- cross-posted to:
- lemmybewholesome
- cross-posted to:
- lemmybewholesome
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“No parenting class would have ever prepared me for having my kid ask me why we don’t need artificial oxygen storage.”
No, but a grade school science class would have…
Yeah this is mindboggling. It wouldn’t have ever crossed her mind to tell her kid that they don’t need oxygen canisters on this planet? I mean, what the dad said is good, as it opened the door to some more learning… but wow.
Never underestimate just how clueless the general population is about how the world works. More than you’d expect would prove to not really grasp even the most basic mechanisms of their environment.
People turn to religion for a reason.
To the majority of people, understanding the world beyond “inexplicable god magic” is difficult to learn good-for-nothing trivia unless it’s needed for a good grade and maybe a job if you’re cut out for it. Only the parts specific to surviving in the wild get a different treatment.
Even the non-religious seem to make a habit of thinking like this. The kind of “not a Christian” alcoholic that is completely disinterested in the actual philosophies that allowed for a world where open disbelief is safe, and vocally in favor of “rights” of some sort for currently relevant minorities, with maybe a rare acknowledgement of some surface-level misunderstanding of humanitarian ethics.
Pump the brakes.
She isn’t saying that she doesn’t know about photosynthesis. She is saying she didn’t understand what the child was actually asking about.
There is a world of difference between knowing the answer and understanding the question, especially if the question was asked by someone who doesn’t even really know what they’re trying to ask either.
Yes. She didn’t understand what the child was actually asking about.
Because to her, oxygen tanks are for other people who use them. To her, any information about it and the contexts of it is not relevant, it is not important for her, and it’s not very interesting to her. To her it is a weird question, despite her stated interest in not wanting to make it seem weird. Normal people do not need oxygen tanks and don’t need to concern themselves with them.
I want to really emphasize that all information like this is genuinely seen as trivia, and only gets to feel like it’s really worth having someone knowing the very moment it becomes tangibly useful, and when the usefulness of the information expires, it becomes trivia again.
Respect for a researcher wavers in almost the exact same way, although a great achievement would be respected possibly for a lifetime if the public understands and appreciates it. Still, anything they learn after that is going to be treated like trivia again.
You want me to pump the brakes? Why would I? Our entire civilization is incapable of pumping the brakes on self inflicted and wholly deserved extinction by way of choking our world in the emissions of our desperate works to create decorative steel flowerpots and heavily marketed plastic garbage, because we cannot stomach the thought of feeding a man that does not create his share of junk.
Wow you’re making some absolutely WILD assumptions about what the poster believes, and in generalizing it to the populous. You’d win Olympic gold in long-jumping-to-conclusions with the distance of that jump.
All that knowledge is trivia, dumbass. It’s just that to people like you and me, it’s worth having anyway. We’re scientists. We’re nerds. Trivia is our stock in trade. People don’t do research on how smart corvids are or whether there was life on Mars millions of years ago because humanity needs to know, they do it because they personally thought it would be cool. If you think climate scientists are any different just because global warming is an existential threat, you should get out more.
I want more people interested in science as much as you do, but we should absolutely NOT do that by distancing ourselves from the idea that science is trivia, or that things that are trivia are not worth learning about. Nothing about deep-sea creatures and ecosystems are relevant to humanity’s survival, but they sure are cool. People might not like learning about it, just like the lady in this post might not like learning about oxygen tanks, and that’s their loss. Some areas of science are more important to the everyman than others, climate change being one of the biggies, and teaching people the basics they need to know to defend themselves against shitheads like Ben Shapiro is IMO something that ought to be done in schools. But people don’t become scientists because they serve a higher calling to the knowledge of humanity. They become scientists because trivia interests them. It’s interesting to a lot of people, and the sooner we stop shaming people for being into nerd shit, thr more scientists we’ll get.
our wholly deserved extinction
Speak for yourself, asshole. Call for corporate regulation, don’t blame all of humanity equally.
