/lit/ - Literature

mein kampf.

The essays of Miguel de Montaigne.

>>1611157
read it.
i used to hid the cover in my lap so people wouldnt think i was a neo-nazi

>i was afraid of losing my sense of morality
i was afraid i was losing my hand sanitizer

Jack London - The Iron Heel
Edward Bellamy - Looking Backward 2000-1887
William Morris- News from Nowhere
Emile Zola - Germinal
Henry Adams - Democracy
Klaus Mann - Mephisto
Theodor Dreiser - The Financier (less political, but one of my favourites; think Wall Street in 1912)

Yeah, yeah they're predominately left-wing, but they're choice titles.

>>1611166

>predominantly

lulzsorry

>>1611160
thanks

>>1611166
i dont care about the bias at all, like i said im reading them to be morally challenged and to question my own being in society. as long as its not some bullshit propaganda shit like zeitgeist

fuck i hate zeitgeist. i especially hate when people call it a documentary. and i would consider myself more left than right

>>1611162

Haha I remember this kid on my campus sitting down reading Mein Kampf and when I walked up to him to ask "What are you reading?" he packed up the book, freaked and ran.

Shit was so cash.

gotta rep my girl Hannah Arendt up in here. read Eichmann in Jersualem or The Human Condition. also I guess Andre Malraux or some shit like that, or existentialists like Sartre or Camus, whoever said Montaigne is smart as hell.

>>1611193
i doubt that happened, but yeah i wish it wasn't taboo to read books like that.

the strong majority of society think people only read books on their own beliefs on ideologies. which is probably true. but i just wish more people had an open mind

Democracy in America - Alexis deTocqueville

One of the best analyses of democracy anywhere in print.

>who give's a fuck animals always go extinct. science proves this to have occurred for millions of years. why save the whale?

This is an incredibly poorly-reasoned argument.

>>1611226
obviously a much more lighter and succinct version, fool.

we're on /lit/ not /sci/ so there's no reason to get into the workings of natural selection and darwinism.

>>1611148

I strongly recommend Plato's Republic

If you don't mind ebooks I've got the Bloom translation and the Complete Works with the Grube translation

http://www.mediafire.com/?y49992hbf9alfr2

http://www.mediafire.com/?b1y7z6vad5biie6

If you prefer a paper copy, go with Bloom, Waterfield, or Reeve

Also, here's a political theory reading list I compiled for /new/ back when it still existed:

http://www.mediafire.com/?92ksu7p14pvb1ir

>me- who give's a fuck animals always go extinct. science proves this to have occurred for millions of years. why save the whale? evolution, ecosystem isn't static. etc, etc...

If we assume that non-human life has no intrinsic or aesthetic value, there are more practical consequences of species extinction. Look up "colony collapse disorder" for example, people were freaking the fuck out because a dramatic decline in bee populations meant that crops weren't being pollinated. The rate of extinction is also occurring at many orders of magnitude faster than the natural background rate, which has led many paleontologists and conservation biologists to conclude that we are on the verge of entering the sixth great mass extinction event.

>>1611246
thanks for your info on the books

now onto your ill-informed understanding of our ecosystem:
>The rate of extinction is also occurring at many orders of magnitude faster
no, it's the fact that we now know of more species of animals and have a higher degree of distinction between them. hence a higher number of animals are going extinct. not a higher magnitude. in fact we now know of more species than ever before so there's no grounds for a magnitude calculation. only a ratio, which is virtually impossible.
l2maths

>dramatic decline in bee populations meant that crops weren't being pollinated
ok, wow. plants aren't populated by only bees. you don't honestly believes bees are the only animals that pollinate our fauna do you? and not all 'crops' need to be pollinated.
and darwinism explains that as one creature exits our ecosystem there are multiple with the capability to take their place if needed and beneficial.
>paleontologists and conservation biologists to conclude that we are on the verge of entering the sixth great mass extinction event
this is just like all the studies done towards global warming.
a key word in that sentence is conservation biologists. and mass extinctions aren't a bad thing. without them you wouldnt be here. think of it as the natural forrest fires that give great rebirth

>>1611233
No, you just don't know what you're talking about.

You've succumbed to nihilism.

Also, science proves nothing, everything is unknown. The universe will probably suffer heat death and nothing you do will ever matter.

Now what?

>>1611246
This is a pretty good list! I was surprised. Reading the Greeks is definitely a pretty necessary thing to do. I would probably include Perpetual Peace for Kant, though. Also think that Tocqueville is probably worth including. And my list of more recent thinkers would probably differ, but realistically all of that is just "stuff I like" not really essentials.

