Doomstead

I have written previously in some thread here about the Collapse of Public Education, ongoing since shortly after my graduation from Stuyvesant in 1974 and in an increasing downward spiral ever since.  It actually probably was already underway by then, just I wasn't aware of it due to having been tracked into a program run by NYC schools to identify the top 1% of students and provide them a college bound preparatory curriculum.  I recall that my sister's regular local NYC HS H.S. was already a worthless shithole when she graduated 6 years before me.

The decay inspired Ronald Rayguns to warn of the failure in Science & Math education way back in 1982.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/13/us/reagan-warns-schools-are-failing-to-meet-science-and-math-needs.html

According to Paul DeHart Hurd, emeritus professor at Stanford University, the typical grade-school pupil gets only one hour of science and four hours of arithmetic every week. Only a third of high school students are graduated with three years of mathematics, he said. Lack of Qualified Teachers

Citing a growing shortage of math and science teachers, he said that half the people teaching those subjects in high schools this year were unqualified and were teaching only with emergency certificates.

The reasons for this are tooo numerous to mention in detail, but one of the biggest was the massive difference in pay scales for teachers actually proficient enough in these subjects to be qualified to teach versus what the same people could earn in careers in Banking, Engineering, Medicine, Pharmaceutical manufacture etc.  Starting pay to begin with was better, but the difference after a 10 year career ran into the 6 figures.  Good teachers simply left after 5 years, realizing they woul be lower middle class the rest of their lives, whereas a move before it was too late meant a future in the upper class or at least upper middle class.  Combine this with the ever increasing number of working mothers and single parent households, the system was already well into collapse by this time.

In 2001, right before the WTC came collapsing down on 911, Curious George Bush announced the "No Child Left Behind" initiative, which in practice was the No Child Allowed to Flunk system which dropped the bar so low even a Monkey like Curious George could graduate.  During my stint teaching in the 1990s, things were already so bad that most of my 9th grade physical science students couldn't even grasp basic formulas like Density=Mass/Volume, and my class devolved into a show & tell  hour of some flashy demo of blowing up something then passing out a connect the dots and fill in the blanks organizer since they couldn't take notes off the blackboard (granted, my handwriting was illegible, lol) and a 10 question quiz at the end of the week where I gave them the questions the day before so they could look up the answers.

Fast forward to today, where the SATs are now being dropped as a requirement for college admissions already, the Oregon State Dept of Ed has now dropped even the lower than low bar of No Child Left Behind era tests designed to graduate you on time as long as you could sign your name to a car loan and use a calculator to add up your grocery bill:

In public education's latest blunder, the Oregon Department of Education has just decided that basic reading, writing and math skills are not required for students to graduate with a high school diploma.

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4288044-oregon-just-dropped-all-graduation-standards-failing-all-of-its-students-in-the-name-of-equity/

Prior to the passage of Senate Bill 744 in the Oregon Legislative Assembly's 2021 session, the state's "Assessment of Essential Skills" requirement for high school graduation was sensible: "read and comprehend a variety of text, write clearly and accurately," and "apply mathematics in a variety of settings." Students were required to demonstrate these skills by "earning at or above a cut score on the Oregon Statewide Summative Assessment test."

HTF are any colleges going to discriminate between applicants without not only national SAT scores but even state proficiency tests of basic skills?  Basically, most of them won't discriminate, they'll sign up any warm blooded Homo Sap who can fog a mirror and will take out a loan to pay  tuition to remedial classes.  The only ones discriminating will be the Ivy League schools, who will base it on their grades from Andover, the recommendation from herdads Congressman and the amount of money he will donate to the endowment.

Forget college, and forget public schools.  Let your kid study online and take a GED test.  Public Education has Officially Collapsed.

RE

Quote from: moniker on Nov 07, 2023, 05:17 PM4. American don't need to learn as they have been earmarked for extinction.

So who is not so earmarked?  Can't be the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Japanese, Italians Swedes, Germans, Turks, Greeks, Mexicans or Palestinians.  South Africans?  Maybe Elon Musk can single handedly save his homeland from depopulating.

RE

Quote from: moniker on Nov 08, 2023, 06:59 AM

Quote from: RE on Nov 07, 2023, 06:30 PM

Quote from: moniker on Nov 07, 2023, 05:17 PM4. American don't need to learn as they have been earmarked for extinction.

So who is not so earmarked?  Can't be the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Japanese, Italians Swedes, Germans, Turks, Greeks, Mexicans or Palestinians.  South Africans?  Maybe Elon Musk can single handedly save his homeland from depopulating.

RE

As George Carlin said, they want "obedient workers". But I would add they want some high IQ types to invent stuff for them.

That would be the thought process of a High IQ type, operating under the assumption stuff needs to be invented.  Except nothing does need to be invented.  Any device useful in a low available energy future has already been invented.  The 5 basic machines of wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, screw, wedge and lever and their combinations and applications are pretty much all you need on an engineering level.  Knowledge of materials like how to work ston, bone, sinew and wood.  Building materials like adobe and clay.  etc, etc, etc, all stuff that's already been figured out long ago.  Anybody with a decent IQ can learn this stuff, so I don't see any real need for High IQ types in the future, unless they are willing to do the grunt work everybody else has to do, and not get more fish or nicer teepees, and especially not conspicuous consumption of A-List Vaginas because they use their high IQs to manipulate the property owwnership system to become filthy rich scum sucking bottom feeders.

RE

Quote from: moniker on Nov 09, 2023, 07:53 AMGrunt work can be good for these folks if they get caught up in overthinking.

Yes.  And no more plowing A-list furrows or nailing A-list boards. Only Monks who take a vow of poverty can dip their pens into A-list ink wells and fill A-list post holes.  ;D

RE

I think I got lucky.  My public education was great.  Nothing like what I found education to like be in the rest of the country.  I found this out as an adult.  At the time I did not know.

I'm of the opinion that a truly educated man educates himself.  And a truly educated man shares what he knows, if for no other reason than to make the knowledge aware to himself.







Given the wars and the determination of the fortunate to keep things in our current lunatic arrangements as long as possible, I came across this.


This Luhman character saw society as a multidimensional collection of interacting systems. 

Which means nothing if I don't explain it.  Consider scientists create an new invention which is described by its actual physical characteristics.  Among themselves they talk about its physical properties.  Length width and such.  Businessmen take the invention and transform it into something else.  They describe it in a language they understand.  In their 'system'  their 'code' is profit and loss and only monetary value is considered.  The invention is seen through this new profit/loss lens.  From their lens a 'commodity' is created and only the utility of the commodity to produce profit is seen.

