>When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well, you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.
Maybe you already know this, but non-aphantastic (heh) just see black too. When we visualize something, it's a very different experience from seeing anything at all. It's more the knowledge of "if I could see this thing, this is how it would look".
I'd be very interested in knowing what really happens in our brains. It feels like stringing together a bunch of information and assembling a spectral "print preview" that you can't really see.
One startup I interviewed at, as an experienced developer, told me (paraphrasing here) "you'll be paid a salary lower than what you probably expect, and your first few months you'll need to work overtime to get used to our trendy tech stack, we don't offer health insurance but we do offer...not quite shares, but, sort of ownership interests. You could become a millionaire!"
The continuously-activating MCAS is such a monumentally stupid and dangerous system that I think you'd be a fool to trust any Boeing-engineered aircraft. I'll be avoiding them for the next few decades.
A more honest framing is that the issue is disagreement over what discrimination means, not that it can't exist or is good. Probably the most contentious issue is representation itself. Can a group of people be overrepresented or underrepresented in an organization without the organization being discriminatory? James Damore made the case that it's probable. And what happened to him shows that it isn't about "unpalatable ideas", it's about avoiding even having the discussion.
People do adapt, and I think that's a feature, not a bug, often forgotten. Climate change is real, but how hubristic was it for us to work toward a globally industrialized world, then post hoc pretend that we must A. Take drastic action to preserve the climate within the centuries-long snapshot we're accustomed to, or else the planet is on fire B. Never expect humanity to adapt, and pretend it's some kind of terribly stupid and illogical thing to do.
Certainly in the long term, the climate will change. We harnessed the natural world and brought it on ourselves sooner. I think we should do what we can, but the apocalyptic language of "planet on fire", etc, and all of us pretending that our little snapshot of the climate is all there ever was and we should never expect to adapt to anything else seems utterly foolish and more big-headed than I can put into words.
The planet as a whole is not on fire, sure. But there are much bigger than normal wildfires in equatorial regions - Amazon, Africa, Australia. Australia is the one getting the most attention as it's closest to "western" cities.
Nature is a cruel place. It's hard to grapple with as somebody who values animal life equally to human life, but also is cognizant of how far beyond our reach it is to remove all the tragedies that are really just part of the ecosystem.
