Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. - Carl Sagan
The Overview Effect is real, but there is a certain percentage of our species that is so brain damaged that it does not work.
I was watching the Blue Origin test launch and a teary eyed William Shatner was beyond words at seeing his planet from the outside for the first time, and was holding onto Jeff Bezos in gratitude for the opportunity to have done so (who was also on the same pod/shuttle) –
And Jeff Bezos just stared. Into the void. Past Shatner. Unaffected. I thought he was in shock at seeing the Earth as well as first but… that’s when it really sunk in. He wasn’t in shock, he truly didn’t feel anything.
Cognition is so vastly different, and sometimes it breaks - some people are fundamentally unaltered by such an experience and they operate on a lower level, like praying mantises, observing prey.
There used to be a word for it in the Diagnostic Service Manuals before they removed it: Psychopathy.
The overview effect is the purest litmus test for psychopathy.
There used to be a word for it in the Diagnostic Service Manuals before they removed it: Psychopathy.
I don’t believe this is true. The first version of the DSM had a section on sociopathic personality “disturbances,” with notes that these were sometimes referred to as psychopathy or sociopathy, but neither it nor the ICD “has ever included a disorder officially titled as such” (per the Wikipedia article on Psychopathy in the Diagnosis section).
Psychopathy was a catch-all for several different things, including homosexuality, so it makes sense for its use to have been retired in a clinical setting.
Antisocial personality disorder is the modern clinical term for sociopathy. ASPD is a Cluster B personality disorder and it has similarities to other Cluster B personality disorders: borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.
It really was horrific, the way Bezos behaved after they landed. Tbh, it re-shaped how i thought about Shatner, but only re- confirmed what i thought about Bezos.
When your ego is the size of the universe, seeing your physical size relative to that of the Earth will not alter you.
I think it’s more like paying for an expensive holiday or being gifted one.
The original Apollo astronauts were salaried men seeing the gift of the Earth from space. They were like newly weds being upgraded to the honeymoon suite for free – beyond gratitude.
Bezos paid for the whole excursion himself and probably thought “huh, nice, but was it really worth 100Million dollars to get this?”
I’ve seen my parents balk at beautiful things when I was a kid, mostly because I wasn’t paying for them.
Not defending the horrific man that he is, just offering an explanation.
Jon Stewart recounts a story of Jeff Bezos describing the economy of the future to Jon Stewart:
https://youtu.be/Vewz1v4rQYg?si=1f0NSTaNbrJzk1IC
skip to 2 minutes to get to the meat and drink of it
TLDR: Bezos seems to see the economy as people doing things for rich people
I need my Cheese, where’s my cheese
Incredible…
I really didn’t remember the source, but i read an interview where ^fuck spez was asked what he would do, if the world ended tomorrow and he’s amongst the last survivors.
Paraphrasing:
I am a born leader. I wouldn’t go down, as it is my natural self to gather everyone around me and lead. Most people need someone to tell them what to do anyway.
Oookay what a complete asshole. Holy hell.
Too be able to sleep every night, on a pillow of money built on labours of people working in near-slavery conditions, you have to be a psychopath.
Also, they removed psychopathy from the DSM?
Yeah, it’s pretty odd but it fits with the M.O, lol
Psychopathy was not removed. Just renamed antisocial PD to reduce stigma.
You’ve never been?