Every system has a 'code' which defines how things are understood inside the system.  A basic fact needed for essential communication and system survival.  This video explains the code of mass media is 'information', and not truth (not so directly as here because the education system likes it that way).

We move between systems.  Between systems which each understands objective reality as suits the system.  Consequently we live in a tower of babble in a society at cross purposes with a collective autopoiesis.  Being the social creatures that we are, we are unaware of our shifts between system realities.   We shift realities all the time.  Like fish unaware of water, we are unaware of the contradictions we swim in.  Or too comfortable with them.

Mass media attempts to define 'what is known to be known'.  It is one of many operationally closed, autopoietically self-reproducing, evolving communication systems that construct reality in the mode of second-order observation.  Another such system is the academic system which distorts reality in it's own particular way to perpetuate itself.

Teaching people to self-educate, the only path to deep knowledge.  Is something not in the best interest of an education system.  Only particular educators with a twinkle in their eye ever want this.  The mission of education is transmuted into : 'make good members of society',  Well educated in: what is known to be known and not one fucking thing else.

Beware thy system memberships.

The autopoiesis of social subsystems destroys the autopoiesis of the whole.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 09, 2023, 02:16 PMTeaching people to self-educate, the only path to deep knowledge.

At least for me, the whole Doomstead Diner project has been an exercise in self-education.  As good as my education was (and it was about the best available anywhere in the world from my elementary school years at the United Nations school in Rio for children of diplomats, bankers and  military officers through high school at Stuyvesant and the Ivy League at Columbia), until the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in 2007-8, I was 100% unaware of the connection between available energy and the monetary system, as well as the issues of resource depletion and climate change.  I was only dimly aware of the problems of population overshoot and waste and the dependence of food production on fossil fuels.

When I first started figuring it all out, my initial conclusion was "oh, we'll have to go back to living like Amish people on farms with horses".  Then I figured out why living like that would be impossible, and we would end up back at stone age level hunter-gatherers, because agriculture itself was unsustainable.  At first I subscribed to the Doomsteading idea (thus the name of  our blog), because I felt setting up an off grid living situation was a good solution.  Then I realized how come this doesn't work in the absence of a larger community of like minded and equally well prepped individuals, and how expensive and inequitable the solution is.  Relatively few people have the resources to set up a good Doomstead, particularly amongst the millenial and later generations.

Another aspect of my learning over the last 15 years has been my increasing disaffection for science, technology and modern medicine.  I used to be a big fan of all these things, and the perpetual progress of the human race.  I used to be a big believer in the ability of human ingenuity & technology to solve all problems.  Now I believe that for every problem we think we solve with technology, we create at least 2 new, more difficult and more dangerous problems, so the more "advanced" our civilization gets, the worse off we actually become.

As important as all this newfound knowledge is to the future of the human race, to this date AFAIK there is no university level Major labelled Collapse Studies as you have Women's Studies or Black Studies programs.  Anyone interested in this still has to pop around through a dozen different disciplines from History, Political Science, Anthropology and Archaeology to Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics, to Environmental Science, Meteorology, Geochemistry, Biochemistry and Medicine and more to begin to get a grasp of the scope of the issues involved in Collapse.

My own journey through these topics I feel is a good Roadmap for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the Collapse of Industrial Civilization we are immersed in, and I hope at some point to retrieve all my writings from the original Doomstead Diner that traced my own journey to understanding what is happening to our species and why it is happening.  Perhaps if more people had this understanding, something might be done to make some positive difference in the outcome.  Continuing with the level of ignorance we currently have assures a REALLY BAD outcome.  When theoretically very smart people write about how optimistic they are for the future and how solvable our energy problems are if we just pay attention to the 3 E's, we are in real trouble.  It's one thing to be wrong, it's another to be so collosolly and completely wrong it's like concluding that 1+1=Purple or that on a planet over stressed with 8B people we need to encourage more reproduction because our biggest worry is depopulation.  ::)

It is time to stop listening to people who are really, Really, REALLY WRONG.

RE

QuoteIt is time to stop listening to people who are really, Really, REALLY WRONG.

But we know that Musk is not capable of changing.  Musk will mend his ways when a leopard can change spots.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kabinata.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F09%2FLeopard_Cannot_Change_Spots.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=2d7d6fc6c8a9411debebbb373a881e2fddcd684ab9524062b95a60824ebe46ec&ipo=images)

And after the leopards are all extinct, none of them will be changing spots.

...

My story is a bit different from most.  I sort of saw all this coming way back in 1972 when the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth (https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/).

At the time, I was young and dumb.  The difference now is I am not so young.  I spent the first half of my life up to about September 11th (When America changed, so maybe there is hope for Musk after all?) thinking the smart brains in the room were working the problem.

Then I learned I was wrong.  Dead wrong, as we all will be.  I learned, contrary to toxic parental lessons that were pretty much beat into me, that I am one of the smart people in the room, and nobody is working the fucking problem.

Through the years I have met a few dozen people who have claimed a 160 I.Q.  Maybe not so many as that, but more than I can remember.  How rare is a 160 I.Q. ?  Only one person in 11,308 has one higher, and claiming that arrogance is beyond me.

So how much would a person need to be a contender on Jeopardy?  Give me a few weeks to review lists of English Kings and such, and I could have been.  Perhaps one person in 162?  That would equate to a 140 IQ.

You don't meet many people claiming an IQ of 140, people insecure enough to need to deceive themselves go for the gusto, the big gulp, at least 160.


But some talents are worthless.  Like the talent of apprehending collapse.  Nobody cares.  The human race has not been out of the trees long enough to become smart enough to change the outcome or to care.  The human race became smart, but not smart enough.  But too smart for our own good, we are.  Then Sigmund Freud and his asshole and much praised nephew Eddie ushered in ' The Century of The Self (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s) '.  Baking doom into the cake.

Pleasure became the highest good.  The highest good to a brain-dead populace with more free time and pleasure than any generation born before them.  Temperance did not benefit the elite, the ones who control.  A self-obsessed population of consumers benefits the rich.  To that end the human race was corrupted.

He became a caricature (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcinefagosmuertos.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F08%2FBuddy-Jesus-768x585.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ea00818428e1dcc7d382871a72972eec7a497d9148e8c5ebef1b2a3609a4a612&ipo=images) .

Free time, pleasure, and Summer Music Festivals.  Where mega consumers go.

Hamas attacked the SuperNova Music festival. 


A celebration of peace and love attacked, three miles from where the former inhabitants of the land are imprisoned for life .

We live in a nation that has lost all sense of irony.  But the irony of the SuperNova attack is not lost on me.  Omelas (https://chasingthesquirrel.com/doomstead/index.php?topic=130.0) again, but now something is not right with the magic.  Almost two and a half million souls do not wish to suffer any longer.  Not locked in their Omelas rooms by choice, they fight the magic.

