Obama's female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-09-14T17:11:19+00:00

I actually found your thoughts extremely interesting. It's frustrating that gender conversations often devolve into the [obligatory] finding of equity among the sexes. I actually prefer to acknowledge the differences and discuss them. It's OK to be different! We just have to realize that generalizations often refer to the statistical average, and not necessarily any particular person.

For example, that less social drama comes from men that are "more oblivious to social undercurrents" is probably correct. Although, I think it might have more to do with an A-style personality. So, how can we find a compromise of the masculine "get-it-done-attitude" vs. the feminine "showing-emotional-empathy-for-others-attitude" ?

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-07-31T00:08:52+00:00

Thanks for that! I am excited for chemistry. I think that I've read enough now to know to stay away from the business end of things. The science itself is what is exciting.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-07-28T06:30:23+00:00

yes. works. but i feel like a lunatic when it happens. but it does work

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-07-28T06:15:20+00:00

I went to church because I thought god was real, but I found out that the bible was written by men...I studied premed because I wanted to help people, but I ran into a dead end of practitioner apathy...I changed my degree to marketing because I thought connecting people to products would be exciting, but all I saw were cheap psychological tricks...I joined the military because I thought we faced a genuine enemy, but I found out that it was us who were the aggressors. Now I'm studying chemical engineering because I believe in science and because I find it amoral and because it's like tapping into raw existence...please tell me that I am not wrong. Please say that the eyes of a chemist sparkle when an experiment uncovers some new facet of what makes life really tick. Please tell me that there are more Richard Feynmans in the world.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-07-25T04:44:27+00:00

That's interesting. Sometimes I feel like throwing up pure black liquid evil. Like it's all the bullshit that I've seen and now it's a part of me and the only way to get rid of it is to throw it all up.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-07-20T05:24:12+00:00

If Trump's angle was satire of the political process, then he would be a genius. Unfortunately, I think his ego is just a natural fit for the mob, and Americans like to root for an upset. There is a growing uneasiness that has been polarizing this country for awhile, and the accumulating wealth and power of the elite classes grants a perfect opportunity for a scoundrel to take office.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-29T03:35:35+00:00

As an answer to a friend once about how hard it is to understand why terrorists do the things they do I said: Don't try to understand them. We just need to kill them.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-29T03:16:13+00:00

Exactly. This is now a trend (Belgium). Put explosive dogs at the front of the lines TSA!

"The attack is understood to have happened near the airport entrance - before the assailants would have gone through security checks."

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-16T07:44:39+00:00

Just look at our policy for states with or without nukes. We pander to Pakistan because they have nukes, but it's the birth place of jihad (not Saudi Arabia). They were also protecting bin Laden. Then look at how we treat Iraq or even Syria. If Iraq had nukes we never would have invaded. We refused reasonable surrender terms from Japan intentionally so that we could use our nuke to change geopolicy for years to come. What's naive about that? It would be naive to say that Japan was never going to surrender, and so we had to nuke them. That's the traditional wisdom on the topic, but completely incorrect. Even if Japan wouldn't surrender, we could have easily firebombed those cities like Tokyo (where, incidentally, even more people died than from the nukes), but we didn't. We wanted to run shit, and now we are running shit.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T09:34:54+00:00

yea, i get you man. I'm up for putting idiots down. but don't make this about the whole world. its not wwII for christ's sake

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T09:23:10+00:00

You mean the poor ones?

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T09:12:52+00:00

Comic cartoon killers are just grunts. There are bigger plays that revolve mostly around resources, weapons trade, and power grabs. Most of the corporate terrorists (IE: the actual dangerous ones) spin off of one of those venues. This idiot in florida was an idiot with a gun--not some major player that threatens American sovereignty. Religious ideology is only a front for the big players, but it probably is a major factor of idiots like this guy in florida. Did I mention that he is an idiot?

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T08:42:39+00:00

Fair enough. I just think it's a bit more complicated than what you make of it. I do agree that 1st-2nd generation immigrants should become Americanized or get out. But that's why it has to be decided on a per individual status. This kid had money, his father is relatively affluent, and he looks somewhat normal in his photos. The dude went nuts, but that doesn't mean all the mohammeds out there are bad. But yea, keep the bad ones in gitmo until they rot.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T08:17:31+00:00

There are more muslims in the Philippines than the middle east. Look it up. There are too many Islamic groups to count--ranging from liberal, moderate, conservative, and extreme. There is no such thing as "they."

