People have mentioned death in this thread. I believe our deaths are set and there is no avoiding it. When a drink driver kills someone's friend, it's very unfortunate that the person passes but for the friend, maybe they were taking life for granted or were a little reckless themselves and although their friend passing was tragic, it bettered them in the grand scheme of things and helped them to grow as a person and make the most of life?
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Everyone deserves to die, and everybody will. Nobody gets out of here alive. It's the wages of entropy.You appear to be suggesting that the deceased deserved to die ?
But not everyone deserves to die long before their three score and ten.Everyone deserves to die, and everybody will. Nobody gets out of here alive. It's the wages of entropy.
But not everyone deserves to die long before their three score and ten.
Whisper that to the audient void. I have always found it cold and implacable, but perhaps it will listen to you?But not everyone deserves to die long before their three score and ten.
it bettered them in the grand schem
Stalin favored killing everybody he could, as then nobody had anything to complain about. Stalin died in bed surrounded by people who were deathly afraid of him, but mainly he died because he had all the decent doctors in Moscow sent to gulags. The choices we make create our Karma.So if we were to remove all the people who are an impediment to the rest of us having a reasonable trauma free life it would really be for the better good ?
All valid points INT21, I agree. We don't seem to choose our parents (tho some Bardo adherents say otherwise), and while we appear to have free will, our choices are often flavored by our assumptions about the world and our start conditions. The thing about Free Will vs Destiny/Fate is that it can be argued quite persuasively from either direction, depending on your rhetorical inclination. I would say that most people like predictability in their lives as it provides them with a sense of control, but is that conducive to free will, or does it create our fate? I don't think many of us are sufficiently self-aware to really be capable of realizing how free we can be versus how confined. I think we live something of a synthesis of the two, and I worry that all too often an algorithm might well be able to predict our behavior.Stalin clearly didn't think it through. I suspect that the situation you are born into greatly influences your future prospects. One could say that if you have free will then you can get out of a bad start. But that depends upon a number of things. One being that you actually recognise that you are in a bad situation in the first place. And also that the opportunity to get out presents itself. The other thing is that if everyone around you conforms to a given lifestyle then you may not see anything unusual about it even though it may be quite bad; it is all you have known. So the last option could be described as the destiny option. The first being free will. INT21.
Oh the time to worry about this was years ago, too late now, it's already here in many respects. The sole basis for the successful application for an interview for many jobs in the UK is the completion of an online psychological profile, which is clearly designed to predict behaviour. Most if not all the questions are wholly unrelated to the actual job you are applying for. A young man I know was turned down for an interview for stacking shelves in a low end supermarket after completing one such "profile".I worry that all too often an algorithm might well be able to predict our behavior.
Tried it a few times, answer was always a resounding silence.Whisper that to the audient void. I have always found it cold and implacable, but perhaps it will listen to you?
The silence was resounding? Excellent result! I have never managed to get anything other than a mundane silence punctuated by chirping crickets. Color me impressed by your efforts!Tried it a few times, answer was always a resounding silence.
Oh the time to worry about this was years ago, too late now, it's already here in many respects. The sole basis for the successful application for an interview for many jobs in the UK is the completion of an online psychological profile, which is clearly designed to predict behaviour. Most if not all the questions are wholly unrelated to the actual job you are applying for. A young man I know was turned down for an interview for stacking shelves in a low end supermarket after completing one such "profile".
I never met a departmental manager who could tell the difference between a good employee and a bad one. Having said that I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the likes of a purported "scientific" computerised method of establishing whether someone is suitable for a particular job or not. The "tests" are inevitably slanted by the composer of the questions.Although to be fair, no employer owes every suitable applicant an interview.
Especially in the case of a fairly menial job, the employer's primary concern is to fill the vacancy with someone who will "not be unsuitable". If they get 200 applicants and shortlist 10, it doesn't mean that all of the other 190 were excluded for any particular reason — only that 10 was the limit to the number of interviews the employer was prepared to conduct, and they had selected 10 candidates who looked likely to be good enough.
That said, some of those psychological profiles are remarkably accurate, and quite sneaky. They often work by asking you to choose one good characteristic from a list of four good characteristics, or one bad characteristic from a list of four bad ones.
The same characteristics pop up in several different lists, and as there are no right or wrong answers, it is very hard for the person being profiled to manipulate their answers.
