• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The internet has definitely stolen a lot of the magic from the world. Foreign places aren’t mysterious anymore. I’ve seen a million videos and pictures of every place I want to visit already, and I talk to the people who live there every day. The Burmuda Triangle isn’t something mysterious anymore, The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, UFOs, everything, it’s all pretty much disproven now. Even ancient Chinese medicine has been peer reviewed and either proven or disproven. Where’s the magic that existed before the internet? I guess in the quantum realm, but that doesn’t have the same type of mystery.

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      4 months ago

      Open your mind, and you’ll see it again. Below organisms lay organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and even before you hit the quantum it all works together spectacularly, in ways that nobody really understands.

      e.g. is there a cure for Alzheimer’s, or “cancer”, or death? Can we grow new limbs, either from the patient’s own cells or at least off the rack generically? We’ve convinced ourselves that just bc we have a good enough microscope to view the book of life (DNA, plus some other stuff like mitochondria and centrioles) that we “understand” it, but we do not, I promise you, or else we would have all of those aforementioned things.

      But don’t take my word for it: pick one of those places you mentioned and visit it - I mean actually go there. You will see what even the locals who have lived right next to it for their entire lives do not. Or start reading a Wikipedia page for something you have always been interested in but never taken the time to learn about, and you’ll see that you may never want to stop… The mystery is nowhere close to being gone, we’ve just told ourselves that it is.

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        4 months ago

        Your third paragraph hits on something I had to realize in my “how to enjoy existence” journey. Put simply, don’t discount meatspace. Sometimes your brain needs those experiences even if you think you don’t. Plus with any current or near future technology, consuming media about a place is not the same as being there. There is no comparison vs the data throughput of all of your senses, even before you get to the social/cultural aspect and being able to interact.

        I’m in the US and have coworkers in Europe along with the ones local to me. We talk almost every day, and interacting with them led me to learn a bit on my own about their area, culture, etc.

        I’ve also gotten to visit a couple times over the past couple years, and yeah like I said there’s no comparison. You get a lot of the vibe for a place in all that extraneous data your senses are always generating. Just seeing how the people carry themselves, and the different ways various mundane everyday stuff is done, it all incrementally builds into a more cohesive experience.

    • Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      The only people claiming UFOs are disproven are feds or patsies.

      Two eyewitness and a whistleblower testifying seeing nonhuman craft under oath to Congress:
      https://www.c-span.org/video/?529499-1/hearing-unidentified-aerial-phenomena

      If UFOs are so disproven, why is congress trying to declassify projects involving them? And why is the Military Industrial Complex pushing back and claiming that they need to be able to patent reverse-engineered technology?

      I’m not saying believe me, I’m saying that if you take a serious honest look at the phenomenon it’s very plain that there’s something there