Scrutable

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:56 pm

Stephanie wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:05 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 4:35 pm

I wrote a blog here: https://thingssamthinks.wordpress.com/2 ... ecoupling/

Which Angela Saini has shared

https://twitter.com/AngelaDSaini/status ... 96738?s=19

"Sorry, that page doesn't exist"... did she get grief for sharing EPD's blog?

Saini shut down her Twitter for a bit to focus on writing a book that she'd just signed a contract for.

Edited out. Ah, can't be arsed...

murmur wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:13 pm

Edited out. Ah, can't be arsed...

Correct response I think.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 4:35 pm

I wrote a blog here: https://thingssamthinks.wordpress.com/2 ... ecoupling/

Good piece.

I vote for the word pillock to return to regular useage.

Perhaps Dawk should learn by heart the poem No Man Is An Island. Or the quote from Leonardo da Vinci

“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

plodder wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 10:45 am

Suggest people read Cumming’s blog and note the number of references. He might be over extrapolating but he’s not blagging to the extent you’re characterising and he is a genuine agent of change with a genuine sense of direction.

I'm not disputing his vision or impact. It's what has influenced his philosophy.

It's a long time ago, but I seem to recall a subset of my peers in the Kentish grammar school system - especially those who embraced the whole Thatcher's Children thing were quite similar in their social Darwinism and not realising that IQ or even academic ability* doesn't automatically protect from picking up a mistaken idea and running with it.

And of course different ways of looking at the world is good for avoiding groupthink, but his advertisement is not the way to achieve that. I'd love to know how many women applied, for example



*slightly different, I'd say.

thanks for the specific take downs of the multiple references he uses. always good to see people steering away from generalised hand waving.

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 8:34 am

I've been demanding my football breeding plan for years.

Yet NOTHING has been done.

I suppose it proves the famous old adage: it you want to forcibly breed a race of ubermenschen you have to do it yourself.

Yes, but what would happen if you tried to cross, say, a Liverpool player with an Everton player etc
Would it be like a positron meeting an electron?

eta Or does the incendiary rivalry only cover supporters?

It's not just the ability to head up a big corporation or create a business or whatever. Mediocre people are floating about in all sorts of senior and influential positions, and it's often because "better" people didn't have access to the same opportunities. This is pretty basic stuff tbh.

Gentleman Jim wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:26 am

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 8:34 am

I've been demanding my football breeding plan for years.

Yet NOTHING has been done.

I suppose it proves the famous old adage: it you want to forcibly breed a race of ubermenschen you have to do it yourself.

Yes, but what would happen if you tried to cross, say, a Liverpool player with an Everton player etc
Would it be like a positron meeting an electron?

eta Or does the incendiary rivalry only cover supporters?

In my experience, when two men come together it never creates a viable embryo, nor an explosion of pure energy.

plebian wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 27, 2020 11:03 pm

Gentleman Jim wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:26 am

lpm wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 21, 2020 8:34 am

I've been demanding my football breeding plan for years.

Yet NOTHING has been done.

I suppose it proves the famous old adage: it you want to forcibly breed a race of ubermenschen you have to do it yourself.

Yes, but what would happen if you tried to cross, say, a Liverpool player with an Everton player etc
Would it be like a positron meeting an electron?

eta Or does the incendiary rivalry only cover supporters?

In my experience, when two men come together it never creates a viable embryo, nor an explosion of pure energy.

Sexist!!
There are women football players and supporters

My knowledge of football is cultivated to be as little as possible. Enjoy your sportsball.

cultivated... you mean you weed it? That's a neat trick there plebs.

plebian wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 28, 2020 11:05 am

My knowledge of football is cultivated to be as little as possible. Enjoy your sportsball.

So is mine but I do at least know that there is women's football. For me it's a feminist thing, like women priests. I don't believe in God(s) but women who do should be able to be ministers of (any) religion.

Note to self: don't make obvious, self centred sex jokes.

plebian wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 28, 2020 6:49 pm

Note to self: don't make obvious, self centred sex jokes.

I enjoyed the joke, pleb

murmur wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 8:28 pm

jimbob wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:31 pm

murmur wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:12 pm

Cummings is one of those wazzocks from a non-science background who reads a couple of pop science books or articles and thinks, "This is a piece of piss, got this lark sussed" without any hint of an understanding of how he got there nor what it really means nor how to spot problems in methods and stats.

At least he's not as bad as local aristo, climate change denying, coal selling "journalist" and former zoologist Matt "Where's my brain?" Ridley...

And half-arsed classicists like Johnson have no starting point for just how big a wazzock a Cummings or a Ridley actually is.

I'd say it's a specific genre of pop-science books. For example I'd lay money on him having read "Blink" (not that I have read it to critique it, just that sort of thing would fit right in with his idea for "superforecasters"). Also probably "Atlas Shrugged".

There's a whole subgenre of anarcho-capitalist science fiction and a lot of Cumming's ideas seem influenced by that.