* (that is the best beer belly I ever saw)

A few things to remember about IQ testing and scores.

1-  By definition, the Median score of a population is always 100.  So if the population as a whole is getting smarter over time,  people tested later are smarter than people tested earlier.  The opposite also is true, if a population is getting stupider over time, people tested earlier on the time line are smarter than those tested later, at the same score.

Now ask yourself, is the population of Amerikans getting smarter or stupider?

2-  The SAT test given to millions of Amerikan college bound students each year is a thinly disguised IQ test.  It scores from 800 to 1600.  Knock off the last digit to get the IQ.  If you scored 1250 on the SAT, that's a 125 IQ.  The reason it stops at 160 is because it's not normalized past that, and no common IQ test is.  Claims of IQs like 180 or 200 are pretty much ridiculous and are specialized tests that require you have quite a bit of learned knowledge to even try taking them.

3-  Every year since the 1960s the SAT has gone through revisions, 3 major ones I am aware of.  Why?  Because the raw scores were decreasing for the population, so in order to normalize the curve for a 100 median derived score, the test had to be simplified.  AKA, the population of college bound seniors has been getting stupider.  A major reason for that is over the same time period the population of college bound students vastly increased as more colleges popped up and needed students.  A huge class of people never tested before were being tested.

3- Thee SAT score you get is most closely correlated to the income level of the father.  AKA, rich people get higher IQ scores on average than poor people.  Does this mean (as Elon Musk would have you believe) that rich people are smarter than poor people?  Of course not.  IQ tests have a huge cultural bias, and what they test is what a rich person is exposed to and expected to learn as they grow up, both in school and in their other experiences.  So as more people from lower middle and poor classes took the test, down went the median score.

Fast forward to today, they are dropping the SAT completely from college admissions requirements, with my best guess being that the median raw score is so horrifically low from nearly every kid educated in the public schools it's close to useless anyhow.  Although the National Average IQ of 100 must still be true of the millenials and later, I guarantee this is a stupider 100 than that of 30 or 50 years ago.

4-  Typical, traditonal IQ tests developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are tightly bound to western european, christian, white post enlightenment scientific type of thinking that serves you well if you go to an institution like Cambridge or Harvard.  If you grew up in a household like that, you probably did well.  Traditional Jewish households also do well, and so do Chinese and Indians.  Aboriginal and Native people, Blacks and Hispanics do not score well as groups.  There are of course individuals who do well.

5-  Despite the limitations of IQ testing, I personally cannot fathom exactly how colleges are going to be able to discriminate at all between students based only on grades from schools with wide disparities in what they teach and how well they teach it.  Is it going to come down to your essay?  AI will probably write most of them.  Interviewes?  They can't possibly innterview everyone, even with Zoom meetings.

Not that this is that important.  College has become a fabulous waste of time and money for everyone, even the elite.  What you learn there now has nothing to do with what you need to know.

RE

Quote from: moniker on Nov 11, 2023, 07:25 AMI used to share your apparent anger at the "property ownership system", but now I believe that it's not the system but that I am overly concerned about it.

No, it's really OK to be paranoid when they really are out to get you.  Trust me, you CAN'T be too concerned about it.  Property ownership is the legal underpinning of the monetary system, and MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.

EAT THE RICH!   >:(  >:(  >:(

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTPibe4WAAI3AMd.png)

RE  ;D

Two collapse education articles today, one from the Ed PoV, the other from the Job PoV.

1st, from Ed

https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/an-academic-transformation-takes-on-the-math-department

This one is about cuts to the only Ph.D. level Math program in WV, which granted is a poor and backward state, but still I think this is representative of a nationwide trend.  The great expansion of higher education which began with the baby boomers graduating many Ph.D.s who needed jobs teaching math had to go do it our at satellite university far from the core of the main schoolss like MIT they learned at.  MIT has only so many tenure track math professors of course, and they're the creme de la creme.  So your more average Ph.D got his tenure at Podunk University.

Problem is, out in Podunk there weren't many students to teach high level math to, so they did research, published some papers and farmed out teaching the beginner classes to adjuncts.  In this WV school, in 35 years the dept head has had 3 Ph.D. students.

So, all the teachers who really know math are either leaving of their own volition or their jobs are being cut.  Leaving a Land of One Eyed Kings, teaching the Blind.

Historically, tenured professors didn't need to worry too much about student evaluations, because their jobs were secure. Teaching faculty don't have this luxury. "Now we have math courses that are basically sixth-grade math," Pantea said. "Pre-algebra."

This was the situation I was in when teaching High School.  I was remediating what I had learned in elementary school.  It was impossible to actually teach Algebra, much less trigonometry or calculus.  Now college teachers are teaching elementary school math.  Nobody this ill prepared in math can possibly take a job in banking or insurance or medical billing.

Which leads us to the Jobs article:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/nov/24/reports-find-colleges-no-longer-produce-ideal-job-/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAQu4i5mYXI3v_NARi0rbXN4cy1yJcBKioIACIQXBEbMEZz5y5Gid_4CzfDmioUCAoiEFwRGzBGc-cuRonf-As3w5o&utm_content=rundown

Of course they don't, because for the types of jobs they are talking about, you need to do better than 6th grade math.  But that is all most colleges teach now, because they don't have enough students coming in who already know 6th grade math.  They have been socially promoted and graduated HS without knowing HS level math.  Happens all the time.

So now, college has become basically obsolete, not enough teaching jobs of real college level material; not enough students capable of learning it.  What these companies want now is some kind of Online Certificate which says you know how to use an Excel Spreadsheet.  That's what they are hiring you to do, they don't need anything else.

It will not be long before the only places to get a Ph.D in Math will be at the Elite Universities.  The only people getting such a degree will be coming from the Elite class, nobody else will bother with a full 4 year degree.  Hell, even Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.  He didn't need a Harvard degree, just the computer science he learned in the first couple of years he was there to get Microsoft going.

I shudder to think what it must be like trying to teach math at the average Community College today.  What a fucking nightmare.  In the  words of the Chairman of the WV University Math dept:

Goldwasser won't be here: he's one of the senior faculty who volunteered to go...
 "My decision was selfish," he said, finally. "I wouldn't want to work in the kind of department that's going to be left."

This also brings us back around to our Depopulation discussion and why it is happening.  You could look at it as occuring because there aren't enough smart people being born for the smart teachers from prior generations to teach.  Only after the current population of smart people dies off will we start to come into balance with the number of stupid people we have left to teach.  Right now the ratio of smart people to stupid people is too high.  The current surplus of math Ph.D.s will need to forget about doing research and teaching and go work on Wall St instead.