>>1611317
>everything is unknown
How you do know that? lol
inb4pyrrhonism, in which case you defeat your own claim

>>1611317
You have no reason to believe yourself.

>>1611327
>implying I'm not taking OP's extreme position
That post in no way reflects my own thoughts. 2deep4u

>>1611327
i think it's just the idea that science and abstraction in general is just a way to compress the immeasurable complexity around us into something useful for our subjective purposes.

it's important to keep in mind that the goal of science is to come up with theories that match large sets of generalized data, not to catalog every detail of reality with "totally true essences that are perfect."

This way, you'll avoid a lot of essence-mongering and bullshit semantics-juggling debates

>>1611278

>l2maths

Based on the fossil record, on average, one species goes extinct every million years. Since 1500, we have recorded about 1200 extinctions or extinct-in-the-wild species. Inferring from species-area method, this could mean a maximum of 140,000 extinctions per year.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/269/5222/347.abstract
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7336/full/nature09678.html
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Edenic_Period?topic=49480

>plants aren't populated by only bees. you don't honestly believes

Did I say that there were no alternative pollinators, or that all crops needed pollination? I only mentioned that there was a negative impact on agriculture due to CCD. This is pretty well-established.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/impact-of-ccd-on-us-agriculture/37/

>and darwinism explains that as one creature exits our ecosystem there are multiple with the capability to take their place if needed and beneficial.

That's true in long time scales, but without adequate observation, there's no way to tell if this is happening at a rate that is acceptable for long-term sustainability or for human society. You cannot snap your fingers and automatically restore the ecosystem to an optimal state.

>just like all the studies done towards global warming.

Global warming is very well understood in science. It does not make much scientific sense to claim that the entire field of conservation biology is bunk by comparing it to an established scientific fact.

>mass extinctions aren't a bad thing. without them you wouldnt be here. think of it as the natural forrest fires that give great rebirth

You're telling us that life today is meaningless, therefore we should give priority to species that might exist millions of years later if we had a mass extinction now? That doesn't follow.

>>1611374

I don't think your view is realistic.

There's no doubt that human society has been and will continue to be a significant extinction event. However, the ways we sample this stuff is so plainly flawed and inaccurate and incomparable between different methods that I don't think a reasonable person could jump to any extreme conclusions.

>>1611374
>Based on the fossil record, on average, one species goes extinct every million years. Since 1500, we have recorded about 1200 extinctions or extinct-in-the-wild species. Inferring from species-area method, this could mean a maximum of 140,000 extinctions per year.
What does this have to do with a specie's extinction mattering or not?

>>1611374
you sir are a lost cause,
you've given in to the fear monogering created by the media.

who cares if we go extinct. it's inevitable. you have to accept that we'll be gone soon. so who cares if we can save a few whales like OP said. do you think the whales will try to save us?

breaking news: we're not the centre of the universe

>>1611410

>inevitable
and
>soon

Are very different propositions.

>>1611374
wow dude, wow.
one species goes extinct every million years does it?
fuck me. you really need to get a clue.

i think we should change boards for a while. you go to /sci/ and learn some real facts about our world, stop listening to the scientist you see in the media and read real scientific journals.
meanwhile, i will be here learning about existentialism with an open mind.

jesus christ, you really have no fundamental concept of the ecosystem do you?
i don't snap my fingers and bees go extinct. they dwindle out. meanwhile, while they're dwindling out the other creature that also flourishes from pollinating fauna excel. due to their increase in nourishment they breed more. hence taking over. forcing the bees to extinction.
and you never ever, restore the ecosystem. thats been my point the whole fucking time! it evolves!

global warming is well understood.
HOLY FUCK! stop the debates. we've got an anon who has found undeniable proof and reason and cause.

and finally.
NO! NO SPECIES GETS PRIORITY! after we go extinct nobody will think, hey good on the humans for helping the whales survive so we can look at them now. they'll think, hey look at this homosapiens skull size. they must've been quite intelligent creatures.

if you haven't understood that life is meaningless other than in it's own right you clearly don't know shit about the universe. life's short and terminal. you might aswell enjoy yours. not somebody elses

>>1611424
soon, is a word that depends very highly on relativity.
we won't last 100s of millions of years like many other DNA streams we've discovered

>>1611393

>However, the ways we sample this stuff is so plainly flawed and inaccurate and incomparable between different methods that I don't think a reasonable person could jump to any extreme conclusions.

What extreme conclusion am I making? The facts are that the extinction rate is, at the absolutely minimum, 100 times faster than the background level. According to the fossil record, this constitutes a mass-extinction level event. And that species extinction is so poorly quantified is not cause for celebration. The median case is pretty worrisome. What if the rate of extinction is towards the upper bound? We'd be seeing species extinction over 10,000 times faster than the background rate.

