Randomness thread, part two.

Seeing those Russian bombers flying off the coast where I live (ok, didn't actually see them, but saw the scrambled British fighter jets sent after it) reminded me how much we take for granted our safety in these peaceful times. But we're never that far away from a life like game of thrones where violence and the ability to buy it reigns supreme, and it wouldn't take that much to throw as back into such a time.

Free market capitalists with their lack of government and private police forces seem to forget this. As far as I can tell, the violent world is the natural state for humans and an effective government is the only thing that stops us from falling back into that violent equilibrium.

But I'd also add that government alone probably can't stop it if the cake is too small to go round.

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Originally Posted by rong

Seeing those Russian bombers flying off the coast where I live (ok, didn't actually see them, but saw the scrambled British fighter jets sent after it) reminded me how much we take for granted our safety in these peaceful times. But we're never that far away from a life like game of thrones where violence and the ability to buy it reigns supreme, and it wouldn't take that much to throw as back into such a time.

Free market capitalists with their lack of government and private police forces seem to forget this. As far as I can tell, the violent world is the natural state for humans and an effective government is the only thing that stops us from falling back into that violent equilibrium.

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There's a lot of status quo bias in this sort of thinking, though. The military that "protects" Americans and Britons is also the source of much of the threat to them. The U.S. armed forces has been a massive financial drain that has really only functioned as a source of blowback for Americans and Europeans. They aren't providing defense. And it turns out defense is actually quite cheap to provide. We see this constantly with the way that small, dug in, guerrilla armies are able to repel wave after wave of attacks from superior troops. There are a lot of compelling arguments for the efficacy of private defense, but statists consider them to be crackpot and do not even entertain a different way to doing things.

1. Status quo bias us one way if putting it, weighing up a non risky option (status quo) vs a risky option (change) is another.

2. Defence and offence and really one and the same thing. Attacking a potential threat before it becomes a big legitimate threat may not taste nice but is still a legitimate defensive strategy. (though I have no intentions of debating the many conflicts we're involved in).
3. Go ask the civilians in the towns being defended by pockets of guerrilla armies what they think of their defensive options.

I put to you that you aren't capable of understanding what it would be like to go back to a time of a life of violence with no formal protection. It's so far beyond our comprehension that we can't really make an informed choice when there is a risk of it.

I mean it's not like I don't see any potential merit in a change of the type you're talking about, but you never seem to acknowledge any risks. And even if you believe the risks are minimal, it's a minimal risk of a catastrophe which at least needs addressing.

The current situation is catastrophic in many ways. You have to compare things with one another. You can't just hold the state up to this non-existent (past, present, or future) ideal and repel all anti-establishment arguments out of hand.

I don't want to pollute the randomness thread with another rehashing of this debate. If you'd like me to start a thread to go into something specific about libertarianism, I'd be happy to.

I'm pretty much with you on most things. I'm just pointing out that it's easy to take aspects of the status quo for granted. It's not all that bad. And some things are fantastic. The likes of you and I are so safe. That is s huge amount of progress over the last few centuries and a major factor in our level if safety in the government monopoly on violence. It's one hell of a risk to play with that. And I'm not suggesting that the only reason we are so safe from violence and theft is that the government protects us or that there is no other way creating a system that provides that safety. But I'd take a lot of convincing before I was willing to hand that responsibility to a corporation with nothing but it's own profits motivating it.

And feel free to start a thread on this but I think one exists already and I just missed most of the action.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Sorry for so long of posts. I wanted to address specific things. I hope there is sense to be made in them.



Causality is backwards. The demand for private imprisonment is created by the government. There is no profit in imprisonment whatsoever except that government, through its shitty laws, create a large supply of convicts that it is unable to house. This creates the demand for housing of convicts, for which the private sector vies for contracts.



Sadly, it doesn't work. We'd have to get into rules of supply, demand, and moral hazards to see why "health and safety" policies make things worse for health and safety.



This is caused by #3. The moral hazards created by things like the FDIC are exactly why "too big to fail" exists. On the surface, mandates like your #3 appear reasonable, benign, and beneficial, but they're truly anything but. What we want to do is avoid more #5s by not creating more #3s.



While it is not a good thing that companies can lobby governments for special treatment in the broadband field, it is also not a good thing to have net neutrality -- where the government monopolizes policy areas of the internet. It should be noted that the primary culprits for special treatment in the broadband arena are not companies, but are instead unions and municipal residents. Comcast and Time Warner have not been able to get nearly as much special treatment as those two groups. This is why the only competition growth in the field we see is in areas where unions and municipalities have not created too many laws against laying new line.

