Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Harold and George Destroy the World

tomclancy.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 322 posts

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#71

Post by throw310822 »

rayiner wrote: post #35

What’s childish is thinking that calling the Department of War by a euphemism changes what it is and always has been. The Department of “Defense” killed a bunch of people Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and countless minor actions. These bubbles of civilization we enjoy are built on adults killing a bunch of people, as necessary, to establish the order that allows more childish people to build social media…

It's better to have to justify a discrepancy between your ideal and your bad actions, than to declare that your ideal is behaving badly.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#72

Post by dalmo3 »

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?

> Idiocracy really seems to appeal to eugenicists

And all men are Socrates...?

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#73

Post by ranyume »

randallsquared wrote: post #68
ranyume wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thought-provoking movies still exist. They're just far away from regular people's comfort zone. I'll recommend you three post 2015 movies that will get you thinking: Wandering (2022) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Monster (2023) But I'd concede that maybe making movies nowadays is harder because things are turning more and more expensive and there's too much pressure for producing profitable mov…

EEAaO is a fun slop movie, but a thinker it is not.

I think that if you're going through a a hard moment it'll make an impact. But it's true that the themes are not "deep" nor complex.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#74

Post by wakamoleguy »

econ wrote: post #25
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…

Education is a weird field with perhaps a few thousand years of very good unimplemented ideas. Imagine training an llm by putting it in a room with other untrained LLMs? All that knowledge is sure to rubb of!

I mean, that LLM idea _sounds_ ridiculous, but similar ideas have worked really well in machine learning for games like Chess and AI.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#75

Post by raincole »

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…

> by top skilled immigration

who are mostly from countries where education is

> leaning more to memorization

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#76

Post by skybrian »

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…

Possibly things are worse, but here’s an argument that we’ve gotten unrealistically ambitious about universal education through college:

What People Want From Our Schools Has Never Been Accomplished, Anywhere, Ever https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-people-want-from-o...

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#77

Post by raincole »

keepamovin wrote: post #26
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…

[flagged]

Something being old doesn't meant it's false. It even has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#78

Post by designerarvid »

mikkupikku wrote: post #40
keepamovin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can find a lot of ancient people saying it was happening. They were obviously wrong, right? Things are better now than then, so they were wrong. Nevermind that many of them were speaking of real social decline, not of humanity altogether in the long run but of their own society in a less global sense. When Socrates was bitching about "kids these days", Athens was peaking and a long period of uneven decline was st…

Plato, and Heraclitus before him, both thought that society would eventually collapse. They sounded smart but would’ve been quite surprised to see what we’ve done with the world.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#79

Post by dalmo3 »

randallsquared wrote: post #68
ranyume wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thought-provoking movies still exist. They're just far away from regular people's comfort zone. I'll recommend you three post 2015 movies that will get you thinking: Wandering (2022) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Monster (2023) But I'd concede that maybe making movies nowadays is harder because things are turning more and more expensive and there's too much pressure for producing profitable mov…

EEAaO is a fun slop movie, but a thinker it is not.

No the rock being alive is super like, deep, man.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#80

Post by jstanley »

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?

"Stupid people breed too much" is a proposition that is either true or false, within some worldview.

(For example, how stupid is stupid? How much breeding is to much? Is there even such a thing as too much breeding? All these are variables up for debate.)

But preventing the spread of an idea that you fear may be true, simply because you don't like the consequences, is intellectually dishonest.

Would you endorse suppressing the idea that the earth orbits the sun just because you lived in a milieu where the primacy of the church was more important than truth?

Argue against eugenics because it's unethical to prevent people from reproducing (and therefore no amount of "stupid people" reproducing is "too much"). Don't cloud your judgment by denying propositions that you fear may be true.

Post reply on HN