He somehow managed to make border abolition sound uncool. Many people don’t agree with it for many reasons, none of which were it being uncool until this tweet
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
Because it turns out sociology, anthropology and politics also exist.
If you were in space and looked at Earth you wouldn’t see any people.
EDIT: Crap, someone is going to point out that you can see lights at night, aren’t they? This thread is for pedants and now I’ve started a conversation about biomarkers you can see from orbit.
I’m going to point out that you edited without editing.
Next level pedantry.
But you can see lights on the dark side!!
You probably would though, there are no single manned space missions far as I know.
The whole point is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can change it if we wanted to, we are participants of sociology anthropology and politics. Oh well social constructs
Yeah, but that’s my point. There’s a tendency, particularly on STEM people, but also on your average normies, to think that “social constructs” aren’t “real”. This is a very bad take that often causes a lot of problems.
Ofc it’s real. Money is a construct and it’s real.
But what we made creates so much suffering and takes lives away. That’s just not necessary. And ofc changing it will probably take some power away from the previliged, that’s the point. Ideally we want everyone to be satisfied, but not when there’s still people dying of starvation.
I don’t know that I claimed it’d take power away from the privileged. If I had to make an educated guess, the idea that “it’s a social construct so we can change it” tends to lead to proposing easy solutions to complicated problems that only work if we all agree they work.
They normally don’t work.
And if the people proposing them are powerful enough to get convinced that all they need to do is force everybody to agree with them regardless it often ends in tears.
Hell, catch me in a good day I’ll tell you changing natural realities is easier than changing social constructs. On par at best, and nature at least won’t argue about it.
You know continents, rivers and mountain ranges exist?
Your point is?
Earth is beautiful!
There are heaps of examples of those that aren’t political borders, though. I live between a river and some mountains. The other side of the river is another county but still the same country, and the other side of the nearest mountains isn’t even another county. Egypt is on both sides of the Nile and also on both sides of the Africa-Asia border, Russia is on both sides of the Urals and the Europe-Asia border (wherever you draw it, if you draw it at all), America is on both sides of the Rockies and so on
El Paso?
No, I’m in Scotland. Isn’t the other side of the river from El Paso across the Mexican border anyway?
What about this tweet reads as pompous to you?
“If everyone was as wise as me, I wouldn’t suffer this tiresome charade”
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.
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.
To judge others so, you must be the personification of kindness and benevolence. Surely?
what he’s really complaining about is queuing, not borders. first world problem.
That’s how I read it. Rich man angry he had to stand in line.
oh this bloviating asshat
Yeah fuckface, borders are this thing in geopolitics which ALSO involves OTHER sovereign nations that might not WANT your fucking moron face there
Missing the message because you hate the messenger.
What is the message? That borders are dumb?
Yes. Borders are dumb.
Countries are just lines drawn in the sand with a stick.
With a gun, now
Yes, it’s lyrics from a song, though.
Join Schengen! It’s easy, unless Austria abuses it’s Veto rights
Typical Austria… (i actually have no idea if this is typical , the only thing I know about Austria is Hitler was from there 😅)
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.
“ ‘Private property is the smallest unit of warfare’ - The Environmental Rescue Team Handbook”
— Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers (2023), chapter 15
This is a call for world federalism. I support it, but it’s probably ahead of our time. A democratic world federation (a truly united nations [of earth] perhaps) would be able to more effectively solve many (global) problems.
Or it’s a return to how things were before nationalism rotted the brains of basically everyone on Earth
You’re imagining a false history. Before nationalism it was tribalism which is just small nationalism. Before that it was “if I see a male of my species I may have to kill them”.
Probably once aliens make their apparition, there’d be a much greater incentive to unite
Black science man always talks like he’s done weed for the first time and is trying to impress his nephew’s friends.
I fucking hate this guy so much. He wants to be carl sagan or stephen hawking so badly, but hes ignorant as fuck and all his ‘deep thoughts’ are shallower than a puddle.
It would be fine if he didn’t talk with such a pretentious tone.
He would be fine if he only talked pretentiously in the fields he actually knows stuff about. He’s earned it for astrophysics. But its the everything else…
PSA: If all you have to do is wait in line, you’re privileged af
We live in a society
I take it you’re not from the US, as we’re trained from birth to be overtly hostile to the concept, as well as each other.
There’s no team in I, and society would be a slippery slope to evil socialism.
But hey, we are oh so very free… to die in the gutter alone as other Americans tell us to hurry up as our continued existence is negatively impacting their property values.
Bottom text
Sadly.
We live in a patchwork of societies, I think is the thing
You think that’s bad? Every April I have to hand the country I live in a bunch of papers with numbers on them just to exist. If I don’t, they send men with guns. How crazy is that?
Yes borders are bullshit, but he really doesn’t have to come across all high and mighty about it
I’m not convinced that he knows how to come across in any other way
Imagine what it would be like having a disagreement with him
He would be absolutely insufferable
In fact, forget the disagreement
It’d be like arguing with a lemming, soooo smug and self-important.
Had to put on pants to go outside due to artificially created laws.
But you take them off when you kiss a mirror on the lips
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!
Sure, as soon as we all agree on what form of government to have and what actions it should take, or at least the point at which we are all willing to not take up arms in opposition against it, we can get rid of these artificially conceived borders.