>>1611401

>What does this have to do with a specie's extinction mattering or not?

This is perhaps just me, but I find non-human life to have intrinsic and aesthetic value. I think that it would be a pretty nasty and ugly world if it were just us, the bare minimum of species necessary for us to survive, and whatever pests and vermin likely to survive in mass extinction events. But the reason for concern to human well-being is that we cannot easily control which species go extinct, and one which we need may disappear under our noses. No one foresaw CCD, for example, but we were very lucky that the situation reversed. As I mentioned above, uncertainty in this sphere is not a desirable thing.

>>1611457
ok i'm not the guy you just replied to, im the original guy your arguing with (OP)
how do you not understand the year 9 mathematics fact that there are more animals we know to be going extinct now because we have the means to know of these animals and of their extinction.

holy fuck you are so retarded

i bet you to an arts degree in journalism or some bullshit that means nothing to anybody but yourself

>>1611457
I'm saying that because this "background rate" was determined by a wildly different method that it can't be compared with modern measurements in any meaningful way.

Isn't this obvious?

>>1611448

Is 15, tops.

>>1611374
>Based on the fossil record, on average, one species goes extinct every million years.
where i should've stopped reading
>Since 1500
where i did stop reading

holy fuck, he doesn't even undesrtand that our new technology finds more animals and junk.
you can look in any childrens dinosaur book and find about 200 dinosaurs we know of. this would already prove its more than 1 every million years

200 > 65 (incase you forgot)

wait, did i just get trolled. nobody is this dumb

>>1611498
and on top of that, assuming we know about every species of dinosaur is beyond retarded, and that's just counting dinosaurs.

>>1611410

>who cares if we go extinct. it's inevitable. you have to accept that we'll be gone soon. so who cares if we can save a few whales like OP said. do you think the whales will try to save us?

I'm afraid I don't quite follow. Are you saying that whales should all die because they have no instrumental use for human beings?

If that's the case, your preposition does not make sense because whales are actually instrumentally useful to human beings. Whales are necessary because their shit fertilizes the oceans with iron and supports phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is necessary as a component of various cycles, most importantly for us the oxygen cycle and the carbon cycle. I shouldn't have to tell you that the majority of atmospheric oxygen is generated by phytoplankton, and that we need oxygen to breathe.

FYI, phytoplankton has declined roughly 50% in the past half century.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/abs/nature09268.html

>>1611448

>fuck me. you really need to get a clue.
>you go to /sci/ and learn some real facts about our world

I'm sorry? I thought the standard practise on /sci/ was to state your argument, then back it up with facts sourced in peer-reviewed journal articles and other authoritative sources. With the exception of the PBS article, which I don't think is false, and my value judgment of non-human life, I have stuck closely to the /sci/ way of doing things. Would you prefer that I troll you with religion crap?

>>1611533

>you never ever, restore the ecosystem. thats been my point the whole fucking time! it evolves!

You misunderstood me. I did not mean to imply that there is a state in which the ecosystem can be restored to. What I meant was that the ecosystem should be, for the instrumental human purposes, prevented from entering a mass extinction event.

Evolution takes a lot of time to work. That's why it takes millions of years for the biosphere to recover from mass extinctions. But we're not thinking about how we're going to recover from a mass extinction millions of years from now, since that timeframe is irrelevant for any practical planning purposes.

>HOLY FUCK! stop the debates. we've got an anon who has found undeniable proof and reason and cause.

How do you mean? Are you saying that the observations and theory which points to global warming is somehow not robust? What is it about the science supporting global warming that you object to?

>NO! NO SPECIES GETS PRIORITY! after we go extinct nobody will think, hey good on the humans for helping the whales survive so we can look at them now.

We shouldn't prevent our own extinction? Why not?

go back to sci and make your sand castles, okay

>>1611533
exactly you dont follow.
i'm saying we shouldnt waste time and resources on saving a creature from extinction even though it's obviously not suited to our current ecosystem if its going extinct. its the same with pandas. its a fucking bear that developed a huge metabolism over thousands of years so it could be totally bad ass. but then it ran out of food. so it evolved to eating bamboo. and now its going extinct because bamboo cant sustain its metabolism. they're not suited to their environment.
fucking natural selection.

how can you not understand that a creature going extinct doesn't mean shit. it was happening for millions of years before we were here and it will happen for millions more once we're gone. even in a nuclear winter.

now get this through your head:
THERE ARE ONLY A HIGHER NUMBER OF EXTINCTIONS NOW BECAUSE WE HAVE THE ABILITY TO KNOW OF THE EXTINCTIONS OCCURING! IT WAS THE SAME RATE AS PREVIOUSLY!

im stopping now, you really are a fucking idiot.
or a brilliant troll.