The last thing we want is net neutrality. The FCC fucked up radio and fucked up TV, and it will fuck up the internet in some form or another. The better option is deregulation in the vein that allows competitors to grow. Google Fiber is doing everything it can, but it is stymied exclusively by one thing: regulations. Apple would probably enter the field if regulations were lower too. There are several other broadband companies that would likely expand too.

Exactly like how the food industry is amazing because regulations are extremely low, which promotes competition, broadband would also be if regulations were low.



Nordic countries are heavily subsidized by capitalism in the West. If taxes were a necessary evil, it would be true that taxes and subsequent regulations on anything (yes anything) is also a necessary evil. But we know that's not the case, as we see that even in the most complex of fields, where the government doesn't do much, prosperity is incredible. Likewise, where we see lots of government involvement, no matter how simple the field is, it's an utter disaster

It isn't that money is needed to run things therefore taxes must be collected, but that profits are needed in order to run things sustainably. Government doesn't create profits and everything it runs sucks. If we exit the pro-state lefty bubble, we see this. For example, Europe is a terrible, terrible analogy to use for why government works. But for some damn reason, we never ever hear about this. We never hear about the shitass high structural unemployment, we never hear about horrible business environment created by distorted incentives from regulatory and welfare policies. We never hear about them because the media is made up of a bunch of pro-statists who view Europe with rosy glasses.

Most economists point to political policies for why unemployment is so much higher in Europe than US, yet journalists won't touch it, because, well, economics is hard and journalism is not





John Oliver is a great guy, but he has a lot of things backwards. When we talk about physics, we ask physicists. But apparently when we talk economics, a comedy actor's voice is as good as anybody's.

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I can't address you point for point que because ftr is not particularly mobile friendly, and that will then become an exercise in frustration for me.

But point 6: are you saying that fcc commissioner mignon Clyburn has no idea what she's doing?

Relevant link: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...-and-title-ii/

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Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the longest-tenured commissioner,{spam link}who supported Title II five years ago, said the net neutrality order does not address only theoretical harms.

"This is more than a theoretical{spam link}exercise," she said. "Providers here in the United States have, in fact, blocked{spam link}applications on mobile devices,{spam link}which not only hampers free{spam link}expression, it also restricts{spam link}innovation by allowing{spam link}companies, not the consumer, to{spam link}pick winners and losers."

Clyburn convinced Chairman Tom Wheeler to remove language that she believed{spam link}was problematic.

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Exactly like how the food industry is amazing because regulations are extremely low, which promotes competition, broadband would also be if regulations were low.

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Are you serious on this statement?

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

Are you serious on this statement?

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Yes. As crappy as what the FDA does is, it's still a small part of the whole food industry

For sure the FDA tries to do the right thing (create safer food), but it doesn't have that effect. It's just more moral hazards, more expenses, and overall less safety. The amount of accountability the FDA has is almost nonexistent compared to private actors in the industry. The best thing we could do to increase safety in the industry is rid ourselves of the agency with the least amount of accountability for its policies.

I have discussed this in the past with regards to building departments since it's something I have some experience with. They do not increase safety one single bit. Their inspections and regulations merely reduce total economic activity (by a lot, actually), and their expertise is virtually always below the expertise of the builders themselves. The snake oil salesman does not exist in the field because it's competitive, not because of the government. Of course it should be mentioned the real snake oil salesman is the government itself

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Yes. As crappy as what the FDA does is, it's still a small part of the whole food industry

For sure the FDA tries to do the right thing (create safer food), but it doesn't have that effect. It's just more moral hazards, more expenses, and overall less safety. The amount of accountability the FDA has is almost nonexistent compared to private actors in the industry. The best thing we could do to increase safety in the industry is rid ourselves of the agency with the least amount of accountability for its policies.

I have discussed this in the past with regards to building departments since it's something I have some experience with. They do not increase safety one single bit. Their inspections and regulations merely reduce total economic activity (by a lot, actually), and their expertise is virtually always below the expertise of the builders themselves. The snake oil salesman does not exist in the field because it's competitive, not because of the government. Of course it should be mentioned the real snake oil salesman is the government itself

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I can +1 this from personal experience as well.

