Why reading the comments section is a really terrible idea

Online discussion increasingly feels like it has only one purpose, as a terrifying dynamo for generating emotion. This isn’t a profound observation, indeed it’s something we can feel intuitively. After-all, the algorithms know us better than we do. Emotion generates engagement, it stirs you into action, leaves you itching and burning to furiously clack away at your keyboard to get your point across to all those strangers on the internet who are just deeply, fundamentally wrong about whatever topic of the day is doing the rounds.

For a long time I’ve had this weird obsession with comment threads. I’m not normally one to wade into the deep-end myself. I had some early burns as a teenager, jumping into a forum for one of my favourite bands and unleashing my uneducated and ill-thought out opinions for the whole community to deftly ridicule. I was a sensitive teenager, and took the rejection and criticism far too personally.

I’m still quite a sensitive adult. So now I rarely post, instead I’m a lurker, a voyeur, a connoisseur of comment threads. Some kind of morbid curiosity moves me to scroll right past the text of an article and dive straight into that putrid comments section. What simplistic war of words will float to the top of the toilet-bowl this time? Sometimes I play a game, trying to guess the tired back-and-forth that will predictably play out when I click the ‘view replies’ button. 

Or another game, guess the proportion of ‘likes’ to ‘laugh emojis’, indicating the relative affirmation or rejection afforded to any given post. Facebook famously rejected the proposal for a ‘dislike’ button, but that stupid little laugh emoji seems to function so much better. Not only do I disagree with you, but I actively find your position laughable.

I’ve gotten quite good at playing my games, I guess things correctly most of the time. Yet they aren’t very enjoyable to play, and I still don’t really understand why I play them. Of course, politics is the perfect fuel for this reactor, and it draws out all the emotion like some greedy, bulbous leech. All-of-a-sudden, I find that every other post on Facebook appears to be some sponsored political piece, each one overflowing with its own raging battleground of simplistic opinions and insulting rebuttals for me to fawn over. All of this leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth, and a harrowing disdain for the human race as a whole.

Ageing has been kind to me thus far, and its main symptom has been an increasing self-knowledge. Of course I know that all of this lurking really isn’t great for my mental health, and I can easily chart the pattern of mood that it burrows into me. So while I quietly fight my own laughable battle for self-control, let this beleaguered voyeur depart some home-grown wisdom... 

Take a break from the news when you need to. Uninstall the apps. Deactivate Facebook. Get up and have a respectful conversation with someone you disagree with. Watch youtube videos about the stuff that inspires you. Find something else to do while you’re sitting on the toilet. Raise your head above the cesspit. Trust me, you’ll feel much better for it.

And with all that said I’m going to take my own advice and watch some random physicist talk about the likely proportion of earth like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

Selfie Awareness

I think it’s safe to assume that cancer exists. Mary 1st of England (better known as Bloody Mary), didn’t have the luxury of knowing. The phantom pregnancy that consumed her was thought of as just that, until the very end. She probably could have done with some cancer awareness herself, for all the good it would have done her.

Of course modern campaigns aren't really about getting the knowledge out that the disease exists. They’re about helping people to talk about it and in doing so finding out about diagnosis, treatment, and symptoms. A person who shaves their head for a cancer charity is in some small way mirroring the all-too noticeable sacrifice someone battling with cancer has to make every day.

And now we come to no-make up selfies. The most useless thing to happen to cancer awareness since weekly horoscopes . First and foremost, it’s a campaign aimed exclusively at women, despite the fact that the disease also affects men.  

While it’s true that male sufferers of breast cancer are certainly in the minority, this makes it even more important to make men aware that they can actually get it. Pink ribbons and female-focused campaigns further perpetuate the myth that it’s a women's only disease. Meanwhile, about 400 men in the UK will be diagnosed this year.  Hell, I only know men can get it because of Fight-Club.

