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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • After WWII there was a halcyon era where nearly every adult in America agreed that nerds had been crucial to our winning. That’s why Operation Paperclip came to be where we stole all the former Axis nerds we could find.

    It also led to an unprecedented boom in education spending, research spending, etc., mostly aimed at beating the USSR at technological development. Sputnik goosed that significantly, and the Apollo program briefly did as well, until Americans got bored of Moon landings…

    That was probably the first major flashing red warning light most of us ignored: Moon landings… boring!!!

    Anyway, educated people started doing things that weren’t directly associated with winning the Cold War, like exposing the dangers of lead in everything, the dangers of smoking, the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons, the dangers of greenhouse gasses, etc.

    That threatened the ability of grotesquely wealthy hoarders to hoard even more grotesque levels of wealth.

    So they started the project to dismantle education in America.

    That project kicked into afterburn once the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended.

    And so far, nerds haven’t been successful in regaining their status.











  • Well back when computers were being developed/ improved there was a pretty strong commitment throughout the Western nations to advancing and expanding education for everyone.

    In that paradigm, people would become more educated and better at critical thinking at a steady pace, probably on par with the rate at which computer programs advanced in their capacity to mimic human behavior.

    So, “can it fool more people into believing it’s a human” would’ve been a great test of whether the program was super advanced.

    Instead we’ve had 50 years of attacks on public education by Republicans that has been tolerated - or at least not fought hard enough - by Democrats. So not particularly advanced programs can fool a great many people. That does make the Turing Test moot, I think.


  • “A kid being sick is one thing”

    You just wrecked your whole argument and put the flaw to OP and all the kid-free people here.

    If your opinion is that “a kid being sick is one thing” then all we’re talking about here is degree of consideration, not whether to consider or not.

    OP and others here are acting like having a kid is some get out of work card. “This one weird trick drives bosses insane!!”

    It very well may be the case that parents get a little more grace, but chances are that the boss has kids too. Because it starts with “a kid being sick is one thing.”