RE

Education and intelligence are often touted as solutions to various problems but I don't think it has done much to raise awareness on collapse or how unsustainable our economic system is. Maybe it is my imagination as I was not alive in the 70s and was much too young to remember anything from the 80s but it would seem people today are much less aware of how unsustainable our lifestyles are.

I mean, back in the 70s people openly thought our society is run on fossil fuels but now this isn't the case. Heck just the other day I hear some guy on QUORA (which is supposed to house intelligent people) saying the "peak oil myth" has been debunked and business as usual will prevail and we need not worry about those worrywarts. Not his words exactly but the thrust of his argument. The guy speaking was a lawyer and has practised law in multiple countries so you can't use the "uneducated/lack of intelligence" as an excuse.

To me I see intelligence as something like this; an intelligent person can offer you a good answer but a wise person can ask the right questions. People aren't asking enough of the right questions and collectively we are lacking in wisdom and humility to see the true picture.

Without wisdom, naked intelligence is as dangerous as giving a baby a gun. The baby will not fully understand the weapon they are wielding and over time will unleash untold damage and carnage. All this intelligence and education is just sending us into a rabbit hole into oblivion. You also got to remember intelligent people are more adept at rationalising any lack of logic or inconsistencies in their world view.

In the end, I don't really subscribe to the notion that if we were more intelligent or more educated the situation would be appreciably different. We are social animals at heart and even the most intelligent amongst us will just follow the herd so to speak. People with contrarian opinions will become outcasts or social misfits and won't fit in enough to make a difference.

Just a couple of days ago in response to K-Dog on why Americans know nothing about the ethnic composition  of Ukraine, I explained it's because they are as ignorant of history as math & science, but all they had to do was go to the library and read.  It's not a Secret.

The problem of course is that most Amerikans educated in the last 20-30 years CAN'T read, even the college educated ones.  This is not newz to long term Diners, since I have on many occasions written about the failure of Public Schools, going back to my own years teaching almost 30 years ago.  Bad as it was back then, based on this article it has clearly got even worse since.  I had to publish the link here since it reinforces what I just wrote.

The various reasons for this we have covered before as well, grade inflation, no child left behind, computers and screen time etc.  Like the reasons why people aren't having kids, it should be common sense but they are not meaningfully addressed.  It's a cultural problem teaching isn't valued, nor is education except for the elite.  They have their own private schools, so they really couldn't give a shit.  The only reason public education was ever funded at all was to serve as a warehouse for kids until they were old enough to work.

For a while in the post WWII period public schools worked OK, at leastt for smart kids and kids from white middle class neighborhoods where property values and taxes were high enough to pay the teachers a decent wage, though they still were better off going into corporate work.  IN the NYC schools where they tracked the smart kids and put them alll together for college prep into a couple of high schools, we got a 1st class education.  But that was 1% of all NYC HS students, and at Stuyvesant we were just about all white or chinese, there were only a handful of black kids or hispanics.  In fact I really can't remember ANY, I just say a handful because there must have been a couple.

There was the occasional inner city success story paraded out also.  Who didn't see "Stand & Deliver", the story of Jaime Escalante teaching Calculus to East LA chicanos?


Inspirational as this is, the number of times something like this was ever pulled off was vanishingly small in 1985, and I doubt you could pull it off today.  Hell, if you can teach algebra you're ahead of the curve, colleges now teach PRE-algebra in their math departments.

In NYC, the typical HS had a trade track, where you took shop classes in machine shop and carpentry, etc, and kids who were poor at math just had to learn something like "business math" and add up numbers on a balance sheet.  Calculators eliminated the need to know even that, and before long kids were graduating without even knowing elementary school math.

Today, Johnny can't read, can't write and can't add or subtract.  You think any of these folks understand how compound interest on a mortgage works?  How to balance their bank account and make a budget?  Gen Z is leaving HS now dumb as rocks.  So dn't count on them to be making very good choices about who their leaders are or fixing what is broken in our society.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html

The Loss of Things I Took for Granted

RE

I can't remember how long it was ago.  I was in Vancouver with Marla (Mrs. Dog) and we saw Edward James Olmos walk across the street.  He was alone.  I turned to Marla and said "Is that who I think it is".

She said yes it is.

We have discussed education before and I was lucky to get a public education of unusual quality.

But we have also, and this applies to all Diner members, improved ourselves online.  Through the years here and elsewhere we have written comments and read extensively.  I am under the delusion that I can write halfway decently, and I know I was not as good as I am the first time I sat in front of a keyboard.

Not everyone has had the same interaction we have had.  I'll guess most people don't read a damn thing anymore since the local newspaper which kept the mass of people somewhat literate is gone.  Video replaced the cognitive brain.  Everyone is bedazzled. 

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.vX7izLp1tB02unoj0rByvgHaEz%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=f3004dc5a067c1cbdb1d27c32bff0a0f23931c3a57ffad498f6b9f3cdc18c448&ipo=images)

We bifurcated.  Split off and went our own way.

But why are there not more of us?  There are millions of people in America.  How can so much ignorance persist for so long?  With the wisdom of the ages at our fingertips, why does ignorance persist?  Why do TikTok videos hijack billions of brains.  Why in a city of millions, with all the problems the world has, is there no protest.  Not a whimper that things might be amiss.

M. King Hubbert did not have trouble finding like minded people (the book arrived).  Technocracy was once a thing.  Imagine the Diner with a staff of 100 people doing research and writing articles.  We would be a thing too!

QuoteThe technocrats made a believable case for a kind of technological utopia, but their asking price was too high. The idea of political democracy still represented a stronger ideal than technological elitism. In the end, critics believed that the socially desirable goals that technology made possible could be achieved without the sacrifice of existing institutions and values and without incurring the apocalypse that technocracy predicted.  (<-- incorrect assumptions of the new deal )

That was not from the book, I had to stop and google the technocracy movement.  The movement was M. Kings 'Diner'.  The FBI file on Hubbert must be as thick as a brick.  In wartime intellectuals are always a target.

QuoteOn October 7, 1940, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested members of Technocracy Incorporated, charging them with belonging to an illegal organization. One of the arrested was Joshua Norman Haldeman, a Regina chiropractor, former director of Technocracy Incorporated, and the grandfather of * Elon Musk.

It was later determined that technocrats supported the war effort.

M. King and his fellow 'doomers' flew close to the sun.  Their wings melted.  Now their story is forgotten, but if he were alive M. King might be here with us in the Diner.  Perhaps asking why there are not more of us here.  Perhaps asking why has everything else gone hockey stick but smarts.  Could smarts not have at least grown proportional to population?  To the contrary, there is no increase, and smarts has declined in a mass homogenization.