But I’m afraid that my mad irk with something seemingly so sincere goes further. It’s an irk similar to another: with those who compulsively pray.

Prayer is something you resort to when all your worldly powers to change things have been exhausted. When seeing someone clinging to a cliff-edge for dear life, your first instinct should not be to clap those clammy palms together and have a word with the good Lord. No, first you’d try to help the poor bugger up.

Sure, take your makeup off. Try and get a nice camera angle and some good lighting. Prepare to be inundated with friends telling you how gorgeous you look. And then rush to put the makeup back on, since you are going out later and need to be fabulous.

While you’re at it, try and figure out how much you spend on make-up every month. Got it? Take that figure, and instead of spending it, give it to a cancer charity. Do the race for life (IN BLACK). Volunteer to help those in need.

Just don’t pretend that perpetuating your own narcissism has ANYTHING to do with cancer awareness. You're posting on Facebook, so you hardly need an excuse for it anyway.


(EDIT): Some people are actually donating money with their selfies. Kudos to those who have. I'd still ask why the selfie part even needs to be there... but if it's to a good cause, what the hey.

A Splitting Headache

 

 Source:  steelturman.typepad.com

I think even as a child I had a fondness for nuclear energy. Looking back, I blame the Simpsons for most of my support. I suppose that tropes such as the three-eyed fish, and that wickedly fluorescent uranium, were supposed to put me off the whole idea, but I couldn’t help but want a twelve-eyed dog that glowed in the dark.

As I grew into a teenager, my opinions began to mature (slightly). I discovered a Nuclear Disarmament patch in a dusty American thrift shop, and promptly convinced my mother to buy it and and sew it on to my newly acquired denim jacket. I spent the next few years trying to convince people that I honestly wasn’t trying to look all ‘New Age’, and genuinely thought nuclear weapons were a nasty idea. Even then I think my idea of what was ‘New Age’ was a little bit past its protest-by date.

However, a tolerance of nuclear power remained. I still firmly believe that a country can justify enriching uranium without wishing to lob the stuff across state borders. My sympathies would go out to Iran, provided they didn’t start official events by chanting “Death to America”.

The fact that we are grappling with the challenge of a carbon-free future only raises the stakes. I say grappling the challenge, but at best we are lightly tickling it. Boffins suggest that as early as 2015 we could be experiencing blackouts due to power shortages. Nuclear power could fill the gap.

The alternative is a reliance on renewables. Unfortunately we are not Iceland, who receive over 50 percent of their energy from geothermals, so this means wind-turbines. While they make wonderful modern art installations, anyone who has driven past one can tell you that they do look rather static most of the time.

Or we could use less power. Speaking as a person who turns into a gibbering lunatic whenever the lights get left on overnight, I can relate to this. But in reality there is only so far this can take us. Hospitals, schools, and research facilities all require an increasing amount of power to keep their employees entertained, and I doubt we are willing to go back to treating various ailments with copious amounts of leeches and praying.

Having said that, there will always be the eternal ‘if’ with nuclear power. The plant can be made to the highest of standards, the employees can be trained with Spartan discipline, and the whole system will still only be one honest mistake away from irradiating hundreds of miles of pristine (but slightly devalued) countryside, and killing thousands of unfortunate homeowners. Anyone who takes this scenario lightly deserves a long night in a skip full of used nappies.

The only response I could offer is that if we’re scared of this kind of scenario with nuclear power, we better stop reading New Scientist for a while. Genetic manipulation, Fusion, Artificial Intelligence, all are technologies that can lead us in a very dark direction if we make mistakes or use them irresponsibly.

The first farmers probably thought a doomsday scenario of a bad harvest. I’m sure glad they took the leap. Fukushima was over 40 years old and was hit by an earthquake. Followed by a tsunami. We can’t live in fear forever.

