What in the Cold War conspiracy theory was that...
>> The Kremlin’s design necessarily depends on the adoption of a single world belief system or religion. Expect a syncretic, gnostic blend, rooted in hierarchy — the Russian Orthodox Church at the core, and other religious factions accorded favor based on demonstrated fealty.
Good luck with that. The most popular religions today are forked versions of one guys story that they couldn't agree on and have been involved in acts of genocide towards one another because of it--for centuries.
What is hard about it? They rope themselves everywhere around it to clean it up. Even a basic robot can put stickers. An even easier and cheaper way is to require it for new constructions.
You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies and billions of years of timespan. That you are sitting here reading these typed words is nothing short of incredible, in a world that many want to model as a Newtonian marble-universe devoid of life and consciousness.
People denounce past lives and future lives, but have no qualms about hanging on to their current life, as if that is worth anything more in the grander scheme of things. That's not to say it's a solution to end it all, but just pointing out the lack of logical thinking and grander perspective, that leads many thinking minds astray.
Or think of it like a hacker: You're cast out as the solitary sentient entity within a huge cosmos with many possibilities and experiences. What do you want to do today?
In many spiritual circles, luck has nothing to do with it, but inevitability does. Mathematics, if advanced enough, could maybe come to the same conclusion. But it's a matter of perspective. What perspective do we inhabit today?
One where everything can be explained (away)?
Or one where we cannot even explain what existence and sentience is, or why everything seems to become empty but still infinitely complex, when we zoom into them?
> You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies and billions of years of timespan. That you are sitting here reading these typed words is nothing short of incredible,
There's nothing incredible about being the only kind of human known to humans. Classic anthropic principle, making every kind of human special as long as they haven't met any other kind.
> You're one out of 8 billion people, the only known humans inhabiting an incredible vast cosmos with billions of galaxies and billions of years of timespan
Sure, but there are also 10^18 insects, and untold other critters too. Given the size of the universe there are likely also billions of other planets with life out there.
It doesn't make sense to call existing and being alive lucky, since that's not a statistical outcome - 100% of humans/etc are alive. I suppose you could call temporarily being part of a living organism a "lucky" outcome for a carbon molecule, since for "them" it's not a guaranteed thing.
As a human, things to consider yourself lucky for, rather than existing at all, as we all do, are things like where you were born, and who your parents are. Were you born into poverty, or some weird religious cult, or lucky to be born into some more fortunate circumstance?
Most pop science writers and readers don't understand the depth of factors involved in creating a habitable planet here. If they did, a simple chat with a better LLM would reveal that the possibility for life is far more rare than in the Universe than is commonly calculated estimating, say, only for "goldilocks zone" planets. Even plugging in one additional obvious factor other than distance to the star, such as planetary tilt, puts the estimation for the nearest possible planet at 2.5 million light years away (when starting with a reasonable estimation for the number of stars in the universe, which you will also need to pare down filtering for star type). And the factors involved go far beyond, including those involving other characteristics of the Star both in isolation and in relationship to those of the planet, and possibly additional solar system bodies like moons and perhaps more.
Then compare in ratio to the number of planets that don't hold life, and in general the vast absence of life in the Universe. Which is far more impressive in its commonness than the existence of Life.
Not feeling "Lucky" to be here is arguably a spiritual crime and, whether or not one is amenable to that type of guilt, perhaps also one of intellect. Sincerely, this is fully a generalized comment and I'm not trying to insult you.
The rarity of goldilocks life-friendly plants seems far outweighed by the astronomical number of planets that must be out there... 100B stars in our own galaxy, and 100B-1T galaxies in the observable universe. Even if on average each galaxy only has one star/planet with life (i.e. only a 1-in-100,000,000,000 chance of a planet having life), that'd still mean 1T planets with life out there! In reality I'd bet there are tons of planets with life in our galaxy.
I'm not sure where you are getting "vast absence of life in the Universe" from... Our search for intelligent life has been limited to looking for radio transmissions. I wonder what the stats are on an intelligent species in our nearest neighboring galaxy happening on our own transmissions?
