I don't think that's true? They have a dysfunctional guilt/shame system but they still have other feelings, right?
stoneparchment
joined 1 year ago
Wikipedia link to radium girls
I think you got the right idea but that description is missing the big points.
They were painting watches and their employers told them to use their lips to make fine points on the brushes, meaning they ingested a ton of the paint. The employers told them it was harmless despite evidence to the contrary. They chose not to use other options because wiping the brush on their lips increased productivity and they were paid per watch.
I don't think you meant to imply that they were doing it for trivial reasons, but I do think mentioning that they were doing it for a job and that their employers were intentionally deceiving them is important context!
OP asked what it means to not have faith in humanity, and the person who responded to your comment had a nuanced take on the answer. Is that really a tangent?
(btw your top comment is a very good answer)
Pretty much every day, multiple times a day, with strangers, acquaintances, and friends. I think it usually brightens people's day, and with strangers, I think delivery and content is much more important than what I look like or who I am.
For content, I only compliment choices, not attributes:
"Cool shirt!" is good, "Nice legs!" is not
"I love your haircut!" is good, "Your hair has such a nice texture!" is not
Tailored compliments are even better, ex. "That book (or other media) is awesome!" is great, if I really do like it, and it can start a conversation, but obviously I don't lie and pretend I know it when I don't.
For delivery, I keep it light and casual. I am mindful to only do it when they aren't preoccupied, like on the phone or reading something. For tone, I guess I pop the compliment, smile, and movie on. For example, if we're walking past each other-- I don't slow down, and I look away immediately after giving a friendly smile. I don't mean that I don't care about their response, because of course I'm mindful to be sure I didn't offend them, but I don't burden them with needing to respond with gratitude or happiness. I think of it as, I want this person to have the (hopefully pleasant) information that their choice was seen and respected by a stranger. I don't want anything back from them.
I would say 95-100% of the people I compliment seem to be genuinely happy I did, and of the ones who don't react positively, I'd say the vast majority react neutrally. In the rare case where my compliment has totally failed, I usually go "Oh! I'm sorry" and again, disengage.
Obviously, with friends and acquaintances the options open up a little more, and usually I do follow up/continue the conversation instead of moving on. But it's similar in the philosophy that I'm usually just trying to give them positive information, and not seeking anything in return. Compliments are not a tool to get people to talk to me or be friends with me. That can and does happen, but it's not the point. Honestly, I think that's the part that most people struggle with, if they feel like they don't get good responses with compliments. It's not for us.
I do think I'm probably an outlier, because I give compliments a lot. But I continue to do it because it seems to really make people smile!
Oh, good point! Yeah, in our old house (copper plumbing) plumbers usually did repairs with cpvc, not sure why.
Huge disclaimer that I'm not a plumber or even close to a plumber, but I did have a house and think about houses:
Isn't the current "standard" plumbing PEX plumbing, which is basically just a bunch of hoses?
Like I think you're on to something but the industry beat you to the punch 😉
What, in your opinion, is the semantic difference between the words plastic and polymer?
What is your word of choice to distinguish between naturally occurring and lab-made polymers?
It's fine if you want to draw some conceptual comparisons between biological and synthetic polymers, but it's 100% not true that "plastics" as defined as synthetic, organic polymers (I.e. acrylics, silicones, polyesters, polyurethanes, halogenated plastics, thermosets, thermoplastics et al.) are the same on a chemical basis as most biological polymers.
Like... where are you drawing the line? Are proteins a plastic? Is starch plastic? Is DNA plastic? RNA? Clearly not, by multiple definitions (bioavailability, reactivity, structure and function, persistence in the environment, etc.). Even biological compounds closer to synthetic polymers (cellulose, chitin, etc.) are definitively different, even if they do have longer persistence, lower reactivity, etc. And bioplastics (like what people mean when they say biodegradable plastics) are heat-modified biological polymers. They don't come out of a living thing that way; they are fundamentally altered from their previous form.
I guess I just... disagree that the distinction is "arbitrary semantics"?
Yeah but like... not all polymers are plastics, right? Like... they aren't synonyms?
Wikipedia says acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, thermoplastics, and thermosets are plastics. Do those exist in organic tissue? Am I missing an obvious group?
Where do you get the idea we are made of plastics? Not necessarily throwing shade, just.. I'm a molecular biologist and at first pass that seems like a stretch. I'd be excited to be wrong
Thermosets and thermoplastics, right? Not sure that we have that going on in there...
First, I want to fully admit I didn't watch the video. Apologies ahead of time if that causes me to be redundant or reductive.
Second, I'm also a biologist, although a molecular one.
Third, I agree with almost all of your premise and train of thought. We're certainly more likely to get the likes of "bacterial mats" than intelligent life anywhere, and especially within a distance that we will ever realistically encounter.
I do wonder, though, how you (or maybe the video guy, but obviously not enough to watch the source material before making an ass of myself...) conceptually reconcile the small sample number of known planets with life (n=1) with the mindblowingly impossible number of worlds.
You say that intelligent life evolving only once indicates that it is difficult for evolution to "discover", which is surely possible to be true. But given that we haven't seen the evolutionary conditions on other hypothetical worlds, from what we know, the evolution of intelligent life has a perfect 100% success rate of occurring on planets with life.
In fact, you mention the independent convergent evolution of eyes as an indication that eyes are a "good idea", and that they must be relatively easy for evolution to discover if they evolve independently, repeatedly. But evolution is subject to the whims of selective forces, so a different world would surely select for different traits. Eyes (or other extremely common evolutionary pathways... looking at you, crab body) might be less frequently selected for or be entirely useless, but intellegent decision making and tool use might evolve in ways we can't even conceptualize in our context.
This also extends to the claim of how our world is evolutionarily dynamic (which you point out is hard to quantify in context). We don't know the dynamics of evolution on other worlds, if it happens at all. Recombination could be a unique characteristic of DNA-based life on Earth or it could be extremely common. Other worlds might have longer or shorter evolutionary time lines, also, since our sun's "working life" is shorter than average due to its size and density. Without another example for reference, we don't know whether we're evolving quickly and with diversity or slowly and conservatively.
I guess, I don't think you are wrong, exactly. I just think you are necessarily making assumptions based on how things work here in order to extrapolate how things might work there-- one has to! But the whole discussion (which continues, like this, to this day) revolves around just too many unknowns. We just don't know, and can't know.
Climbing down from my high-horse, though, I have to admit I'm biased, since I have a pet-belief that life is basically guaranteed to exist elsewhere (how freakish would it be for it to only happen once out of so, so many chances?). I honestly feel like there's a good shot that it's incredibly common, at least in a basic form. In essence, I suspect that if we find bacterial mats (or soup) on Enceladus or Europa then it's basically certain that life is everywhere. But we won't even likely know that in my lifetime, so... I keep dreaming!