I can’t stand the discussions where people speculate a bunch of random things about a topic instead of just looking it up. Tom Waits would be disappointed in me.
That’s ok. Chances are good that if you’ve ever listened to Tom Waits’s music you’re disappointed in him too.
I absolutely love Waits’ music and have for decades. In an interview he talks about how he hears shades of red, blue, green but some people listen to his music and just hears different shades of brown - and that’s OK.
I do think it’s a case of “never meet your heroes,” though.
Tom strikes me as a cranky old man who lives in his chicken coop. He and I likely wouldn’t gel as friends, or have much to talk about, and maybe we’d even vehemently disagree on some points. But that’s OK. I don’t have to be his friend to enjoy his music.
Cute. How’s your album coming?
Yeah, I hate this. My family goes back and forth trying to figure out who is right about what year something happened…just look it up. Wonder about ideas, not established facts.
This is stupidity. If you want to wonder, wonder about the many things we humans still do not understand. If you wonder enough, you may be motivated enough to actually learn about the field, then genuinely discover something.
@Mnemnosyne @jaromil human knowledge is so vast that there will always be niches to hide in wonder. That’s what poetry is about. I was about to also say “religion” but then I realized religion is really just a device pretending to be that phone (answering your questions)
I was a kid pre-Internet. People talk about how we had to go to the library to look something up if it wasn’t in the family encyclopedia, and that’s true, but what they don’t mention as much is that we only did that if we had to or really care. If you were talking with friends and someone said “I swear that’s the same crow that hung around here years ago - I wonder how long they live,” in all likelihood you’d all look at each other, shrug, and then go skateboarding. If someone said, “I don’t know, let’s ride our bikes to the library and look it up!” you’d probably laugh at him.
So one of the cool things to me is that, if that comes up today, someone is going to pull out their phone and say, “Oh, it could be: they typically live 7 to 8 years in the wild, and they can live up to 30” and now we all know this cool crow fact.
It depends. If we are “wondering” about the harry potter universe and how various obscure things work there, its better not to look it up lol. If if is something for which a correct answer matters, you should actually bother to look up the answer and far too few people do that.
After reading the comments it looks like I’m in the minority, but I agree… I find it fun to hypothesise and discuss certain topics and that stops as soon as google comes out.
If it’s important, then yeah, google it. Other than that, I find it more fun to think and talk about it.
Me too people have zero imagination.
It’s not saying don’t look up answers to things that actually matter.
It’s subjects that are open to debate for creativity’s sake. Like what exact colour of blue do you think the sky is?
Don’t need to google it - this is the jumping off point for some great conversations.
I love Tom Waits as a human being but I feel there is an assumption here that wanting to know the truth of a thing means you can’t wonder. In this day of alternative facts, I see too many harmful conspiracy theories and misconceptions that lead people to harm themselves and others because all they do is wonder without taking the time to investigate the truth of a thing. Knowing that the moon isn’t made of cheese doesn’t prevent me from wondering what it would be like if it was.
Chatting around a camp fire is good for this, otherwise I love learning too much myself.
I wonder, and i wonder, and I rabbit hole, diving deep into Wikipedia, archive.org, lemmy, etc, to find answers to old questions and then immediately come up with new ones! It doesn’t stop. I am a sponge. I must know things.
anyone with a deficit of wonder regarding crystal reports, sql, subaru dash bulbs, gen1 honda insight wiring, or general furnace failure shenanigans, if you can be assed, bestow upon me your knowledge lol
Improper conflation of two meanings of the word.
It’s good to have wonder (noun): a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable
It’s also good to find answers when you wonder (verb): desire or be curious to know something
The two are not mutually exclusive. The fact that we no longer wonder (verb) what stars are does nothing to diminish their wonder (noun) in the night sky.
There is still plenty to wonder about, not everything has an answer. I wonder what sorts of things have concrete answers that he would prefer to wonder about? Maybe outer space things?
On the panel I see the lights that are on. The steps of the process are under my control. I keep an eye on the computer's analyses. Here uncertainty has played out its role. The control flashes blue, a signal for safety. The control flashes blue, then everything is as it should be. If the screen is normal, there is no reason to hesitate. When the control flashes blue, then everything is as it should be. But in the quiet hours of the night I've wondered, What happens where technology doesn't see, What hides in the shade of the tuja trees. And I feel the worry growing more and more. But the control flashes blue, a signal to be safe. The control flashes blue, then everything is as it should be. If the screen is normal, there is no reason to hesitate. When the control flashes blue, then everything is as it should be. But there are questions the computer cannot answer. Signals I can't understand. There is so much we cannot explain. There are forces that we can never count on. The control flashes blue, a signal for safety. The control flashes blue, then everything is as it should be. If the screen is normal, there is no reason to hesitate. When the control flashes blue, then everything is as it should be.This absolute raw gem of a man saved my life, and I’ve had two distinct opportunities to personally thank him, but thought better of it. Maybe someday, though.
Yay anti-intelectualism! You know what’s better then knowledge and understanding? Ignorance and conjecture! I bet that hasn’t hurt anyone before
Tom Waits is not a person you should accuse of being an anti-intellectual or of advocating that.
I think the meaning behind this is it’s hard to be creative if there’s always a hard and fast right or wrong answer.
You’ll forgive me if I neither know who Tom Waits is, or particularly care, but I can say I’ve seen enough people turn into corpses from this line of thought before and don’t relish the thought of burying any more.
You should look into him, really cool guy.
