On top of that we’re asking a random assortment of Americans to compare where they live with the places they visit on vacation. Watch your wallet in Europe, people are saying. Duh, yeah, when you are a tourist in a tourist area. That’s universal, folks.

By the same token, people shouldn’t over-generalize about the US either. It’s a big place with massive differences from place to place.

I like the usually-better public transit systems. You have an advantage over us in that many of your biggest cities were established long before cars even came about, so they are not planned out as car-cities first and foremost. I’m in California where the automobile was a reality by the time most everything was being built. And in those days, people were excited by cars and the liberty they brought. Cars are much more fun when there aren’t too many of them and you have the open landscape before you. So the region I live in was planned as a love letter to cars and now we are living with all the downsides of that model being overloaded.

Obviously the whole picture is more complex than this - European cities have been rebuilt and replanned, sometimes after WW2 mass destruction. But still I think the effect of having an earlier establishment does make a difference in this way.

Let’s run a marathon where everyone is underfed and has foot injuries as well as painful dental problems. I guarantee you more women will finish the race ;D

Oh god, I can. Remember TiVo?

That’s why they had to call it that.

Buses drive outside.

People tend to step outside for a smoke.

So yeah, you actually might be more likely to get hit by a bus if you smoke, your smoking spot is anywhere near a bus route, and you are ducking out there 2-4 times a day to stand there smoking while you play with your phone.

I’ve even seen human engineers’ code thrown out because no one else could understand it. Back in the day, one webdev took it upon himself to whip up a mobile version of our company’s very complex website. He did it as a side project. It worked. It was complete. It looked good. It was very fast. The code was completely unreadable by anyone else. We didn’t use it.

My entire comment history here, and the last 10 years or so on Reddit have been exclusively from a phone. Weeks go by that I don’t touch an actual Mac or PC anymore.

I think you’re right to be skeptical. And I think he’s at least a half step more honestly curious than most of the “just asking questions” douchebags. But there is a lot more to talk about on this subject that’s more interesting than whether or not “god did it.”

Ultimately I think of him as an engineer, and not a scientist. I think engineering is much more compatible with religion, because they cover orthogonal material. Engineering is all about “how” and religion is “why.” And the image of the great-engineer-in-the-sky is tempting to them, I think.

He asked if the complexity could be reduced or not, so he raised the topic. But he didn’t imply that the thing is too complex and can’t be reduced therefore god. He stopped short of that.

And it is a fair topic for anyone to think about. I’m an “atoms bouncing around” guy and I too want to know if the complexity can be reduced because if not, that means we must have waited a long long time for some of these assemblies to appear.

Okay here’s my full transcript of what he said on this.

“This is fascinating stuff. It also opens up a huge debate. People say ‘how can something this complex come to be out of nothing?’ Well, the logic goes like this. If this motor system is composed of complex individual parts and al these parts work together to perform the overall function of rotating, then how did the individual parts come to be?”

“Did it all have to happen at the same time? Or is there some evolutionary advantage to the cell for every intermediate stage of development? Is 15% of this motor advantageous to the cell? What function would 50% of the structure perform? What were the steps these components took to assemble into such a complex molecular machine in the first place?”

“Scientists are trying to figure this out, and I encourage you to read their papers. Many seem to be focusing on the type 3 secretion system which works like a hypodermic needle that a cell can use to inject other things. This device looks similar but it’s quite different in its protein structure. The complexity and origin of the bacterial flagellar motor is a really interesting conundrum.”

“As I was a younger man and I would read things on the internet and find people saying ‘hey, you gotta believe all this over here.’ People say ‘hey, you gotta believe all this over here.’ There’s a big war going on between science and faith and you’re either in one camp or the other. Get your flag and figure out where you’re going to put your flag.”

“And the more I have matured and started to not really care about defending where my flag is, the more I’ve been able to learn from people no matter where they are. I’m still working on this.”

“There’s a really interesting book I’m reading. I can’t speak for everything in the book, I’m not done with it. It’s called Where the Conflict Reall Lies. And it talks about this interplay between science, religion, naturalism. It’s very interesting. It goes into more into the areas of philosophy and I love it because it challenges me and it’s fantastic. And this is what I would encourage you. If you have your flag in a camp somewhere, I would encourage you not to defend your flag. I would encourage you to look at a flagellar motor and just think about it. Think about how it is and what it be. It’s a fantastic thing to think about. How did this get here? You have intelligence and you get to make up your mind. And I love that about consciousness and I love that about life.”