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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

I can't address you point for point que because ftr is not particularly mobile friendly, and that will then become an exercise in frustration for me.

But point 6: are you saying that fcc commissioner mignon Clyburn has no idea what she's doing?

Relevant link: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...-and-title-ii/

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Sure she knows what she's doing as far as being a government agent is concerned.

Are there food neutrality rules? No. What is special about the internet with respect to food that it needs neutrality rules?

If you would like to have a dialogue, I think we can get somewhere starting here.

But all food is created equal!!!1

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

I can +1 this from personal experience as well.

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For anybody reading, the short of why that is: the job of private contractors is to produce a product that the consumer chooses to pay for. This means he has to get good at it, and the better he is at it, the more money he makes. The job of the government agent is to make sure rules are adhered to regardless of the veracity or effectiveness of the rules. The agent's revenue source is not choice of consumers, but mandated taxation. Likewise the agent's feedback model is not adherent to consumer demand, but instead to the infinitely complex and disjointed bureaucratic mechanism.

The incentive for enterprise is to make a product people want to pay for. The incentive for government is nothing of the sort. It's basically just not to get people too pissed off. Of course, government tries to do its best to help people. The issue is the system has functionally wrong incentives, so no matter how many Einsteins and Mother Teresas the government employs, they still have no ability to operate outside of their incentives.

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Originally Posted by rong

Free market capitalists with their lack of government and private police forces seem to forget this.

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If that was the case, we most certainly would not support weakening of the state on issues of foreign policy and defense. The overwhelming majority of free market proponents are huge foreign policy and defense hawks, probably because it's a much harder thing to believe the market can handle. I'm the guy on the gas who wants to figure out which position the logic supports.

The crux of my position depends on not having yet found any evidence or logical reasons for why the market works like dandy for safety in all sorts of fields yet supposedly doesn't for defense, and why it is that the only way people can be defended is if somebody punches them, takes their lunch money, and uses that lunch money to buy a rock to throw at somebody else

Could it be the biggest lie we were ever told, that we are incapable of acting in our own self-interests and need a big brother to do it for us? It's fitting that humans, who tend to believe myths of their own weakness and powers higher than themselves (subservience to gods) would also believe in the mythos of the state (which is essentially the same thing as subservience to a higher power)

Doesn't the states monopoly of violence underpin everything else.

Honestly, I can't even begin to create the privatisation of violence without hitting huge problems at every turn.

Without a monopoly of violence there is no state. Ans that's just anarchy.

Since we have talked moral hazards, just like "too big to fail" would not exist except by the moral hazards created by other government policy (like the FDIC), net neutrality wouldn't even be a consideration if the government didn't impose all the laws against laying lines that it currently does

Competing in the broadband space is one of the hardest things a company can do, exclusively because the law basically says nope. Don't get mad at Comcast and applaud the government on net neutrality; get mad at the government for feeding us all the bullshit that its fixing a problem that it created. Of course, this just creates more moral hazards and unintended consequences. Since most people think the government is the good guy, this just means we're going to not blame it for the problems it creates and we're going to give it even more power in the future to fix the additional problems created by each new policy. The counter isn't for its policies to be "better" either, because the existence of moral hazards depends on policies being mandates. We could eliminate moral hazards if we opted for a system of consumer choice, but not if we opt for mandates

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Originally Posted by rong

Doesn't the states monopoly of violence underpin everything else.

Honestly, I can't even begin to create the privatisation of violence without hitting huge problems at every turn.

Without a monopoly of violence there is no state. Ans that's just anarchy.

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I'm not sure what you're asking

I mean, if the state doesn't have a monopoly of violence it can't enforce rules, if it can't enforce them then it loses the power to create them. If it isn't creating them, then who is? The guy who is wealthy enough to pay for the best enforcement. All we're doing is switching one master for another.

response in other thread holmes

BACK TO RANDONESS

more like back to ftr gossip, ranting, and general tomfoolery. that's what this thread really is. the heart of the commune

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

I've been getting into the idea of systems (as opposed to goals) a lot recently.

I got this iPhone (my first smartphone) a couple of months ago, and I've been really playing with the idea of using it as the "control panel" of my systems in general.

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a friend of mine (PhD candidate on human nutrition embedded in the med school) published some research on using phone apps for weight loss stuff recently. Sounds similar?

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Originally Posted by daven

a friend of mine (PhD candidate on human nutrition embedded in the med school) published some research on using phone apps for weight loss stuff recently. Sounds similar?

