I wasn't raised explicitly atheist--that is to say, when I was young, no one told me, "God does not exist." (Though I could conceivably have overheard it when someone wasn't talking to me.) But I was also certainly not raised theist. And I was taught (via very aggravating, though now I recognize also useful, conversations with my dad) to have good arguments. If I said, "So, everyone X, right?" as the beginning to an argument, he'd say, "Oh? Why do you say that?"

I suspect that people raised with the idea of global warming have an advantage in knowing that the human race might well one day die out, that it is not necessarily immortal.

On the other hand, perhaps not. I remember learning about global warming. I don't remember the specific details of what I learned, or even if it was at all accurate, but I do remember learning about it. And I thought something along the lines of, "There's a fair chance everyone's going to die if we don't all do something about this."

And I looked around.

And even the people I knew who believed in global warming--which, considering my social circles, consisted of pretty much everyone--seemed not to really see this. Even the ones who learned the exact same things I did, from the exact same place (that is to say, school) just seemed to assume that everything would, by necessity, just turn out all right.

After a while of this, I just gave up.

I must have missed the part where we see that MoR!Hogwarts in general differs in gender politics and sexuality than most of real life, except for the "girls can compete in contact sports/armies with boys" bit, but that's a logical consequence of inherent equality of magical power. Lupin and Harry accepted a Peter/Sirius relationship without any squick, but Harry's a child of the Enlightenment (who, by dint of his uber-prodigy-ness likely didn't have jock-type macho-boys or religious conservatives as his formative peer group) and Lupin's a member of a disadvantaged minority himself. Do we have any evidence that someone like Lucius Malfoy would not be about as homophobic as the average medieval baron, of the sort who would teach his son that raping uppity peasant girls with impunity is one of the bennies that comes with "good breeding?" Or that, say, Seamus Finnigan wouldn't have the same kind of teen-boy homophobia/bullying reaction that's fairly common in our world?

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I disagree that the book is basically unsympathetic to cryonics. It's true that Miles is basically unsympathetic to cryonics, but Miles is, as we have seen in earlier books, somewhat prejudiced by his Barrayaran upbringing. The characters native to the planet seem to think that Cryonics is good, and that it's just the corporations that are going wrong. True, some of them later accept life-extension technologies in place of this, but I think that's natural--especially since the people accepting know that they can't keep running their cryo-place forever.

Apparently mods can make reports evaporate. I have so evaporated; worry not.

This probably has more to do with the exposure effect than a change of priorities.

Ive noticed something interesting thats sort of this but backwards. This is how it goes: when I first meet someone, I might find them aesthetically displeasing. But as I get to know them, if they become my friend or just someone I find nice and intelligent, I find them prettier than I did to begin with. Possibly it`s just that as I now know more about them, their beauty or lack thereof becomes less important in my judgement about them.