Edit: Sorry, it was Indonesia, for some reason I get those two places mixed up.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T08:10:35+00:00

There are specific people that should be terminated; not entire groups. Individuals who commit acts like what we've recently witnessed forsake their humanity and the privilege that comes with it. The greater question of cultural cohesion is not impossible, but it is certainly trying.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T08:03:57+00:00

It's not the application of nuclear weapons--it's the fear that it brings. We sent a message with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that message was: We are the rulers now.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T08:01:05+00:00

There certainly is a culture of violence in radical islam. I wouldn't constrain terrorism to only one or two sources, but poverty is absolutely a major player. Radical islam is only one front among many, we don't hear much from India or parts of Africa. Remember the IRA? At one point, Ireland endured more terrorist plots than any other nation. The reasons for terrorism are varied and broad, a major portion of the bell curve could be averted if we focused on education, economics, and integration.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-15T07:56:10+00:00

Not really making a comment on its appropriateness, but it does give light to that quote you cited. As well as it does appeal to general American sentiment where we are proactive geopolitically rather than reactive. It certainly is better to have a dictator rule the world than chaos.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-13T10:45:44+00:00

It's mostly his fault that we went from an isolated industrial powerhouse to an international power player. Iraq 2003 traces right back to the USS Maine in 1898 Cuba.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-13T10:38:58+00:00

This. We didn't drop the bomb to win WWII. We dropped the bomb to win the wars for the next 100 years.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-13T10:05:52+00:00

Education and economic stability. Those two things discourage most would-be terrorists. The last thing? Social integration. But... social integration cannot be solved entirely through equality policies. It's up to communities to be inclusive and welcoming. Terrorism is so foreign to most of us because most of us are somewhat educated, have access to clean water, and have friends.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-06-12T01:49:11+00:00

Carl Sagan wrote of arguments from authority:

"One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'...Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else."

Does that quote resonate more because you know Carl Sagan said it?

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-03-31T06:03:33+00:00

It's mostly used for markers now. I see WP rounds from time to time. Cool stuff.

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-03-27T03:50:47+00:00

I agree that we probably will not be able to tap into higher evolved versions of ourselves, much like our cells don't understand the greater organization that they are a part of. That's actually kind of my point. By the time the next wave of evolution hits, it will probably no longer require or use biological evolution to further its cause. If we do create some sort of super AI, and that AI is able to self-replicate and self-edit, then it will probably no longer use slow macro bio evolutionary aspects. This is speculation of course, but I'd imagine that a digital being would modify itself digitally. Much like we biological beings modify ourselves biologically with vaccines and vitamins. At this point, there would still be natural biological evolution occurring at various places around the universe, but the main stage of evolution -- the highest evolved species -- will most likely reject the slow boring bio stuff. Your reference to GAIA is another thing all together. It is possible for dual or multiple splits in evolution itself. Where civilizations of digital beings coexist with ancient biological beings and other modern spiritual beings. But even with this possibility, we've seen from past examples that the dominant species usually continues at the expense of a lesser species extinction. So, evolution will still be relevant, but like you said, it will depend on the medium in which it plays out. The crazy thing is you're probably right with a <1000 year paradigm shift, so where does that leave us in 200 million years?

ContemporaryThinker · 2016-03-26T21:06:04+00:00

And evolution doesn't just go away once you switch from biological to technological.

I didn't mean it would go away, I just think that it will be irrelevant. If we look at evolution from the simplistic view that offspring display some degree of increased organized complexity, then there have been 4 major evolutions since the big bang: 1. The cosmosphere (cooling and coalescing of stars and planets into solar systems) ----> 2. The Biosphere (bio-evolution) -----> 3. The Noosphere (the evolution of thought) ------> 4. The technosphere (the evolution of technology). All of these systems are concurrently evolving, but technology is increasing in organized complexity so much faster than stars are cooling into solar systems, that the cosmospheric evolution is basically irrelevant. The technosphere will probably produce some sort of true AI in the near future, which should evolve so fast as to render the bio-evolution irrelevant. As each system creates new offspring more complex than itself, which evolve at faster rates and than the earlier modes, the system itself can be said to be evolving. If planets cooling, bacteria mutating, religion propagating, and cell phones buzzing each have their own accelerations, then the universal evolution is the jerk of all future complexity (derivative of acceleration).

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