991–1000 of 1001 posts
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That does seem to be the trend these days. See: AI proliferation, cryptocurrency.
> That does seem to be the trend these days These days? The space race was 50 years ago.
The first time around, the space race was expensive, but not entirely unnecessary. There were real strategic advantages at play.
"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator. A scary way to set a schedule on a complex project with lives at stake. They don't care though.
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I mean.. Werner von Braun wasn't just "sort of a Nazi if you squint real hard", but an ACTUAL Nazi. At some point you need to focus on getting the job done, and not on purity tests and struggle sessions. THAT is why the US once got to the moon, while China starved 40 million of its own people, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
What? The US got to the moon ONLY bc we decided the nazis were more useful and the Soviet Union collapsed bc they didn’t make the same choice? That’s absurd. Either way, I’d personally rather today’s Nazis of all flavors to be dead. At the very least they seem a lot dumber than the old ones.
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Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.
Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. "I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months." — 11/27/2022
This makes me think of Intels decline over the last decade or so. It feels to me like a canary in a coal mine. Perhaps of a failing in the US system as a whole. It is possible we are not quite the world leader we once were, despite bailouts, despite legislation like the CHIPS act, despite a CEO dedicated to a roadmap to regain technical superiority … maybe we cannot win this race. Have we reached a point where managi…
> where wealth inequality has reached a point of a new feudal like caste system This is a global problem, not limited to the US. It's also the end-state of capitalism because having (access to) more money makes it easier to have access to more money, and money drives everything else. > where our institutions now function to primarily manage and preserve an unhealthy society that is primarily exploitative and does not…
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Ain't gonna happen. It would actually trigger a civil war.
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Which will backfire spectacularly when Obama is re-elected.
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You're comparing their side beliefs and oddities to others main careers and expertise
I would hardly call being a Nazi a side belief or oddity. It was a pretty defining part of his identity. Same with Jack Parsons and occultism - it helped shaped much of his personality and beliefs. Regardless of all of that, the point I was attempting to make, wasn't they were Nazis or occultists. Rather, it was that they were members of influential societies / networks of people and didn't necessarily obtain their p…
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I would hardly call being a Nazi a side belief or oddity. It was a pretty defining part of his identity. Same with Jack Parsons and occultism - it helped shaped much of his personality and beliefs. Regardless of all of that, the point I was attempting to make, wasn't they were Nazis or occultists. Rather, it was that they were members of influential societies / networks of people and didn't necessarily obtain their p…
They don't seem to care. It's not, by the way, like the other side hasn't done similar things. In fact, it seems common here in the US to employ people for some other reason than them being capable of something.
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I’m still wanting a great explanation why we could do it in the 60s, but China can’t do it until 2030s. The reason I’m told we don’t do it today, is that we don’t want to. OK, China does, so what is the hold up that applies now?
1. It still took nearly 7 years to after JFK's speech in the 60s. 2. The institutional knowledge of working directly on the Apollo program has largely been lost in the US, and certainly isn't present in China. Those are the unimportant pieces. The real reason is: 3. The US was actively at war with Russia. While it was a cold war (except for the proxy wars), the Apollo program had a wartime budget (spent nearly half a…
2. Uh huh. The knowledge for 1960s tech is limited, agreed, but the tech is so much more superior now, and China as a nation has a high understanding. What does China not have that would be of any relevance?
3. Cool, China is in an economic Cold War with the USA.
I remain unconvinced.