As if the entire population is pasteurized.

It is disappointing the * old school of Peak Oilers which some of us have roots in, did not know more about M. King. Hubbert and his involvement with the Technocrats.  The new school (this is it) is aware of the technocrats and will be finding out more.

(https://www.artberman.com/wp-content/uploads/DRAIN-AMERICA-FIRST-1.jpg)

Will this be noticed.

I want my carbon dividends.

* Musk might know more about M. King than we do.

* Old school peak oil  was embarrassed by the deployment of tight oil technology.  Now with the Biden administration using the Hail Mary Pass of American Tight Oil to finance their personal war in Ukraine, that embarrassment may be reversed.  Time will tell.

Not really convinced that better schools would have made that much difference to our collapse journey. From what I hear Denmark, Finland and Japan have the best schooling systems in the world. Do these countries have anyone talking about collapse and the insanity of growth-based economics? Not really. So, I see no reason why things would be all that different even if Americans could read and do math. What you really need is strong critical thinking and people not to adopt herd mentality.

That is the issue. Herd mentality. You can have the best minds in the world but if the prevailing thought says to believe in business as usual that is what people will do. People will only jump on collapse theories when the truth becomes undeniable and then they will lament that is so painfully obvious it was going to happen. However how many of these people are willing to stick their necks before the event and risk being labelled a moron? Not many I suspect.

I took 8 of the NYS Regents exams required for the so-called "Advanced" HS Diploma.  There were 3 for Math, Algebra, Geometry & Trigonometry.  Science had 4, Earth Science, Biology, Chemistry & Physics.  I only took the last 3 of those because I didn't take Earth Science, better known as "Rocks for Jocks".  ;D   That was the science class dummies took to fulfill their requirement of having at least 1 science course during HS.  I took the Amerikan History and English exams also.  They also had Foreign language exams, but I didn't bother taking the Spanish one, though I took the required 2 years of a foreign language.  I hated that class, found it very boring.

The tests were good basic science, not college level like the AP tests but if you could pass them you had a decent foundation for going into a college class already knowing the terminology and basic concepts, making understanding college textbooks easier.  I didn't take the AP tests because I was a lazy HS student, I didn't want to work any harder than necessary. lol.

I also taught the science exams during my short tenure as a teacher in a LI Public Skule.  My students generally did not do too well. lol.  They were even less motivated than me during HS and weren't good test takers. 

Any pretense that there are any minimum standards of proficiency or that a HS Diploma means anything besides the fact you attended are history.  Rather than admit that the education system is a complete failure, they just declare knowing any of this stuff as unnecessary.  Which in fact it is for many of the students who will never need to know any of it for the jobs available that they take.  The few highly paid tech jobs in society are gobbled up mostly by the kids of professional level parents who send them to private schools.  The remaining are taken by the 1% of high IQ kids who are autodidacts and can learn in any school just by reading the textbook.  OK, maybe it's 10%, that's about what I found while teaching in a typical lower middle class HS.  Thee parents in that community either were in goobermint jobs like cops, firemen, bus drivers and garbagemen or in the trades in plumbing, electrical or auto mechanics.  Salesmen and Real Estate agents also.  They had no need to learn chemistry, or with the invention of the calculator even how to add and subtract.

If they had dreams of making big money, it was in music or acting or sports.  Or more realistically, as Drug Dealers, and occasionally in legitimate bizness like opening a restaurant.  Quite a few went into the military also with dreams of becoming a pilot or if they were the tough guy type who liked Rambo, Mercs or Bodyguards.  The academic subjects of HS simply weren't relevant what they figured to do with their lives after HS.

What also was lost though was the ability to think in abstract terms, which is why they are so easily manipulated by politicians espousing one ideology or the other.  This has already happened though, all that is going on dropping the exams is acknowledgement of reality.  There's no reason to keep the tests, not enough kids can actually pass them.

It's hard for me to imagine what life must be like today in the typical HS classroom, for the students or the teachers.  It has to be incredibly depressing.  So it goes.

https://nypost.com/2024/06/12/opinion/new-york-is-about-to-make-its-high-school-diplomas-worse-than-useless/

New York is about to make its high school diplomas worse than useless

RE

(https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-03-21T224524Z_494421684_RC24BDA6Q6A7_RTRMADP_3_USA-TRUMP-COLUMBIA-1742733664.jpg?resize=770%2C513&quality=80)

As the article details, it hasn't just begun, it's been underway for years already.  Part of it is simple demographics, the falling birthrate started back in the 90s, so that translates to fewer college age students each year now.  Many other reasons though, not the least of which is that for many students, a college degree didn't lead to a high paying career, it merely began their working life with a big pile of debt.

In fact in many ways the expansion of universities in the 60s was a failed experiment right from the beginning and just served to devalue the sheepskin and lower the quality of the degree.  For prpfit schools in the business of putting warm bodies in the classroom seats accepted many students thoroughly unprepared for college level work.

The top public and private universities will survive a while longer, although the Trumpenator is making their lives difficult too and their operations will shrink in size.  University education will once again be available mainly to the elite and a few statistical outliers, bright bulbs that periodically turn up among the poor.  Of course now if they're immigrant kids, they'll probably get deported.

The great collapse of US higher education has begun

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/24/the-great-collapse-of-us-higher-education-has-begun

RE

QuoteThe great collapse of US higher education has begun

Yes, but to be more accurate, the great collapse of US middle class education has begun.

JACOBIN.COM • 2025-06-26

A Tech-Backed Influencer Wants to Replace Teachers With AI (https://jacobin.com/2025/06/ai-education-mackenzie-price-tech?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8eTFCUqE5f5DW4xiGcxc2aegLHkPyRy40Q7UPa0iMNc_mEz2jUwJsKYJz8RpKezDJd8yQE)

Backed by tech money, entrepreneur MacKenzie Price is growing a network of private K–12 schools that promises to replace all classroom teachers with an "AI tutor" that students learn from while glued to their laptop screens.

The proles are not to think critically about society or history.

Get ready for Prager Screw.  The common man is to worry about the price of beer and trivia.  No "big picture" concerns will be appropriate or possible as idiocracy is pursued at warp speed.  A new age of pharaohs defined by the rentier^* economy the conservative billionaire (NAZI) class is building now dawns as our new reality.

It will not take long to create an nation of morons.  Destroying public education will have a very fast payback for 'them'.  In a few years stupidity, and draconian control by the American elite will be ubiquitous.  Recent decades have shown that poor public education is beneficial to the American upper class.  A large part of the American demographic is already malleable, easily manipulated.  And all too willing to play the fool.


