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U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

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Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#231

Post by dan-0 »

pimpampum wrote: post #207
nindalf wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That standardised test administered by the US military has some history. The idea was that folks who were below an 85IQ would be harder to train. During the Vietnam war they tried abandoning the requirement and the results were sad. It cost the military a lot more in remedial training, but the real tragedy is that these folks died at 3 times the rate of people who would have passed the test. They weren’t cut out to b…

I wonder how IQ higer than 85 relates to the chances of dying, maybe still relevant? There's probably a sweet spot not too dumb but dumb enough to join the military.

This was interesting to me as well. I'm assuming the more limited IQ resulted in more of those soldiers falling into inherently more dangerous roles such as the Infantry due to inability to qualify for more technical and safer roles.

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#233

Post by petre »

graphe wrote: post #219
Krasnol wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they've been "taken from China" over a century ago doesn't mean they're not "Russian" today. They surely have Russian documents and were allowed to vote in Russia for their president. They might be ethnic minorities, but this fact comes with the size of this country. And yes, I'm aware of the point you want to make. I do know that there is a huge racist issue at play. They're still Russians, though. Thos…

Thank you. When people say "Russian" they have an expectation. What is the difference between these foreigners and there ethnic groups in your eyes? >They surely have Russian documents and were allowed to vote in Russia for their president. I'm not sure if you were trying to be funny but you are.

Between Tartarstan and Buryatia and Moscow and St. Petersburg? Quite a lot of difference. Ethnicity, religion, income, education etc. They are also throwing Central Asian migrants towards the frontline after a short trip to prison. You'll find largely the same ethnic groups in North-Western Kazahstan and Orenburg oblast.

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#234

Post by maroonblazer »

kerkeslager wrote: post #211
PeterStuer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day my country still had obligatory military service for the oldest male child of the family. Everyone had to do this. IQ tests were used to sort people coming in. The military does not only need highly functioning autonomous operators. There were many more menial positions in cleaning, catering, hauling and warm body canon fodder than there were scouts or special forces. I guess these days many of those…

> Back in the day my country still had obligatory military service for the oldest male child of the family. Everyone had to do this. IQ tests were used to sort people coming in. With due respect for your country, which country you're talking about is highly relevant. There are That starts with the fact that the US doesn't do compulsory military service, because soldiers who don't want to be there aren't effective sol…

>That starts with the fact that the US doesn't do compulsory military service, because soldiers who don't want to be there aren't effective soldiers (note that Israel does do compulsory military service, which is because they have different problems than we do).

While the security concerns of certain countries have motivated compelled military service, I wonder if a side-effect is less division/greater intra-country tolerance? And would the U.S. benefit from instituting compelled military service, or perhaps, compelled national service, which doesn't necessarily entail holding a weapon.

Some cursory searching turned up this study from Brookings suggesting that it would. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/nationa...

And here's a paper - more of an opinion piece - arguing against it: https://www.cato.org/testimony/mandatory-universal-national-...

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#235

Post by somenameforme »

mlrtime wrote: post #215
nvm0n2 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly not. The Flynn effect appears to be obsolete. In many countries it stopped in the 90s and IQs have actually gone down a bit since then. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#/media/File:Sunde...

For others interested, this doesn't seem to be fully accepted. A few studies in EU countries (and Australia)) have shown slight regressions from past increases. No studies done in the US which is the cohort here.

Studies have been done in the US. Here [1] is (to my knowledge) the latest, and it does indeed show a substantial reversal of the Flynn Effect. And to my knowledge the reversal of the Flynn Effect is indeed globally acknowledged. The debate at this point is on the cause.

The main reason early studies were in places like Scandinavia is that they have compulsory military enlistment alongside IQ tests, whose results are made available for research. Studies in places like the US came later, because simply getting a representative and comparable sample is non-trivial. There's also the cultural issue that studies on IQ are walking on eggshells in the US.

And it's not slight regressions. We've gone from gradually and consistently gaining IQ, to the current scenario where some studies [2] have shown declines as great as .29 standard deviation per decade. Meaning in 40 years we'd all be a whole standard deviation away from where the mean used to be. That is exceptionally disconcerting, particularly if it doesn't just flat-line at some point.