Speak for yourself, asshole. Call for corporate regulation, don’t blame all of humanity equally.
Sure not equally. But go into any thread on this topic and talk about what individuals can do to minimize their own impact - because the reality is that we all need to shift on it behaviors not just corporations (even if they are the largest by far) - and then come back and tell me how confident you are that it isn’t all humanity.
It’s shocking to me how many people deny climate change, but it’s even more shocking to me how much push back you get from people about actually doing anything individually, when they realize it is happening.
The reason we shouldn’t be pushing the message of “understanding the world is not just trivia” is not because it’s wrong. It’s because people would not be responsive to it.
Besides, there are far more fundamental structures to prioritize understanding before getting into the varieties of aquatic lifeforms, which do become pretty trivial. If a category of fish does something that significantly impacts something important, that matters. You have a role to fulfill as an informed voter, with a responsibility to participate in ruling your territory well. If you have a working understanding of how and why this shit works as it does, you can be reminded of that important function when they are threatened by dangerous interests. Whether or not you personally recall all their colorful patterns and names of the fish without looking them up is not as important.
As for our ruination, I don’t place blame equally. But as voters I do blame the majority of your friends and family, as well as my own.
But I stand by the idea that it is a deserved disaster, but further I think it’s for the best. Ideally we don’t bring our bullshit too far into the future. A few more centuries as we fade away is more than enough. It would be a disaster if we managed to keep growing into larger and larger civilizations for millennia, repeating the same behaviors at larger and larger scales with more and more to suffer it.
It’s best if we all die out.
Suppose my child asks when she’s going to get fur. If I don’t know what she’s been reading, my first thought might be that she saw one of her friends or a rich old lady wearing a fur coat and wants one for herself, not that she doesn’t know that humans don’t need fur to stay warm like dogs do. If I then begin explaining that raising or (worse) hunting wild animals for their fur is unethical, but I’m happy to buy her a nice synthetic jacket if she wants it, that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot who doesn’t even know humans don’t grow fur and Everything That’s Wrong With Society Today, it means I misunderstood her question.
How quaint that you defaulted to a fashion analogy.
How predictable that someone who decries the intellectual decay of the human race defaulted to an ad hominem attack.
It’s surprised me once I got out of school and uni how little people know. But what really blew my mind is just how little they actually care.
Like someone will say they don’t know how something works, I’ll explain and they will stare at me blankly and I really realise they didn’t want me to explain and they were actually happy not knowing. Whereas I will look at something, whether it’s a kettle or pasteurisation or grass and wonder how it works. But for people actually to prefer not to know and live in ignorance really messed with me for a while.
I’ve largely given up now. My boss said he was getting all the heating changed in his house to have electric. I asked why he doesn’t get a heat pump and he told me it’s because they don’t work they just blow air our like a fan so it’s colder than an electric radiator. I just said okay and moved on.
Yeah. I’ve built an entire library worth of knowledge into my head and a deep love of piecing everything together to extend my understanding of how things are and works… And will take it all to the grave with me cause no one cares and honestly whatever.
People don’t care. The idea of us being an intelligent and exploring species is a mistake from those of us that are applying it to everyone else. The maybe 10% of us are doomed to be at the whims of the other 90% that just doesn’t care or want to hear it.
There’s a lot of people who claim to be science lovers who think this way too. They liked watching Bill Nye and participating in science class as a kid. But now that they’re adults, they expect to already know everything and aren’t interested in learning more. Even Einstein thought this way. That’s why he said “God does not play dice with the universe”.
These anti science reactions are especially common if you tell people about fringe or advanced science or occultism. Like if you discuss how consensus reality is a social construct and our beliefs are highly influential of our perceptions, thus permitting control of perception through belief, a lot of people’s eyes will glaze over and then they’ll yell about how science is exactly what they learned in school and not an inch more.
