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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 10, 2019 2:08:37 GMT
Some peeps are trying to have this convo on Kboards but ironically there's a ton of censorship going on *teehee* so I thought I'd open up a thread here in case anyone had any thoughts to share they couldn't share there or on writer sanctum. UK to unleash internet safety czar on Google, Facebook, Twitter Social media companies will face huge fines if they fail to live up to their "duty of care" to internet users. www.cnet.com/news/uk-to-keep-social-networks-in-check-with-internet-safety-regulator/ These things sound nice on the surface, but I could also see lots of arguments over what is inappropriate material for children, and what does "having access" mean? I guess only time will tell if it becomes a problem or if it ends up being helpful and only making the world a safer and nicer place to be in.
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Post by writeway on Apr 10, 2019 5:24:44 GMT
I saw the thread and the poster on Kboards seems confused. Regulation is not censorship. Regulation is holding companies accountable. I am a fan of regulation especially when it's to keep people safe. Social media sites should be held responsible for the crap they allow on there especially when idiotic, racist posters go off and kill a group of people due to the venom spread on these sites by hate groups, etc. This is not censorship and to answer that poster's question, no I don't think the US government will get to that point of actual censorship. I am not familiar with UK law, but the US has the Constitution and laws that protect freedom of expression. Even hate speech is protected under the Constitution but it's different when these groups use sites to cause harm and violence or to recruit others who do. If you allow these people to play on your playground then you are responsible if they use your platform to hurt other people because you provided them a space and reach they otherwise would not have had. Giving sites strict guidelines is not censorship. Telling people what movies they can make or books they can write, is. A big difference. Anyway, people get confused about what is censorship and what is not. For example, erotica authors often say Amazon censors them when they don't allow certain books in the store. That is NOT censorship and I hate when people say that. A company has every right not to allow you to publish something on their site. Amazon doesn't owe an author anything, especially not a spot for them to sell their stuff and make money. People use "censorship" too loosely and don't know what it really is. A company's guidelines are not censorship. As I said, no one has to let anyone publish on their site. Amazon can reject our work any time they want for any reason. It's their store.
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Post by davidvandyke on Apr 10, 2019 22:01:37 GMT
Regulation by the government CAN be censorship. Censorship can include the "chilling effect" that large threatened punishments have on free speech. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect It can be quite convoluted, balancing freedom and safety.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 10, 2019 22:12:25 GMT
If you aren't allowed to do something ever that's censorship. If you aren't allowed to do something on one website, to me that's censorship, too, just on a much smaller scale. Website owners absolutely have the right to police what peeps post, and if you're prevented from doing something on one site it's a tiny issue in the grand scheme of things. When the government says you can't do something on any site anywhere online that is a much bigger deal. I suppose government have that right if the people they're governing want them to. I think sometimes people of censorship is anything bad, but if they don't have a problem with a prohibition then it's not censorship. Or the prohibition must be absolute or it's not censorship. But to me it's all the same, whether on a small scale or a large scale, and whether I like the rule or I don't. Sometimes censorship is good, sometimes it's bad, other times it's meh, whatever.
But I know I've heard that argument before that if a prohibition isn't absolute and doesn't apply everywhere then it's something different. But to me it looks and feels the same. *shrugs*
I won't let people post homophobic or transphobic or racist things on here. I consider that censorship, just on a tiny, microscopic scale. I haz an itty bitty scepter of power.
