goodbyesf

No. I'm correct. From your link: 'The Abrahamic religions are a group of religions centered around the worship of the God of Abraham. Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch,[1][2] is extensively mentioned throughout the Abrahamic religious scriptures of the Quran, and the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.'

As I said, only judaism worships the god of abraham. As I showed, the god of abraham said ONLY the descendants of abraham are his 'chosen people' and hence only the descendants of abraham are able to attain salvation.

Christians worship the god of christ, not the god of abraham because the god of christ allows non-descendants of abraham ( 99.999% of all christians around the world ) to be saved. The same logic applies to islam.

In other words, if christians worship the god of abraham, then it would mean christians believe they are going to hell while jews go to heaven. Does that sound like christianity to you? I grew up christian and that doesn't sound like the christianity I grew up with. Christians believe jews forsaked god and jews are destined for hell. That's why god sent christ to form a new convenant with all humanity. Hence the new testament vs the old testament.

The abrahamic religion nonsense is a political creation like judeo-christian. It's self-contradictory nonsense invented purely to advance a political agenda.

> No, obviously vegans think arresting bears is dumb.

So you don't believe that animals are sentient and deserving of the same rights as humans. And yet vegans always push that angle. That's the argument that I was responding to. So you are on my side against the vegan I responded to.

I love that a yourveganfallacyis is full of logical fallacies. I know I'll regret this because educating cultish vegans mired in nutrient deficient brain-fog is a no win situation but here goes...

> Non-human animals do many things we find unethical; they steal, rape, eat their children and engage in other activities...

No. We don't find that unethical at all. Nobody finds an animals stealing, raping, cannibalizing their young, etc unethical because animals are animals. Ethics doesn't apply to animals. Basics of logic, if your premise is flawed then so is your conclusion.

> This means it is illogical to claim that we should eat the same diet certain non-human animals do.

Animals eat plants. So it's illogical to claim we should eat plants. So silly.

> And while we are capable of killing and eating them, it isn't necessary for our survival.

It's necessary for our optimal living. Driving cars isn't necessary for our survival. Millions of sentient animals are killed by cars. Why not ban cars? Planes? Etc.

> We aren't lions, and we know that we cannot justify taking the life of a sentient being for no better reason than our personal dietary preferences.

If their being sentient is important then it is up to us to protect sentient animals from lions. We'd have to arrest all lions and give them meat supplements for the rest of their lives.

So here we are, back to sentience because that's the crux of the matter even though you denied it in the beginning. Without sentience, what argument is there? Without sentience, eating an animal is no different than eating plants. But wait. What if plants have sentience?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34558231/

https://gizmodo.com/is-plant-intelligence-just-a-human-fanta...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/biocentrism/201703/a...

How will you vegans live with yourselves for destroying sentient plants?

> This might just be a cynical atheist's interpretation of Abrahamic religions

There is only one abrahamic religion - judaism. Judaism confers eternal salvation and israel to the descendants of abraham. People forget that judaism is an ethnicity first and religion second. Hence why you can be an atheist jew. The convenant between god and abraham and his descendant is what makes a religion abrahamic.

'On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates...' Genesis 15.

Christianity is a non-abrahamic religion as the covenant is between christ and all of humanity. Hence why anyone can become a christian. Similarly with islam as anyone can become a muslim.

> Your point is straight-up bonkers and the data you yourself cite disproves it.

Ad hominems isn't an argument.

> Comparing the UAE (one country, an outlier at that, due to their subsidized incentives) to the collective immigration to Australia + USA + Western Europe + Japan + South Korea is beyond disingenuous.

I wrote the middle east, not the UAE. Very curious. So you are being disingenuous here by misrepresenting my claim. The wealthy countries of the middle east - uae, saudi arabia, kuwait, qatar, etc have more immigration per capita than the US and any country in europe. Why are you including Japan and South Korea when both are highly averse to immigration and are not part of 'the west'?

> You know who destabilized my country? The USSR.

What country is that? It's a good thing the USSR is gone then. Maybe the same should happen to 'the west'? Are you saying it's okay for 'the west' to destabilize countries but not the USSR? I don't even know what your point is here.