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Yeah it sounds like bullshit.

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Originally Posted by rong

Seeing those Russian bombers flying off the coast where I live (ok, didn't actually see them, but saw the scrambled British fighter jets sent after it) reminded me how much we take for granted our safety in these peaceful times.

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Please. That "incident" was a huge non-story that was published with the intention of making people like you think thoughts like this. The Russians are perfectly entitled to fly bombers down the Channel, just as we're perfectly entitled to send military personnel to the Black Sea, which of course we do. The Russians have been flying planes near our airspace for years. It's sabre rattling, and our government love it because it gives them the opportunity to send jets out to "escort" them away, giving the impression that the govt are prepared to protect the citizens against an imaginary Russian invasion.

But of course the Russians aren't going to invade, and even if they did, there's not a great deal we can do about it other than cry to America.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

But of course the Russians aren't going to invade, and even if they did, there's not a great deal we can do about it other than cry to America.

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Britain beats the bollocks off Russia mano a mano

Hell even France might. Well, your grandfather's France would, at least.

Russia is not as tough as people think. It couldn't beat Ukraine mano a mano. It wouldn't lose to Ukraine, but it also couldn't occupy it successfully. Assuming no civic agreements were put in place

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Please. That "incident" was a huge non-story that was published with the intention of making people like you think thoughts like this. The Russians are perfectly entitled to fly bombers down the Channel, just as we're perfectly entitled to send military personnel to the Black Sea, which of course we do. The Russians have been flying planes near our airspace for years. It's sabre rattling, and our government love it because it gives them the opportunity to send jets out to "escort" them away, giving the impression that the govt are prepared to protect the citizens against an imaginary Russian invasion.

But of course the Russians aren't going to invade, and even if they did, there's not a great deal we can do about it other than cry to America.

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Ahahahaha oh god, here he goes again.

Are you kidding? We're far from the force we used to be. I don't even think we have any aircraft carriers any more. Thing with Britain is, there's nowhere to retreat. It's so small. It would be easy to bring us to our knees, especially if nukes are on the table. Russia, on the other hand, is ridiculously vast. Key military infrastucture can be hidden much more easily in, say, Siberia, rather than perhaps Bodmin Moors. We wouldn't stand a chance if the Russians were stupid enough to take us on. We could do some serious damage to Russia, but we couldn't wipe them out. Not a chance. They could wipe us out if they had the bollocks and reason to.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Ahahahaha oh god, here he goes again.

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Aw cmon don't you secretly like these ridiculous arguments I engage in?

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Are you kidding? We're far from the force we used to be. I don't even think we have any aircraft carriers any more. Thing with Britain is, there's nowhere to retreat. It's so small. It would be easy to bring us to our knees, especially if nukes are on the table. Russia, on the other hand, is ridiculously vast. Key military infrastucture can be hidden much more easily in, say, Siberia, rather than perhaps Bodmin Moors. We wouldn't stand a chance if the Russians were stupid enough to take us on. We could do some serious damage to Russia, but we couldn't wipe them out. Not a chance. They could wipe us out if they had the bollocks and reason to.

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Well without nukes even the US probably couldn't wipe out Moscow

Of course if nukes are on the table nobody survives.

As far as UK vs Russia conventionally, Russia couldn't invade UK but UK could invade Russia. UK also likely has better equipment and technology. Russia has always been a shitty quality but overpowering quantity thing, which it can't do against UK due to geography.

The only thing UK would have to do is crush or just siphon off Atlantic access from Russia's only warm water deep seaport in Crimea. Invasion would not go well for Britain. It certainly couldn't occupy much of Russia, but Britain comes out ahead on the body count relative to population

The only reason Britain didn't lead the Cold War was because US did. Of course that works for everybody since US is the right leader to have in that situation, but Britain was in a position to get the job done post-WW2. Britain has been the Robin to the US Batman since then when dealing with Russia, but Robin could certainly have taken over if need be. Granted the path to victory would have been far more treacherous, but Russia wouldn't have gotten much further than Berlin even if the US wasn't involved. Keep in mind the US won the Pacific theater, not the European one. Britain was the real fisticuffs in the European western front as well as the Italian campaign. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's close at least

I think if there's no US in WW2, Germany still never occupies Britain, Germany still gets run over by Russia, and Britain and France hold the line somewhere inside Germany

I'm not reading much but is 'Murica the good guys or bad guys in the past few posts? I hope they're the good guys.

