Looking forward to /r/theMotte’s next account of going abroad for the
first time:
Politics - Everyone in Europe thinks we’re right-wing even though
only 30% of people in the US identify as Republicans. Hell, they even
have some Communist Party representation and people aren’t saying
anything! Also when I was sick the doctor apologized profusely and said
because I wasn’t eligible for social security I had to pay 30€ upfront.
I think there must have been a mistake.
Language - So it seems like everyone in Africa speaks four languages
or something? How is it possible? I thought their average IQ was 75 as
per Lynn and Rindermann, surely that must hamper their learning
abilities? Also, does that mean I’m low IQ if I’m monolingual? (‘Don’t
worry, language proficiency isn’t shown to improve cognitive ability’
-gwern)
Btw, there is one really big problem with this (I think). Way to much social science is done on Americans, who think they are just an average part of the world but who actually are an outlier (at least to me as a European (whos culture is already half American)).
Of course, im not well informed about social science so could be this is actually something either already researched and not relevant, or something which they are working on/aware off. I dont know for sure.
It’s not just media. We’re uneducated. I’m serious. Get Americans talking about facts in science or history or geography and prepare to weep. Most people can’t name more than a couple of big countries in Europe, almost none in Africa, and think Asia is only China, Japan and Korea. In science it’s crazy bad.
> Also when I was sick the doctor apologized profusely and said because I wasn't eligible for social security I had to pay 30€ upfront. I think there must have been a mistake.
Quality of care is much lower in Europe, I wasn't even offered a complementary script of Nuvadril®, and the accompanying year long battle with my insurer to cover it.
Re: language in Africa - I remember some white nationalist who lived in Mexico who flat out made a post saying "yes their IQ scores are lower but that doesn't really matter much given how developed their society is"
Also WWII Germans invading Poland and the USSR were surprised how so many people had blonde hair and whatnot. Like you guys fought them in the last war you know what they look like even if blah blah blah Spengler said the Asian parts overthrew and killed the white parts
there’s nothing racist with this one. it’s just amusing to me because
I grew up in a highway town that’s probably a lot like the dozens this
guy passed, and all his Brain Droppings (christ) are just him pointing
out normal things
This killed me. I'm from a rural area and many of my friends farm. Hilarious to imagine some city slicker pondering whether a $500,000 piece of equipment on which your whole livelihood depends is really worth a couple hours drive. Very hilarious to imagine a "tractor store" that you just pop into and "buy a new tractor", but, you know, only if it's not too much of a pain in the ass.
I worked for a bit on a farm in Central Tennessee, looking it up on google maps it’s only a two and a half hour drive from Memphis, which is where we took the produce, although it took substantially longer than that in a clapped out old truck loaded with produce
Maybe it’s just that I spent all of my 26 years taking between 4-and-a-half to 9-hour trips to various places in Scotland from London, but it’s wild to me that even a city person would consider that a substantial drive, especially someone in the US
Tennessee is so fucking big. I drove from Texas to New England two falls ago. Took me a day to get to TN. Took me a day's drive through TN to barely get over the border into Virginia. 1 day to get back home from there.
Day 1: 3 states. Day 2: 2 states. Day 3: 7 states.
Gorgeous drive with the fall foliage, beautiful state.
TN is great, I met so many beautiful people there I’m still friends with, especially but not exclusively in Memphis, let alone the landscape (which is just as gorgeous as the people)
The South in general gets a bad rap for being stereotyped as the home of slavery and racism, and while that’s (as we’ve recently seen) a terrible feature of how things are there, there’s so much cool shit that I think that anyone who has the chance to visit and decides not to is doing themselves a huge disservice
As an aside, on the subject of distances, it’s worth mentioning that although Britain gets characterised as “A Small Island”, you can still absolutely spend several days travelling from one end to the other if you don’t have a fast enough car, and there are around 62-3 million of us here (not counting Northern Ireland): and since we’re on the topic of food, that means a lot of different recipes outsiders might not be aware of!
tbf, travelling anywhere at all in London you're trapped in a bubble of slow time
i got to tell a bbc film crew once how the fastest way to get from our house back to White City was literally the tube
Yeah, once one of my friends in Edinburgh asked me how I could stand to walk an hour and a half in the middle of the night to get back to my flat from Leith, and I was like (a) it saves the price of a cab and (b) it’s less painful than spending 2 hours on a crammed nightbus to get back to Peckham from Hackney
Im sorry but they are right, why focus on nature when it will all just be converted into computonium which will power our simulated afterlife?
> Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the acausalrobotgod is not in them.
Can I go too? I grew up in a rural part of the east coast, so my childhood had farm shows and annual carnivals over at the volunteer fire house. But I've been in cities since the late 1990s. I've been in Chicago over ten years, but barely outside of Chicagoland - maybe twice? I don't know a thing about the midwest - I hardly know "Actual Illinois" at all. Anyway - I promise to only embarrass you in mildly amusing ways!
I can understand not being aware of certain particular features of
life outside of major cities, but damn, this is a level of ignorance way
beyond what I expected.
Rationalist's first road trip.
"How do logistics and roads work, whoah different scenery, wind farms, 90 min drive for a tractor?, these places have culture?!"
It's like what I would expect out of a 12 year-old.
The logistics question is actually legit though, most people never think about logistics.
Yeah. Anyone who thinks a 90-minute drive is a long one is truly sheltered.
When I was growing up, it was a 90-minute commute to school (mainly because I had private education in the city, there were closer schools, but public education in the rural north of England, is not exactly of the highest standard) - and it was a slightly longer commute for my parents getting to work.
For a piece of equipment that is instrumental to your entire livelihood, people would accept a 9-hour drive.
With respect to #6, if you ever make the LA to San Francisco drive,
or vice versa, stop off at Casa De Fruta. Have lunch at the diner. Pick
up a pie or taffy before you go. Lovely spot.
Whatever the opposite a sneer is for this reply:
> Half the posts on this subreddit legitimately seem to come from people who have never left their apartment.
Now if only this observation could be used with respect to culture war rhetoric...
Somebody built a shit-ton of roads, many of them paved, across vast
stretches of dry grasslands, mountains, and rugged hills. How? Why? I’m
not even talking about the interstates, although they connected some
awfully empty places. There are state roads and “US route XX” connecting
a handful of towns, maybe a few thousand people total, in between the
interstates, all paved. When did that happen? Did it happen all at once,
like the interstate system, or gradually? Who paid for it? Is it
economical? Could we do something like that today? Who determines which
roads get paved and which don’t?
Looking forward to /r/theMotte’s next account of going abroad for the first time:
Politics - Everyone in Europe thinks we’re right-wing even though only 30% of people in the US identify as Republicans. Hell, they even have some Communist Party representation and people aren’t saying anything! Also when I was sick the doctor apologized profusely and said because I wasn’t eligible for social security I had to pay 30€ upfront. I think there must have been a mistake.
Language - So it seems like everyone in Africa speaks four languages or something? How is it possible? I thought their average IQ was 75 as per Lynn and Rindermann, surely that must hamper their learning abilities? Also, does that mean I’m low IQ if I’m monolingual? (‘Don’t worry, language proficiency isn’t shown to improve cognitive ability’ -gwern)
Ethnicity - Wtf why do so many Arabs look white
there’s nothing racist with this one. it’s just amusing to me because I grew up in a highway town that’s probably a lot like the dozens this guy passed, and all his Brain Droppings (christ) are just him pointing out normal things
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I can understand not being aware of certain particular features of life outside of major cities, but damn, this is a level of ignorance way beyond what I expected.
Very high https://xkcd.com/1053/ energy. So, this is just a bit adorable tbh.
My favorite part is them protecting their anonymity. I bet they drove from Texas to Colorado, there’s a volcano in northern New Mexico.
With respect to #6, if you ever make the LA to San Francisco drive, or vice versa, stop off at Casa De Fruta. Have lunch at the diner. Pick up a pie or taffy before you go. Lovely spot.
This is fucking hilarious. SCC-ers really are just a bunch of sheltered city nerds, aren’t they?
just absolutely cackling at this
Big roads, big windmills, how did all this get here? Must have been aliens, or maybe some lost tribe of nerds from the Bay Area.