That’s the opposite of why he said that though. He said that because he felt that the things that seemed random couldn’t actually be random and that there was something more that they didn’t understand. In other words, he felt he didn’t know enough and wanted to learn more. Not sure where you came up with the idea that he wasn’t interested in learning more.
You completely missed the point.
This was about the elegance of the answer, not the answer itself.
My first thought, when I heard that question, would be “do we have a backup in case the naturally produced oxygen for some reason goes away?” like some families have an emergency supply of food or water, not that the child did not know that Earth’s atmosphere naturally contains oxygen thanks to plants.
I mean… I know perfectly well that plants produce oxygen, but it never would’ve occurred to me that that was waht a child asking about oxygen tanks wanted to know.
It wasn’t about wanting to know about photosynthesis, the original question was really about the oxygen tanks. Kids very often are looking for a simple answer. Even though the real answer is far more complex.
As a Dad who helped raise 4 Daughters, (a CPA, a Triage Nurse, PHD Mech Engineer, and a Computer Forensic Expert for the FBI), teaching at home is a crucial part of parenting. Beyond offering a wide variety of materials to learn from, (we built a library of books that filled my office), and being ready to answer those oxygen tank questions, you need to show and make asking those questions and learning from them fun.
Right? This seems like a…strange problem to have. “Why don’t we need gas masks when we go outside?” “Why don’t we need to worry about rivers of lava?”
…because those aren’t problems on this planet. Lava stays underground unless there is an active eruption and the air outside isn’t toxic. Pretty simple.
A time traveler’s survival guide. The vertical green bars are the only times in Earth’s history with enough oxygen to breathe (hypoxia) and low enough to avoid oxygen toxicity (hyperoxia):
That blue bar is extremely pessimistic. Humans can survive pretty well with 15% oxygen, and do so in several places in the Andes mountains, China and India. I wouldn’t recommend doing it without lengthy acclimatizing, especially not considering my last paragraph, but it’s completely survivable by itself.
Humans also don’t really have a problem with 25% oxygen, although that will definitely bring down the life expectancy.
On the other hand, note how those pointers talk about giant insects, megafauna and other scary things. Those are a much bigger problem than the air you’re breathing.
To add to this: At 3’500 meters above sea level, the pressure is down to 2/3 atmospheres. So instead of 21 kPa of oxygen partial pressure, it is only 14 kPa. So like breathing 14 % oxygen at sea level. People live at that height.
Dumb question, but in a very oxygen rich environment, can you just breathe through a paper bag or something? Mostly just breathe your own exhaled CO2 with a bit of O2 leaking in?
For short periods maybe. You only use a few percent of the O2 you breathe in each time. But you also increase the CO2 each time. It’d depend on the amount of leak because you need enough O2 coming in but enough CO2 going out.
So like how big mosquitos are we talking about?
About crabhead ticks?
Mosquitos are kind of modern, being only 45 million years old, way after the megafauna bugs died.
but think 40cm long, meter wide “dragonflies”, half-meter long “scorpions”, 60cm “spiders” with knifelike front legs and 250cm long millipedes (technically not an insect, but eh)
But if you’re looking for giant mosquitoes, you’re in luck: the very much not-extinct elephant mosquito can grow over 1.5cm long.
Dragonflys don’t scare me, but if we got same proportional upgrades to anything that regularly bites, I would move underground.
Dragonflys don’t scare me
Dragonflies are possibly the most efficient predator in existence, catching up to 95% of the prey they attempt to catch. And their larvae are utterly terrifying.
I would move underground.
With the 2.5 meter long millipedes…?
Yes, into a vault.
bring down the life expectancy
why?
Oxygen is really rough on the DNA due to making the cells “rust” which hampers cell division and/or increases risks of mutations or cancers
So those memes that were “warning” that oxygen was dangerous because it created rust in metal rods is actually true ??
I’m super skeptical of this.
You don’t get oxygen toxicity, even breathing pure oxygen, unless you’re under significantly more pressure than atmospheric pressure…
So either this graphic is wrong/misleading, or the atmosphere was more than double current pressure for most of earth’s history… Which I’m pretty skeptical of.
