SkittyDog's comments

* https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Under "In Comments"...

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

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> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

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> Please don't post shallow dismissals...

You're not wrong about the difference in vibes. And there were plenty of other music festivals in the 90s that did feature lineups more akin to the original Woodstock... But those festivals were pretty small in comparison, because the main thrust of popular music had changed so drastically in the decades since the original.

And attendance will ultimately limit the amount of money everyone can make--organizers, bands, vendors, drug dealers, etc. The money provides a strong motivation to cater to current popular tastes, because the festival has a bigger potential audience.

And given how well-attended the festival turned out to be, I think it's safe to say that they were right... If only a couple of thousand people had turned up, that would be a different story.

The classic example is talking about disgusting topics before serving someone a meal... If you tell someone a story about a sewage plant worker falling into an open vat of raw human feces, and then later contracting a bunch of diseases because the fecal matter infiltrated their mouth, nose, eyes, and ears... The people hearing that story will eat less on average, and be more likely to refuse food outright, than a control group who heard a neutral story that removes the sewage and contamination elements.

Another example: People who hear a story about a war hero saving their comrades lives by sacrificing their own are subsequently more likely to offer to help random strangers with tasks like changing a flat tire, or carrying a heavy package.

And the behavior changes are mostly transient... The effect doesn't generally last beyond a few hours or days, unless the priming process is repeated.

So researchers can use priming to explore human motivations, and reveal connections that the subjects aren't even consciously aware of. It still depends on careful experimental design, because you never really know exactly why people are responding to the priming stimulus. But if you pick your stimuli carefully, you can usually eliminate alternative possibilities pretty well.

> In healthy volunteers and right- but not left-onset patients, religious belief-scores significantly increased following the aesthetic prime consisting of the ocean view (a wonderful reward) but not the death prime. (The religious ritual prime increased religious belief only inconsistently, with little impact compared with that of the ocean view.) The results directly refuted the anxiety theory of religion while supporting the notion that religiosity was spurred by the quest for unexpected reward.

He's using a concept called "priming" to study the impact that different thoughts have on his subjects receptivity to religious sentiment. If Freud's theory is correct (religion being driven mainly by our fear of death) then we would expect the people who heard the ending about witnessing someone's death to express more religious sentiment, afterwards, because the story "primed" (reminded them of) human mortality.

But that's not what he observed... Subjects who heard the death ending were not more likely to express religious sentiment.

The religious ritual ending also didn't significantly increase religion sentiment. Only the ocean view ending, with it's imagery of breathtaking natural beauty, actually achieved an increase in religious sentiment.

So it suggests that Freud's theory is incorrect.

I'm glad you're working on finding a more polite way to talk about things you disagree with... Your new comment is an improvement, but it's still hella low-key argumentive, and needlessly insulting to the people around you.

You need to learn how to disagree with people without making other people out to be jerks.

I'd've thought that all the downvotes on your last comment would've helped drive the point home, but I guess not. Maybe it just takes time to learn this stuff.

But as for me... Until you take some responsibility for the words you're choosing, and start making better comments, I'm still not interested in trying to have any kind of conversation with you. LMK when you want to try again.

A nurse with a Bachelor's degree, more or less

Anyhow, NAWPA is some fascinating stuff... It's completely insane and a terrible idea, but it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer size of it.

Kinda got me wondering now... Would the biggest version of NAWPA exceed the size of the Atlantropa idea, in terms of how much land area they each would flood/drain? I mean, the Mediterranean Sea is pretty big, but...

The state's legislative apparatus will always do (and ONLY do) that which is achieved by the outcome of all the competing interests and their efforts at lobbying, contributing, marketing, persuading, bribing, intimidating, etc, etc. Occasionally there may be room for the individual conscience of a principled actor. But most often the ethics of individuals don't mean anything in the face of the economic, political, and cultural forces that shape state policy.

Even with direct ballot intiatives, we've just shifted the target of all those lobbying efforts from the statehouse to your house. The mass of voters might be less immediately corrupt and power-hungry than professional politicians in the legislature, but we're also more ignorant, stupid, distracted, and impatient than the pros.. And since ballot initiatives because a thing, we've managed to create about as many serious problems as we've been able to solve.

There is no such thing as "easily" when it comes to making laws--unless you're a dictator with a firm grip on power.

Rather than space aliens, I find it far more compelling to consider that:

• Russia had been severely traumatized by WWII, less than a generation earlier. Tens of millions died in combat and of starvation.

• After WWII, Russia awas again severely traumatized by Stalinism and his political purges. For a decade, anyone who was even suspected of stepping out of line was oiable to get imprisoned or just executed.

• During the 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA was attempting to train Russian expatriates in the West to return to Russia as spies and organizers of underground resistance in the event WWIII broke out. The program was a complete disaster... The CIA trained and equipped dozens of young men, and then PARACHUTED them into Eastern Bloc countries,after which none of them were ever heard from, ever again. (It's assumed they were all immediately caught and executed.)

