NDT the goat of saying rly dumb shit but everyone thinks it’s somehow enlightening. he’s like Jaden smith but Twitter likes him
I mean I agree with him here. It’s ridiculous how we are still this tribalistic species while basically everyone would be better off when we would work together (e.g. climate change would be non-existent)
Passports weren’t a general concept until the end of the 19th century. Before they were mostly to allow passage to certain areas inside one country, rather than for movement between countries. There have been Identifications for Nobels and Diplomats though.
Anyways the whole concept is mostly a concept of modern nation states not of ancient tribalism.
I think the point is that the tribalism led to the creation of the nations/states in the first place. I don’t know enough to know if that’s true, but that was my interpretation of their comment.
In tribal times, there were no maps and the borders moved a lot, but when you crossed them, you generally got driven back or killed.
This goes back to before there were humans, and all other territorial animals do it, too.Bold claim stating that climate change wouldn’t be real if we just worked together. As if we didn’t live in an ice age as the same species we are now.
Just evolve into a homo without tribalism then and outbreed the rest of us
It is possible to agree with something and still believe it is terribly presented.
Wait til you learn that the reason you hate immigrants and immigration is that the wealthy conditioned you to hate them. Notice how capital can cross borders, but people can’t? This allows the wealthy to profit off of international arbitrage, while regular citizens can’t. A CEO can move a factory to a low cost country to save on labor, but you in a wealthy country can’t move there to save on cost of living. And the citizens in a poor country can’t move to a wealthy country to earn better wages. The corporations get to take advantage of international arbitrage, but you don’t.
Notice how capital can cross borders, but people can’t?
Well… some capital. Don’t try to order anything from Cuba or Venezuela or Russia and expect it on your doorstep any time soon.
Possibly Mexico, Canada, or China soon too, if the Trumpies get everything they’re asking for.
And the citizens in a poor country can’t move to a wealthy country to earn better wages.
Best example of this I’ve ever seen (other than Israel/Gaza, which is really more of an interior border) is Haiti/Dominican Republic. The fact that they’re all on the same island but one half looks like the fucking Korean Demilitarized Zone to keep the other half out is bleak af. Particularly nauseating when you’re seeing earthquake relief getting held up by some of the most evil bureaucratic fucks you’ve ever dealt with in your life.
Or mostly anywhere really. The EU exists for all that to be easier within the EU.
Had to put on pants to go outside due to artificially created laws.
Facts 😢
I dunno I kind of hate sitting where someone else’s sweaty ass has sat on first. I’ll let this one slide.
Just don’t sit then, ever again!
Not so much me. It’s, in fact, my fetish.
But you take them off when you kiss a mirror on the lips
This dude really is a pompous ass sometimes.
Agreed he can be pompous but I think since he’s an astronomer he is making the point that if you were in space and looked at earth you would wonder why are there borders
You know continents, rivers and mountain ranges exist?
Your point is?
Earth is beautiful!
What about this tweet reads as pompous to you?
“If everyone was as wise as me, I wouldn’t suffer this tiresome charade”
Well, he’s ridiculing the fact that everything we have setup for governance is, in fact, made up. I don’t see why that’s pompous. I know his tweets tend to be a bit too pedantic for certain topics, but that is his persona. He is one of the few peopeople responsible for this generation finding science cool. He’s allowed that much.
It’s sophomoric.
If you close your eyes and imagine a future Star Trek utopia, are you still imagining borders? It’s a pretty standard opinion that borders are an outcropping of our worse natures and should eventually be left behind.
Borders are absolutely in the star Trek utopia. Everything has borders. What we do about those borders is the difference.
Each quadrant, solar system, etc has borders. These are even more arbitrary as the current state, county, and country borders across our world tend to follow natural terrain or longitude and latitude. None of these exist in space. But the quadrant borders are as easy to cross as for me to drive to my next US state. However, the Kardassian border is not so easy to cross, just like it’s not so easy for me to cross into North Korea.
Borders are not the inherent issue here. Conflict is the inherent issue, and borders are how we try to minimize that conflict.
They should really issue some sort of identification showing to which quadrant you belong so that friendly quadrants will accept you as a visitor with open arms.
I love all the posts calling him arrogant and elitist for pointing out something, in a critical manner, that by their nature are arrogant and elitist: nation state borders.
Those things that make people who’ve done nothing feel entitled to more resources than other people by virtue of where their mother was hanging out when she popped them out.
I think dwelling on their artifical, self-serving nature is healthier than taking them seriously in any other sense than the threat of state violence for failing to pretend that they’re sacred.