> Boy am I glad to be an American and I wouldn't give up my citizenship for anything.

Why would you? Did I say you should?

> I'll gladly pay taxes even if end up living elsewhere.

What? Go ahead.

It's like you build up a strawman on top of a strawman and got confused along the way. All I'm saying is people immigrate to 'the west' for the same reason they immigrate to the middle east. For money and economic opportunities. Like you and everyone else did. Take australia. The biggest immigrant group in australia is the british. Do you think the british moved to australia for 'classical liberalism' and 'western values'?

> They are completely neutral in terms of investment quantities.

They are not completely neutral since 'they' own large blocks of major companies which gives them commensurate voting power and immense influence over every major company.

The simplest fix to this is deny funds any voting rights and to give the votes to the individuals who invest in these funds - index or mutual, closed or open ended. It's a logistic nightmare but either the individuals get the vote or nobody does.

> In fact the speaker seems to imply that they have very little, if any, influence on countries like Russia and China.

Why would they? They don't have a major presence in these countries. Though I'm sure both want access to china.

> Most, if not all, of the actual claims made in this video are not supported beyond being stated.

It isn't a secret that these two had undue influence in corporate america. Go to any major company and check their top institutional holders.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/META/holders?p=META

You'll almost always see blackrock and vanguard amongst the major shareholders. The problem is that they get to vote when the people who invest in these funds should be the ones given the vote. It's really an industry wide problem, not an individual fund company problem.

> Many people (both poor and rich) are leaving china, places with sharia law, and moving to the west.

The countries with the highest per capita immigration are in the middle east, not in 'the west'.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-immigration-by-co...

Do you think they are moving to the middle east because of their love of sharia law? Or do you think they are moving they for economic opportunities?

People move to 'the west' for the same reason tens of millions of europeans moved to america in the 19th and 20th century. For money. We were the land of milk and honey or that's what they were told. Do you think millions of italians, germans, irish, etc came to america for the nonexistent classic liberalism?

People come here for the economic opportunity that doesn't exist in their countries - much of the time because 'the west' invaded, destroyed or destabilized it. China being one of the many countries 'the west' invaded, destroyed and destabilized.

> Hot take: Yes. Because classical liberalism, the free market, and bottom-up government has done more for the advancement of humankind than sharia law, tyrants, oligarchies, theocracies, or dictatorships have ever done.

That's not 'the west' and has never been. The US was born protectionist and pretty much stayed protectionist til today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...

Of course today we wrap our protectionism with 'national security'. If a free market exists, then let me know because I've never come across one. All markets are protected and certainly not free. And if there is a bottom-up government, I've never heard of one in history. Can you show me an example of a bottom-up government? I'd love a good laugh.

> Let's stop pretending like all values have the same ethical valence.

And lets stop making up values to suit ones agenda.

Edit: Also, you might want to brush up on your history. 'sharia law, tyrants, oligarchies, theocracies, or dictatorships have ever done' have given us civilization and nearly all human progress since the dawn of time. Everything from agriculture, to writing, to the laws of physics were produced outside of 'classical liberalism'.

> Short fiction has never been a lucrative business.

A perfect example being Edgar Allan Poe. One of the greatest writers in history could barely support himself and his wife with his short stories and poems. Tragic.

> If we acknowledge that animals are sentient beings, capable of cognition, fear, and suffering... it's not a stretch to draw parallels between this and other forms of oppression such as slavery, sexual exploitation, and domestic abuse.

That's such an absurd flamebait that if you bother to think about it for a second, you'd realize how untenable your position is. If we accept your assertion, then then we would have to protect a deer from a bear, snake from a hawk and all kinds of fish from bluefin tuna. Do you suggest we arrest every bear, hawk and bluefin tuna that eats another sentient being? Would we have to arrest all dog and cat owners that feed their pets a healthy meat diet?

> Wow, "created" seems like a heckuva stretch in this title.

Keep in mind that rollingstone gave us the "Rape on Campus" lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus

When it comes to rollingstone, I can smell the agenda a mile away.