So in the early 1960s, when some dude in a parachute lands in your village, I think it's far less speculative to assume that they were afraid Yuri Gagarin might be a Western spy.

No need for space aliens... And no need to insult the intelligence of these Russians by lumping them in with ol' Karen up in Lethbridge, who was such a simple rube that we all laugh at her for calling the police on a Stormtrooper.

Honestly, I see why the "space aliens" narrative is appealing: It's funnier! It's hilarious to imagine old timey Russian villagers, hiding in fear of space invaders.

Unless anybody reading this happens to be Russian, in which case we'd be making up silly stories that mainly serve to depeict their parents or grandparents as a bunch of simple, stupid, gullible pigeons.

And I just don't see the point in that whole line of thinking, when we already have much more plausible theories, already.

This is rude, and unnecessary. If your own counter-argument is actually sound, why are you bothering to label Reisner's as trash? It doesn't make you more believable--it mostly just undermines your credibility, because you apparently don't trust the soundness of your arguments to stand on their own.

Have you read the HN comment guidelines? I'll quote something that you might want to consider:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Right now, I have zero interest in engaging with you, because of the unpleasantly combatitive way you've chosen to approach the topic. What would even be the point of trying to have a discussion with someone who believes it's OK to speak to strangers like this?

Consider rewriting your comment, and maybe we can talk about the actual merits of Reisner... As it is now, good luck, and I hope you learn a better way to interact with the world.

I think the US in 1938 was maybe in a distinct situation, though... For one, the US in the 30s may have been primed to thoughts of space aliens by the consumption of mass quantities of SF--radio serials, films, books, etc.

Also, the real-world news in 1938 was pretty tense, and very heavy on the specific theme of invasion... WWII was already swinging in the Pacific, and everybody in Europe was expecting the shooting to start soon. Here in the US, there was a general sense that we'd get violently drawn into it, sooner or later.

So I dunno... You definitely moved the needle for me on this one, but I'm still pretty skeptical that some isolated Siberian farmers in the 1960s would go straight for the "space aliens" explanation. Maybe I'm just rationalizing my earlier post--I'd be the last to know.

Mark Reisner originally wrote the book in the early 1990s, and his predictions have turned out to be quite accurate over the last three decades.

If you want to make informed decisions, as a voter and a resident, this is probably the single most important thing you need to get educated about.

Their closest Grizzly encounter was a bear that stumbled across them, and charged at their lead skier from ~200m out. The guide shot the bear twice, but it still managed to get within 20m of the group before it dropped.

Here in the US, I know two hikers who've been attacked by Grizzlies in the Rockies, and another guy who got jumped in Alaska. All three survived, but required medical evacuation and hospitalization... The guy in Alaska nearly bled to death from a broken rib tearing into the blood vessels feeding his kidney.

So I'm not sure what the likelihood of bear attacks would be--but it does happen, and the consequences can be quite severe.

I think you're going way, waaaay far beyond the evidence to suggest that these farmers though Gagarin was a space alien. That's a funny little narrative, but I don't think it's remotely necessary.

These remote Soviet people weren't likely any stupider than you or me... Less educated, sure--but they knew what human beings looked like, and were aware of the fact that airplanes existed. This was more than a decade after WWII ended, after all.

I can think of a hundred perfectly terrestrial reasons why these isolated, remote farmers would have good reason to be apprehensive in this situation... I'd imagine they get almost zero visitors, so the sight of any strangers would probably be the big news of the year--let alone a military aviator parachuting down in bright orange clothes.

In fairness, I should confess that I'm pointing this out because it kinda bugs me for us to be looking down on these folks, as if they're children or simpletons. At the very least, that narrative seems to serve our own egos, more so than any interest in accuracy.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, under the section "In Comments" (halfway down)...

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

...

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

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> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

Your question has an obvious, widely accepted answer... Whether that answer is right or wrong, your failure to reference it comes off as deliberately provocative.

And by your response, it seema pretty obvious: Yes, you knew full well the answer before you sarcastically asked your orignal question.

If you ask questions in bad faith, using an argumentative tone--then why are you surprised when I respond to you in the same fashion?

If you want better replies, you should try writing a better post, in the first place.

But this weird, kinda archaic, jargony, overly-specific English is just how regular motions are written, by real lawyers in regular courts.

(And yes, it does sound funny, if you're not used to reading/writing it.)

There are also certain specific legal terms and phrases that work kind of like reserved words or functions in a programming langauge, because they invoke a specific legal effect in how the court needs to handle them. If you don't phrase your motion properly, your motion could be denied because it. Or maybe the judge let's it slide, but you piss them off and wear down their patience.

Anyway... For us, it sounds funny because we're ignorant of it. Just like how programming languages may sound funny to non-programmers: "If X then Y else Z" is similar enough to English, but it'll make the kids giggle if you ask them to read it aloud.