Recent comments in /f/Showerthoughts

SuddenlyElga t1_ja20s08 wrote

A few years ago I heard about the train theory that kept humans from progressing as fast as we could.

I don’t remember it exactly, but it kind of went like this:

The locomotive represents science and people wanting to make life better. But that locomotive is held back by train cars full of religious people and other dumbasses.

I’m sure the real theory is a lot more politically correct but that’s the gist.

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KickBassColonyDrop t1_ja20lhc wrote

Tough call. They don't develop object permanence for several years. I think you need that in order to qualify as someone being stupid. If their brains can't remember that because their eyes can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there, then it's impossible to claim they're stupid. In fact, claiming that they're stupid is on of itself stupid. You neeny.

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My_Username_Is_What t1_ja20bjs wrote

A country could, hypothetically speaking, spend around 800 billion dollars on their military and be the strongest country on the planet. You can't beat them in a fight, ever.

But you don't need to. Just get this hypothetical country to rot from the inside. You start introducing your ideas into pop culture, massage the media for a decade or two, and buy politicians. Convince those politicians to fleece their constituents, destroy the education system, and simultaneously get the public to think it's, once again hypothetically speaking, say a minority population that is at fault. Not the politicians.

Then you have uneducated stupid people running around killing each other and tearing up history in some "morality" based purge and tada, that once homogeneous and united country is now divided into city states busily attacking each other.

A wise man once wrote "in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."

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LiamTheHuman t1_ja1zs8p wrote

I actually wondered something similar. Like if countries are using mental warfare on each other, are they hurting one another or just teaching the populous how to defend against it in the long run. I guess just like other organisms the strong cultures that can withstand the pressure survive and the weak are controlled or die off

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gottarunfast1 t1_ja1zl95 wrote

It's only weird to us in modern day that there isn't a common, easy spell/item that everyone uses because today everyone has cell phones. But the books are at in the 90s. The communication systems they use are pretty similar to communication systems back then (letters, calling people at home, pagers, and a few people having mobile phones)

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