There is a difference between traditional colonies that were exploited for resources and some of their wealth was stolen and those like the US where the natives were outright exterminated and all the wealth stolen outright.

A world of difference between say the philippines or india and 'settler colonies' of the US, Canada, etc.

When people talk europeans exploiting their colonies, most are talking about traditional colonies, not settler colonies which are ultimately european nations themselves.

> Isn't this exactly what happened?

No.

> My understanding of history is that up until like the 16th century North Africa, the Middle East, and India were global leaders in science and industry.

If anyone were 'global leaders' back then it was probably india and china but both were predominantly tea drinking societies. But there were no real global leaders of 'science and industry' back then because 'science and industry' didn't exist as we define it today and nobody had global influence. North africa hadn't been a leader of anything since the fall of ancient egypt. The middle east had it's moments of glory but far more moments of embarrassment ( european, mongol, turkish, etc conquest ).

Arguing coffee was behind the enlightenment is as silly as arguing tea is why britain conquered the world.

If that was the case, then the enlightenment would have occurred in north africa first, then the middle east and then eastern europe. Western europe was centuries late to coffee consumption. Also, how do you explain the renaissance?

The enlightenment happened for the same reason that the renaissance happened. Exploration and introduction to new lands, knowledge, goods, wealth, etc. The renaissance was the result of western europe's direct connection to east ( china, india, etc ) via the mongol empire in the 1200s. The enlightenment is the result of western europe's direct connection to the americas via columbus in the late 1400s. It's not an accident that most scholars use 1500 as the boundary between the renaissance and the enlightenment.

Experience has shown that people who scream 'free speech' just mean 'my free speech only'. Doesn't matter whether it's left or right, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, When the 'liberals' were trying to push their agenda, they screamed 'free speech'. Once they succeeded, they pushed censorship everywhere. Elon was screaming 'free speech' at twitter. Once he got control, did he allow free speech? Of course not. He just introduced his version of censorship. Hypocrisy is part of human nature.

> This has the scent of sensationalism. You can dig into any empire and find glowing accounts of their tolerance.

Dig into it. Given the stereotype of the mongols as bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs, it's surprising that they committed no genocide. Not a single one. And they were rather benevolent and beneficial. Everywhere from the islamic world to the rus to the chinese to the persians to central asia actually benefited from mongol rule. Everywhere the locals got wealthier and were better off. I'm more than happy to be corrected. And please, nothing about baghdad and the fall of the islamic empire. The mongol conquest eventually led to the greater, wealthier and more important islamic ottoman empire.

> The vikings were the Rus, and they continued to rule as vassals under the Mongols in Moscow.

Yes. But by 'the rus' I'm talking about the slavic peoples ( the eventual 'rus'sians, bela'rus'ians, ukrainians, etc ) that the vikings conquered. In other words, the viking ship is on the ukrainian emblem, not because the vikings protected the ukrainians from the mongols, but because the vikings conquered the ukrainians. The ship would have been on the emblem regardless of whether the mongols invaded or not as it is ukrainian legacy of viking conquest.

It's difficult to talk about that era since the conquered took on the name of the conquerors and eventually displaced the conquerors. It would be as if the native americans started calling themselves english or anglos. Which would have caused more confusion than calling them indians.

> The whole founding of Russia starts with locals turning to the vikings in order to protect themselves against the murderous mongols.

The founding of russia starts with the mongol establishment of 'the muscovy' in the 13th century - moscow being established by the mongol empire as the administrative capital of the russian people. Also, the vikings were just as 'murderous' as the mongols. In actuality, the mongols probably were the least murderous of all the major empire. The most religiously, racially, economically tolerant empire that has ever existed. Look it up. It was an anomoly for its time.

> Hence the Emblem of Ukraine sporting a viking ship…

It sports the viking ship because the vikings conquered the rus. The vikings conquered 'the rus' and made themselves their rulers. The nonsense about vikings 'protecting' the locals is propaganda established during the 'de-mongolization' period after the fall of the mongol empire and the ascendancy of europe. Had the mongol empire stuck around, it would be the bow and arrow in the emblem of ukraine showing how the mongols 'protected' the rus from the 'murderous' vikings.