Aint no good guys other than Murca

ever read the book 'with winning in mind'? it's written by a target shooter who was the best in the world etc - similar ideas to the link you posted, in book form about 30 years ago.
edit. just checked my shelf. Lanny bassham, 1988, close

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Yeah it sounds like bullshit.

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like this?

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

the idea of systems (as opposed to goals) a lot recently.

I got this iPhone (my first smartphone) a couple of months ago, and I've been really playing with the idea of using it as the "control panel" of my systems in general

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sounded pretty similar to me

It's irrelevant whether or not Russia can invade. The point is that the only reason nobody invades is because of our pretty bad ass defence. Everything else is built on the safety provided by this. Long term investment needs that foundation and it's taken for granted. We prob don't need nukes, prob won't ever fire them, but there's a definite theoretical advantage in having some. Same applies all the way down to some grunts with rifles.

AI nails space invaders. But it was never taught how to play. Pretty cool.

http://www.iflscience.com/technology...ing-told-rules

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Originally Posted by daven

ever read the book 'with winning in mind'? it's written by a target shooter who was the best in the world etc - similar ideas to the link you posted, in book form about 30 years ago.
edit. just checked my shelf. Lanny bassham, 1988, close



like this?


sounded pretty similar to me

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I'd say apples and oranges, but a more accurate comparison would be like apples and dump trucks.

What? The only reason we don't get invaded is because of our bad ass defence? Why doesn't anyone invade New Zealand then?

They get the benefit of our bad ass defence as well. And the USAs etc.

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Originally Posted by rong

They get the benefit of our bad ass defence as well. And the USAs etc.

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Ok NZ was a crap example. Why doesn't China and/or Russia invade Mongolia? Why doesn't China invade North Korea? Why doesn't South Africa invade Lesotho?

Contrary to what you might think, the world isn't made up of nations who want to invade the shit out of each other.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Well without nukes even the US probably couldn't wipe out Moscow

Of course if nukes are on the table nobody survives.

As far as UK vs Russia conventionally, Russia couldn't invade UK but UK could invade Russia. UK also likely has better equipment and technology. Russia has always been a shitty quality but overpowering quantity thing, which it can't do against UK due to geography.

The only thing UK would have to do is crush or just siphon off Atlantic access from Russia's only warm water deep seaport in Crimea. Invasion would not go well for Britain. It certainly couldn't occupy much of Russia, but Britain comes out ahead on the body count relative to population

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We couldn't invade Russia. Well, we could, but there wouldn't be many of the invading party returning home. We couldn't conquer Russia by any conventional means. The ONLY hope we have of defeating Russia would be by means of economic war... which is exactly what is happening.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

Ok NZ was a crap example. Why doesn't China and/or Russia invade Mongolia? Why doesn't China invade North Korea? Why doesn't South Africa invade Lesotho?

Contrary to what you might think, the world isn't made up of nations who want to invade the shit out of each other.

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Russiw/Ukraine.

Besides which, they don't all need to want to do it. If we all throw away our armies it only takes one.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

We couldn't invade Russia. Well, we could, but there wouldn't be many of the invading party returning home. We couldn't conquer Russia by any conventional means. The ONLY hope we have of defeating Russia would be by means of economic war... which is exactly what is happening.

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We'd barely defend ourselves against them without our big bro coming to our aid. They'd destroy our airforce pretty quickly. Then they could bomb the shit out if us. Would be logistically a frigging nightmare to actually full on troops on the ground invade us so will never happen.

The Russia/Ukraine thing is totally different. Do you think Russia are out of line when it comes to Ukraine? Let's see it from their point of view, just for a moment. They see the democratically elected, pro-Russian leader of Ukraine, overthrown by a "revolution" of Nazi football hooligans, and replaced by a Western approved puppet who has no democratic mandate. Russia deem it necessary to protect their Black Sea port in Crimea, and invade, with the near total support of the local population.

Russia are engaged in a proxy war with the West, in case you hadn't noticed. It's interesting that we accuse them of expansionist ideals when Ukraine is on their doorstep, and not ours. What the fuck are we doing there? It's NATO that is attempting to expand, not Russia.

This is the best picture

http://i.imgur.com/12LBa2V.jpg

I see white and gold.

My friend saw white and gold, now sees blue and black. This is actually very interesting.