“And so for me, the flagellar motor makes me happy. I feel joy. You know how when you go outside at night and you look up at the stars and you see all these stars and you feel small and you feel wonder. Thats what this makes me feel like, even though it is small. I feel awe and reverence toward this thing.”

(Okay so far okay, really. I mean it depends a lot on if that book really is just a defense of creationism. But there’s nothing here I can disagree with. And then…)

“And as a Christian, this makes me want to thank God that it exists. I feel compelled with gratitude that this thing is so awesome. So that’s just where I’m at. But what I would encourage you to do is just think critically. You have a brain. Don’t defend a flag. Just think about how things are. And I hope you are happy and experience the same joy I feel about this no matter what you think about it. So anyway, enough about that.”

Okay you’re right. I watched the rest of the video and he absolutely turns it to god at the end. It was a really i trivially balanced little speech he was making there, and for 90% of it I thought he might be talking to Christians and helping them open their minds to possibilities. He talked about not getting dogmatic. And the. He said “I’m a Christian and I thank god for this!” Which was a pretty idiotic 180 after everything he said.

It makes me sad because he’s clearly very intelligent, but if you’re raised on religion it can be extremely hard to ever shed. It’s like getting someone to forget the language they used until they were 10. You can teach them any number of new languages but it’s unlikely they will forget that one.

Ah I didn’t catch that part. I’m going to go watch again.

Okay thanks. I’m not compelling you to find examples. How I missed it is I probably have never or almost never watched any of his videos to the final frame and then sat there examining what I saw. It’s YT and when the “thanks to my friends at xyz like and subscribe” talk begins I tend to move on.

I guess I don’t object to someone being christian and exhibiting some outward signs of their cultural membership in it, any more than I object to someone being Jewish and wearing a Star of David or someone having a Disney tattoo because that’s what they are into. as long as they aren’t pushing it or using it to judge others, I can live and let live, especially for someone who is doing a lot of other valuable things. But that’s just me. You do you.

I did absolutely stop watching Samurai Carpenter when he took an entire video to talk about how Jesus saved him from his alcoholism and porn addiction and saved his marriage, and he said it all in a very preachy way like all of you guys listening should find it in yourselves to do the same while you still have time. The guy is clearly a miserable SOB too so it just rang hypocritical as hell. THAT’s where my line is drawn.

Please don’t judge what women can provide by this sad, angry man.

To your core topic, of course you can be married and lonely. Being married doesn’t necessarily mean you are spending a lot of quality time together, or genuinely communicating when you do.

Conservatives often have more of a “battle of the sexes” mentality where men are supposed to be MEN and women are supposed to know their place. First of all this warps everyone since these roles may not suit their native personality. And on top of that, the male role includes a bunch of sexism - be stoic around women, etc. Conservative men try to be stoic overall, but a lot of them are also loudmouths because their values are so black-and-white they have a tendency to really, really think they are right and therefore should tell the world.

This guy is probably stoic around his wife and a loudmouth at work. A healthier person would have a marriage where they can talk about what’s bothering them, and then be professional at work. He’s clearly got emotional problems but then Conservatives also have backwards attitudes about mental health. It’s not something they think about and try to manage. Again: black and white. If you’re not fucking crazy then you don’t have a mental health problem, you just need to suck it up. It’s no failing of this man if he is cracking. He’s been set up to fail.

Absolutely you should pity him. That doesn’t mean you have to listen to his loudmouth politics in the workplace.

I definitely hate religion but I haven’t noticed any on Smarter Every Day. Does he talk about god? Recently I watched him talking to a researcher about the proton motors that power bacterial flagella and he kept saying he was getting emotional from noticing design features he’s had to implement himself on machines. But he didn’t say a word about god while doing that. It makes me emotional too just in wonder at the complexity of life.

EDIT: as I was shown by another member, he absolutely talks directly about god at the end of the video - I hadn’t watched far enough.

The snowflake metaphor really gives us everything we need. Yes each one has a different crystalline pattern but ALL of them will melt at the same temperature. Thinking your uniqueness extends to everything and frees you from all the rules is the problem. Of course, conservatives love rules too much and don’t even recognize when they are setting up rules for how your crystalline pattern is “supposed to be.”

…your honor.

For sure - that was clear. I was talking about others who still think this way. Cheers

Indeed. It’s worse for them. A man can walk around bald if he wants to. Maybe he won’t be so attractive, but he can do it. Women who lose all their hair have to resort to head wraps and wigs. They can’t just scalp it like they don’t care.