Beards and Face-Punching: 2021 Ig Informal Lectures

[@verioffkin]

I can't start thinking because I can't stop laughing. An adverb "then" doesn't work. The paradox.

[@BCBL96]

Great video, very educational!

[@thompkins6796]

Interesting hypothesis, but after looking at the study, I don't think the researchers adequately addressed that fleece isn't a good analog for beard hair. It assumes that since beard hairs can be 5x longer than fleece, that makes up for the differences in density. But that's assuming it would be biologically worthwhile for human males to grow 16cm/6.5in beards just for impact protection.

[@lightbox617]

The best punches are in the nose. It is never the most effective punch. Look at the throat, the ear, the testacies, maybe the solar plexus

[@Sovvyy]

Are we the most empathetic species? Not sure I agree, we slaughter 77 billion land animals alone each year.

[@christophermalala7615]

You are a human being, too, and here you are feeling empathy for those land animals you just spoke of. There are hardly any other species that would have the brain capacity to understand the horrific nature of those actions. Give any other predator the means to kill as much as we do and they would do it without a second thought. We are by no means a perfectly altruistic species, but we are more capable of being empathetic than any other species.

[@Sovvyy]

​@@christophermalala7615 That's an interesting angle - I think you're correct when you say capable. I've thought about this for a while since my original comment. While I believe other animals display empathy to other species, moral agency seems to be uniquely predominant in humans which seems to give rise to empathetic progression. Most of us don't like the idea of injured wild animals and also seem uncomfortable with things like factory farming. I think things like animal rights and veganism are evidence for this. Conversely, we have also uniquely devised tortures, but these are fringe cases. Overall, we seem to move in a positive direction over time and extend empathy to more outgroups. So while I'm not sure if we are in practice... innately? I think I would agree. Apologies for the lengthy reply - I appreciate the comment!

[@Nobody32990]

@@Sovvyy life consumes other life to live. Such is the way of things and there is nothing wrong with that. Too much empathy can be pathological and we see it already with behaviour in people exhibiting extreme, almost insane, outgroup preference to the point of actively sabotaging and attacking their ingroup.

[@Sovvyy]

​@@Nobody32990 I'm not quite sure on what you mean by pathological and how it applies here - do you have any particular examples or sources? Yes, nature is brutal and in a way, all life does consume life. There is nothing 'wrong' with consuming life it'self, rather it's the context and understanding in which it occurs relative to what that form of life is (e.g. a human vs bacterium). We typically don't look to nature for moral guidance.