Apparently, because of the bright light behind it, my mind thinks this side of the dress is in the shade and adjusts the colors to seem white and gold. If your brain assumes the whole room is very lit, you go to the black and blue side of things.

I saw white and gold this morning and had no clue how you'd get blue and black out of it. Now all I see if blue and black and I can't think it back to white and gold.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Apparently, because of the bright light behind it, my mind thinks this side of the dress is in the shade and adjusts the colors to seem white and gold. If your brain assumes the whole room is very lit, you go to the black and blue side of things.

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I see primarily white/gold. However, I can see the blue in the light, and I can imagine this dress being blue and gold. I just can't not see the gold, I have no idea how that appears black to people. I'm trying to see it blue/black, but blue/gold is as far as I can get.

I see blue and gold. Something is wrong with me.

No, take that back I can switch between black and gold at will. Can't see the white for the blue though.

It looks black and blue to me now after looking white and gold all day.

Now I see purple and brown.

I was on team white and gold before rilla posted this picture. I saw the picture and it was blue and black. Then, before my eyes, it tried to go to white and gold...but then it went back to blue and black. Fuck my eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzni...ature=youtu.be

Let's spin this rando thread 360 degrees

team white and gold for life

inb4 ong invades a library

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Let's spin this rando thread 360 degrees

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Rilla (at 50 seconds) up in here:
http://youtu.be/g751-jjKXC0?t=50s
Yes, that's the dude from GoT.

I knew what I was doing

http://i.imgur.com/a26MLo7.png

i just realized that chris farley's comedy styling was pure macho man randy savage impersonation

http://i.imgur.com/qShH5re.gif

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.n...c9811eb736a229

http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2...them-meet-god/

400 men cut off their testicles to be closer to God and you won't even go to church... for shame.

http://i61.tinypic.com/24b99h3.jpg

Turns out Spock's last words were "it's gold and fucking white".

Color perception is a weird thing.

The Greeks didn't even have a word for blue... They used the same word to describe the color of the sky as the color of bronze.

Well.. Homer did, anyway.

EDIT: slightly better link

Some languages don't differentiate between blue and green, another, Russian I think, has two words for Blue. They consider light blue and dark blue to be different colours.

At the end of the day they're just arbitrary points to guide you through a range so I suppose anything would do as long as it covers the entire range and enough people agree to use it.

Well, maybe not arbitrary, but I guess there's lots of potential ways to carve it up.

Kinda interesting:

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According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, distinct terms for brown, purple, pink, orange and grey will not emerge in a language until the language has made a distinction between green and blue.

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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disti...ious_languages

but yeah i saw white/gold exclusively for the first few hours, went to work, did other shit, looked at my phone, saw the image again... black/blue. freaked out. now I see black/blue more often than white/gold, and i cannot switch back and forth on will like some people can.

it's a bit like this GIF. Do you see her rotating clockwise or counterclockwise?

http://www.maniacworld.com/Spinning-...l-Illusion.gif

It always starts clockwise u think, then flips after a while.

Blue & black, never seen anything else.

That gif has always gone clockwise for me and never anything else.

:(

I'd say it's arbitrary until you consider which sensor is reading the signal.

Human eyes are sensitive to blue, green and red wavelengths of light, with a lot of overlap between the red/green and with blue being much less sensitive. I mean it takes a higher intensity of blue light to activate your vision than either red or green.

So it makes sense to have blue, green and red as the primary colors on say, a computer monitor's pixels.

If we had eyes more like a bee's or humming bird's, though, we'd almost definitely need color words for the near ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

***
All atoms readily absorb and emit photons due to the fact that they are charged particles vibrating with thermal excitations. It's just a matter of what temperature they are as to which range of photons they interact with most strongly. This is called blackbody radiation.

The near infrared spectrum corresponds to the temperature at which our bodies readily absorb the photons as heat. That's how a heat lamp works. It produces light in the infrared wavelength (as well as plenty of visible light). The infrared light is not seen by human eyes, but is readily absorbed by atoms near 300 Kelvin = 27 degrees C = 80 degrees F. That's pretty close to comfortable room temperature (and it was a very rough approximation on a number with a wide variance).

So we "see" heat with our bodies.
That "heat" is in fact readily absorbed and emitted by infrared light.
Infrared light is just lower in energy than our eyes detect.

If we could see heat with our eyes, then heat words would be color words, and there'd be no weirdness in that.

