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Harold and George Destroy the World

tomclancy.info

141–150 of 322 posts

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idiocracy really seems to appeal to eugenicists. Is “stupid people breed too much” really an issue we think is worth propagating?

The movie did have an unfortunate eugenic implication, which is doubly unfortunate because it wasn’t even necessary for the plot. Society can just get dumb due to people not valuing education. Genetically we’re not that different from cavemen, so the floor (without any weird eugenic theories about dumb people breeding too much) is “tamed caveman.”

>The movie did have an unfortunate eugenic implication

You’re thinking of dysgenic, not eugenic.

Gattaca is a movie about eugenics.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by top skilled immigration who are mostly from countries where education is > leaning more to memorization

There’s a potential irony here that a commenter lamenting the decline of education in the West is leaning on the “critical thinking over memorization” trope in contemporary Western education, when that trope has contributed to a decline in educational effectiveness. The massive success of information retrieval allowed people to trick themselves that they no longer needed to remember things , and remember them easily.…

Believe or not, if you look at Zhihu[0] you'll see a lot of people glazing Western education system. Grass is always greener on the other side of Pacific.

[0]: China's Quora equivalent, but much better than Quora

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird analogy, but it feels similar to the way old music differed to new music. Old music had more variation in volume - volume rises and falls to add nuance to the piece. New music is produced differently and has a more “flat” sound due to everything being louder and variation being reduced by compression. Seems like some parallels to other forms of media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Is the loudness war still going on? I kind of assumed it died out with streaming. Music apps are smart enough nowadays to normalize loudness anyway, and there are better ways of getting attention, right?

Crowd-sourced metrics at:

https://dr.loudness-war.info/

2026 releases have varied dynamic range but the majority is still low. Loudness war mastering sounds better on phone speakers and in cars. Even though streaming services normalize loudness, you need quiet listening environments and good headphones/speakers to properly appreciate a high dynamic range recording.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College and school are super suboptimal at dispensing education. We keep smart kids co-mingled with disruptive kids and bullies. We need to do what Asian countries do - entrance exams at every level. We don't let kids excel at their interest area. Math and science, obviously, but we lack programs for entrepreneurship and leadership that might be better for kids that aren't STEM-focused. Something like a scouts-type p…

You get a free education in entrepreneurship and leadership when you're born into the upper socioeconomic groups.

Nothing can be done about that.

We need to focus on ways to boost class mobility at a young age.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by top skilled immigration who are mostly from countries where education is > leaning more to memorization

There’s a potential irony here that a commenter lamenting the decline of education in the West is leaning on the “critical thinking over memorization” trope in contemporary Western education, when that trope has contributed to a decline in educational effectiveness. The massive success of information retrieval allowed people to trick themselves that they no longer needed to remember things , and remember them easily.…

Memorizing is not understanding. You can see this clearly with LLMs trying to predict outside their training data.

Yes, memorization is important. What I argue it's pushing out truly understanding and critical thinking. Kids need trial and error from experimentation (play).

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#146
That's mistakenly conflating two concepts: the media propaganda in a more general sense of the word (like the pentagon reviewing movie scripts for war propaganda) and the underlying material and ideological reasons for US foreign policy (see natural resources, petrodollar, etc.). It would be a severe mistake to think the current conflict is somehow detached from the "grand chessboard" type of neoconservative thought dominating foreign policy for decades. In other words you shouldn't disagree with the war on Iran because Trump is an idiot, you should disagree because its an horrific atrocious war even if it were run by competent people instead.

Just as a very basic example: 4 presidents in a row have bombed Yemen: Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. This is consensus on very fundamental ideas on US foreign policy. But way more importantly than whether or not you agree with bombing Yemen, you should start to recognize that the real reasons for bombing Yemen or any other conflict are completely absent from public discourse and media.

Also once you broaden your horizon on film a bit it becomes very hard to watch modern mainstream western movies at all. Like watch The Battle of Algiers or any Costa-Gavras movie and you realize most western cinema is at best just infantilizing and at worst outright propaganda.

Like if you watched One Battle After Another and thought it was profound, did you not notice the absence of any real ideological exploration beyond "racism is bad"? What did the caricatured resistance really believe in? What can such a movie really say about "radical" politics on immigration if the liberals who made it have to account for liberals approval and funding of ICE? Like it said nothing at all, that's the issue with everything. We are so politically atrophied that we think its the most political movie ever, but its really apolitical if you think about it a bit more.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#147
post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

Dumb people - smart computers. What's the consequence of that I wonder.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#148

The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2]. The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because th…

We can soon rename "Dept of War" into "Dept of Debt".

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have to support Eugenics to understand there's probably a real effect.

You can’t disentangle “smart people have few kids, dumb people have lots of kids, ergo we are gradually getting dumber” from eugenics (or class for that matter). It’s inherent in the argument. It’s also not how genes work. It’s a very classist, flawed argument. In some way it’s emblematic of what the right calls “East Coast elitism” yet I find people from across the political spectrum have no issue embracing the argu…

You can call it a flawed argument, but then you need to point out the flaw. Intelligence is heritable. Flynn effect has reversed. High IQ people have less kids. What's the flaw?

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#150

The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2]. The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because th…

The current preferred name is Department of Defense. Ask anyone who isn’t incompetence aligned.

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