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Harold and George Destroy the World

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Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#181

Post by jeremyjh »

dgsii wrote: post #163
jeremyjh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that, but it is one of the strongest predictors of success in the US military.

Sure, but what has that got to do with “IQ is also highly heritable?” which, in this context, suggests intelligence is something innate and biological, rather than recognizing an IQ test as a gauge skewed by culture and socioeconomic status.

Well, that was a different reference in GP's post. You can go read it. Heritability is definitely a thing, but far from the only thing and it isn't simple Mendelian inheritance - there are many components to intelligence that reflect differently in gene transfer and so while you can see a correlation in specific individuals and their immediate ancestors there are lots of exceptions and its probably a mirage - if seen at all - in any large demographic. See my other comment on the problems with eugenics in this thread.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#182

Post by jimkleiber »

sorokod wrote: post #111

The US Department of War does not take full advantage of its name. Declaring a war has real legal and political consequences which presumably are not appealing to the current US administration. https://www.war.gov/Spotlights/Operation-Epic-Fury/

I had no idea they actually changed the domain name. Reminds me of Musk wanting it to be X because it sounded tougher. Something about trying to appear tough seems to make me think those people are less tough. I'm sure there's some famous paradox in that.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#183

Post by xp84 »

raincole wrote: post #142
thundergolfer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think both viewpoints can be right. Chinese people come here, study engineering, chemistry, pharma, computer science, etc. and then graduate and then they invent and make insanely cool things.

Meanwhile at the same schools, so many Americans major in things like the various identity “____ studies,” fake sciences like psychology, etc. They graduate from college with potentially less useful skills or knowledge than could have been gained by watching a few (non-AI) YouTube videos a day.

We’ve turned half or more of our educational system into babysitting and self-esteem therapy for a generation we’ve raised to be incredibly anxious and fragile.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#184

Post by jfengel »

adventured wrote: post #167
MidnightRider39 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.

No it won't, that's merely fantasy projection (a personal desire for the US to suffer for what it's doing). US hegemony ended with the rise of China's economy into superpower status over the past 10-15 years. There was no scenario where the relatively brief US hegemony from the late 1980s to the late 2000s was going to continue no matter what the US did. China was always going to build a military to match its economi…

Maybe. But the Iran conflict also ties in with the Ukraine war, which is an assertion of Russian power into that US-Europe/China duopoly. And it's happening at the same time as the former alliance is breaking.

It's possible that it will be a regional conflict the way the Serbian/Austro-Hungarian conflict was regional. Or the way people pretended that the Germany/Sudetenland conflict was regional.

I don't wish to catastophize. But I also think it's important to realize that this does have the potential to become much worse very suddenly. That doesn't make the decisions easy, but they shouldn't be easy.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#185

Post by nradov »

MidnightRider39 wrote: post #138
randallsquared wrote: post #66

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…

Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.

Starting the war with Iraq in 2003 was definitely a pretty stupid decision, and at the time some pundits predicted that it was the beginning of the end for US hegemony. But now a couple decades later the US is still looking pretty hegemonic. US hegemony will end some day, but we should be skeptical of predictions about timing.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#187

Post by dbspin »

afavour wrote: post #172
SoftTalker wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The millions of deaths are still happening, they just aren't our boys so we were all cool with it.

They haven’t, though. In the decades that followed World War 2, creation of the UN etc, the number of people dying in warfare and civilian death due to war dropped dramatically. No, it wasn’t zero. But there was still a notable drop. I don’t think it’s coincidence that blowing up this world order has only become a cause now that those who suffered the horrors of WW2 have died.

They may have dropped from the level of death during the war itself. A transnational conflict that involved every continent on earth. But I'd be shocked if the numbers dead from war in the post war period did not exceed the median number of civilian victims of war pre-WW1 or in the post war period. The World Wars normalised the idea of total war, of death squads and killing fields and mechanised genocide. Those have continued apace, everywhere from the Congo to Cambodia. At the time they were novelties in 'the civilised' world.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#188

Post by xp84 »

marxisttemp wrote: post #24
alecco wrote: 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…

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

It’s not the stupid people’s fault. They’ve always bred. The problem is smart people used to as well, and now we’ve stopped. Because of lots of reasons that make sense for the individuals:

- childfree is probably more enjoyable

- kids expensive and student debt crippling, so let’s delay starting till we’re 37 and own a home

- scary time/place to raise kids if you think about it too much

- etc.

So that’s thrown things out of balance. it’s not eugenics to say that smart people shouldn’t hold their birth rate so close to zero.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#189

Post by nradov »

adventured wrote: post #167
MidnightRider39 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.

No it won't, that's merely fantasy projection (a personal desire for the US to suffer for what it's doing). US hegemony ended with the rise of China's economy into superpower status over the past 10-15 years. There was no scenario where the relatively brief US hegemony from the late 1980s to the late 2000s was going to continue no matter what the US did. China was always going to build a military to match its economi…

Nonsense. China remains unable to project power much beyond the first island chain. They're building fast and that will change in a few years but as of today their conventional military capabilities remain very limited and defensive. When was the last time a Chinese carrier strike group deployed to the Middle East?

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#190

Post by Fricken »

ericmcer wrote: post #41

The author framed this as if "One Battle After Another" was some adult work and they couldn't watch "Predator" afterwards because it was so childish. I had the opposite reaction and could barely make it through 15m of One Battle. The movie opens with women in skin tight dresses and mini skirts with automatic weapons robbing banks and breaking into migrant detention centers while yelling "this is what real power looks…

Paul Thomas Anderson's films oft set within extreme and/or marginal cultures. The porn industry in Boogie Nights. The Master was a thinly veiled alter ego of Scientology founder L.Ron Hubbard. One Battle after another looks at radical leftists. PTA likes to take characters that are hard to empathize with and humanize them. Also OBATA is a comedy, everybody but the daughter is a caricature.
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