Humanity, not to be confused with your own individual greed or birth lottery results, would be far better off abolishing them. They bring nothing to the table but dehumanization, death, and inequity. Most, even most who consider themselves to be on the privileged side of the imaginary line in the dirt, have far more in common with the people trying to get to the privileged side than the miniscule populations of sociopath humans that use them to secure and metastasize their ego score hoards, the entire point of them.
I wish I could upvote you a thousand times.
I think it actually is interesting if you’re going to call out humans as a species of animal!
All across species from unicellular to megafauna, from plants to fungus, you can find mechanisms used to defend an individual’s physical territory. Ants and bees from the same species will fight and kill others colony members of they stray into their territory. Bears will fight and kill other bears. Our closest relatives, chimps, will go to war with neighboring chimp bands.
Artificial borders are humans way of saying “this is my territory enter at your own risk”. The REALLY interesting thing is that we have established systematic exceptions to the behaviors we see in nature. “Ask us before you come and you can visit and be safe here from those that enforce our territory.”
The temporary nature is unique, many social animals will permanently adopt an outsider into their group on occasion, equivalent to immigration, but I’m not aware of any that have pre-agreed temporary violations of group territory.
okay I don’t know how to articulate this properly but i’ll try;
fukn get rekt ngt
I don’t care if you hate him; he’s right on this. this entire thing is bullshit.
Who hates him?
A lot of people think he’s become a bit of a wanker on social media and IRL. Some of his tweets are cringe and makes him doing like he’s lightyears up his own ass.
I don’t use twitter (never have tbh) so I’ve only ever seen screenshots of his more infamous tweets, but I have listened to a LOT of his startalk podcast. Most of the time he’s an entertaining person and seems to admit when he doesn’t know enough about a given subject (although I’ve seen a lot of criticism that he does tend to talk about things he doesn’t know, it doesn’t seem to be that way in the podcast at least)
He can be annoying in some of his podcasts though and you can feel his guests being diplomatic about it while still hearing a bit of annoyance in their voice or next sentence etc. But overall I rather quite like him, despite the Internet’s disdain for him.
More people making science popular and easily digestible is always a good thing IMO. But I’m also biased because I’ve really liked NDT since I was a kid due to seeing him in space documentaries when I was young, and I still love his version of Cosmos.
Black science man always talks like he’s done weed for the first time and is trying to impress his nephew’s friends.
Yes borders are bullshit, but he really doesn’t have to come across all high and mighty about it
Hits the joint “borders man”
This is not interesting.
I’m not saying NDT isn’t a smart guy, but yeah he does tend to do that thing a lot where you describe a normal concept in a sort of detached anthropological way so it sounds profound even if it isn’t.
I think about this a few times a year and I become sad each time. We only get this one planet in the whole ass universe. And we can barely see all of it, unless we’re lucky and/or rich (at least moreso than most of humankind).
It’s profoundly ridiculous.
Mobility is better now than it has ever been, so don’t get too sad about that.
But only for the rich. If you don’t have money, you can’t
escapeleave your country. Barely even travel in your own country. Society has broken our nomadic heritage. We did it to ourselves eons ago when we started cultivation of the land, but with the modern borders and stuff, it’s just been made so much harder.Cool, just down vote instead of having a conversation…
You’re totally right about this. I find it frustrating in a different way that the ability to travel is easier and possible, which hasn’t been the case for the majority of humanity, but (generally) artificial restrictions prevent it from happening.
I’m from Canada and my partner was born in Europe. When I hear how easily she was able to travel by train and plane, it makes me sad that we don’t have a similar system. Even airfare is significantly cheaper there because trains are a worthy competitor.
A friend of mine who has relatives in China has talked about how people my age (university age) have been using the new train system to see so much of their country than they otherwise would be able to.
I hope that eventually there will be a similar transit system in Canada that allows poor people to see the country they live in. And I understand that by even living in Canada I don’t really count amongst the global impoverished population. I understand the privilege.
It’s crazy to think that the level of border control we have today would be unfathomable to someone even 100 years ago. If we go a bit earlier, how could you even ID someone without photographs?
As if humans weren’t fiercely tribalistic forever. Other species beat each other to death, too.
The post may be right, but getting a bunch of homo sapiens from far away not to club each other to death is, historically, a hard problem, and countries and passports are kinda a stepping stone.
If I said the shit that fart smeller says people would literally say “shut up stoner” to me.
Join Schengen! It’s easy, unless Austria abuses it’s Veto rights
