frog

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frog ,

"Dragon of Ash and Stars" by H. Leighton Dickson is definitely worth a read.

frog , (edited )

Consider me highly sceptical.

How Aija once dramatically declared to her parents, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the end of the world!” and curtsied.

“It’s a little disturbing to hear that from a 2-year-old, especially in the middle of a pandemic,” Marie says with a slight laugh.

Tucker nods. “You kind of wonder where she even picked up the expression.”

Because, yeah, there were absolutely no individuals on TV or radio who sarcastically remarked during the pandemic "ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the end of the world!" Just because the parents didn't remember hearing it, doesn't mean the child didn't hear it and emulate it. Childrens' brains are wired to pay attention to their surroundings in ways that adults aren't, because that's how they learn. It seems massively more likely that the children in these cases are echoing things they have heard and absorbed that their parents simply paid no attention to.

Unless the parents can categorically prove that, for example, they never watched a film or documentary about the Holocaust while their child was nearby and able to hear it, that seems a far more likely explanation than reincarnation. For that matter, I'd be more inclined to believe that the child was remembering details from a documentary the parents watched when the child was still a baby, and thus considered unable to absorb anything at all, than believe the child was remembering a past life.

The fact that they can never be pinned down to a specific historic individual is also suspect. The article gives a generic "Presumably there were a lot of Ninas in concentration camps", but okay, has anyone checked how many there were, and what ages they were, and what other details might match up with the child's story? A bit of research would prove it one way or another, and the reluctance to follow through on that research makes it hard for me to take the claims seriously.

frog ,

where does that weirdness come from?

Kids are weird, largely because they repeat things they hear without any understanding of the meanings and significance behind the words. So in the cases of past lives, they're repeating stuff they've heard on TV, films, documentaries, etc, and describing images they've seen on posters and adverts and book covers. And they talk about it like it's real because at that age, kids can't tell the difference between reality and fiction, so it's all equally real and it all gets blended together in their minds. Then adults read something into it that isn't really there.

frog ,

One of the downsides of staying (mostly) on top of my university work, including the group project, is when it comes to a soft deadline and other people aren't done yet even though I am... that just means more work for me. I narrowly avoided getting assigned a difficult task (moving the project forward into the next stage) by proactively volunteering to take over an easy task that two of my fellow students hadn't finished. Thus, I spent the morning generating trees instead of importing dozens of 3D models at variously disorganised scales into a single scene. Which was honestly a relief because I am so drained and burned out and exhausted.

frog ,

As an artist who is sick of the same argument being made about AI image generators, I 100% agree. Definitely in favour of developer and artist solidarity on this issue, because at the end of the day, we're all workers whose livelihoods are at stake.

frog ,

I was extremely sceptical at the premise of this based on the title, but having read the whole thing, there are actually some very good points in there that I agree with.

frog ,

My thinking has always been that the only "reality" I'm qualified to talk about is my own perception of it, and it's not something I can define for anyone else. Therefore, logically, the only appropriate course of action is to accept what other people perceive as real for them, as long as what they perceive as real doesn't require them to force their perception of reality onto others. Accepting a particular deity as real? That's fine, it's real for them even if it's not for me. But when that drives the person to persecute queer people, that's them trying to define reality for everyone, not just themselves, and that's not okay.

I'm not sure if that fully matches up with soulist theory, but it seems to me that our thinking on things are compatible, and I'm happy to consider soulists as allies. :)

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