5 Reasons the Aliens haven't phoned up yet...

First encounters are often quite awkward. An army of pizza delivery men could personally attest to this. Incidentally, I’ve never had my pizza delivered by a woman. I must be black-listed, or something…

Yes, awkward. A word that we wouldn’t naturally assign to our as yet unmet extraterrestrial brethren. Nonetheless, I think an intergalactic super-species might be a tad embarrassed upon greeting us with a friendly “hello”, and getting our maths homework in response . Conversely, we might feel slightly deflated that our long-awaited alien friend turns out to be a primordial slime from Europia. It’s more awkward for the slime really.

Yet all this is conjecture. And look! More conjecture up ahead! Lucky you. The following list is ranked from most likely to least likely. If you’re beginning to wonder what authority I have to make such a list, I studied philosophy and you’re a baboon for reading this far.

1. The Universe is Too Big

A 2D, infrared map of the entire Universe. And no, the bit in the middle isn’t God

Source: http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/2mass.html

The universe is rather large, in case you needed reminding. Our closest neighboring system, Alpha Centauri, lies a miniscule 4.37 light years away from us. That's roughly 25.6 trillion miles in Earth terms. I’m leaving out the zeroes of course. All twelve of them.

That’s really quite close! Assuming that we can get anything bigger than a  light particle to reach those kinds of speeds (unlikely), we’d still be quite alive upon reaching our destination.

Of course there is the small matter of the micro-meteorites that might hit us on the way, the lack of an external power source, long periods exposed to cosmic radiation, the prospect of making baby in space, and the fact that 25.6 trillion miles is a laughably short distance to travel. Space isn’t designed for us. We must design for it. That might take some time.

And so the argument goes, that by the time any species reaches the point at which interstellar travel is possible, they’ll have either long been squished or have squashed themselves. This leaves us with a universe of brief sparks. Life sprouts into existence on an infinitude of lucky planets, has it’s moment in the sun, and then withers in a short space of time, leaving nothing.

Personally, I don’t buy the theory. We paste our own insecurities and ineptitudes onto it. The universe is also very old. Alien civilizations have had a long time in which to advance. Surely a meteorite could have avoided one? Surely one could have resisted the temptation to exact devastation upon itself?

Ask a Roman Trireme commander to cross the Atlantic Ocean. He won’t react much, given he’s a skull. But if he could, I’m sure he’d laugh his jawbone off. Looking at history as a precedent has its limits, but 25.6 Trillion miles could be a short trip down the shops, given time.

2. The Aliens are Simply Watching

Sinister bastard...

Source: http://gifmovie.tumblr.com/post/28715887383/david-attenborough-bbc-nature

I watch a lot of nature documentaries. Increasingly, they are more about conservation than anything else. The first documentary of this kind to be shown on the BBC was called Zoo Quest and first ran in 1954. It featured a young David Attenborough.

The name wasn’t just meant to be catchy. They certainly captured the animals on camera... it’s just afterwards they captured them again for zoos. I can only imagine the moment they stopped filming the beautiful tropical bird, and a beady eyed Attenborough squawked “RIGHT, GET HIM!”.

Of course that would be dead wrong now. Modern conservationists understand that the intention should always be to let the animal behave as naturally as possible. Their habitat does not equate to ours, and we rob them of their own fulfillment by forcing ours on them. Like teaching a monkey how to smoke a cigar.

You can see where I’m going with this. We are indeed the duck-billed platypus. We could well lie within an astral ‘National Park’, left to our own devices in order to evolve naturally.

Whether we are being watched is another question, and it’s answer depends partly on your level of narcissism. While they may not be watching you, they are certainly watching me. We should at least hope they are keeping a close enough eye on us to swat away any pesky meteorites. They certainly aren't answering prayers anyway.

3. The Aliens are Sleeping/ Can't be Bothered

If the red pill means a lifetime spent as a jockey’s right testicle… I think I’ll stick with the fantasy

Source: http://sixguns.wikia.com/wiki/File:What_if_I_told_you_potato.jpg

Artificial reality still seems like the kind of concept that belongs strictly to blockbuster films. This is despite the fact most of us experience it every night upon falling asleep.

