Cȯsꭑọ ∴ ọꭑƨȯƆ @cosmiccitizen@schelling.pt

The oldest artifacts that might be beds are about 200k years old. The earliest representational narrative cave art might be about 50k years old.The oldest evidence of ploughing is roughly 5k years old. The photo in this post was taken roughly 5k years after ploughing started. And this photo at this link was taken 78 years after that: <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Himawari-8_true-color_2015-01-25_0230Z.png>.

The first ones had hair for the cold and shady trees for the heat. They killed their prey by chasing them and then ate the raw flesh.
The in-between ones had no hair and were sheltered by caves. Their dogs chased the prey and they cooked their meat. They knew enemies and hierarchy. They learned of the magic of signs.
The recent ones grew small and lived in homes. They cooked their food in pots and pans. They traded for iron. They learned to gamble.
We know our names and can number our ancestors.

It would probably be something on the order of 10s of millions of years if humans don't do a bunch of gene editing and habitat restoration.

It's amazing what you can do with a a handful of opportunities to show compassion.

"The Social Contract" meme is the first thing I've seen online that I'd consider an impressive one-shot psywar salvo. Lots of antisocial thinking in a simple diagram.

It will easily take millions of years for the biosphere to recover the biodiversity that we've lost in the past 100 years.

Incidentally I feel like this kind of Alcibiades character should have been the Peter Wiggins backstory: that he was a really gifted kid in a brainy family, a childhood without struggle messed up his prudence, and his conflicts with resentful people gave him a shit dynamic with most of humanity.
If this were the case, though, then the torturous treatment of Ender would be justified by his family history. And it's hard to see how Valentine works in this.

Oh and BTW having a lot of unearned confidence is pretty good for most socializing but there's a population that fucking hates it and will prize shoving you around a bit.

It's also really hard for me to relate to people who have grievances against institutions that are similar to schools. In my life school has just been a tree full of goodies and I've basically fed my myself by shaking the tree as much as I've wanted to. It's hard to see any other view when that's the condition that's shaped me. Just hang out under the goodie tree bro.

So far those two vices haven't collapsed into a single crisis (where I get fucked by lack of a life-skill while out-on-a-limb) buuuut each of them has separately caused crises so it's probably just a matter of time. I've got to start upskilling before I bring irrevocable disaster to the people around me. And I think I need an education on risk.

I think my weirdest characteristic comes from being really really successful at formal schooling in a family that held it as the main value. Because my experiences in education have almost exclusively been easy top-tier success, I entered adulthood with an air of effortless invincibility that has been both out-of-line with some practical life skills and has also led me to take big swing-for-the-fences risks in the course of finding my place in the world.

If you're going to make a bullshit overgeneralization, it's best to invoke a word with a very cloudy meaning not at all relevant to application.
Say "X is all about power"
Don't say "X is all about electricity"
Say "X hates us for our freedom"
Don't say "X hates us for Taco Tuesdays"

My worldview:

gat dangit
Now I have to learn about this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dempster%E2%80%93Shafer_theory

The jury had to kill Socrates because he mistakenly took democracy seriously. He thought that any individual would have to be accountable for the high domain of political rationalization. He thought any schlub in the agora should be able to give an account of truth, justice, nobility, and so on. He refused to route his questions through the appropriate social technologies that Athens' oligarchs had provided to diffuse this accountability: the priests, the mystery cults, etc.

Everyone who thinks s/he is an exemplary communicator is mistaken.
Communication is not an arrow and audiences are not a target. Communication is a reciprocal process that brings the behavior of multiple people into a sustainable flow.
The only way to be an exemplary communicator is to have some method for addressing millions of follow-up questions. People on the top address these questions through staff, technology, etc. People on the bottom address these questions face-to-face.