It's good to feel lucky/thankful for ones own fortunate circumstances, but merely existing isn't really one of them. If you are a drugged-up child soldier in Africa, who has just been forced to kill your own parents, then should you be feeling lucky to be alive?
>The rarity of goldilocks life-friendly plants seems far outweighed by the astronomical number of planets that must be out there...
This math gets to be complicated even for people skilled in it. But with the assistance of Claude 3.5, using a specific estimate of one septillion total stars in the Universe, and fitting only a couple of extra (beyond the Goldilocks distance) yet basic likely required variables like Star type and axial tilt (my position is that there are very likely many more required variables), the total number of possible planets in the entire Universe is around 100 million iirc. And that's without variables for multiple Solar System bodies that may need to further align. With the closest possible planet probably being a distant 2.5 million light years away. The possibilities could rapidly reduce in probable number, if one or more extra variables were fitted. The number of extra variables that may need to be fitted is unknown. However, multiple characteristics of Earth exhibit multiple remarkable correlations with characteristics of the Sun, Moon, and possibly more. Are correlations of these types required for a Planet to form a life supporting atmosphere and surface? It's a strong possibility in my opinion.
There are a lot of planets. Though, the number of planets that could hold life may be overestimated given probable underestimation of the required confluent factors needed for life.
>I'm not sure where you are getting "vast absence of life in the Universe" from.
Really? Even "close" distances between intergalactic bodies tend to be beyond most people's ability to comprehend them. Life is absent in those spaces, and these distances comprise almost 100% of the Universe. In addition, the only known life in the entire Universe is on this planet. Everything else is speculation until proven otherwise.
>It's good to feel lucky/thankful for ones own fortunate circumstances, but merely existing isn't really one of them.
I and many more would disagree. Perception on this matter is personal, and in part a factor of intentional specific use of one's cognition to appreciate how rare and unlikely this is.
>If you are a drugged-up child soldier in Africa, who has just been forced to kill your own parents, then should you be feeling lucky to be alive?
That this is hypothetical aside, in my opinion there's nothing more true on this matter than the assertion that you'd have to ask them. Whether or not you and I approve of their existence is another matter.
Nightmarish miseries have always existed here. As has bliss. They've never been justly meted, and about as far from evenly as possible.
Still, that dichotomy and everything else that characterizes life is a part of the total human experience. We've never had one without the other, and may never unfortunately. That may be the nature of life.
Therefore the essence of the question may boil down to whether or not you and the median child soldier would rather this collective existence of unjustly partitioned joy and misery, or instead nothing but the cold vacuum of a completely lifeless Universe.
I don't think that it's rational to marginalize the specialness of the experience of this Life just because misery exists. Though, for sure many people would agree with you while many would agree with me. Both miserable and not.
Most people have been miserable at some point and most have gotten through it, extreme circumstances aside. Are most people who come through their misery happy to have remained alive to see the other side of it?
You're likely to have had ancestors that lived extremely short, violent, and miserable lives. Possibly somewhat parallel to that of the hypothetical child soldier. Yet, they or their siblings persevered to reproduce, and down the line some their relatives likely experienced lives full of relative happiness abetted by the possibly unlikely gifts of this Earth. Would it have been better for none of them to exist at all? Alternately, we might accept that Life here is a unique miracle, to our knowledge, which has a striking and inescapable dual nature.
That said, everyone looks forward to a future wherein we can eliminate such nightmarish human misery as much as possible: ideally to zero.
> In many spiritual circles, luck has nothing to do with it, but inevitability does.
What do you mean exactly? Say, the notion of karma in Eastern religions is a way to explain at least some amount of what is commonly dubbed "luck".
But from the perspective of someone ignorant of karmic ties, can't it only be considered luck/random? Furthermore, isn't more genuine luck/randomness (free-will?) causing such initial ties?
It depends on perspective. If you look into karma, it only holds for the perspective of sequences of lifetimes, or a couple of lifetimes being interwoven by karmic ties. What karma is is also very mystical, but not unthinkable physically speaking. Ie. gene expressions can flip during a lifetime, thus our genes hold memories lasting for at least a couple of generations. So ancestral karma is also a concept, but hard to research of course.