Is there a higher resolution version?
Is there a version with more JPEG?
Is there a version which actually loads?
My grandfather would tell stories of how the planet used to be covered in plants and you could breathe the air outside. Back when the sky was blue.
Where is this from ?
It is (I hope) an original. Though the form “my grandfather would tell stories” might be bordering on cliché.
I have a feeling that I read this before somewhere
Especially the “Back when the sky was blue” part
It just feels like some dystopian, Bradbury-type implication
Reminded me of his story All Summer in a Day, actually.
I mean he’s got a story about people living on Venus
That’s what I immediately thought of too
Yup. Exactly the one I was thinking of.
I’d be surprised if I’m the first person to say it. If you find your source though, let me know, would be interested in reading it.
It is (I hope) an original
Haha, that’s a big mood.
Sounds to me like Dad needs a little credit here.
Even if you arent good at improv “Thats a good question! I’m not sure, we should look that up!” Is an easy go-to.
Then after shower and get into bed we look up todays questions.
Sounds like you need some credit too!
First off, weird to point out that they’re “age appropriate”
If your kid reads above the age level and understands it that’s generally a good thing
Number two I don’t get why this is such a weird concept on how to explain things to a child. Seems pretty normal and “age appropriate”
Not only that, it’d be better to ask the kid why oxygen tanks are needed on spacecraft, then ask why we don’t need them here on earth.
It’s a weird post, in general.
Yep. I was reading at a 6th grade level in 1st grade, and had advanced to university level comprehension by 5th grade. WTF was an “age appropriate book?”
I’m pretty sure that those people would have been incensed, if they knew that I chose TLotR as my 1st grade book report. (This was in 1985, so while there was an animated movie, it didn’t cover the entire three books, so I had to read them.)
I assumed age appropriate was regarding content not difficulty. It is still a weird thing to emphasize though.
It always strikes me regarding the mental gymnastics people engage in regarding consumption of entertainment. Violent video games*, even if it’s cartoon violence, tv and movies are everywhere. But people clutch their pearls if it’s in a book format. The world is ending if it’s sexual. Hell, Utah just banned Judy Blume books.
*I’m not condemning video games, study after study has proven that violence in games doesn’t lead to violent behavior, just that we find violence in games acceptable vs people losing their shit over a girl getting her period in a book for YA’s.
Technically only one Judy Bloom book, but your point still stands and I agree. It’s pretty bizarre.
They undoubtedly wouldn’t approve of the content of some of the books I was reading back then either. I had already learned the extremely broad strokes around sex and reproduction by the first grade. My parents have a farm with livestock. I was also reading computer manuals learning how to be a greyhat, before the term even existed.
I’m extremely impressed that you were able to read and understand LotR at 7 years old. i read them at 15 and loved them, but definitely had trouble at the council of the elves etc
Yeah, I was one of those “gifted” kids. I’m not sure that it helped anything other than depression and anxiety, but I’m still here, watching as things get even stupider.
I’m not cynical, you’re being silly.
For me it’s just all the funny words for highly specific descriptors of particular types of terrain. But also, you can somehow still get such a vivid picture and follow the gist, even as you filter through all that, even if you don’t bother to look it up.
“Along the left was an eylet flanked by a hithertop which flattened as they proceeded north through the shallow wolly, which rose into semi-steep clifftons…”
(Yes I made all that up lol)
Somehow even with my ADHD I’m having such a good time with it…because it’s so vivid, like Tolkien was actually there.
i love the extraneous detail SO MUCH… i also have ADHD and wrote stories in that way. you need to see it the way i see it! lol
There’s some old sci fi that I read as a kid that I wouldn’t give to mine at the same age. Too much sexism, racism, incorrect astronomy
With sexism and racism I feel at least that’s a good place to have a conversation with your kid and show them why exactly it is wrong though uk?
