Tuesday, March 3, 2020

NASA Tracks Asteroid - Could End Human Civilisation

In a January posting "Lunch Money and Asteroids", I suggested a thought experiment where you'd have a chat with your mid-2000s self, telling her/him that actually George W. Bush wasn't all that bad. I figured it would go poorly:
I'd suspect that your then-self would scorn you, insisting that, no, you greying idiot, Bush is The Absolute Worst (fwiw, my own then-self would have forcefully agreed). He's the devil incarnate. A blight and a scourge and a shame and an ignorant dick. One truly couldn't imagine worse.

This is how reframing works. We latch onto a framing until it's forcibly ripped from us. Getting your lunch money stolen by the school bully will no longer seem like the most traumatic possible thing once you've broken your leg playing softball, and that's instantly nothing if someone starts firing a gun, and even that becomes a mere blip when you've spotted the huge asteroid in the sky hurtling toward Earth.

Trump has broken your leg, leaving your lunch money indignation largely forgotten. So don't be a shmuck. Don't tempt the fates to send you gunfire, much less the asteroid.
And now, this. Don't say I didn't warn you.

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