119 points

Most people at their core are good people

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33 points

I don’t remember where I read this quote originally and I can only paraphrase it, but observing people living in a capitalist society and concluding that human nature is self-centeredness and greed is equivalent to observing workers in a factory that is poisoning their lungs and concluding that human nature is to cough.

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15 points

That’s a nice quote, thank you. I looked into it. It’s by Andrew Collier:

To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough.

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6 points

Primary goal is to survive in the environment you are in, how many might have a desire to escape that environment but lack the ability to do so? Leave it all behind and live in a cabin in the woods isn’t exactly an unheard of idea.

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2 points

That’s confusing cause and effect

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10 points

Damn, ya beat me. I’m not good people to so I know from first hand experience.

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4 points

Don’t worry, people can change.

Trust me, I used to be a huge piece of shit

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1 point

No one can stop you ordering a huge steak and a glass of water.

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1 point

It is evidence of my age that I assumed this link would be a Rick roll…

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6 points

I think “good” and “bad” are hard terms to apply to people objectively, but I do believe that most people value social coherence and are willing to do (the minimum amount of) something to maintain it. If you can’t believe at least that it means that all of those thin blue line people are right, and I’m just not willing to believe that’s true.

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5 points

I was gonna go with “most people give a damn”, but I think you phrased it a bit more positively.

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4 points
1 point

Thank you, I’ll have to read it.

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3 points

I would say most people are good. However, the human brain is pretty shit and easy to manipulate. It’s easy to make people view other people as not human or other to them, or to not think about them at all. Maybe that is “not good” in some definitions though. When face-to-face, I will bet every time on someone treating someone well. I’ll lose the bet occasionally, but I’ll be right more than wrong.

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2 points

I used to think the Anne Frank quote was inspiring. Now I just see it as bitterly ironic.

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60 points

Karma - there are way too many shitty people who just continue to be shitty because nothing ever comes back to bite them. Meanwhile, people who actually try to help are kicked around the most.

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2 points

Karma doesn’t always ripen in this life, but upon reincarnation.

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1 point

That’s not the point of karma. And thoughts count, so what you wish for others comes back.

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43 points

That humans can survive the climate disaster they created.

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9 points

It’s ok the earth will survive.

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3 points

Gosh I hope not. I don’t dislike you, I dislike humanity. I’m sorry you got caught up in this mess, but you gotta go.

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1 point

Some will

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40 points

Showing people irrefutable proof of something will change their minds.

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4 points

There are only finitely many prime numbers and I will not hear otherwise.

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2 points

And your irrefutable proof is…?

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4 points
*

If you want to show there are infinitely many primes, one way is to first note that every integer greater than 1 has a prime factor. This is because if an integer n is prime, n is a prime factor of itself, and if n is not prime then it must have a smaller factor m other than 1, 1< m < n. If m is also not prime, it too must have a smaller factor other than 1, and you can keep playing this game but there are only so many integers between 1 and n so eventually you’ll get to a factor of n that has no smaller factors of its own other than 1, which means it is prime.

Let’s now suppose there is only a finite number of primes, we’ll try to show that this assumption leads to nonsense so can’t be possible.

We can multiply any finite number of integers together to get a new integer. Let’s multiply all of the primes together to get a new number M. Then M + 1 gives a remainder of 1 when you divide by any prime number. Since dividing by a factor will always give a remainder of 0, none of the prime numbers can be a factor of M + 1. So M + 1 is an integer bigger than 1 with no prime factors. This is impossible, so there must be a mistake somewhere in this argument.

The only thing we said that we’re not 100% sure is true was that there are a finite number of primes, so that has to be our mistake. So there must be infinitely many prime numbers.

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40 points

That our benevolent alien overlords are gonna show up aaaaaany minute now…

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9 points

Fucking seriously… I wish there were aliens that could save us from ourselves, but it’s just oligarchs all the way down…

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2 points

Don’t worry, the aliens will come, and they’ll be oligarchs in their society too.

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2 points

Epic of Gilgamesh.

Anyway, if they were so benevolent and so much smarter than us, why would they impose their will, and especially if interference might make our extinction more rapid?

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2 points

Our benefactors.

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