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Post by possiblyderanged on Apr 22, 2019 8:04:24 GMT
There have to be some limits. There was an old saying, back in the "hippie" days: Your rights end where mine begin. It was a short way of saying that there are freedoms, but they don't include harming someone else. So, you can be in the KKK, hate black people and whoever else, but you aren't allowed to do things that hurt them, that violate their rights. So, have a rally and say blacks should go back to Africa, but you can't go out and beat them up, or kidnap them and put them on a boat back to Africa. (I think some people don't realize Africa is a continent, not one single country.) We can think and believe a lot of things, but when we act we have to keep in mind that others don't feel the same, and some actions and even speech (or writing) isn't a free-for-all. Society functions when people have limits. Some people are happy when those limits coincide with their beliefs, and not so much when they don't. It's complicated and my insomnia probably isn't helping me explain myself.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 22, 2019 18:00:32 GMT
There have to be some limits. There was an old saying, back in the "hippie" days: Your rights end where mine begin. It was a short way of saying that there are freedoms, but they don't include harming someone else. So, you can be in the KKK, hate black people and whoever else, but you aren't allowed to do things that hurt them, that violate their rights. So, have a rally and say blacks should go back to Africa, but you can't go out and beat them up, or kidnap them and put them on a boat back to Africa. (I think some people don't realize Africa is a continent, not one single country.) We can think and believe a lot of things, but when we act we have to keep in mind that others don't feel the same, and some actions and even speech (or writing) isn't a free-for-all. Society functions when people have limits. Some people are happy when those limits coincide with their beliefs, and not so much when they don't. It's complicated and my insomnia probably isn't helping me explain myself. I fully agree with you! *major hugs for the insomnia* Last night was the first night I slept in a week. Yesterday, I was about ready to kill someone.
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Post by davidvandyke on Apr 24, 2019 6:30:10 GMT
Always funny to hear the "go back to Africa" dumbass rants.
Response: "Since my ancestors were brought here against their will by your ancestors...whose fault is it I'm here?"
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 24, 2019 7:23:29 GMT
Although, I suppose, if you took "go back to where you came from" far enough we'd all have to go back to Africa. If I'm right in my understanding that humans started there, anyway. I think I read something somewhere that the earliest american remains they found came from an aboriginal Australian. I'm not really up on my human origins, so I don't know if we all started in one place and spread out, or whether cos there were so many pre-human peeps out there that prolly did some traveling of their own if humans evolved separately in different parts of the world.
I believe the point was for stupid racists to not racist stupidly though.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 24, 2019 9:51:03 GMT
Although, I suppose, if you took "go back to where you came from" far enough we'd all have to go back to Africa. If I'm right in my understanding that humans started there, anyway. I know it's not the original subject, but that seems to be the case. And most of the genetic diversity in the human race is in people still in Africa - so it doesn't make much sense to be talking about Africans as if they are all the same, when in practice it is the rest of us who are most similar to each other (whatever our skin colour or appearance). And the original Europeans were dark skinned. Seems that the genes for pale skin came through interbreeding with the Neanderthals or with the arrival of the Yamnaya and spread quickly because of its advantages in the cold, sunless north.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 24, 2019 22:27:34 GMT
Although, I suppose, if you took "go back to where you came from" far enough we'd all have to go back to Africa. If I'm right in my understanding that humans started there, anyway. I know it's not the original subject, but that seems to be the case. And most of the genetic diversity in the human race is in people still in Africa - so it doesn't make much sense to be talking about Africans as if they are all the same, when in practice it is the rest of us who are most similar to each other (whatever our skin colour or appearance). And the original Europeans were dark skinned. Seems that the genes for pale skin came through interbreeding with the Neanderthals or with the arrival of the Yamnaya and spread quickly because of its advantages in the cold, sunless north. I'll have to look up the Yamnaya, I hadn't heard of them before. I love subjects like this though. It's incredibly fascinating to me. And it's really helpful research for sci-fi and fantasy writers, too. Luckily I started the thread so I don't have to worry about offending the OP for starting a new topic in the middle. *teehee* I watched this really fun documentary on the neanderthals, a few years ago. I have no idea if any of the stuff they said was real, but they said they lived in caves and had a rich musical religion, and that they were very sweet and nice, and that they were nocturnal. But the homo sapiens were much more aggressive, daytime peeps without the sophistication, and that they raped and pillaged the neanderthals until there were only homos left. But at least they also stole their spiritual ideas, as well, so that's why we still have art and music and stuff now. I also watched this movie about the Lut-somethings who were supposedly the ancient white people who really discovered america. I assume it was some white-supremacy ideology thing, but the movie was fun, anyway. You had this young couple, male and female who had to leave their village during the ice age and they traveled a long ways and fought mammoths and stuff. Found this on the Yamnaya. dna-explained.com/2015/06/15/yamnaya-light-skinned-brown-eyed-ancestors/
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Post by dormouse on Apr 26, 2019 8:50:24 GMT
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Post by dormouse on Apr 26, 2019 8:57:59 GMT
The neanderthal stuff is really interesting but nearly all speculation. iirc there's very little evidence of direct conflict with homo sapiens and their populations appeared to be falling before sapiens arrived. iirc the belief is that, unlike sapiens, they mostly depended on very large game and that the availability of this reduced because of climate change. Plusz ca change
Also worth researching the Denisovans if you don't know about them.
