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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#401

Post by ajuc »

LevGoldstein wrote: post #309
nosianu wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with. We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military. Assuming like minded people wont self-organize is a bad starting point, and jets and tanks have a tough time doing things like enforcing curfews.…

You cut off the supplies, and wait 2 weeks. Modern civilization collapses, gangs take over, people ask the army on their knees to return.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#402

Post by anigbrowl »

theptip wrote: post #336
nosianu wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

If the president shreds the constitution, there would likely be many in the military opposed to it. While they are actively replacing cabinet positions with loyal outsiders that have little-to-no experience within the organizations they now run (eg Patel, Hegseth), I think it’s reasonable to assume that there remains career leaders throughout that would put country before king. You also need to look at loyalty within…

Ask your conservative friends what they think of Mark Milley and his successor.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#403

Post by throwawaymaths »

JeremyNT wrote: post #208
throwawaymaths wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first . Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.

What a strange assertion. It's not the case that the government is necessarily run by authoritarians cracking down on speech they disapprove of at colleges by threatening to withhold other funding. This is a novel development. We can surely go back to funding schools without such strings attached.

"live by the sword, die by the sword". even if it was a novel development it was entirely foreseeable.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#404

Post by robwwilliams »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #398
robwwilliams wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth drawing a distinction between governmental support for science and for the humanities. The first does a lot of relative low mark-up contract work requested by governmental agencies. Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured. The request for “bids” (aka grant applications) from NIH, DoD (now DoW) and NSF is what has greatly expanded research-focused universities and msde the…

> Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured. i think an important question is "who is this "all of us" you speak of and who made you god to pronounce it" you are making an arbitrary distinction because vibes, because it's a cause you care about. it's irrelevant. if you take money for Alzheimer's research, you owe the government one (because that money is extracted from the people…

Not sure I understand your point. Add a qualifier if you want. It is not taking money as much as responding to a request for proposals.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#405

Post by UncleMeat »

analog8374 wrote: post #365
UncleMeat wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even ones that are expressly critical of the policies. In Covid's Wake is a rather famous recent example. The authors are both professors at a prestigious university. They were interviewed by all sorts of outlets, including left leaning outlets. The idea that doing a cost-benefit analysis of various covid policies would get academics expelled from the academy is just not based in fact.

My first criticism is the unity of popular opinion. (Ironic, yes). I see this majority, holding the exact same opinion, offering the exact same arguments in support of that opinion, implementing that opinion in exactly the same way. In lockstep. There's a definite lack of natural chaos. That's fishy. That reeks of a finely crafted propaganda campaign.

I have no idea what is going on here.

The claim above seemed to have been that professors who went against particular narratives regarding transgender affirmation and public health efforts surrounding covid were silenced or even expelled from the academy. This is just observably not the case. Some sense that the academy demands absolute conformity to left wing positions is something people often say but it is ill supported.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#406

Post by UncleMeat »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #189
motoboi wrote: post #126

> "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certain…

> And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again. Yup. I've see it a few times a week on HN at this point

No surprise that HN was one of moldbugs targets in the beginning.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#407

Post by analog8374 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #405
analog8374 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first criticism is the unity of popular opinion. (Ironic, yes). I see this majority, holding the exact same opinion, offering the exact same arguments in support of that opinion, implementing that opinion in exactly the same way. In lockstep. There's a definite lack of natural chaos. That's fishy. That reeks of a finely crafted propaganda campaign.

I have no idea what is going on here. The claim above seemed to have been that professors who went against particular narratives regarding transgender affirmation and public health efforts surrounding covid were silenced or even expelled from the academy. This is just observably not the case. Some sense that the academy demands absolute conformity to left wing positions is something people often say but it is ill sup…

It's what mathematicians refer to as a "tangent".

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#408

Post by Archelaos »

throw0101c wrote: post #195
Archelaos wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

East Germany definitly never was. And even West Germany was considerably behind the UK in per capita GDP in US$ after WW2.[1] It had catched up at around 1970. Since 1970 the two were roughly equivalent: some years one was ahead some years the other.[2] However, Germany is now considerably ahead of the UK in terms of per capita GDP measuered in PPP (ie. adjusted to local prices: aprox. 20% now, or 10 to 15 years (dep…

> East Germany definitly never was. And even West Germany was considerably behind the UK in per capita GDP in US$ after WW2.[1] Germany was behind the UK even before WW2. Just the UK outproduced Germany in (e.g.) aircraft production, and that was even before the US got involved. Adam Tooze wrote an entire book on the subject: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction

> Germany was behind the UK even before WW2.

Yep. -- I noticed that the first link of my comment is somehow not working. Here is another reference for those who want some numbers. It is a German publication ("Deutschland in Daten", PDF) but the relevant tables should be understandable anyway:

https://www.bpb.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/deutschland_in_...

For GDP per capita in "International dollar"/"Geary-Khamis-Dollar" for Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, USA in the period 1850-2019, see p. 312 and 313.

According to this publication, 1930, 1940 and 1950 the German GDP per capita was about 75% of that of Great Britain. However, there was a big dip right after 1945 shown in the second table.

The German "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder") of the 1950s and 1960s was in essence not an outperformance of other western countries in absolute terms, but a catching-up process with them. The same holds for Japan. The process lost momentum, when parity with most of the other major economies was reached.

However, the USA have always been considerably ahead since WW2. -- So much to the slogan "Make America great again". It seems to be based on a very distorted self-image of having a backward economy, for which I have no sound explanation as an outside observer. And even if it were not about the general economic situation, but about a growing disparity inside the country, then a solution to better the situation, when the country is already so much ahead economically, cannot come from outside, but must be domestic.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#409

Post by anigbrowl »

username332211 wrote: post #260
bix6 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is not real life. How many of those comments are bots? How many people say things online they wouldn’t say in person? The right and left are not as far apart as the internet would have us believe.

> How many of those comments are bots? Wasn't there a group cheering in front of the courtroom when the judge dropped the terrorism charge? Those people were not bots. > How many people say things online they wouldn’t say in person? Ohh, so lovely of them. I wonder how Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and ultimately Paul Graham feel, to know that the only reason why a good portion of the population doesn't advocate for their de…

Elon Musk is actively poisoning people in Tennessee to make more money. I don't really care about his problems; if he's worried about his popularity he could try being nicer to other people.

https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/07/07/a-billionaire-an-ai-...

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#410

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

username332211 wrote: post #260
bix6 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is not real life. How many of those comments are bots? How many people say things online they wouldn’t say in person? The right and left are not as far apart as the internet would have us believe.

> How many of those comments are bots? Wasn't there a group cheering in front of the courtroom when the judge dropped the terrorism charge? Those people were not bots. > How many people say things online they wouldn’t say in person? Ohh, so lovely of them. I wonder how Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and ultimately Paul Graham feel, to know that the only reason why a good portion of the population doesn't advocate for their de…

How many deaths have Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk caused, in their active campaign to destroy the climate?
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