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Originally Posted by ImSavy

Blue & black, never seen anything else.

That gif has always gone clockwise for me and never anything else.

:(

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Since it's a silhouette, the front-back is ambiguous. Is her arm moving to the left in the foreground or the background?

foreground.

Last time I saw it posted I spent some time trying to figure out how to get it to go both ways and nothing I read worked. Maybe it's because I always tend to view stuff on forums in the same place in the same kind of light etc.

White and gold, and never saw anything else

ImSavy with no apostrophe and only one v... if that rotating silhouette frustrates you, this might help...

http://www.echalk.co.uk/amusements/O...ilhouette.html

This one is freaky...

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/201...illusion-o.gif

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

This one is freaky...

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/201...illusion-o.gif

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I know this could have been looped better.

I did notice it wasn't a very clean gif, but I'm far too lazy to keep searching once I've found what I'm looking for.

The best part about all these illusions is that they hint there is no natural pressure for truly accurate perception. There's no reason you should be able to see the real world if some fantastical interpretation serves your genes best.

Considering that two people can look at the same picture and see two different things.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Considering that two people can look at the same picture and see two different things.

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It doesn't even have to be a picture.

The amount of guesswork the brain has to go through to create a "world-view" is immense. The whole dress color thing is just an example of how we disregard information like pixel color because we assume there is a real, physical light source playing on the apparent colors of things.

Our brains use assumptions to make sense of a thing being actually a different color in different light, yet maintain object permanence. We know that if we see a white mug in green light, that the mug will appear green, but that the mug is white. Our brain basically overrides the "fact" that the mug appears green with the "fact" that this mug is the same one that appeared white a moment ago.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/...y_illusion.jpg

Here, the brain interprets the shading clues in the picture to say the lower surface is in shadow, and therefore it must actually be much lighter to appear to be the same as the upper surface.

The brain uses a shortcut about lighting here, but it echoes the sorts of shortcuts that underlie 19.99 pricing or at-a-glance racism.

It's stuff like this that I find really interesting. No matter how sured up your defenses are, your lazy brain can always be tricked. The tricks were born of utility, but still they exist and they pop up all over the place.

Hey ong, apparently it's 'shored up' but I thought it was 'sured up'. Maybe I don't even know how I pronounce sure.

I'm a little over-irritated that feminists love watching garbage like Girls yet can't be bothered to watch the most feminist movie ever made: Aliens

Snatched from Reddit. Don't read if you haven't watch Aliens (WHY THE FUCK HAVEN'T YOU WATCHED ALIENS YOU TWAT)

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It's also one of the best chick flicks of all time. It was such a good chick flick, you didn't even notice it was a chick flick. You thought it was an action movie, and you loved it.

Here's the plot of aliens, in terms of how events relate to the protagonist:
A single mother, Lt. Ellen Ripley, returns home from work to realize that her baby has died. (that is, lived her whole life and died of old age without any children of her own while Ripley was in cryosleep)
Having "lost" her "child", Ripley becomes clinically depressed, and lounges around in her underwear, not eating, not bathing, and smoking cigarettes, until Carter Burke offers her the opportunity to take revenge against the species that, in a roundabout sorta way, cost her her baby.
Ripley puts on her big-girl panties and decides to take him up on his offer, figuring it's the only way to shake off the depression.
On LV-426, Ripley encounters a recently orphaned girl, about the same age as Ripley's kid when Ripley originally shipped out on the Nostromo. Ripley attempts to bond with the girl, but finds her initial attempts rebuffed.
Bla bla bla a bunch of marines die figuring out that all the colonists are dead or cocooned and they have to get themselves, Ripley, and this girl, Newt-- the lone surviving colonist --the hell off of LV-426 because there are xenos everywhere.
During this, Ripley discovers there is another mother with whom she is in direct conflict: the hive queen.
During a xenomorph assault, Newt is caught or possibly killed, and Ripley decides to go after her. In the moment where she believes Newt dead, we see all of Ripley's repressed grief and pain come crashing to the surface, until she hears Newt scream. In saving Newt, she and Queenie share a moment, one mother to another. She stumbles in on the xenomorph queen laying eggs and using nothing but body language, Ripley seems to say "I just want to take my baby and get out of here. And I will kill your babies if I have to to do it." Queenie understands the message loud and clear, and orders her praetorians to stand down and let Ripley go. As a pair of facehuggers start to hatch, Ripley is reminded of what Queenie's children have already cost her: friends, colleagues and even her own daughter.
So Ripley sets fire to the entire nest, and shoots Queenie right in the babymaker with grenades, not only killing all of her current brood, but permanently sterilizing her and denying her any and all future babies.
Queenie, enraged, chases Ripley down but is unable to prevent her escape. Back on the Sulaco, Queenie, who had stowed away, eliminates the last crewman, Bishop, and once again threatens to kill Newt.
After donning a power loader, Ripley and Queenie engage in the best Lifetime Network chick-flick catfight in cinematic history, culminating in Queenie being blown out the airlock, left to die in the hard vacuum of space, childless and alone.
Having proved her loyalty as a surrogate mother and sheer unkillability, Newt rewards grieving mom Ripley with the only thing Ripley has really been wanting since the beginning of the movie: she throws her arms around Ripley and, still delirious from the pants-shitting terror of almost getting killed by a 20 foot tall xenomorph queen and then blown out of an airlock, she calls Ripley "mommy".
And Ellen Ripley learns that, as much as she believed she wanted revenge, her broken heart could really only start to heal by the love of a child.