But this may be out of date now; I've not checked.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 26, 2019 11:44:42 GMT
You might also be interested in searching the Princess of Ukok, who was from a culture partly descended from the Yamnaya.
And the Tarim Basin/ Xiaohe mummies and their DNA.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 26, 2019 18:57:18 GMT
Fascinating stuff, thanks for all the links and research suggestions!!! Yep, the spoiler tags still work. Yay! You just put spoiler in [] at the front and /spoiler in [] at the end.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 26, 2019 19:15:50 GMT
test Ha! Works on site but not on properly on preview. Or maybe it was just the switching backwards and forwards. But putting a title in for the spoiler doesn't seem to work. And here's what I was going to put in for the evidence of conflict If the Yamnaya migrants did behave as Kristiansen suggests, Neolithic Europe’s men are likely to have objected, setting the stage for violent encounters. Some evidence that this was the case comes from a remarkable Corded Ware site called Eulau in Germany. Here, a handful of unusual graves each contain between two and four bodies – mostly women and their children. Analysis of isotopes in the women’s teeth reveals that they did not grow up locally. And injuries on five of the 13 bodies indicate that they met a violent end. Kristiansen interprets this as evidence of a brutal raid by Neolithic men taking revenge on migrants who had stolen “their” women. The absence of male burials suggests they waited until the village’s men were out tending their cattle before making the attack.
This sort of mass killing wasn’t unheard of in Neolithic Europe, says Christian Meyer at the OsteoArchaeological Research Centre, Germany, who was involved in the Eulau analysis. Nevertheless, it hints at an upsurge in violence about 5000 years ago. And there are other signs. “We do see a rather high number of trepanations [holes drilled in skulls],” he says – people may have undergone this procedure as a therapeutic measure after bad head injuries. There are still major problems with the violence hypothesis though. Northern Germany was covered in thick forest. The Yamnaya were adapted to the steppes and highly horse dependent. Horses aren't much good for warfare in forests; even the Romans found it hard to conquer the heavily forested areas in Germany.
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Post by dormouse on Apr 26, 2019 20:28:50 GMT
The violence theory more or less goes: Kill the men, enslave the women and then all children have the native mitochondrial DNA and the invader Y chromosome. Underlying problem is that there are then no men doing the productive work keeping everyone fed. That's OK if the native men were drones and the women did all the work or if there's a huge number of invading men who can do the work. Neither are probable.
Alternative is enslave both men and women, only allow the invaders sexual access to the women and use the enslaved men to do the work. Underlying problem with that one is that it is very hard for a small number of people to control a very large number of slaves.
Something similar did happen in Iceland where male vikings brought enslaved Scottish and Irish women - but that was into an empty land.