Still, if the advent of the internet has shown us anything, it’s that many of us are quite happy to spend hours in another reality. A teenage me would always need a friendly exchange on MSN before ever daring to meet a girl IRL. Twenty-something me feels much the same, but reacts to facebook like a fart in a sleeping bag.

The primary problem with the real world is that everything ends up being so final. Every poignant decision has both success and failure lying ahead in the mists of possibility. Some might say this makes life beautiful… that is until they mess things up and have to live with the consequences.

If you decide to try your hand at free-running across the tops of skyscrapers, you won’t get a second life should you end up splattering the pavement with your ambition. An artificial reality doesn't share this problem. We write the rules and can always load the calculations in our favour.

If we assume E.T is much more advanced than us, then we can pretty much guarantee he’ll have the ability to see this concept to its fruition. Why bother actually travelling halfway across the universe when you can simply build your own? Why bother settling for anything less than a virtual heaven?

If you’re the more spiritual type, you might even say that they’ve gone and ‘ascended’. Where to, is anyone’s guess; The Fourth Dimension, Nirvana, or the space under the car seat that eats all your change.

Of course you could argue that reality is far more fulfilling in a deep and meaningful way. The enduring popularity of soap-operas on T.V flies in the face of that theory.

4. We Are the Aliens

This is entirely relevant, and in the interest of Science I advise that you study it closely

Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/487827-jiggle-physics-gainaxing

I always find it mind-boggling that the earth is 4.54 billion years old. Given that the age of the universe is 13.8 billion, this means that our wrinkly planet has been around for almost a third of all time.

This might get you wondering when the first planets formed. With modern telescopes we can now detect planets in other stellar systems. We do this by measuring the amount of wobble that a planet’s gravity generates on a host star.

You need to be a pretty significant lump of mass to make a star wobble. A planet is one of the only objects that has the arrogance to accumulate this kind of mass. The oldest planet that we’ve found so far is a whopping 12.8 billion years old. So maybe we are (relatively) young, after all?

Finding a planet is one thing, finding a rocky planet is another entirely. All of the earliest planets we have discovered have been gas giants. Once again, we have wobbling to thank for this knowledge. But if we’re looking for life, finding a rocky planet is crucial.

Rocky planets are composed of heavy elements (in essence, anything other than hydrogen and helium). Stars only produce these on their deathbed. Like a miserable relative giving a heartfelt reconciliation on theirs. Except with a colossal explosion.

It seems pretty safe to assume that life requires these heavy elements, as well as a solid surface, in order to evolve. While it is true plenty of lifeforms ‘have gas’, we’ve yet to discover a lifeform composed entirely of it. Politicians notwithstanding.

So rocky planets are generally young in universal terms, and although unlikely, it is possible that the Earth could be one of the ‘first born’, at least within our neck of the galaxy. Our neighbourhood sits in the outer rim, where stars are younger, and more sparsely distributed. Intelligent alien life might exist here, but it could still be at a primitive stage.

This theory is a bit of a long-shot, but it’s a possibility we almost never consider. The best portrayal Hollywood offers crosses the smurfs with Pocahontas, and paints us as Gargamel.

5. We Alone

Oh this suburban life…

Source: http://rosiesays.com/2012/07/22/you-are-here/

Science has told us again and again that this is highly unlikely. Only the most religious would argue that we are special enough to have stewardship over the entire universe. Yet until we find something else out there, this is the status quo. SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Life)  is merely an expensive project that listens to space drone on about itself.

Let’s not get too down about this though. No neighbours means no noise complaints, no cats pooping in our solar system, and no independence day style mass invasions of our planet. We still have each other after all.

Individual humans are alien enough in personality anyway, and until we can learn to get along with our own species, perhaps it’s best we haven’t found any little grey dudes yet.