From a holistic and wider perspective of wholeness, everything may be said to be predestined. From a spiritual perspective, it's about how everything is set up in order to have certain experiences and maybe "lessons". Mathematically, if you have all the variables, everything that may happen can be solved by calculation, however that is done on the cosmic scales.
If the idiot is guided by a higher mind, then there's no room for "luck" on the grandest scales, but it will look like luck to the person, as a unique and individual experience.
That's been in use for thousands of years already: yoga, pranayama and meditation.
There are courses one can take where one learns this, like Art of Living and any other that follows the same traditions.
Yes, there's research on that, and new studies should absolutely gain from this study. Not entirely sure you'll observe the same effect, that depends on meditator, but you can fall asleep during practice.
I have over a decade experience with it, and have also participated on a study on breathing exercises and epigenetic effects from that versus blind control.
Meditation is a practice, you practice to keep your mind "clean" and don't clutter it with unnecessary thoughts, worries, etc. If you master this skill, you will require less sleep. And then you don't have to be sitting on the floor all the time, you can just live your life without cluttering your mind all the time. So it is ultimately more efficient than cluttering your mind all day and then needing lots of sleep. But it does take some initial practicing time before you reach that state of mind. But with all things, if you put some effort in beforehand, you can reap a lot of gain afterwards. Doing this practice for about 20/30 minutes every morning can already quickly bring great improvement to your daily life. If done right that is. It's easy to do it wrong also, and then it can not bring any benefit. Sometimes it's necessary to first work out some traumas before you start a serious meditation practice. Sometimes meditation actually helps you work out traumas. It all depends on the person and situation. For some people guided meditation works great, other people rather just sit in silence. It doesn't really matter, as long as you find something that works for you.
See it like exercising: you might think that spending time on exercising takes away time that you could spend on doing useful things. But it actually gives you better health, making you function better in your daily life. So it enables you to do things more efficiently. And you'll feel healthier, better, happier. So ultimately you gain from it.
I think the point would be if you could replace ~8 hours of sleep with ~1-2 hours of meditation. I very much doubt it's a like-for-like replacement, but it might go some way to reducing the need for full sleep, e.g. 2 hours meditating + 2 hours sleeping = 8 hours sleeping.
What people really require for sleep vary a lot. But there are claims some people practicing very intensely, need only 4-6 hours of sleep at night. That's rarely a goal in itself though, as it's not a means to become more efficient or "save time", in a traditional, linear way of thinking at least.
However, the goal of meditation can be very diverse, since there are many different techniques, each with their own aims and side-effects. Generally, the main goal is often to calm the mind, make the body relax and let go of stress. There are many more benefits though, which you only realize when doing personal and experiencial practice over longer periods of time. It's not like the effects are the same for each person even, so it's more like a discovery process rather than do A, B, C techniques for X, Y, Z gains. However, there's a baseline of methods and general health, which is what it's usually used for. Very few people are suited to be munks or living in secluded communes like that. But it can be Very nice to be on a 1-2 week retreat now and then.
“You should meditate 10 minutes each day,” the teacher said.
“But I can’t find 10 minutes every day!” said the student.
“Then,” replied the teacher, “you should meditate for 60 minutes each day.”
It's hilarious to me that these practices are laughed off, trivialized through memes and hyper-objectivity (science can't evaluate their value in a practical manner -> "Lulz hippie-dippie nonsense for ditzy/ungrounded women!!!!" -- Western dolt). Its insane considering their benefits...that are of course tragically perfect for those who would never participate
Of course that's a huge generality, I'd say it may be 1 out of 5 people like that in the US, but its the fact that it is not constrained to any particular demographic/background.
I've seen actual psychiatrists suggesting meditation or yoga as additional ways to help with certain issues (eg anxiety) along with medicine, and the benefits of say, just conscious, controlled breathing as is involved in both are obvious to anyone who has a temper.
I wouldn't be surprised if the idea that it's completely useless because it can't be scientifically observed in a traditional sense is highly correlated with people who think that mental health issues aren't real in general.