ROLL CREDITS.

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Ripley is a dude with tits, is why.

Watch Out of Africa. They don't want to see strong women blowing up alien faces, they want to feel the strength of a woman.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Ripley is a dude with tits, is why.

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Watch Out of Africa. They don't want to see strong women blowing up alien faces, they want to feel the strength of a woman.

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I think that's mostly stereotype. The further our culture has gotten at assuming women are normal people too, the more we see them like the same sort of stuff men do.

I LOVE romance films. I mean, I love love love them. Am I somehow capable as a guy to love romances but women are not capable as women to like actions? I think the whole thing is just pigeonholing women and treating them like second-class humans. Femininity involves a great deal of the kind of strength Ripley has. But women are demanded to not be strong, told that they can't be strong, so then they all end up believing anything with strong women is just masculine projection.

Aliens isn't even about blowing up aliens. The first thing it is is a fantastic movie by all elements. The second thing is something where a main conflict is science fiction.

If you want to "feel the strength" of something, there's little better way to get it in film than the final half hour of Aliens. Arguably the most intense half hour of any movie

One of my favorite things about Downton Abbey is how pampered the women are because they "lack the constitution" to not be pampered. Like when a man dies, the women are expected to mourn forever because they're so much weaker than men.

It's all summed up right here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYkxCzBszOQ

The wrongness isn't in women being strong but in the people who assume that strong women are acting like men

Nothing happens in Out of Africa and bitches love it. Awesome shit happens in Aliens and bitches can't step.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

If you want to "feel the strength" of something, there's little better way to get it in film than the final half hour of Aliens. Arguably the most intense half hour of any movie

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PS this is exactly what you don't understand. Women want to feel the strength, and you don't get that.

I have no idea what you mean then

Right, it's hard to understand as a man. But where you want to see strength, a woman wants to feel strength. Ripley doesn't do that for them.

Bo Burnham had a music video where he mocked pop music for repeating the same lovey-bullshit refrains to every girl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt9c0UeYhFc

Of course, the parallel would be mocking porn for being the same chicks, scenes, and positions every time.

But just like porn still works for us, these feelings bullshit songs/movies work for chicks.

Ripley/Aliens doesn't try to play that game, it plays awesome tense battles which is not up the wheelhouse for the fairer sex.

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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla

Right, it's hard to understand as a man. But where you want to see strength, a woman wants to feel strength. Ripley doesn't do that for them.

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Sorry I don't buy it.

Women and men are pretty much exactly the same except very specific exceptions. Most non-sex gender differences are cultural too. The strength people find in Ripley is all feeling. I'm lost as to what sort of strength Meryl Streep exudes in a movie where "nothing happens". Ripley's strengths has nothing to do with killing aliens. The single most intense scene of the entire movie is when she decides to go down the elevator to save a little child. If women don't "feel" that then they're bullshitting.

Besides, the idea that women are more into feelings than men is hogwash

Virtually without exception, every time we treat women like they're normal, we find that stereotypes about how men and women are inherently different are no longer true. Women used to be bad at math and hate video games and not like sports. Turns out that was only true when society demanded it

Hey, I'm, not selling it. Just calling it like I see it.

Sexual preference is one of the only ways it can be demonstrated that men and women are legitimately different