> I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously... I can't see an intelligent person ever falling for it.

Some of the smartest people we know, who gave us modern astronomy - Galileo, Kepler, et al - were into astrology.

> Huh?!? That's totally false.

Lets see who is lying and who is telling the truth.

> Depending on the field of science it was either French or German and transitioned to English.

Charles Darwin did his work in french? Or was it german? What language did faraday, maxwell, dalton, etc use? French or german? What language did lord kelvin to give us the temperature scale? Can you point to a single scientific paper that an english or american scientist wrote in german or french?

> For physics it was German moving into English over that 100 years.

Yes I know. I'm not denying that english is lingua franca.

> In math French was a bit more of a player.

Bit of a more player? That's proving my point. French was not lingua franca. Nobody would say 'english is bit of a more player' in math, science, business, politics, etc. Lingua franca is obvious. You don't have to miscontrue it with such weasely language.

> Turing's famous work is in German.

I don't know german and I've read turing's original works on computation, AI, morphogenesis, etc. Have you? They were most definitely not written in german. What's with people who know absolutely nothing writing with such authority?

> There was a clear lingua franca.

So tell me what 'lingua franca' turing was publishing his work in. It wasn't german like you claimed so german wasn't lingua franca. It surely as hell wasn't french.

The only lingua franca in europe before english was latin. Neither french nor german ever was 'lingua franca' as you've clearly proved with turing. At best you could argue that english, french and german were major players in science, math, etc. But certainly there was no lingua franca until english took over post-ww2.

> It’s not a popular opinion on this site, and I’m probably going to be savagely downvoted

At best, it's hard to take someone seriously when they intentionally lie about the obvious. At worst, it makes it seem like you are part of a pr campaign.

Can you point to a post where you were savagely downvoted for criticizing elon and anything having to do with twitter? I genuinely interested. Maybe your experience on hn is different from everyone else's.

> I don’t really see what Musk is trying to accomplish.

Have you followed his twitter account? Watch his interviews. Read his SEC filings? He's been pretty open about his intentions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Corp.

> Everything he’s done to Twitter carries the foul stench of Death by Private Equity. No product improvements, but worse reliability, more spam

That's not what 'Death by Private Equity' is or looks like.

> and a weird desperate-looking rebrand.

Desperate weird rebrand? The rebrand happens months ago. It's not a new thing.

"The concept for X solidified in October 2022, when Musk tweeted that acquiring Twitter is "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Corp.

Elon is doing what exactly what he said he was going to do but you are twisting into some bizarre 'Death by Private Equity' that doesn't make sense because you don't like elon? Isn't that the gist of it? The anti-elon pr campaign is no different than the anti-zuckerburg campaign.

> It always amazes me how people's minds can be so fundamentally different.

Not just between different people. What about a single individual. Is a single individual's mind the same over time? Is your mind the same now as it was yesterday? Is it the same before your nap and after you awake? Everyone is separated from each other by their own personal subjective reality. But does that also apply to the individual?

@dang - flamebait alert.

> There must be a lingua franca

Not true. The period of greatest scientific advancement in human history ( mid-19th to the mid-20th century ) had no lingua franca. Actually, the end of french as a 'lingua franca' in europe in the first half of 1800s can partly be credited with the burgeoning of science ( and other academic fields ) in britain, germany, russia, etc. Just like the ending of latin as 'lingua franca' ( beginning of the 'vulgar' period ) led to the burgeoning of religion, philosophy, literature, etc throughout europe.

> Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?

Or maybe people should speak their own language and 'do science' in their own language.

What's more preferable? Having one billion chinese learn english to study algebra with an english language textbook or translated that one algebra textbook into chinese and have one billion chinese learn algebra in chinese?

The dull and boring mono-linguistic and mono-culture world has led to stagnation. The world would be infinitely better off when that changes. When we have actual diversity, not the superficial diversity where we look different but all think and talk the same.

Look at the tech world today. Look at just europe alone. How great would it be if europe had a german, spanish, russian, french 'google/apple/microsoft/etc'? Now broaden that view to the arab, persian, chinese, indian, african, etc regions. So much diversity, knowledge, creativity, etc is lost because one group of people want to dominate the world. It's tragic.