* A rentier is a person who earns a significant portion, or often all, of their income from property rights rather than from actively working.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 22, 2025, 06:13 AMIt will not take long to create an nation of morons.

The sentence imples future tense. Where have you been lately to think it hasn't already happened? I give origin credit mostly to the internet, I figure AI is the coupe de grace. Trump is a consequence of this happening as opposed to a prime mover.

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 22, 2025, 09:35 AM

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 22, 2025, 06:13 AMIt will not take long to create an nation of morons.

The sentence imples future tense. Where have you been lately to think it hasn't already happened? I give origin credit mostly to the internet, I figure AI is the coupe de grace. Trump is a consequence of this happening as opposed to a prime mover.

You are right, I am a dinosaur who has gone to a library at night more than once in my life, to find when I got home I had explaining to do to my wife.  The paradox is that since I had a decent education and started out old school, the internet and AI do not dumb me down.  I use them both as tools and can I understand their limitations.  A more simple explanation is that my career in electronics inoculated my brain from turning into mush.

And yes, Trump is no more than executioner for the fates.  (https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/b2544cdd-2bf3-4577-9f29-3ba0b6ff2658/dazobya-5337e7fa-7a4e-42d2-8b14-3879fa044a5e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2IyNTQ0Y2RkLTJiZjMtNDU3Ny05ZjI5LTNiYTBiNmZmMjY1OFwvZGF6b2J5YS01MzM3ZTdmYS03YTRlLTQyZDItOGIxNC0zODc5ZmEwNDRhNWUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.NSmfem_QON3TiO3J8yP4k1i7McBKeDH5L1GSCDrxS7o)  A nexus of forces made Trump happen.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 22, 2025, 02:19 PMYou are right, I am a dinosaur who has gone to a library at night more than once in my life, to find when I got home I had explaining to do to my wife.

I'm going to have to remember that one, it is a great "men of our age" angle. I loved libraries, didn't have a wife around to need to explain anything to though when I finally came home though.

Quote from: K-DogThe paradox is that since I had a decent education and started out old school, the internet and AI do not dumb me down. 

Nor me. Which is why I irritate people so often I suppose, pointing out when folks appear to have fallen for some of the more interesting.... "facts" and "interpretations" they find online.
 
Can you believe I got banned from peakoil.com, and big chunks of my posting history erased years before RE showed up, for daring to point out the inconsistencies, lack of critical thinking and zero desire to learn the most basic components required to understand the topic? It was quite surprising, coming from a background where intellectual combat was sought out to test the strength of ones ideas. Figured the internet would be more like that. Boy was I wrong!

 

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 22, 2025, 09:35 AM

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 22, 2025, 06:13 AMIt will not take long to create an nation of morons.

The sentence imples future tense. Where have you been lately to think it hasn't already happened? I give origin credit mostly to the internet, I figure AI is the coupe de grace. Trump is a consequence of this happening as opposed to a prime mover.

It's always been a nation of morons because the vast majority of homo saps infesting the planet are morons.  The main thing the internet has done is to allow morons to communicate their moronic ideas faster and more efficiently to a global audience.

RE

But, since we are on the internet we must not be morons as we have no global audience.

Quote from: RE on Nov 25, 2025, 02:56 AM

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 22, 2025, 09:35 AM

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 22, 2025, 06:13 AMIt will not take long to create an nation of morons.

The sentence imples future tense. Where have you been lately to think it hasn't already happened? I give origin credit mostly to the internet, I figure AI is the coupe de grace. Trump is a consequence of this happening as opposed to a prime mover.

It's always been a nation of morons because the vast majority of homo saps infesting the planet are morons.

Ah....that's a standard smart folks answer. None of the three of us are below average in that regard. And while the normal distribution of alleged IQ doesn't allow your answer to be true..."morons" can sure be shit-stupid regardless of IQ. Peakoil.com being like a shining historical light proving just such a thing. Not the only one of course, reddit isn't bad either if you go way back in the right place. Most of the oil PO sites have disappeared memorializing what was considered the "facts" of the event at that point in time. LATOC would be the absolute GOLD STANDARD but Matt made that disappear because he sure didn't want it coming back on him as he tried to change careers to professional astrologer.

Quote from: REThe main thing the internet has done is to allow morons to communicate their moronic ideas faster and more efficiently to a global audience.

RE

Like a disease. It made people dumber, faster. So sure...it made things worse by spreading stupid shit far faster than it otherwise would have been. And did it really well, which is why it is my marker as a seismic shift.

One quick example. Colin Campball published a global peak oil claim for the world in 1990, in Noroil. Peter McCabe had a far more nuanced article (https://archives.datapages.com/data/bulletns/1998/11nov/2110/2110.htm) published in 1998 (I was happy to have been a sounding board for him when he was looking for technical holes in his argument) and Colin Campbell came out of the woodwork, as did the French guy, and they went back and forth in print in later publications. It was great! Big ideas from experts fought out in public without the usual internet horseshit. And then the internet gives us peakoil.com....and presto....you can see the difference between the two if you were watching. I certainly did.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 25, 2025, 04:21 AMBut, since we are on the internet we must not be morons as we have no global audience.

I agree with the unstated but implied conclusion. Not even RE can shout loud enough into the wind to overcome the hordes of mentally diminished, uninformed and desiring to stay that way folks that the internet consists of.

It took him, what, this entire century to arrive at one or two people who think similarly, and an objective observer along for the ride to watch a particular idea purely as a professional curiousity?

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 25, 2025, 09:15 AM

Quote from: RE on Nov 25, 2025, 02:56 AM

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 22, 2025, 09:35 AM

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 22, 2025, 06:13 AMIt will not take long to create an nation of morons.

The sentence imples future tense. Where have you been lately to think it hasn't already happened? I give origin credit mostly to the internet, I figure AI is the coupe de grace. Trump is a consequence of this happening as opposed to a prime mover.

It's always been a nation of morons because the vast majority of homo saps infesting the planet are morons.

Ah....that's a standard smart folks answer. None of the three of us are below average in that regard. And while the normal distribution of alleged IQ doesn't allow your answer to be true..."morons" can sure be shit-stupid regardless of IQ.

A standard answer yes, but I can objectively show why it's true with a very high level of confidence.

As you point out, IQ alone does not make a person a moron, other factors are involved.  A fairly large number of them no doubt, but I'll just pick out a few important ones to show why this is true.

Beginning with IQ, by definition half the population has an IQ 100 or below. considered "average" intelligence.  Not necessarily a moron, but not the brightest bulb in the box either.  Genetically, being really smart is more complex than just a single gene, but in aggregate behaves like a recessive trait.  Looked at in this way in a Punnet Square, a child needs to be Homozygous for the smart gene and only 1:4 kids come out smart, the other 3:4 are Stupid.

