Ohhh ok yea there it is. Sorry, not American.

Ok maybe I’m missing something but scumbag Stephen Miller didn’t really say anything contentious or bad? I’m sure he meant it disparagingly but wouldn’t a more effective response be something like “thanks for acknowledging this positive step towards inclusivity!” ? Idk

I think they mean that their father went no-contact with his own parents/family (OPs grandparents and extended family) prior to OPs birth.

Why is happiness diminished by knowing it’s a chemical reaction? Why doesn’t that apply to depression and sadness?

As in you’re bothered by the lack of meaning? Figure out why it’s so important to you to have a purpose, and then choose a purpose for yourself. It’s quite freeing in my opinion, you can’t really mess up your life in a wider philosophical sense. You succeed just by doing things that make you happy (and depending on your morals, don’t make anyone else’s life worse).

The real meaning of life is to reproduce. We are here because some funny molecules have a tendency to replicate themselves, that’s really all there is to it.

The lack of meaning isn’t really a problem unless you make it one

How is it a weakness? If anything it seems like it would help address inequity in how people are treated based on race, age, gender if people are interacting more anonymously, and maybe we could also dispense with this whole coworkers are a family bs that is meant to instil loyalty to a company that doesn’t care about you and offset a lack of work life balance

Does that mean it will be like a crown owned pipeline? Not that privatizing ports is worth a provincial pipeline but that would be an interesting outcome.

Like mice, you can acknowledge something feels pain and still need to deal with pest type problems related to it (ideally in a targeted and humane manner). But it may affect some other things for the better such as mandatory killing of crustaceans before boiling, acceptable procedures for invertebrate animal research, eliminating use of live insects for fishing bait, etc.

What a demoralizing work environment for those scientists

The answer is bison

But to the problem of converting to veganism on a larger scale, I think you’d just gradually phase out by banning further breeding and the cow population could dwindle down. It wouldn’t solve a lot of the other adjacent problems though.

I do believe you have learned plenty outside of interacting with electronic devices. And I am not saying you have to leave your niche either, if you are fulfilled and stimulated that’s great.

But to suggest that you can learn and understand everything within your tiny bubble is really demonstrating a lack of depth and wisdom… At least you should be able to understand and accept that you are choosing to disengage with a vast amount of knowledge that cannot be provided by your current sphere of interest. If you accept that, then that is a good start.

It doesn’t mean your pursuit of knowledge is invalid or useless. But an important piece of growth that sometimes but not always comes with age is beginning to grasp the vastness of what you don’t know, how much is out there that you cannot even begin the comprehend.

The other side of this is a bit physiological. You mentioned in another comment that may skills and concepts learned outdoors have analogues online (like navigating the internet). I just wanted to add that these are very different. Our brains have evolved for millions of years to navigate a physical environment and have unique mechanisms to do that based on vision, smell, even magnetic forces. The inherent attuning of our brains to the physical world is why things like using a mind palace technique for memory are so powerful. There are many other mechanisms like that which can’t always be exercised in a meaningful way via the internet or technology, and which contain their own opportunities for knowledge and growing ones understanding.

Yes, my answer is the same. You are conflating learning with pure comprehension of factual information. Learning and knowledge and wisdom involve much more than that.

No, you have lost touch or you have never been in touch with the many possibilities and opportunities for growth and learning which exist outside of electronic devices. I am not remotely saying there is nothing of value online, or within technology. There is incredible value and a staggering amount of information (of various quality). But when you attain more wisdom you will see that that also applies to things outside of electronic devices and denying yourself that information and interaction is rejecting knowledge and personal growth.

It locks your brain and senses into restricting patterns

The fact you don’t see the potential there on your own makes it clear that you have plenty of room to grow in your own wisdom

For a serious answer, it may be trying to tell you to keep watch on your mental health and talk to someone about what you are experiencing. Becoming overly aware of number patterns and perceiving them as signs/messages that are more than a coincidence can be an early sign of paranoid delusions or other psychosis kind of symptoms. I have seen in first hand in my friend who was eventually diagnosed with bipolar (it got a lot worse before it got any better, so do try to intervene early).

Drugs and alcohol and other non-necessities generally are not free. So I am not sure how you’d fund those things or the partying, depending what that means to you.

But if you choose to do that nothing would happen, society would support the costs of you having safe (although likely fairly frugal) housing, sufficient food, and medical care. There are already people who live that way but without the food, housing, or care; they may resort to crime to meet their needs (negative affect on society) or may just have such poor health that they require much more expensive care (already at the cost of taxpayer in capitalistic society) than they would have if they’d been able to access care before it became a dire emergency.

Research generally indicates that capitalist societies already pay more to address the consequences of poverty than it would cost to provide those people with their basic needs in the first place.