[1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

[2] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#236

Post by PeterStuer »

kerkeslager wrote: post #211
PeterStuer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day my country still had obligatory military service for the oldest male child of the family. Everyone had to do this. IQ tests were used to sort people coming in. The military does not only need highly functioning autonomous operators. There were many more menial positions in cleaning, catering, hauling and warm body canon fodder than there were scouts or special forces. I guess these days many of those…

> Back in the day my country still had obligatory military service for the oldest male child of the family. Everyone had to do this. IQ tests were used to sort people coming in. With due respect for your country, which country you're talking about is highly relevant. There are That starts with the fact that the US doesn't do compulsory military service, because soldiers who don't want to be there aren't effective sol…

The country was Belgium. This was in the 1980's. A different era.

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#237

Post by FredPret »

unnamed76ri wrote: post #189
hayst4ck wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neutrality is support for might makes right. Choosing to be neutral is to say that the strongest party should win. Not being prepared to be violent makes you harmless. Having the capacity for violence and choosing not to use it makes you peaceful. If you speak softly, but don't carry a big stick, then you are just speaking softly. Might might not make right, but it determines who gets to make the rules.

US foreign policy for the second half of the 20th century was basically: "Communism is real bad and causing millions of people to suffer and die, so let's go start a war that will cause millions of people to suffer and die. Except now a lot of those people get to be our people! Hurray!" Left alone, communism eventually fails in almost every case. China being the main exception but that's because we pump a half a tril…

China has had a weird mix of free market and political totalitarianism since they liberalized in 1990.

Before that their economy was a complete non-event. All of their rapid growth really started in the mid-90’s, and the West started paying attention even later.

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#238

Post by paganel »

samus wrote: post #179
paganel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked until it didn't, and when it didn't anymore the failure was spectacular.

It worked as long as they were properly integrated into the legionary structure. Auxilia were organized, disciplined, led, and ulimately paid and rewarded like the non-auxilia. The system stopped working because they abandoned it. Due to time pressure, they hired entire war bands and armies as mercenaries led by their kings instead of reorganizing them into Roman-style forces. It didn't help at all that the Romans we…

They did the hiring part that you mention most probably because it was cheaper (in the context of the then Roman economy, that is).

I also think that the much higher level of taxation inflicted on the (local) Roman population certainly didn’t help, as I feel that by the 3rd-4th century many parts of the Roman hinterland were much less populated than they should have been (had not the higher taxation hindered the Roman demographics, that is). In a way the outside-the-limes “barbarians” had the comparative advantage of not having had to pay those very high taxes, and most probably that was good for their (the “barbarians’”) demographics. And on a large enough time scale demographics is destiny.

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#239

Post by paganel »

samus wrote: post #190
paganel wrote: post #147

The coming obligatory mass conscription in the West will make all of this moot, anyway. The obesity pandemic will be a lot harder for many of the Western militaries to overcome, though.

Mass conscription for what? The most dangerous bottleneck of western forces is supply of advanced weaponry, which is already taxed by the war in Ukraine. Even if these supply bottlenecks are fixed, it will continue to be a severe strain on public finances. And as you hint at, the draftees have to be trained to be more useful than being static targets. 21st century battlefields are very fast-paced and deadly and often…

> 21st century battlefields are very fast-paced and deadly and often asymmetric;

The current battlefield in Ukraine is anything but fast-paced, and this is the largest continental war we’ve had since May ‘45 (the War in Korea has some shots of having been bigger, but then only for one year or so, 1950).

Re: U.S. army drops requirement for high school diploma (2022)

#240

Post by dan-0 »

kerkeslager wrote: post #202
mihaaly wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Some', 'could', 'mostly', not too strong arguments for the abolishment of generic rules applied on all. 'Some' 'could' see that the ability of jumping the requirements of education is 'mostly' coincides with a certain level of mental abilities. 'Some' smart people do not participate in organized education and 'some' graduates regardless of modest abilities, but those are never arguments for the generic population an…

> Some', 'could', 'mostly', not too strong arguments for the abolishment of generic rules applied on all. "Some", "could", and "mostly" are words that people use when they're concerned with saying what's true, not when they have a weak argument. The facts are rarely absolutes and if you don't use qualifying words like that, what you're saying is rarely strictly true.

This has been a litmus test for me over the years honestly. I tend to trust people much less if they speak in absolutes on complex topics.

Yes, it can make your argument more strong, but you're lying if it doesn't cover 100% of the cases for the subject. For the lay person, this might be fine, they don't know, but for anyone who knows the subject matter in depth, chances are you sound like an idiot.

I'd argue this mentality plays a good part in making some social media so toxic. People generally aren't going to read detailed explanations on a topic, so people who would write them have less incentive, meanwhile some pop star's 10 word tweet over simplifying some complex global crisis, like you can just make it go away overnight, will get a million likes.

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