(https://kaiserscience.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/punnett-square-mendel-wikipedia.png)

However, many smart people are morons, because they lack the also recessive Common Fucking Sense gene.  Instead they have the dominant Easily Deluded gene. Only 1:4 kids are homozygous cfs.  You don't need to be smart to know Trump is a moron, all you need is CFS.  Neverthe less, half the people voted for him,  showing they migh not be morons themselves, but at least lack CFS.

In order to NOT be a moron, you have to be homozygous for BOTH the smart gene AND the cfs gene, which means only 1:16 people, or 3.75% of the population.

Beyond that is the consequences gene, how many steps ahead someone can work out a problem. The typical person can think 1 step ahead and be right half the time, but 2 steps ahead only a quarter of the time.  The ability to think 3 steps ahead is rare by itself and to be right more than half the time even more rare.  However, to not be a moron, you need to be able to think more than 1 step ahead and be right more than half the time.

At the very least, these three factors control human thinking and behavior, and being on the right side of the moron/not moron divide requires all 3 be positive.  It's not really so clear cut  as a single gene for any of them, otherwise less than 1% of the population would not be morons.  However, my own personal lifetime cumulative study of all the people I have ever met indicates that a MINIMUM of 90% of the global population of homo sap are MORONS.  Besides the FSoA, my lifetime sample includes Brazilians, Australians, Brits, Frogs, Krauts, Vikings and a smattering of other countries.

QED. 😀

RE

The blind obedience gene is dominant.  For sure it is not recessive.  It works with the socialization gene to make morons of otherwise capable people.  Their other abilities, being in the normal range; let them pass easily.

You need the special glasses to see them.

Quote from: RE on Nov 25, 2025, 11:55 AMAt the very least, these three factors control human thinking and behavior, and being on the right side of the moron/not moron divide requires all 3 be positive.

For starters, I liked the gene calculation explanation and went and looked up more about it prior to responding. Looking things up also revealed that a consequence and CFS gene look to be flyers, and when you ask AI about it what gets mentioned is an interaction between genetics and experience/environment. CFS seemed to also include/require a general intelligence and ability to learn. At best a "consequences gene" was attributed to combinations of others rather than its own thing.

Quote from: REIt's not really so clear cut  as a single gene for any of them, otherwise less than 1% of the population would not be morons.  However, my own personal lifetime cumulative study of all the people I have ever met indicates that a MINIMUM of 90% of the global population of homo sap are MORONS.  Besides the FSoA, my lifetime sample includes Brazilians, Australians, Brits, Frogs, Krauts, Vikings and a smattering of other countries.
QED. 😀
RE

However, jumping to the morons conclusion, 90% strikes me as a bit higher than I would have WAG'd myself. But as with experience, intelligence, and critical thinking being involved in CFS and consequences, I imagine such a number might also involve the attitude and expectations of the person making the estimate.

You are a smart guy, it isn't a surprise you would think most folks are morons.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 25, 2025, 04:32 PMThe blind obedience gene is dominant.  For sure it is not recessive.

Couldn't find that as a specific gene either.

Quote from: K-DogIt works with the socialization gene to make morons of otherwise capable people.  Their other abilities, being in the normal range; let them pass easily.

And what type of test would you recommend to identify these types of people?

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 25, 2025, 05:42 PMFor starters, I liked the gene calculation explanation and went and looked up more about it prior to responding. Looking things up also revealed that a consequence and CFS gene look to be flyers, and when you ask AI about it what gets mentioned is an interaction between genetics and experience/environment. CFS seemed to also include/require a general intelligence and ability to learn. At best a "consequences gene" was attributed to combinations of others rather than its own thing.

It is in fact FAR more complex than I make it out to be using basic Genetics to explain the concept.  As you point out, predicting consequences is clearly connected to the type of intelligence measured by IQ tests.  The fact is that there are hundreds if not thousands of individual genes which have an impact on intelligence and we're only beginning to map out what they are and where they are located on the chromosomes.  Genes which fall close to one another are referred to as "linked" genes and often get inherited together.  Blond Hair & Blue Eyes are an example of linked genes.  There is a mechanism called crossing over where linked genes sometimes get split, complicating the inheritance picture.

As you note also, genetics (nature) only partially explains intelligence or CFS, education & experience (nurture) also factor in.  However, given both the condition of the education system and our society, it is unlikely nurture is improving on nature much these days.

Anyhow, I simplified both the concepts and the math involved in genetics and inheritance to make the concepts readable and understandable to people not familiar with biochemistry.  The general principle though is valid even though the 10% number I estimate for non-morons is just a WAG and intelligence is relative because all I can compare it against is my own.  Which makes the whole thing quite biased. lol.  A more reasonable number is probably 80% morons.  Still  large majority though.

RE

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 25, 2025, 05:48 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 25, 2025, 04:32 PMThe blind obedience gene is dominant.  For sure it is not recessive.

Couldn't find that as a specific gene either.

Quote from: K-DogIt works with the socialization gene to make morons of otherwise capable people.  Their other abilities, being in the normal range; let them pass easily.

And what type of test would you recommend to identify these types of people?

This should do it.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 26, 2025, 06:35 AM

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 25, 2025, 05:48 PMAnd what type of test would you recommend to identify these types of people?

This should do it.

RE explained a topic in an interesting and understandable way. Was worth looking up and seeing how deep that rabbit hole could go, and when you get into all the combinations, the answer is...DEEP.

And when I ask about a test I get....Youtube wanting me to identify myself.....

I'm sure the video has a point.....you know...getting hits and likes or whatnot.....but the real question this generated in my mind is....did you provide a video because they can enunciate or explain said test far better than you can? I'll take the video as an answer of course....if you can vouch for them answering the question I asked.

Unfortuately, what usually happens with video links is the person doing the linking thinks there is a kernel of some sort in there...or maybe even some phrase of concept which answers ALL questions. Maybe it does...maybe it doesn't. Unfortunately, what usually happens with videos....someone likes one...and it becomes a catchall of some sort, and saves someone from having to do anything except wave at someone elses work and say..."Just watch this video and all will be revealed!".

Sort of like....THE BIBLE!!! A wonderful work of history, used by everyone to justify about everything. An advocate slings out a book and verse number, and uses it to prove a point. Or should I say, INTERPRETS it to make a point. And another Bible thumper can then sling out a book and verse contradicting the first..or INTERPRET it as contradicting the first. And then we found religions that fight and kill each other over he said/she said nonsense.

