Sentios wrote:
Fixing this planet up, at least to the point of undoing any damage that we have caused to it, does have positive applications even form your view point as it is basically terraforming on a practical scale. If we can not even tweak our native planet's conditions then we'll never terraform another planet and I don't believe we'll see bubble colonies on a planet's surface as practical long term either.
I see your point, but fixing up this planet will, in my opinion, always be harder to push through than terraforming a different one because there are way too many different countries and interest groups on this planet. Look how the oil spill thing went, about 10 countries wanted to help clean it up, but the US state decided "there was no immediate need for the assistance", if we can't even co-operate on something like that, then how would an effort to change the entire Earth go?
When it comes to Mars and other planets/moons it'd be on a first come first serve basis, the first country to colonize would make all the important decisions, so while it may be harder from a technical standpoint it'd be easier decision making wise.
Mathias wrote:
Debaters often take quotes out of context.
If by "debaters" you mean populist politicians, biased journalists and Internet trolls then yeah, otherwise it's not considered a good debating skill at all. Good job at not aiming very high.
Also when Grey pointed out that your response to my quote was irrelevant, you said "Actually, it is relevant", but now you claim you took it out of context on purpose. You can't take a quote out of context on purpose and at the same time think it's relevant, so which one was it? It can't be both.
0GravityDragon wrote:
dismissing a possible message just becuz of who made it isn't being open-minded it's called bein ignant.
Right. I'll keep that in mind, I need to look up the word "ignant", must be some neologism cause I don't think I've heard it before, "hypocratic" is new to me, too.
Jokes aside, there's a difference between having an open-mind and swallowing every shit that's presented to you. When I'm in Częstochowa and some guy with a shaved head wants to talk to me about the "one true path to happiness" and I'm not talking to him and avoid eye contact, it's not because I'm not open-minded, it's because he's in some cult whose message is shallow and they're just after my money. So yes, at times, dismissing a "possible message" based on who presents it to you is very reasonable.
But that's NOT even what I'm doing here. Philosophy is also about being critical of worldviews that are presented to you, I'd be ignorant if I dismissed the Matrix's "message" without watching it, but I did watch it and I formed an opinion. And that opinion is as follows, it's an action movie, with flat characters, poor writing, good fighting sequences, cool special effects and level of acting ranging from good to horrible. That's all it is, an action movie. The "message" is tacked on to seem "deep" to easily impresed 1999 teenagers, and to have some characterization as to why Smith hates humans so much.
So yeah, I think citing an Agent Smith line when explaining your view on humanity looks dumb, and you can call me pretentious I don't give a fuck.
Also, don't pull the whole "dont ban me" shit, I hate it when people do that. It's always meant to be read as "Oh look at me, I'm so brave and truth loving that I'm willing to risk a conflict with the big bad Mods, because I value my principles so much". You're not risking anything, stop blowing your horn. I've been a mod for 5 years, I've never banned anyone who didn't deserve it, I've never abused my mod status and I'll never ban someone simply because he criticizes me or disagrees with me. Stop being silly.
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Stanisław Lem wrote:
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.