Get some perri-air
God damnit I missed that pun until now.
This is just your “one of today’s lucky 10,000” moment.
That’s awesome. I love weird questions with weird but accurate answers.
So, where do I find this dad, as opposed to, “Dunno, ask yer mom, and fetch me a
bud lightcoors.”?They’re what you call “nerds.”
So, Lemmy. Lemmy is where you find one.
I guess I’m here, and being the fun nerdy dad is kind of my whole shtick.
Maybe we need a DadAdvice community. Who needs free non-binding advice about random shit?
They make great partners, because their spirits come pre-broken.
And they tell you to get whiskey or rum, not Coors.
Or a Coors. Who cares. It’s alcohol.
Also how many whys does it take to get to the big bang and final we can’t know before popping we need better instruments or math so difficult it’s impossible for even mathematicians to pretend to make sense of besides ‘maybe, the math works anyway.’
Almost everywhere…if all the men in your life are really that shitty it’s time to prioritize getting the fuck out of whatever community you’re stuck in.
I was both of those dads.
“Go get me a beer and let’s figure out the answer to your question!”
Isn’t the ocean that produces most oxygen?
Yes, the ocean grass
Plankton
Phytoplanktons be like, what’d he say fuck me for (^_-)
I’m very disappointed there was no praise for dad at the end of all that.
We don’t do that.
My kid is twenty three years old. I raised her alone. Crazy, I know, but she and I are pretty close.
To this day, I get dozens of adulating text messages on mother’s Day for “playing both roles.”
On Father’s Day, total utter crickets except from my daughter herself.
Fathers are here to donate sperm and fund other lives. That’s it.
Happy belated father’s day, from someone who is glad you made this comment. I appreciate you highlighting this issue, because this is something that is sorely lacking in progressive discourse; it’s getting better, I think, but that is likely due to people like you helping people like me to understand how caring fathers are usually not respected or appreciated by the world. (Edit: like you say, “appreciation” towards fathers is usually limited to financial support, which completely ignores the vast majority of what it means to be a father (and also marginalises full-time dads whose partner is the working parent))
As far as I can tell, the whole thing was praising the dad.
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Never been a big fan of kids, but for some reason this post clicked with me. I think I get it.
You sure about that? Having a kid means that you will have to dedicate your money and energy (working), and you will have to be there with them.
But I hope this doesn’t stops you from being a parent. /lh
Dude… just like… think before you speak to a stranger on the internet. You assume. You assume I’ve never raised a child that wasn’t mine in a relationship that lasted 10 years. You assume I didn’t wake up 30 minutes early every morning to drive my exs’ kid to school for 5 years. You assume I don’t have my nieces and nephews over for sleep overs regularly. Mostly you assume that I don’t take the “financial possibilities” of having a child into consideration. Just like shut the fuck up. I’m sorry, but be quiet. The adults are speaking and you don’t know of what you speak. You spew, you throw up nonsense. Be quiet 🤫
Mostly, mostly you may assume I’m female. I’m a 40 y/o male that aches to have a child to love and raise. I yearn for the day when a child says “I love you dad” to me again. Cause it happened with my exs’ child and it’s like a hit from heroin, instantly addicted but in the best way possible
I wasn’t assuming anything, just saying from what I know, sorry if it sounded harmful.
Why? To deny them bacon and eggs and instead hand them dehydrated bananas on whole grain pancakes?
you seem angry
That was personal
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I had reached reddit account #105 (±, obviously skipping 88, 69 was taken, so was 100, etc.) when I made the lemm.ee account.
I think my last one on reddit was #145.
Oh look, it’s buzz-Killington.
“Not on this planet… yet.”
Or if you want to go full crash course, “For now, but that hasn’t always been the case and might not be in another million years” and explain things like Oxygen Collapse/Great Oxygenation during the proterozoic when oxygen levels first shot up and killed off a ton of oxygen-hating things.
Aim her at Asimov and Clarke.
Not on this planet… Yet