There are studies on this, and I see they've been updated a bit. It doesn't seem to replace sleep due to Delta-waves during deep sleep, but can be used over time to maybe reduce the need for sleep. Enough sleep is of course important for clarity of mind and for releasing toxins and stress. In the West we often suffer from chronic sleep-deprivation, so meditation may help in that as well as ensuring enough rest in order to recuperate.
You don't really need studies for this when you can have experiential evidence through own practices, which is much more important for an individual than external studies.
Even if we had net zero emissions of GHG today, which we can't, we would also need to remove much of what we already emitted. Otherwise effects of GHG concentrations will still warm the planet for centuries, maybe even thousands- to millions of years with feedback loop effects.
Going zero emission today would mean most people would starve and not have proper transportation. But without a job, they maybe wouldn't have need for that..
As long as is needed to transition away from burning fossil fuels. You can always put more in high altitude. If half the comments here are right and climate change is truly an apocalyptic threat, then acid rain and global dimming would be worthwhile tradeoffs.
If climate change isn't extremely bad, then maybe it's not worth it. But at some point, if it becomes existential, then all options are on the table.
> Masking the problem will only make it come back harder when measures don't scale up anymore.
If (e.g.) China stops the US can start, or if a small country can't scale up enough more countries can join in. The whole "termination shock" thing is highly overrated, it's solvable with next to no communication at all. Decision rule: if not enough is being sprayed according to your models, make up the difference yourself.
The most shocking is the sea surface temperature, but we see rising temperature in all layers of the troposphere. A factor that has dampened global warming for very long, since the last ice age, is the ocean's capacity for absorbing heat. If this gets saturated, and since surface waters don't mix much with deep waters.. If the same surplus heat equivalent to 15 hiroshima bombs per second today hits the surface, and rising. All that goes into heating air and surface, it's going to accellerate warming going forward. Early projections are in fact showing accelleration already.
That most people are incapable of emotionally processing this, is part of the problem.
There's a good chance that the sudden bump in sea surface temperature is a consequence of us cleaning up marine diesel. Which is at least interesting, because it suggests we were doing geoengineering without even knowing it.
(Random thought: what's the sulphur content of automotive diesel? I know it's cleaner, but there are so many more cars than boats. Could we see another sea surface temperature bump as we phase out diesel cars?)
All these are temporary masking conditions. They also add to feedback effects, for increased warming. So could be partly accellerating heating as well.
I think some researchers are seeing accelleration in the overall trend. You can eyeball this with a ruler as well. Even though it might be too early to tell, it's hard to find any negative feedback loops to counter all these positive ones.
For cars, I think we'd probably see increase in surface temperature on land. People might care a bit more then. It could be removed from both gas and diesel. That would bring pollution down, but also remove aerosols currently masking effects from GHG.
UPDATE: As noted in another comment here. Car fuel is quite a bit different category than bunker fuel (heavy fuel oil). We might still observe "unmasking"-impacts if implemented generally though. We'd notice it more too, as the impact would be right where we use our cars.
No useful comment, except to say I thought that was a great response. Thoughtful and detailed despite being an extended "it's complicated". My ignorance feels much better informed ;)
Is 1+ enough of a trend to disregard most of the models? Is there no other explanation for the "new paradigm" of accelerating warming? You're saying that extreme warming scenario is now the correct science. I don't think there is a consensus about this.
It's not enough to call it a change of trend. I have another comment here where there are other, more temporary factors that also came into play. There's not consensus until after we see the new trend. Likely there are some temporary factors that will make the lines go down again when they wear out. But the overall trend might still be accellerating, just that it's going slower than normal human reference of time.
The increasing sea surface temperature is concerning because it directly is starting to harm millions of sea creatures that cannot adapt fast enough. There are multiple die-offs happening already that might be due to this.
I just provided links with the latest diagrams, facts. You provided what, ad hominem attacks and projection?
I suggest to read up on the matter, in order to contribute something of value. There are lots of content derived from scientific studies and facts that present unbiased, objective material.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrepperIntel/s/scOu1QuhNt
"Project Russia" is spiritual warfare
https://washingtonspectator.org/project-russia-reveals-putin...
Billionaire ransacking the Treasury https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/senator-warns-of-national-...
Bernie's statement about this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mL0crkf5Dzw