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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30019 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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No passenger would be tempted to troubleshoot a high-flying faulty airliner by the legislative process

I don't think this is as good of an example as you think given how Boeing has been doing lately. Someone gets mugged by reality alright, but it doesn't have to be the scientist or the people who give him money. And until you have a way to close the loop, they can keep being insane for long enough to destroy your society.

Science is good at figuring out precise models of the natural world, it is absolutely terrible at making decisions about the results of those models, or itself.

The modern world being so complex you need layers upon layers of experts to even understand problems is the story the managerial class tells about why it should rule, but that's only a story. We could be doing other things, with other tradeoffs.

The modern world being so complex you need layers upon layers of experts to even understand problems is the story the managerial class tells about why it should rule, but that's only a story. We could be doing other things, with other tradeoffs.

I think what did the most damage to this story in recent times is Elon Musk. I think that's what they hated most about him, before the Twitter purchase.

The managerial class had evaluated the question and decided that while electric cars were a cute idea, they were not a realistic replacement for ICE cars. It also concluded that space exploration was just too expensive and that it should just be about launching drones to increase the prestige of institutional Science, and as a way to transfer more ressources to contractors so embedded in the US government they're practically an arm of it.

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