My own theory, for what it is worth, is technology. We know that technological advances were usually closely guarded secrets (because that preserved the competitive advantage for the owners) and were often handed down father to son. We know that some technological advantages (eg metal working) spread west, probably with people (ie male metal workers). Societies without the technology would be very open to importing it, young metal workers would be happy to go (better to go where there's less competition) and, for most, no advantage to bringing their own women with them - they'd be a prize catch in the new society. With the technology being handed down within families the male chromosomes with the technology would have a competitive advantage for a number of generations.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 26, 2019 20:35:12 GMT
Hmm, bad glitches, bad. I found this article that talks about neanderthals, denisovans, and humans all having the same ancestor. In my opinion, I doubt that humans back then thought of the other humans as that much different from them. Maybe they may have thought of them as different races or simply foreigners, but prolly not as a different species. Especially since they could interbreed and most likely communicate. There was prolly lots of raping and pillaging and murdering going on, but there was also prolly lots of making friends and settling down together. I imagine some people back then were nice and others were mean, just like today. And during hard times when one group was in need, there was lots more temptation to steal and refuse to share. genographic.nationalgeographic.com/neanderthal/ All of this is really interesting to me since I was raised to not believe in evolution, so I always had this idea of God directly creating humans, and then everything following on from there. Rather than life evolving slowly over millions of years until the first humans developed and there being lots of different human groups developing until our group, homo sapiens arrived. And then we outbred or destroyed or both the other human groups. I wonder if one day there will be a new human group like Mutants or something that will outbreed and destroy us? Maybe they'll be cyborgs! Hopefully the German cave tragedy was not the norm and just some sort of feud going on between two groups. I have to try and learn and remember what all the names and ages and periods and stuff mean since I didn't learn any of it from my ACE curriculum.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Apr 26, 2019 20:46:19 GMT
The violence theory more or less goes: Kill the men, enslave the women and then all children have the native mitochondrial DNA and the invader Y chromosome. Underlying problem is that there are then no men doing the productive work keeping everyone fed. That's OK if the native men were drones and the women did all the work or if there's a huge number of invading men who can do the work. Neither are probable. Alternative is enslave both men and women, only allow the invaders sexual access to the women and use the enslaved men to do the work. Underlying problem with that one is that it is very hard for a small number of people to control a very large number of slaves. Something similar did happen in Iceland where male vikings brought enslaved Scottish and Irish women - but that was into an empty land. My own theory, for what it is worth, is technology. We know that technological advances were usually closely guarded secrets (because that preserved the competitive advantage for the owners) and were often handed down father to son. We know that some technological advantages (eg metal working) spread west, probably with people (ie male metal workers). Societies without the technology would be very open to importing it, young metal workers would be happy to go (better to go where there's less competition) and, for most, no advantage to bringing their own women with them - they'd be a prize catch in the new society. With the technology being handed down within families the male chromosomes with the technology would have a competitive advantage for a number of generations. Sure, all that makes sense. Ancient peoples were likely less violent that the old warporn stories liked to present. So someone had to be keeping all the women and children alive. Maybe the women and children kept themselves alive. And maybe they mated with the visiting men willingly since all their good-for-nothing males kept leaving for greener pastures. Or something. I don't know, but it's fun to think about. For a small village though, the invaders could likely send in just a few super horny men to sort of capture the village, for it's own protection. Offer a bunch of the young men an exciting travel adventure and new work opportunities. Then they'd just have to deal with the older men. The older men might decide it's not worth it to fight, maybe the women are attracted to the bad boy invaders, at least partially, and the little boys think they are cool. So then lots of sex commences and new hybrid children are born and new societies form. And maybe there really isn't that much resistance to the changes.
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Post by possiblyderanged on Apr 30, 2019 23:03:51 GMT
Always funny to hear the "go back to Africa" dumbass rants. Response: "Since my ancestors were brought here against their will by your ancestors...whose fault is it I'm here?" I once upset someone to the point they wouldn't speak to me when I told them that all humans originated in Africa (Mitochondrial Eve). I thought they might have a stroke. There was a pretty good series a few years back, on PBS, about all the different types of homo sapiens that were around, and overlapped. The theory is that mostly they all interbred and became what we know as modern man.
K', I almost hate to introduce this concept to your growing knowledge of evolution, but I'll just drop this here: Ancient Aliens.
You're welcome.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on May 1, 2019 6:50:14 GMT
possiblyderanged, I LOVE Ancient Aliens!!!!!!! It's so fun. Ancient Astronaut theory is wonderful. I have added Mitochrondrial Eve to my research list. I love PBS documentaries, too. PBS and the BBC do really good ones. Hahaha on the person giving you the silent treatment over human origins. I can't understand anyone getting upset about that.
