a sloppy manner, but if they were to acknowledge that (to themselves) then it would cause emotional distress. So they… don’t. To clarify: I don’t even say that fully as a value judgement so much as an observation of human psychology i.e. an instance of the natural world. And yes I include myself in this as well:-).

This paradox means then that these “truth-tellers” are fully literally incapable of telling you the objective Truth, b/c they do not know it themselves - and even if they are aware that they do not know, that part they will not admit for fear of being perceived as weak. (Edit: obviously there is a spectrum here, and different people operate in different modes at different times, e.g. an actor who knows a lot about conveying emotions with their facial expressions might not know anything about physics and vice versa, but neither of them knowing anything about pediatric care, and so on - so even someone who is capable of telling the truth in their chosen area of expertise might not be capable of doing so outside of that sphere, especially if they drink their own cool-aid and allow themselves to forget where the proper demarcating line is - which seems to me to be roughly 100% of all people who ever lived… though I might not be fully capable of telling the truth there?:-P)

Another part is the lies that get passed back and forth so often that they begin to take on a ring of truthiness - this seems to just be an extension of the above, using an external second party rather than happening solely inside of one brain. (This one I *do* levy a value judgement at: just b/c all your “friends” think that a vaccine does not work, does not outweigh the opinions of actual medical professionals - nor do such people even truly believe in this manner themselves, b/c whenever they get sick do they turn to their “friends” or do they suddenly cry out for help from an actual doctor? this is just hypocrisy plain & simple: “hanging out” and “playing around with”, like a kid in a playground, is not the same thing as “believing” in the adult world, and when shit finally gets real these people suddenly start adulting, so why not do the adulting at all times, especially when e.g. voting on things that affect millions of other humans?)

This second group could tell the objective Truth - b/c they suddenly do it themselves when they have a personal stake in the matter - but for whatever reason they choose not to, I guess for fear of losing friends.

Either way, it seems unreasonable to expect the truth from someone who does not value that concept themselves - either in their own minds or in their discourse with others. The same with compassion, and patience, and every other aspect of life that can variously be either a virtue or a deficit depending on how much someone has or lacks of it.

You cannot extract blood from a stone.

Replaces the older .com format, also compatible with the .bat and .lnk wrappers too.

Very big table, complex operations, much waiting, so yeah.

In this comic, bodily decomposition occurs at a “feels like” pace:-).

Wouldn’t that be funny if like, someone splashed water (or coffee?) on their shirt and while changing it (and thus it was off), managed to survive the horror that killed everyone else?

And then did it again, and again, and again - until eventually they realized that it was literally a fundamental law in the universe that redshirts die, not just bc they are security and thus the first line of defense, but literally because they wear red shirts!?

TNG explored that thought I suppose, several times, especially with the Moriarty story arc.

I just love thinking about things like that :-P.

In the case of redshirts, it would be unethical to test the premise empirically though.