What is wrong with this world

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What is wrong with this world? The are so many things that just don’t make sense in this world, for example why don’t sheep shrink when it rains. Are people on death row on suicide watch. And there are so many more thing that just not make sense. Does any one know any more and can any one find an answer to them

I agree with you in principle, there are lots of things which don't make sense.

Regarding shrinking sheep, don't forget that wool in its natural state is different to woollen clothing. It is the shape of the sheep (in terms of skin and bones) that gives the sheep's wool it's shape when seen in situ. When removed from the sheep other rules start to apply! This reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke, "Sponges grow in the ocean. If they didn't, how much deeper would it be?".

Some things which appear confusing are only so because you don't understand them yet. In some cases people deliberately compound the confusion because it's funny, e.g. the sponge joke. It takes an understandable misconception and stretches it to its logical (or rather, illogical) extreme.

There are other things which REALLY don't make sense, though. Mainly the ones centered around human behaviour. Conventions, morals, priorities, laws - these things are often contradictory and nonsensical. Unlike the queries with wool and sponges they do not have scientific solutions, because these problems are all to do with human perceptions, values, and decision-making priorities. Though some authors like Richard Dawkins and Steven D Levitt have succesfully argued that most behaviour essentially stems from genetic selfishness.

I don't understand why, on morning radio, they just repeat the same topics over and over for the whole program. It's like they only have 5 minutes of material but have to fill an hour ~ they just go round and round and round saying the same things over and over and over ~ and then the news announcer comes on and says the same things too!! !

I don't understand why, when a queue of cars are waiting at a traffic light and it changes to green, the first car starts to move and then the next and so on and so on. If everybody was watching the traffic light all the cars should move as one (keeping the same distance between each other).

there is to many people in the world. if there wasnt so many the world wouldnt seem so messed up

Last edited by richardbenson on 29 Jul 2007, 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not sure if your serious . But your post cracked me up.

I can answer the traffic light query very easily. It's a question of assessing risk.

If you only move off when the car in front has already pulled away, there is little risk of a collision. If everyone attempts to pull away based purely on the light going green, without looking at what the other cars are doing, this relies on everyone and everything being perfect and reacting as one. It would only need one car to stall, or for one driver to be distracted or have slower reactions, and everyone would crash into one another.

You have no idea what is going on within each car in the queue, therefore the only safe way to judge the situation is to wait until the car directly in front of yours starts to move.

Maybe it's my 'Theory of Mind' (or lack of) LOL

I do expect everyone to be thinking as I am and also to be 'perfect and reacting as one'

To make things worse, on Thursday July 26th, the man who thinks he's the "President", signed an executive order that will make him a tyrant in 20 days from now. The executive order will take away all personal assests from anyone who is anti-war/anti-violence through the discretions of the Secretary of the Treasury because anyone whose assests are taken anyone may fall under suspicion that a crime may be committed in the future. This order grants this "President" the right to do whatever he wants without a confirmation from Congress.

Doesn't that sound like the plot out of "V for Vendetta" or "Minority Report?"

Steven Wright aside, (although I love his humor!) Please remember that it is HOT water that makes wool shrink and rarely does it rain at 190 degrees F. People on Death Row are on suicide watch so the State does not get cheated out of it's "Justice".

I am just interesed in things like Jumbo Shrimp and Army Intelligence. Also why do we drive on a Parkway and park on a Drive way?

Merle

Philosiphers have been wondering what's wrong with existence for thousands of years. The best answer is that there is no real reason for things being the way they are and that life is just a random series of events. sometimes peopel are lucky, sometimes people are badly off. I do not believe in fate at the moment (but the joy of beign a chaos magician is the wonderful paradigm shift). I would be cruel to give a reason for pointless human suffering, but it is nice to think that good things happen to people becuase they have earned it (again, the paradigm shift). I think it's hard for people to come to terms with the fact that terrible things happen in life for the brutal reason that things just happen thinks to small intertwining actions and decisions, so they use religion to explain things in a Nice neat way. I had a very traumatic childhood, and I would not like to think that some great being inflicted these things on me, but recently a series of good things that make me happy have happened and it would be equally nice to think that a great power was giving me gifts to ease my pain and make me a happy person, or rewarding me for doing something that pleased him/her/it.
It's a strange and flexible way to look at things, but it is also versitle and good for thinking out of the box, so to speak.

There are too many wars.

I agree, Sid! how many wars should there be, instead?

Merle

So much conflict, so much war, neccessary though it may be. People have conflicting ideologies, and as undesirable as war seems, it's the final solution when disputes reach a terrifying level. It is the agent of change, and peace is the result and intermediate period between wars.

Humanity is an odd mixture, capable of so much good and so much evil, however you define both terms.

Peace is the result of Wars?

That's one way of looking at it, if you consider that there has not been one decade without at least one war in some part of the world. It's the result of conflicting interests, ideas, nations, and various factions. The only way to ensure relative peace on earth is unity and global understanding. Going to take alot of work, but I'm convinced it's possible if a general consensus can be achieved. There's going to be asteroid independence wars once humanity colonizes space, and history will repeat itself, inevitably.

I think you'll find there has not been 1 year without a war somewhere.

IMHO, there was no point to WW1, WW2, etc. Consider the decline of communism and the USSR. It shows that no bad system is sustainable in the long run. Had Nazi Germany won WW2 it would, like the USSR, have altered (possibly quickly had there been a successful assassination attempt on Hitler). So 50 - 60 years on, Western Europe may not be much different from what it is today. So what was the point?

Or would it be different?

If a country does not have competition from other countries (rising standard of living of neighbours who have more resources to put into missile defence/space race or whatever, there is no imperative to reform in order to keep up. We may not have had the advances in productivity that give us a higher standard of living that people had 100 years ago and we could be living in a police state (Oh I forgot, we are )