Oh yeah, he just has to have read Gladwell and thinks it's all the real deal.

Ayn Rand is a given for that class of wazzock...All that time wasted when he could've been reading Sartre or Genet or Italo Calvino...Even Enid f.cking Blyton...

I've just remembered one book I read around 14 and it did make an impression on me - just not the one the writer wanted
Niven and Pournelle "Oath of Fealty"

...as I couldn't see how a techno-feudalist future was desirable or why the instigators should be the heroes of the book. At the time, I hadn't noticed the bit where liberals were anti-science and thus bad and conservatives were pro-science. I *did* spot it in a even worse book they cooperated on - "

Fallen Angels where environmental campaigns against global warming have led to an ice age and disaster - but again there are some right wing scientific prophets on earth and rich right-wingers living in orbit for some reason. Given that it was written in 1991, I was reading it with a sense of HTF did they manage to be so dishonest.

Which certainly fits in with this

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Googling them - I'd guess that Cummings has read loads of books shortlisted or winners of the Prometheus Award. Unfortunately, I have read too many of them - although I do find it amusing that Ken Mac Leod has won it on several occasions. When Heinlein is one of the more liberal voices, you have problems.

Libertarian b.llsh.t and right wing nut jobbery is strong among many US SF writers. I remember reading Pournelle’s Mercenary when I was 15 or so, basically a justification for what the US did in Central America, but in SPAAACE. Was frankly disgusted and it was the last book of his I ever read. Michael Moorcock wrote a great essay on the hideousness of much science fiction several decades ago, and it still applies today.

bjn wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 03, 2020 10:27 pm

Libertarian b.llsh.t and right wing nut jobbery is strong among many US SF writers. I remember reading Pournelle’s Mercenary when I was 15 or so, basically a justification for what the US did in Central America, but in SPAAACE. Was frankly disgusted and it was the last book of his I ever read. Michael Moorcock wrote a great essay on the hideousness of much science fiction several decades ago, and it still applies today.

Oh yes. And I've linked to that essay before. And as you say, even as an impressionable teenager, I found them quite repellent. But it does mean I recognise the ideas that Cummings is regurgitating.

bjn wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 03, 2020 10:27 pm

Libertarian b.llsh.t and right wing nut jobbery is strong among many US SF writers. I remember reading Pournelle’s Mercenary when I was 15 or so, basically a justification for what the US did in Central America, but in SPAAACE. Was frankly disgusted and it was the last book of his I ever read. Michael Moorcock wrote a great essay on the hideousness of much science fiction several decades ago, and it still applies today.

I suspect it's partly driven by it being easier to write fiction where the protagonists are demi-gods*. Writing strong characters who are not natural leaders, who don't have positions of influence, and are not exceptional in some way is difficult, and probably a hard sell. Many people buy fiction as an escape from their normal world (others use other means to provide relief from their daily lives), so reading a gritty, realistic novel about someone being ground down by 'the system' isn't perhaps the entertainment they seek.
I read 'hard' science fiction primarily for the fun of playing with technological concepts, and get quite irritated by the implausible characters and ideologies

As for American SF, it might be being influenced by the cultural stories about the 'conquest of the west' by rugged individuals leading their families with just the resources they could carry in a wagon and their abilities and making successes of their lives.

There's clearly a place for libertarianism and right wing nut jobbery in human society - it hasn't been selected out yet - but it is not appropriate in all circumstances (and neither (probably) is liberalism).

If I ever get around to writing a (bad) SF novel, it will probably be about ordinary people with manifold faults doing their best to cope with extra-ordinary events.

e.g. E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series.

Pucksoppet wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 8:43 am

There's clearly a place for libertarianism and right wing nut jobbery in human society - it hasn't been selected out yet - but it is not appropriate in all circumstances (and neither (probably) is liberalism).

It may never get selected out as there seems to be no shortage of them willing and able to breed. Even if society turned against them they would still exist covertly.

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:12 pm

Pucksoppet wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 8:43 am

There's clearly a place for libertarianism and right wing nut jobbery in human society - it hasn't been selected out yet - but it is not appropriate in all circumstances (and neither (probably) is liberalism).

It may never get selected out as there seems to be no shortage of them willing and able to breed. Even if society turned against them they would still exist covertly.

We should start by sterilising people who promote eugenics on twitter.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:27 pm

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:12 pm

Pucksoppet wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 8:43 am

There's clearly a place for libertarianism and right wing nut jobbery in human society - it hasn't been selected out yet - but it is not appropriate in all circumstances (and neither (probably) is liberalism).

It may never get selected out as there seems to be no shortage of them willing and able to breed. Even if society turned against them they would still exist covertly.

We should start by sterilising people who promote eugenics on twitter.

Then we become them

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:30 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:27 pm

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:12 pm

It may never get selected out as there seems to be no shortage of them willing and able to breed. Even if society turned against them they would still exist covertly.

We should start by sterilising people who promote eugenics on twitter.

Then we become them

Hard to see how, if they aren't breeding.