ResoluteRaven
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User ID: 867
ResoluteRaven
7d ago
The cuts to science funding seem likely to do major damage to American R&D, cause a mass exodus of skilled workers to Europe, and give China the opportunity to get even farther ahead of us in key fields such as battery development. As an attack on the woke elements of the Academy they seem both disproportionate and poorly targeted, and as an attempt to burn it all to the ground they are clearly insufficient. I'd like to see someone at least propose a new Bell Labs-type enterprise as a replacement for the scientific infrastructure that they're trying to dismantle, if that's the way we're going.
In other news, Elon promised to start a new political party and to primary a bunch of Republican congresscritters if the bill passed. That should be entertaining to watch if he doesn't chicken out.
ResoluteRaven
24d ago
Maybe it doesn't matter, that in the end us dysgenic neurotics will end up being weeded out of the gene pool, and that future populations will be able to break out of this local minima and take over the world.
This is, unfortunately, the conclusion I have come to. The crisis of meaning is, like the problem of low birthrates, ultimately self-correcting via natural selection, as those without the psychological capacity to handle modernity will end up in some ideological or nihilistic dead end or another and fail to perpetuate their lines. But who knows, maybe someday we'll invent the mental health equivalent of GLP-1 agonists and people will be able to pop a meaning of life pill every morning to motivate themselves.
ResoluteRaven
27d ago
I'm not here to change people's minds. I'm here because this is the online equivalent of an Enlightenment-era coffee shop with a rotating cast of brilliant and eccentric characters with whom to play word games and perhaps learn a thing or two about the world. Like its 18th-century antecedants, it may spit out some future revolutionaries, philosophers, or reformers who will go on to change the world, but that will happen out in the real world, not in this training ground.
Here, the bold may sharpen their rhetorical knives in combat against ideological demons modern and ancient that have been banished from polite society; some of us are just around for the thrill of the fight and don't have any grand vision for remaking the world, while others may discover that they had no stomach for it to begin with.
As to what may happen down the line, I suppose I'm just a high enough decoupler that the fact that in some future conflict I may need to take up arms against the majority of my fellow posters here doesn't bother me too much. If that ends up being the case, then it was fun while it lasted and I wish you all good fortune in the civil wars to come.
ResoluteRaven
27d ago
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. +10 on the highway, +5 otherwise
4. Left lane is for faster traffic, but not for passing only except on highways with 3 or more lanes
5. No
6. No
Ask any Chinese nationalist and you will hear all kinds of animosity towards Europe, particularly Britain and France but also the rest of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Right now it's a bit of a "for you it was the worst day of your life but for me it was Tuesday" sort of situation, but when the power balance is inverted it matters quite a bit what their feelings on the subject are.
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