The internet and videos have sort of become like that. If you had kicked out some published research I could get my hands on, that has refernces and argument and logic all rolled up to make the point and can evaluated on its own, that would work! But videos....are....like modern....cartoons.....and while cartoons were usually pretty funny on Saturday morning...they sure weren't ever designed to be very....informative.

You look for an answer where none there is.  Living with ambiguity is hard.  A true master practices long to become comfortable with ambiguity.

Consider, that the stupid, unable to find answers for themselves do not know ambiguity at all.  They cannot balance a pencil on its point or consider the nuances of argument.  Nuance at all they cannot see.  Off to it they are turned.  Embracing contradiction and being comfortable with it is a skill that takes practice.  The stupid are too afraid of the empty void to experience contradiction as it is meant to be experienced.

You also have no fucking sense of humor.

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 26, 2025, 04:06 PMRE explained a topic in an interesting and understandable way. Was worth looking up and seeing how deep that rabbit hole could go, and when you get into all the combinations, the answer is...DEEP.

Glad it was helpful.  The topic is very deep indeed, and you have to be quite careful extrapolating too far based on what we know about genetics versus what we don't know.  Even scientists in  the field will convey the idea that because we worked out the genetic code carried on DNA, we have all thhe tools we need to work out how a given organism works, just a matter of time in identifying what code sequence is responsible for each phenotype.  Fact is , there is far more we don't know than what we do.

What we do know is that DNA  codes for different proteins, and these proteins serve either as catalysts for a metabolic pathway or as building blocks for the structure of the organism.  Which makes it possible to identify genes responsible for a variety of diseases and sometimes fix them.

Going much beyond this however is still shrouded in mystery.  There is little understanding of how genes code for the gross morphology of an organism, its body plan.  It always bothered me when I discussed it with Eric, and our bio teacher never gave me a satisfactory answer either.  I've also never been happy with the explanations for cell differentiation in different organs, nor with explanation of the organization of the brain by region.  Had I continued my study for a doctorate, this is where I would have focused my research.  The area of study is wide open to this day because it's so mysterious.  Nobel Prize material if you could work it out.

Anyhow, without an understanding of the gross structure to begin with, it's a mistake to go too far using genetics to explain how intelligence works and what traits can be ascribed to specific genes or sets of genes.  You  can however do pretty good statistical studies of populations to see how the numbers shake out, then work backwards to figure how many genes are involved and what's dominant or recessive.  Not much of that being done either, since most of the money is being spent on DNA research that has direct application in pharmaceutical drug synthesis.  That's where the money is.

RE

The number of genes defining the subtleties we are discussing is in the hundreds.  But there are some which are very apparent.

BBC.COM • 2025-05-15

Williams Syndrome: The people who are too friendly (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250515-williams-syndrome-the-people-who-are-too-friendly)

People with Williams Syndrome treat strangers as their new best friends. Now the condition is giving clues to our evolutionary past – and what makes us human.

A handful of genes are missing from one chromosome and the body has only the back up copy to code proteins with.  I'll guess that deletion of the missing section from both chromosomes is fatal.

These missing genes have a dramatic affect on behavior and mental capacity.  The article link is good at discussing the underlying biochemistry.  Genes that control social behavior go all the way back.  To before humans were human, and individual genes can control more than one thing in a morass of complexity.  It shows that our analysis here of stupidity being controlled by social genes is not far off.  Or is that just my point of view?

The boundaries and institutions of collapsing empires are well established.  Innovation and change which built an empire once welcomed traits in the early days are considered subversive dissent that challenges the existing. now moribund social arrangement and poser structure. Only compliance is rewarded in a dying empire.  The dying days of empire are days of yes men and sycophants.

And now our social genetics reward stupidity, and stupidity blossoms like flowers in a field.  At the exact time wisdom is needed, it is shunned.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 26, 2025, 05:24 PM

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpngimg.com%2Fuploads%2Fstarwars%2Fstarwars_PNG1.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=271e4a1e623e453c7639bf5c826ce9d2ba939941d8c8a6f6ed3175e4cb84ba87)

You look for an answer where none there is.  Living with ambiguity is hard.  A true master practices long to become comfortable with ambiguity.

I do better than just ambiguous, I do probability, high, low, skewed or not, for as many scenarios as someone can dream up.

What I don't do is clicks for random talking heads on Youtube which may, or may not, have anything to do with the topic in question.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 26, 2025, 08:15 PMAnd now our social genetics reward stupidity, and stupidity blossoms like flowers in a field.  At the exact time wisdom is needed, it is shunned.

Well, depends on the field of endeavour I suppose. Haven't seen much shunning at all, folks been paying quite well for the wisdom from those who have it.

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 27, 2025, 01:33 PMWell, depends on the field of endeavour I suppose. Haven't seen much shunning at all, folks been paying quite well for the wisdom from those who have it.

Technical expertiese and Wisdom are not synonymous.

RE

Quote from: RE on Nov 27, 2025, 03:06 PM

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 27, 2025, 01:33 PMWell, depends on the field of endeavour I suppose. Haven't seen much shunning at all, folks been paying quite well for the wisdom from those who have it.

Technical expertiese and Wisdom are not synonymous.

RE

Of course they aren't. But for those who fell on the right side of your gene combination, and ended up with the right expertise at the right time, and used both to develop not ONLY wisdom but insight into previously unknown concepts and ideas, having both can be quite lucrative.

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 27, 2025, 03:25 PMOf course they aren't. But for those who fell on the right side of your gene combination, and ended up with the right expertise at the right time, and used both to develop not ONLY wisdom but insight into previously unknown concepts and ideas, having both can be quite lucrative.

There's no evidence I am aware of that technical expertiese can be used to develop wisdom, or that there is even any correlation between them.

RE

Quote from: RE on Nov 27, 2025, 06:49 PMThere's no evidence I am aware of that technical expertiese can be used to develop wisdom, or that there is even any correlation between them.
RE

That is only because "wisdom" can be as amorphous to quantify as ....say....beauty. And correlation? They can be meaningful. Or not.

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QuoteThere's no evidence I am aware of that technical expertise can be used to develop wisdom, or that there is even any correlation between them.

True, they are not the same thing.  Technical expertise is a narrow and focused blade.  Wisdom is a broad river, wider than De Nile.

Quote from: TDoS on Nov 27, 2025, 07:32 PM

Quote from: RE on Nov 27, 2025, 06:49 PMThere's no evidence I am aware of that technical expertiese can be used to develop wisdom, or that there is even any correlation between them.
RE

That is only because "wisdom" can be as amorphous to quantify as ....say....beauty.

It's more like being funny.  Some people can know a lot of jokes and never get a laugh.   Funny people make others laugh just by observing the truth and pointing it out.


RE