Made up example:
Over a series of 100 questions like this, you are going to tend to choose words that are associated with one characteristic, such as honesty or reliability. Indeed, if you try to manipulate it, it will probably be obvious that you have done so because you will inevitably have introduced inconsistencies.
- Which word describes you best? Honest, diligent, trustworthy, creative
- Which word describes you best? Industrious, honest, imaginative, reliable
- Which word describes you best? Creative, intelligent, honest, trustworthy
- Which word describes you least well? Lazy, dishonest, unreliable, untrustworthy
- And so on.
The problem is, without these consistent tests, employers would have to rely on the intuition and judgement of their many departmental managers, every single one of whom assumes that they are a better than average judge of character.
(Emphasis Added)Oh the time to worry about this was years ago, too late now, it's already here in many respects. The sole basis for the successful application for an interview for many jobs in the UK is the completion of an online psychological profile, which is clearly designed to predict behaviour. Most if not all the questions are wholly unrelated to the actual job you are applying for. A young man I know was turned down for an interview for stacking shelves in a low end supermarket after completing one such "profile".
Yes possibly I chose the wrong word there. Perhaps "predict characteristics" might be better. But I'm sure that it's not a huge leap from identifying characteristics to predicting, albeit not necessarily with 100% accuracy, how someone will behave in certain circumstances. I know a psychological profiler and I'll ask her about this.(Emphasis Added)
There's something of a misconception implied in the phrasing highlighted above ...
Psychological profiling doesn't (and can't) provide any reliable clues to how a candidate will behave. Profiling can only provide clues to possible predilections, preferences, or relative foci representative of the candidate's very general attitude(s) or tendencies with respect to whichever factors or dimensions the test battery is designed to address.
It remains to the reviewer / evaluator (e.g. a manager seeking a new employee) to connect the dots between the profiling results and whatever criteria he / she believes to be critical to selection and subsequent performance. I agree that most front-line operations managers are ill-equipped to connect such dots above and beyond evaluating particular factors that may be critical to the given job description.
In any case, there's no universal approach to how one maps results from the profile to the prospective job functions. For example, a candidate's marked propensity for attention to fine-grained details might be taken as a positive feature for some jobs and a potential problem for others.
So if we were to remove all the people who are an impediment to the rest of us having a reasonable trauma free life it would really be for the better good ?
How did that go? Did you know at the time how badly things were going or did you find out afterwards? When you were revived, did you have a memory of the event or not? etcMaybe I should add that I actually did die (flat lined) during a medical procedure.
Fortunately not for long before the medics returned me to the land of the living.
INT21.
How did that go? Did you know at the time how badly things were going or did you find out afterwards? When you were revived, did you have a memory of the event or not? etc
I know it was a long time ago INT21, but I still think it is unfair this sort of thing happens at all. Glad you are still with us. Just don't post any photos from the event. I had a gf who worked industrial accidents for an insurance company who showed me photos. I'm still traumatized 19 years later.I had a very bad reaction to some anesthetic solution that was used to freeze one of my eyes while the medics dug out a piece of steel grinding that had welded itself to an eyeball (yes, I was wearing safety goggles). I remember the digging out thingy approaching my eye. Next thing there was a crash crew around me. I was gone for about ten minutes. Just remember a greyness. The long term effects were a loss of some of my higher mental faculties. I have great trouble remembering guitar chords. And although I was never a brilliant mathematician, I seem to have lost some of the calculation abilities I did have. Who knows what else has gone. But this was about fifty years ago. I was able to drive home after a few minutes rest. One eye patched over. Still had to go to an eye specialist in Bradford to have the metal removed. Fortunately it was a success. INT21.
I learned all about safety from my Dad, who had been a craft, design and technology teacher (i.e., woodwork and metalwork). He'd seen a lot of hairy stuff when he was an apprentice back in the late 1940s. He'd volunteered to assist ROSPA with setting up workshops in the schools in Surrey, so during the 60s and 70s he was fairly influential in determining health and safety in those schools.No worries. After all this time I still don't like to think about it.
I was talking to my grandson about similar things a couple of days ago. He is seventeen and has just started out in the building trade. He mention that hardly any of the workers use safety goggles, even when using Stihl saws.
I emphasized that he MUST always wear them. Take no notice of anyone who tells you there is no need. You only have the one set of eyes.
Was that at Bradford Royal Infirmary? I still shudder at the memory of spending 4 awful months in there over 40 years ago.Still had to go to an eye specialist in Bradford to have the metal removed.
INT21.