>>1611469

>how do you not understand the year 9 mathematics fact that there are more animals we know to be going extinct now because we have the means to know of these animals and of their extinction.

The fossil record?

>i bet you to an arts degree in journalism or some bullshit that means nothing to anybody but yourself

Nice try, but I am not majoring in arts or journalism. Ad hominem does not a good argument make

>>1611504

>and on top of that, assuming we know about every species of dinosaur is beyond retarded

Yes, we do not know every single species that ever existed. That is not a point of contention. But we know enough to determine the average rate of extinctions. That is to say, one species in the fossil record, on average, exists for about one million years. That is how we know that the background rate is somewhere in the neighbourhood of once per million years.

How do we know mass extinctions exist? Because, in the fossil record, a huge percentage of species goes extinct in a geologically short period of time. If we cannot infer a background extinction rate, that's tantamount to saying we can't even know if a mass extinction was real or not. And no offense to you, but that sounds like some fucking creationist argument.

>>1611558

Is still 15, tops.

nobody is this retarded.
oh dear god, please do not let somebody be this stupidit's got to be a troll

>>1611569

It's okay. High school is rough for everyone.

>>1611559
>one species in the fossil record, on average, exists for about one million years. That is how we know that the background rate is somewhere in the neighbourhood of once per million years.


repeat this several times to yourself out loud. Draw a picture.


Ok let me break it down. The average life expectancy of a a human is, say, 50 years. Therefore, only 1 human dies every 50 years.

This is what it sounds like you are saying.

>>1611558

>i'm saying we shouldnt waste time and resources on saving a creature from extinction even though it's obviously not suited to our current ecosystem if its going extinct. its the same with pandas. its a fucking bear that developed a huge metabolism over thousands of years so it could be totally bad ass. but then it ran out of food. so it evolved to eating bamboo. and now its going extinct because bamboo cant sustain its metabolism. they're not suited to their environment.

Why are we talking about pandas? I've already said that for the sake of this discussion, we are ignoring ethical considerations, and only dealing with direct impacts on humanity. In the case of pandas, yes, they have little instrumental value except in the case of generating revenue for tourism and zoos, and if that doesn't matter then we shouldn't bother trying to save them.

But why shouldn't we prevent extinction of whales, if whales are necessary for the fertilization of phytoplankton?

>THERE ARE ONLY A HIGHER NUMBER OF EXTINCTIONS NOW BECAUSE WE HAVE THE ABILITY TO KNOW OF THE EXTINCTIONS OCCURING!

What about comparison with the fossil record? Or is the fossil record completely meaningless? We've also discovered more species, but we haven't discovered new species at the rate that we are discovering extinctions. Your logic only makes sense if we discover proportionately fewer species than species extinctions.

>IT WAS THE SAME RATE AS PREVIOUSLY!

How do you know that?

>or a brilliant troll.

I swear I'm not a troll. This topic is merely of interest to me because it's tangentially related to my main area of research.

>>1611580

That's not what it sounds like he's saying at all.

>>1611586
ok if you dont understand the relation to pandas im truly done

you're a fucking idiot

i seriously hope you increase your understanding of the world before long

>>1611580

Did you read the Pimm paper I cited? It discusses the methodology behind inferring extinction rates.

If you are really interested, it's easy to find papers on the background extinction rate. Just search "background extinction rate" on Google Scholar, JSTOR, or whatever database your school has access to. If it's a big university then you should have no problem accessing most major journals.

If you don't have access, I can upload a particular paper for you, or you can e-mail the communicating author of the paper, and if you ask nicely they'll send one over.

>>1611599

I understand the relationship to pandas in that you appear to be trying to tar the scientific community with the same brush as with environmentalists with an irrational love affair with charismatic megafauna. But I wanted to be generous and give you a chance to defend yourself from what appears at first glance to be an obvious straw man.

Please read the scientific literature on the subject, it may contain insights and knowledge that may not have previously been aware of.

>>1611603
my understanding is that most papers about background extinction rates are peppered with caveats that their accuracy is a difficult issue.

Although I haven't read any myself.

I'm a statistician, which means I think almost all of science's rigor with regards to statistics is terrible and interpret any caveats about anything's accuracy as "this is basically bullshit, but please feel free to give me a grant anyway"

>>1611633

Accuracy is an issue, but if the absolute minimum present-day estimate of the extinction rate were true, and the absolute maximum estimate of background extinction rate were true, we'd still have a god damn mass extinction. I doubt reality would be more generous.