Chieve

Got it in one.

This is why so much art is so very boring now. Groupthink and good art have no relation.

Noncom

Exactly.

FUCK THAT.

No matter how many plutes and puling libs want me to, I will not live in the pod and I will not eat bugs.

Not Read-y

Something like 80% of print books are now unreadable for me as the font is too small. I can still technically read them — my eyesight is about the same as it was at 18 — but I’ve been spoiled by e-readers so just can’t tolerate it anymore.

Why would I want to squint at six-point font intended for ants when I could read some other book available in a format where I can easily change the font size and everything else? I do not and will not.

Full Up

If you replace the “US Green Party” with the “US Democratic Party” the sentence is equally true.

We are surrounded by morons.

In Spite Of All The Damage

I think about 100-300 million, but certainly not greater than a billion. Since a +4C world seems about what we’ll hit, I’d say by 2200 if we don’t completely apocalypse ourselves (also very likely, due to nuclear war), there will be 300 million people alive on earth.

If we do nuke ourselves (I give this a 60% chance), possible extinction, but I’d say 2-3 million alive on earth as most likely, with about 50/50 chance of extinction.

Not Loss

That is funny. My teachers told me the same thing. It was a lie, and I knew it even then.

This is apart from my dislike of doing math, but I can almost guarantee that math education will become less and less relevant over the next 20-50 years. It’ll all be handled much more competently and quickly by AI/expert systems and beyond understanding the basics in 50 years, even 99% of scientists won’t actually use much math directly. It’ll decline in teaching and importance and the “M” in “STEM” will come to stand for “Machine Learning.”

Most math education is an utter waste of time and is just busywork anyway, so no great loss.

No Cabin

Same here. I’d be so abysmally terrible at this. I’d also probably die. It’d never occur to me to even try anything like this because the only outcome would be abject failure. Just as with math, it’s not a lack of confidence. No. Just a complete and utter lack of ability.

Loaner

Good thread, but ignores one of the most — if not the most — important economic cause of this: student loans! Loans cause inflation, because in many cases (including this one), inflation is just a surfeit of money in a certain market.

For the past three decades, student loans have been easier to get and more prevalent than ever in history. Part of that is lower interest rates, part of that is subsidies, and part of that is just a cultural change. However, just a simple economic truism is that an increasing pool of money leads to an inflationary spiral.

And available money will not go unused, even if it doesn’t go to teaching. And that’s exactly what happened — it didn’t go to teaching. Instead, it was devoted to instantiating the administrative apparatuses that are now destroying universities, and those climbing walls, those deluxe gyms, all those amenities that are now de rigeur but were unknown even in the 1980s. It also becomes self-sustaining: as more money is available via student loans, universities add more admins and amenities as they realize they can raise tuition which will be covered by loans. As they then need to pay to maintain these new cost burdens, and to improve it to compete with other colleges, tuition rises again. As tuition rises, universities can then fund more of this useless stuff. But that then requires more and larger loans to pay for this increased tuition. And on and on, ad infinitum.

That’s just basic inflation, and a lot (I’d estimate 70%) of the rise in college costs are due to this loan-created inflationary spiral.

The Hofstadter Problem

The problem with me hanging around with “smart” people is that eventually someone is going to praise Douglas Hofstadter and his terrible book, and then I will go off on a 30-minute jeremiad about how and why that book is a worthless turd furrow and furthermore how anyone who likes it is a shabby excuse for anything claiming intelligence above that of a nematode.

And then because 90% of the mooks there will love that foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, I will have offended everyone present and no one will want me there again.

There is no way to prevent this. None.