> The way you put it, it sounds like some random architect somewhere looked at Linear B, worked hard on their own, and came up with the answer. That's not even remotely true.

But that's true of everything. Newton didn't invent calculus ( neither did leibniz either ). He didn't even understand the idea of a limit. It took contributions of many people over many decades and even centuries to develop the discipline of calculus. Not to mention his ideas came from ancient greeks, et al. The same applies to Einstein and of course the most overrated and misrepresented Turing.

The idea of a lone genius or a singular great man who works by himself to produce something great is a lie. Brady didn't win 7 superbowls by himself, Jobs didn't create the iPhone by himself and Musk really didn't create anything by himself. It's just PR which creates heros out of mere mortals.

> Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary.

In an ideal world that would be the case. But in an era of mass media, consumers really aren't making the choice. The choice is being made for them by ads.

> I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it that some government regulator should or even can micromanage the diet of ordinary citizens.

Pretty much everything a supermarket, restaurant, etc sells is regulated by the government. Whether you like it or not, government is involved in our diets.

> Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?

A geniunely independent bureacrat? Maybe. On the other hand, do you want a world where corporations with their ads control your diet? It's a complex question.

I stopped using avast years ago when I first encountered the phrase: 'if it is free, then you are the product'.

Also, avast, avg, etc are just another source of vulnerabilities themselves.

Everyone really should be taught in school to ask: 'how do they profit off of me?'.

> Actually I think you've been starting a large number of them—or at least significantly worsening.

I can't think of any I started. Even this thread wasn't started by me. And my response wasn't that flamebaity. I was simply giving my honest opinion to actual flamebait.

> "Start" is rather a dubious concept to begin with, as everyone always feels like the other person started it.

I suppose. But in most cases, you can just climb the comment tree to find the root.

Also, I see tons of flamebait here. I ignore most of them. For example, this guy loves to flamebait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36722869

Yet you haven't censured him. It's only when I respond and bring the flamebait to light, that you would recognize it. Maybe it's time for comments to have a report link where we can report flamebait? Or is flamebait allowed as long as no one takes the bait?

Who would want to be an extra then? Aren't most extras people who want to break into the film business? If you are an extra for one movie and the studio owns your likeness forever, how will you get another job as an extra or a cast member? They wouldn't need you since they already have your likeness to use as they please in any film they want. I mean owning the your image within the movie is understandable. But owning your likeness which is transferable across films and mediums is rather amazing. I can't imagine extras are paid that much to begin with that it'll be worth it to sell their likeness for one days pay.

> I love a good moon landing hoax

Swing and a miss. Though I don't look down on the 'moon landing hoax' folks as many unfairly do, I actually believe the other extreme - we've been sending people to the moon nonstop since the 70s. Seems the likeliest of the 3 main scenarios. But ultimately, I'm was interested in a discussion as it one of the most fascinating topics of the modern era. Hope you aren't too disappointed.

Also, as you already know, I don't start flamebaits, I just participate in them. You should skip over me and climb up the comment tree to the source. Not telling you how to do your job but I believe that would be the most fruitful course of action. What do you think? Besides, I only post a comment or two for the edification of future readers. My intention certainly isn't to set the site on fire.

I'm glad you enjoy some of my comments and I hope you don't see me as the guy throwing molotovs, but the one pointing and shouting 'look! this guy is throwing molotov cocktails over there!'. A flamewar alarm bell if you will.

As I understand it, 'the beginning' is when 'the universe' had a 'once-in-a-gazillion' moment where the probabilistically unlikely event of entropy shrinking to a very small value happened ( aka 'the beginning' ) and from whence entropy started to increase again as it is wont to do.

It all goes back to thermodynamics and the probabilistic understanding that entropy 'always' increases. But if entropy always increases then by reason, it must have started off at small minuscule point sometime in the past. But if energy/mass are constant, how could it have gotten to the low entropy in the first place? Given enough time, a 'once-in-a-gazillion' event actually happened. At a fundamental level, it's all mathematical guesswork.