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Post by dormouse on May 1, 2019 18:43:23 GMT
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on May 2, 2019 0:50:50 GMT
Fascinating!!! How awesome would it be to time travel back to the world when newbie humans, neanderthals, and denisovans were all chilling together. One day, I'd like to write that story. So inspiring and exciting! Yes, it does have a rather Trekkish vibe to it. (nods tricorder)
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Post by davidvandyke on May 8, 2019 16:30:00 GMT
Given the distance in time and the incomplete record, there were probably many more types of hominids as yet undiscovered. Makes some of the ancient myths and legends about gods and Nephilim look more like bits of truth left over...and I'm completely open to the concept of ancient aliens too. If they're out there, as many reputable scientists have speculated, the odds are high that they checked out Earth at some time in its history. If they're anything like humans, they probably meddled in the primitive culture--maybe just a sprinkling of life-promoting substances or molecules, maybe some single-celled organisms, maybe more.
Darwinian evolution's single largest problem and its dirty little secret is that it's a bigger evolutionary distance from no life to a single cell, than from the cell to humans, and it's never been adequately explained--it's assumed. Many atheistic scientists have managed to be honest with themselves on this point and have decided some form of panspermia or life-seeding is the simplest, most likely explanation.
Yet look how strongly the quasi-religious orthodoxy of "life originated on Earth!" is entrenched. Even Star Trek, with its bazillions of aliens wandering around everywhere, including the godlike Qs, couldn't bring itself to assert otherwise (remember the episode All Good Things with Q where the goop of life was prevented from forming...) Given the age of the universe, it's much, much more likely it originated elsewhere and spread to Earth.
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Post by dormouse on May 8, 2019 18:37:37 GMT
Darwinian evolution's single largest problem and its dirty little secret is that it's a bigger evolutionary distance from no life to a single cell, than from the cell to humans, and it's never been adequately explained--it's assumed. Not sure about dirty little secret. Evolution only covers adaption and development in living organisms, so the beginning of life is outside its scope. Evolution implies nothing about the existence or non-existence of God, although it does challenge those who have a literal belief in the Old Testament. Dawkins is a clever idiot, and his militant atheism is as dangerous as some militant religious preaching. I'm not sure about the assumption. Many scientists have tried to demonstrate how it could have happened. So it is something they are looking to explain. And scientists surely ought to be looking to use science to explain things, and assuming that such an explanation exists is a reasonable position (the converse, believing that it does not, implies that no further scientific enquiry is warranted). They should also have no rigid 'scientific' beliefs about matters that haven't been demonstrated, but they tend not to be so good about that. Stuff we don't know is stuff we don't know. And stuff we do know is just a set of working hypotheses.
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Post by dormouse on May 8, 2019 20:23:55 GMT
I wonder if this thread is heading to the Alien Studies Board Don't think I'd noticed the Alien Studies title before.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on May 9, 2019 1:51:51 GMT
We could move it if you wanted it to move. That board isn't indexed like this one. I'm cool either way. I listen to the Atheist Experience a lot so I love theist-atheist debates, especially when they wander over to evolution. I don't have any beliefs about the origin of the universe or the first spark of evolution. In TUOK the universe/multi-verse is self-existent, and it developed sentience which eventually evolved into deities who then took over and created everything else, but sometimes the universe will just do something outside of the control of the deities. Like a new world will pop up that they didn't create or a new psi power or something. So I guess it's a pantheist/monotheist universe.
Stories are just more interesting when there's an intelligence behind movement. At least it is to me. So even though I have zero reason to believe in real life deities I still enjoy the stories and speculation muchly.
From what I understand, abiogenesis is the study of how life began, and evolution just shows what scientists understand currently as the way life evolved once it existed. But if you want to discuss how life began you have to look into abiogenesis.
If this were WS this thread would be split off into three separate threads. I find that annoying, but maybe it's helpful?
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Post by dormouse on May 9, 2019 8:46:00 GMT
We could move it if you wanted it to move. That board isn't indexed like this one. I'm cool either way. If this were WS this thread would be split off into three separate threads. I find that annoying, but maybe it's helpful? I find it easier when things stay where they are. I think it is only worth splitting threads when there are two distinct conversations running in parallel
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on May 10, 2019 0:18:19 GMT
Then stay it shall!
I bet ancient aliens get annoyed when anthropology professors censor them in class just because the poor professor doesn't understand the ancient astronaut's wisdom.
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